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Tallinn is a sweet, gentile town on the outskirts of Europe. Far enough removed from the West that...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:00:22 +0100

Tallinn is a sweet, gentile town on the outskirts of Europe. Far enough removed from the West that is has avoided a great deal of bad architecture. And between the old town and the old Soviet warehouses it has enough to drown out the occasional billboard. When Sunday comes it is perfectly serene.

In a restaurant drinking Georgian wine - no, me neither, but it’s good - a group of bald fat men in puffer jackets walk in. The type you only really see at Europa League matches. Big thick eyebrows, skinheads with little man bag – but instead of football chants its Georgian folk and a male voice choir. So when one sits down next to me I ask if he knows who he’s just performed to. He doesn’t and I point to Peter Jenner Pink Floyd’s manager who’s sitting across the room. That the man has seen every Floyd show and has just applauded my new friend. “Oh, I love Pink Floyd, they’re my favourite band.” The singing continues and Mari Kalkun who’s sat opposite encourages some oratory folk songs. And the men, who are not naturally music-minded, slowly join in. It’s a moment of pure, easy music where the synthetics of a conference are lost in the snowstorm outside.

The highlight of the event was to be found in the classical side with Páll Ragnar Pálsson; the Icelandic composer unveiled a knockout chamber piece of warping progressions and immaculate metre. The work was designed for a similar event in Amsterdam but it never materialised. Left in a drawer, neglected, it was only when Estonian Music Days heard of the piece’s existence did it finally find its performance. The complexity of it was its ability to create rolling emotive sound without falling back on tired symbolism and familiar structure. ‘Undir yfirráðum kyrrðar’ (tr. ‘Supremacy of Peace’) performed by the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.

There is good music to be had and Barry Andrewsin Disko is another favourite. Signed to world beating Tampere label Fonal, this new signing is the lofi set up of Jukka Herva. Balancing between the grit and the glistening he’s making incredibly fluid music and could find cozy shelf space next to Islaja. But all this is really beside the point. A delicate backdrop, much like the April snowfall.

I’m fortunate enough to be invited on export trips, and the reason I keep saying “yes” is because these events are an education. An opportunity to see the world and speak to people I’d never normally be allowed in a room with. At a Music Finland event in collaboration with the Finnish Embassy conversation turns to Eurovision as the guy who judges the Lithuanian entrants is talking about it to a small entourage. Although there’s music on, the real excitement is these conversations. So when people complain about the music industry talking at the bar and not watching the bands it’s because the conversations are, broadly speaking, better than the music.

So the advice is that if you love stories get yourself out. Now on the plane home and as I type this, and I’m not exaggerating for literary effect here, the guy next to me is explaining how under Soviet rule he drank tonnes of cheap champagne. Because it was coming from Odessa. “They’ve got delicious grapes, red and white, sweet semi sweet, dry, you know, they are very, very good…” I’m typing this live.

This effect is becoming lost at festivals because their decreasingly diverse crowds are becoming increasingly reverent to the bands. On these trips it’s possible to learn more about the world than a year in school. And Tallinn Music Week is great because of its grace and tenderness. Qualities that echo out of its organiser Helen Sildna and through all involved.

Most social media spats are storms in teacups and while a few can be blown completely out of...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:58:01 +0100

Most social media spats are storms in teacups and while a few can be blown completely out of proportion, on the whole they are usually over in a couple of days. However, in one particular case a Twitter feud has served as an unlikely source of inspiration. Last June an incident was picked up by various news sources, including the New York Time’s Paul Krugman, who wrote a post that was as short as it was damning. Krugman said the Estonian austerity budgeting has created, “…a terrible — Depression-level — slump, followed by a significant but still incomplete recovery.” Before going on to conclude, “Better than no recovery at all, obviously — but this is what passes for economic triumph?”

Then followed a retort from Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves who was taking his first baby steps onto the social media platform. Taking to the stage the new politician revealed his scorn at the softly dismissive Nobel-winning economist. Culminating in a tweet of striking sarcasm: “Let’s sh*t on East Europeans: their English is bad, won’t respond & actually do what they’ve agreed to & reelect govts that are responsible.” Hardly words befitting a head of state, more the medium.

Then writer Scott Diel is asked by Eugene Birman, a composer and fellow American in Tallinn, to write a libretto. Diel has freedom of topic. Instead of writing about a grand incident such as the rise of neoliberal capitalism in the early Nineties or the dissuasion to join the Euro, the focus is more acute, he picks the spat. At the heart of the libretto is the idea that Estonia is bullied by global forces and instructed on what to do economically by bigger powers.

I spoke to Diel at the premiere and he said “the kernel of the idea came from a mental list I’ve kept in my head over the years of all the times Estonia has rejected advice from the West and done things its own way”.

“I thought this series of big brotherly advice from the West was material for something, but at the time it seemed far too much for 16 minutes.”

“I had one of Krugman’s books open on the nightstand and started to think about that topic – stimulus as another instance of big brotherly advice. When I reviewed Ilves’ tweets they just sort of recommended themselves. So I took those tweets, added a few lines of explanatory text and then constructed a part for Krugman based on what he’d written.”

The libretto premiered Sunday night with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra. It’s a peculiar piece that works asynchronously to the narrative, only occasionally echoing the text. Wonderfully enlivened when vocalist Iris Oja inflexes sh*t. What results is a work of simple command and clean execution.

Diel goes on to say, “What interested me about this was that it seemed to be an incidence of the larger historical debate coming to an emotional head. It interested me that the disagreement between Ilves and Krugman served to some extent as a proxy for the bigger argument.”

But the incident points to a strangeness. Politicians rarely swear in public and lesser so on Twitter. “Surely they swear like plumbers in private,” notes Diel, “so President Ilves’ remarks merely proved to the public that he was human.” But as Ilves tweets like a rather potty-mouthed bird he usurps the traditional and I’d argue proper medium for presidents: to write a letter to the editor. So surely a libretto of the incident would be to highlight and expend the absurdity of the incident?

But no. Diel adopts an intelligent approach to a vibrant issue, and executes it without falling into cliché. And with the music, retains a neutrality. The semantics of the event is hugely relevant, and that writing about a specific political incident is a traditional, folkloric, although potentially forbidden thing to do. Although Diel points me to the broader historical nature of his motivation.

Strangely structured the work finds interest when imagining the chronology of events taking place as the music plays through. In this contemplation there’s the brutality of austerity and empathising with a belittled nation, a President’s frustration and an economist’s arrogance. It’s subtle, but it’s all there.

The performance was part of Estonian Music Days and took place at the House of the Brotherhood of Blackheads.

This is an article from May 2009. Remembered after writing another take down piece on Iggy. Who knew...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:00:00 +0000

This is an article from May 2009. Remembered after writing another take down piece on Iggy. Who knew I didn’t like Iggy Pop? Not me.

old man look at my life, i’m not like you

It all happened so fast. One minute I’m listening to The Idiot in a Le Fanfaron, a debauched rocknroll bar, the next I’m sneering at an album cover in an empty record store, and it’s all because of this man, Michel Houellebecq (pictured).

This antagonist, hermit, drunk and womaniser has – through the brilliance of translated texts – become the rockstars’ rockstar (Iggy Pop has written the soundtrack to a documentary on Houellebecq’s attempts to make a movie based on his book La Possibilité d’une île) and I’m beginning to see why. The book in question is written from two perspectives, that of blogger Daniel and Daniel24 (if my memory serves me right) and is consistently scathing towards the internet and its functions. In his earlier novel Extension du domaine de la lutte, Houellebecq, himself a former civil servant and IT manager writes,

I don’t like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke. My entire work as a computer expert consists of adding to the data, the cross-referencing, the criteria of rational decision-making. It has no meaning.

In an interview for the release of his new album, Préliminaires, an expansion of his soundtrack to the documentary, Iggy Pop explains that when he was recording the songs he had an internet savvy assistant who sent the songs for the Louie Armstrong-esque backing to be recorded. He comes across rather nonchalant when saying this, but you can guess that Mr. Houellebecq and Mr. Pop probable see eye-to-eye on technological matters – and they’re not the only ones. On Neil Young’s latest record, title track Fork in the Road the aging Canadian sings,

I’m a big rock star
My sales have tanked
But I still got you
Thanks
Download this
Sounds like shit

Keep on bloggin’
‘Til the power goes out
Your battery’s dead
Twist and shout

Ouch! I want to agree with the two old rockers, maybe they’re right, maybe this internet malarkey is so impersonal that through endorsing it we are only distancing ourselves from those around us, maybe as Houellebecq argues, ‘It has no meaning’, but I can’t. I find myself deserting these canonised artists because the transcendental qualities of youth – one of the key selling points in their respective oeuvres – is destroyed in the instant they come over all nostalgic on us and start singing about how good it wasin the pre-web era. Young has used the same venom that he had for the establishment in songs like Ohio and directed it at web users. The whole experience is just debasing on their behalf.

It’s not a political qualm I wish to add; it’s not because they they’re all a bunch of Right-wing warmongers, because they’re not even if they do all swing that way. It’s not because they’re all out to make a quick buck and live their paid-up professional lifestyles that grates on me; although that advert is pretty horrendous, and Young is just as bothered about his revenue streams as he is the bloggers in his lyrics. It’s because when I listened to The Idiot back in Paris I believed that it could have been written about me and those around me. It spoke to my neurosis and the end of existence, of war and bombs. However when I hear that Iggy Pop is releasing a concept album around a book that openly attacks the web and only weeks after hearing Neil Young spit vitriol about the digital age, I just think, ‘Fuck ‘em. They’re past it. They don’t know me anymore.’

When they attacked Nixon and gave a voice to those who had been silenced, when they shared the pain and strife of the underdog, that’s when they mattered; nowadays they sing not-so-tongue-in-cheek anecdotes about being King of the Dogs in a world they cannot fathom. They’ve given up, they sit there in their cabins taking pot shots at the world as it is, if anyone has lost touch with reality it’s not the bloggers and web users, it is them.

There’s a lovely moment in Extension du domaine de la lutte (tr. Whatever) where an office worker gets drunk at the Christmas bash, strips and gyrates about. Down to her knickers she realises what she’d done and has to collect her clothes while her colleagues look on. I’d like both Iggy Pop and Neil Young to come to their senses like the female office worker does. To feel a sense of shame and embarrassment that the party’s over and they’re exposing themselves.

Shine on you crazy diamonds: a eulogy for Emeralds A number of weeks ago Emeralds kicked the...

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:48:00 +0000

Shine on you crazy diamonds: a eulogy for Emeralds

A number of weeks ago Emeralds kicked the bucket. Cherished by their fans, championed by the critics. There was something endearingly straight up and bullshit-free about Emeralds. Their live shows were loud. Real loud. They turned it up to create something you could feel. They existed out of context, beyond relevance. The only thing important about the group was how good they sounded. How soulful their music was.

In 2006 the US cassette scene was peaking. With dusty synths available freely from thrift stores; found between VCRs and plastic table lamps. A generation of fearless dudes took the time to master these instruments. To return to an outmoded sonic dialect.

At the time there was a hell of a lot of emphasis on the crude industrial nature of the music. Broken electrical equipment played by neanderthal virtuosos. From this sonic clutter a strand was emerging and it was very 90210. It was a sunshine state of 8-bit retro. Locally to them in Ohio, acts such as Mike Shiflet and personal favourites Burning Star Core were making power electronics. Emeralds existed in this world but they were out of tune with their peers. They were versed in electronic music composer Klaus Schultze and a revered Brian Eno and Robert Fripp guitar project.

The band are not easy to understand. I have spent a lot of time with their records and made very little progress. While it maybe relatively easy to assess the Komische/Fripptronic education that inspired the music, less clear is where they took it and what it is precisely they were trying to create.

With so many tapes overlapping themselves from recording to release and with the band rhizomic growth, it’s easy to dispute a point of change. There is no linearity in their progress. Gradually emerging from the fuzz of dying machines. There’s no point arguing the precise moment but Emeralds crossed over from cave to sunlight. As each release, each track would dance between these spaces, there was always a momentum, a potency with which their music world became brighter.

There are dozens of moments one could cite to hand. Solar Bridge in 2008 is one of those. Amidst the misty glow of reverb a warmth consumes the listener. A soulful feel. A loving embrace. This is what made Emeralds great. Not their frame of reference, nor their instrumentation, nor industriousness. Emeralds shined because they made beautiful, feelgood music. Reaching to their audience with the passion of Whitney Houston. Theirs is an engaging, dense sound.

Between 2008 and 2010 the group went through purple patch: Solar Bridge, Live, What Happened, self titled, and Does It Look Like I’m Here – with What Happened being the jewel, as the trio turned to improvisation. Meanwhile each of the members – John Elliott, Mark McGuire, Steve Hauschildt – were turning around solo and side projects in frighteningly short intervals.

Emeralds were always a band who entertained dualities. Theirs was always a bringing together of ideas and sounds. They operated best when negotiating markers, tightrope walking between sounds that could have killed them – between gaudy 80s tropes and offish noise. They took serious risks and found an audience through their passion for soulful music.

Their latest record, and now their last, was a conflicted album riddled with potholes and difficult passages, harmonised guitar solos and bright arpeggiations. The record entertained the duality of describing a numbness, and piercing through it. Just To Feel Anything is an honest, warts and all record.

The sound of a group over reaching, desperately seeking progress but arriving at a sound that felt exhausted.

Fader published an interview, with Mark McGuire talking about the record: “I think 95 percent of people in the world are convinced that none of the stuff they ever felt or cared about is real or matters at all or is relevant to today’s world, which is pretty much true. So trying to put your soul into a record today, when basically nothing seems to matter anyway, is kind of tough. It’s just a weird time to be making music. I mean, god, you can’t even fall off your chair without it being on YouTube and eight million people watching it and laughing at you”.

In confirming his departure and the death knell for the group Hauschildt tweeted, “Our legacy is one to be felt, not remembered”. And he’s right. If you haven’t yet experienced your hairs standing on end as a bass rich drone fires along your neurones, I’d recommend checking them out.

Some of the records mentioned here are now available. Other than that it’s the case of digital or digging.

Best of 2012 Albums Actress - R.I.P. (Honest Jons) Chromatics -...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:30:01 +0000

Best of 2012

Albums

Actress - R.I.P. (Honest Jons)

Chromatics - Kill For Love (Italians Do It Better)

Ian Drennan - The Wonderful World (Underwater Peoples)

Lee Gamble - Diversions 1994-1996 (PAN)

Hildur Guðnadóttir - Allow The Light (Touch)

Moritz von Oswald Trio - Fetch (Honest Jons)

Motion Sickness of Time Travel - Motion Sickness of Time Travel (Spectrum Spools)

Pallbearer - Sorrow And Extinction (Profound Lore)

Sun Araw & M. Geddes Gengras meet The Congos - Icon Give Thank (RVNG Intl.)

Swans - The Seer (Young God)

Singles

Amen Dunes - Ethio Song I (KRAAK/Sacred Bones)

Neneh Cherry & The Thing - Dream Baby Dream [Four Tet remix] (Smalltown Supersound)

Funkineven feat. Fatima - Phoneline (Eglo)

Julia Holter & Jib Kidder - My Baby (n/a)

Miguel - Adorn (RCA)

Pete Swanson - Do You Like Students? (Type)

Taylor Swift - We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together [Hilbert mix] (Big Machine)

Tombs - Ashes (Everything Went Black)

Triad God - Remand (Hippos In Tanks)

Trus’me - Shakea Body [Terence Dixon remix] (Prime Numbers)

Reissues

Don Cherry - Organic Music Society (Caprice Records)

Uku Kuut - Vision Of Estonia (People’s Potential Unlimited)

Bernard Parmigiani - L’‘uil écoute / Dedans-Dehors (Recollection GRM)

Gareth Williams & Mary Currie - Flaming Tunes (Blackest Ever Black)

V/A - Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984 (Chocolate Industries)

Mix(tap)es

100s - Ice Cold Perm

Juicy J - Blue Dream & Lean

Rick Ross - Rich Forever

FACTmix 356: i:Cube

RyJ - Nicki Minaj Pickle Juice Mix

An Organic Music Society: Don, Neneh, Kieran, Terry, and the...

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:29:37 +0000

An Organic Music Society: Don, Neneh, Kieran, Terry, and the Thing!

For all the vocal repetition, humming and ah-ing, ’North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn’ never suffers from familiarity nor predictability. That despite being perfectly obvious in structure and narrative at no point does it feel stale or worked. It doesn’t leave the listener with the angst not apprehension for change. It expands and contracts with grace. It is a cohesive construction of mood and sound. Cyclical tones heard as one complete arc, one singular narrative. It is remarkable.

It’s impossible that Kieran Hebden is unfamiliar with Organic Music Society. He knows the record and it shows. His understanding of it can be heard in his remix of Neneh Cherry & The Thing ‘Dream Baby Dream’. In its returning, hypnotic nature, it shares the tone of ‘North Brazilian Ceremonial Hymn’. It retains the slow reveal, the patient inquisition into music.

The original by Suicide has a distinct structure: a mangled Casio baseline bastardised, vomited through peaking equalisers, and delivered with the razor toothed regularity of a Motorik drummer. Coughing up similar results when transposed to different musicians. The Thing create a mountainous crescendo. The relentless aural pounding of the original rejected in favour of a shapely climb. The Thing move the track away from the original, before Hebden reels it back in.

Much less is his mindset of post punk framing, void of friction or angst, the Four Tet remix is fluid and restrained. A xylophone and Neneh’s vocal: “dream baby dream” and “keep those dreams burning forever” perform a dance over the techno bed. The relationships between these interpretations swirl around. This isn’t an arbitrary case of a composition performed and edited in contrasting ways. This is a community drunk with ideas, communicating those through their craft, and producing intoxicating music in the process.

Whilst the original vocal is both comedic and adulterated, Neneh Cherry performs the song as a mother. A role augmented as the xylophone remembers a lullaby on baby mobile. She is a guiding voice giving the song a purpose that would otherwise be lost in the musicological mist.

2012 heard a lot of talk concerning inheritance and our social responsibility - what our society should look like from a moral perspective. The political fall out of the Arab spring and Egypt’s new government. The legacy a Summer of games and the socially tender streets of East London. The bind of lending and a divided senate on a new Presidential term. Stoicism in political handover in China. The environment. How much tax corporations should pay. How much support should nations and individuals receive. We want to adopt a greater sense of responsibility and morality. For me, there’s a growing sense of ethical responsibility working its way into everything we do, more than the detergents we buy to the outlets we shop in, rather fundamental questions our our government. The society our actions shape, and the world our society leaves behind.

One question that continued throughout the year was the legacy of Barack Obama. Had he departed office last November what would his legacy have been? A captain who tried to steer a mutinous ship, or a ruthless general aggressively bombing Pakistan with drone strikes. Now he has another chance to shape his legacy.

What has been fascinating to imagine, between Organic Music Society and Dream Baby Dream is the relationship. What has been shared, what has been inherited, what has been improved on, what has evolved. When Don Cherry recorded the LP he involved all sorts of musicians. There are school children on camp in America, there are session musicians in Stockholm and New York, there’s Terry Riley whose influence can only be heard on a manuscript rustling inaudibly on Terry’s Song. There’s so much communication and exchange of ideas. There’s so much democracy at work. There are so many thoughts adopted.

The Four Tet remix of a Suicide song covered by a collaboration between ensemble The Thing and a singer creates its own organic music society. We are invited to listen to the musicians communicate to each other through the artefact of a recording. In a couple of records we can see more communication, more compromise, a greater tolerance of ideas, and more intelligence, than that which is frequently on show between governments and citizens. In these records I’ve harboured a serenity. A utopia that I would struggle to have found looking outward in 2012.

The leading thinkers of our society are potato sack...

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 18:15:00 +0000

The leading thinkers of our society are potato sack wearing, undiscerning literary minds, obsessed by a maligned and outdated language none of them can speak. They maintain the Mayan people’s geographical and meteorological understanding of the environs of Perpignan, France. Their ability to accurately predict well into the future. They are adamant the apocalypse is nigh. Which really sucks.

Why couldn’t they have predicted something good, like cake or a retweet. I would have even been content had they offered me a MySpace beta invite, something I couldn’t be more apathetic about. As if we need another social platform for music. Just make it stop.

So are you ready? We at Clash certainly arn’t. We had plans. Good, solid plans. Ones involving tinned food and walls of water tanks. But these plans were scheduled for after the Christmas party. And quite frankly, we’ve done very little since then. Too busy skulking in the corner, hoping no one notices.

So here we go. The end. This is it. The last opportunity to listen to post-apocalyptic music pre-apocalypse. After that it’ll be you or me son. Rotting flesh, cloaked, screeching across town with flairs, in diabolical wagons, marauding record shops for Tim Hecker LPs, John Carpenter soundtracks, and dystopian library music. Brawling over the last offerings of our society to the Great Above. Hail! Hail! However, we did manage to arrange one provision for us all. Our dear brother and spiritual leader Etienne Jaumet - synth commander of Zombie Zombie, sax blaster in Kill for TOTAL PEACE, and artist in his own right - has made us a mix. Hail! Hail!

Etienne: “With the beginning of my mix I tried to evoke what will be the world after the chaos… I don’t know what will happen the 21 of December, but I like the idea that the world will not be the same after…”

Anyone who’s been up with the escapades of Rihanna’s recent...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:40:00 +0000

Anyone who’s been up with the escapades of Rihanna’s recent promo campaign would get the impression that the pop industry continues to tower financially over us all. A plane leaving LA taking in seven destinations including London where it concluded.

Those looking at the fine print of this elaborate stunt will have noticed the brand advertising that fuelled the plane with oil and the journalists with booze. Something I am in no way bitter about being excluded from. Definitely not.

The cracks can be seen. A recurring feature of pop videos today is the product placement: the phone, a designer beverage, or whatever multinational brand has decided to market their wares. Not only has this starved the artistry of pop videos but it bolsters the idea that pop’s haughtiness is escaping for pastures real.

With such fiscal degeneration, the magnetic centre of major labels and formal structures has weakened and increasingly ‘Pop’ artists are turning to the fringes, rather than being consumed by the not-so-fat-anymore fat cats. They are less likely to be seduced by the money men, who are standing increasingly pocketless, or the producers whose bloated studios feel increasingly irrelevant.

Now the idea of the bedroom producer, the home studio, or the DIY operation above a suburban kebab shop seems more relevant. There’s also a case, recently made by Carrie Battan over at Pitchfork, that the gulf between the indie scene and its pop counterpart is being exploited. That there is an increasing interest in gentrified pop, in the growing belief that pop music is wasted on the young.

This isn’t a particularly new trend nor is it one I take any claim in. It’s the urban, savvy, talented vocalist constructing radio-friendly ditties with the help of boutique producers and record labels. The self aware, intelligent artist. One who understand the importance of collaboration. Jade Pybus,or Py is one of them. A former Music and Visual Arts student at Brighton University, engrossed in submersion and interactive performance.

“The first [producer involved] was Throwing Snow. I just contacted him… [the] thing with Ross that I real like was that he crossed over the bridge of live music and band music and I was really into what he was doing. Maybe at the time I hadn’t really realised that. It was a really good match and now he’s become a great friend.”

The nature of the scene, with everyone being friendly and I just got to know everyone. To know people working, with everyone working differently.” When Jade talks she sounds neither wide-eyed nor overwhelmed. She has the pedestrian ease of someone in control: “Then Lapalux contacted my on my [social music platform] Soundcloud. You know,” she pauses, “a lot of producers contact me on Soundcloud.”

And when Jade expresses her involvement with the art direction it comes across as real, “I’ve done two videos now. I wanted to get my teeth into it, and the art director was on the same course as me. And I’ve made loads of visuals as well, going on to sound images and capturing things that mean stuff to me – there’s a lot of nostalgia and memories.”

Both Katy B and Jessie Ware have been brought to fame through their own creative endeavours. Katy worked with Rinse, the cutting edge East London dance operation, and Jessie collaborated with Julio Bashmore (perhaps with Sade covers in mind). But these aren’t the only two that fit this exciting and emerging trend. Fatima Bramme Sey moved from Stockholm to London in pursuit of a change.

“I just was bored of living in Stockholm. I really love my home town. As far as the city goes it felt pretty small. One of my best friends was moving here, so I wanted to go there. When I arrived in London I did a few things I don’t think are worth mentioning,” she does, and I mention how working in a sneaker shop was probably a good way to meet musicians, “Eventually as time goes by you get to know the city better. Get to know the characters.”

This change has not taken place overnight, nor does is feel completely revolutionary, but it has crept into the current cultural landscape, and left London a pop industry more feral than ever.

Last year the beautiful compilation I Listen To The Wind That...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:46:00 +0000

Last year the beautiful compilation I Listen To The Wind That Obliterates My Traces (Dust-to-Digital) premiered obsolete field recordings from recording pioneers and radio towers. As the title suggests, the theme of this compilation is the idea that time passes, represented by an early recording of the wind framing recordings of voice, song, and nature. Of the eponymous recording, it is a strange, haunting souvenir that draws acute focus on the vernacular lives captured by proxy in the sound. For this ancient wind sweeping through evokes a lot of emotions and looking at the front covers of this week’s papers, brings out the horror of it all.

Here is the poem from where the compilation takes its title:

I listen to the wind that obliterates my traces.
The wind that resembles nothing,
Understands nothing nor cares what it does,
But is so lovely to listen to.
The soft wind,
Soft like oblivion.
When the new morning breaks
I shall wander further,
In the windless dawn begin my wandering afresh
With my very first step
In the wonderfully untouched sand.

Par Lagerkvist ‘Aftonland’ (tr. Evening Land, 1953)

Looking back 100 years, recordings of this nature are rare. They exist in a balance between our folkloric inclinations, sensory memory, and aesthetic perceptions. As Lagerkvist’s words aptly highlight the wind’s luggage in voices and people.

Composer, novelist, and journalist Paul Bowles of NYC studied with Aaron Copeland, wrote for theatre, before migrating to Tangier to write. When camped in North Africa his love for recorded sound manifested in his narrations of his tales. One poignant recording The Garden, now available through UBU Web, it employs sound to evoke the story.

Ironically it is a tale of enlightenment, comprehending faith, and the threat of danger. In its conclusion the desert wind is brought in to represent the passing of life. Again the majesty of a ghostly wind can be heard. It is used to evoke ideas of existence and the passing of time.

Today recordings of the wind are more stark than ever. As Manolo Espinosa Head of Audio at Soundcloud remarks, “The recordings of Hurricane Sandy before and during the storm provided a powerful way to get a sense of the strength and impact of it through one of our most fundamental senses.”

He draws my attention to one podcaster Baratunde Thurston who has been recording excerpts of his journey through Manhattan during the storm ‘We are making the news: Audio journey out of & back into a dark, post-hurricane NYC’. At first the podcaster’s tone suggested that of a lonely anorak waffling on, broadcasting for his own pleasure. It would have been easy to be more dismissive of him, were it not for the humbling self-realisation that followed. But where Thurston engages in citizen journalism, it is the recording purists that charge my interest. It’s the cracking microphones caught in a gale that excite. The peaking of the sound levels in the might of the storm.

Espinosa corresponds via email, “We can’t see wind, of course we eventually see its punishing effects, we hear the wind and sense the danger is approaching through the howling and the whistling. These sounds formed the haunting soundtrack to this event right before and during the impact of Hurricane Sandy.” Indeed it is possible to track the storm as it approached NYC chronologically placing recordings of it.

“This is becoming even more relevant the more mobile our society becomes – the more people take their smartphones on-the-go, the more of a hunger there is for audio.” Espinosa curated a set of recordings on his Soundcloud page, offering a vivid portrayal of the ’superstorm’ which he continues to update.

The volume of recordings is clearly an issue, one we are familiar with in the internet age. “I believe having more choice is always a good thing,” argues Manolo. “Of course there’s always a challenge in surfacing the worthy material from the rest when the volume increases, but that’s where people and curation and good search comes in. If a piece of audio resonates with enough people, then it should rise, just like useful information on other social media channels.”

With mortality impossible to disassociate from these recordings, it’s painful to imagine that by their intangible nature they themselves may not survive, taken from us in technology’s advance.

In 2008 Megan Remy started her solo project U.S. Girls releasing...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

In 2008 Megan Remy started her solo project U.S. Girls releasing cassingles, 7” E.P.’s and an L.P. Support from Britt Brown of Not Not Fun and a two date UK tour ensued.

Live shows see Meg singing mangled, reverb heavy vocals over prerecorded tape loops layered with white noise. the songs would include covers such as Bruce Springsteen’s Prove It All Night but it’s her own eerie R&B compositions that place her at the vanguard of pop music.

“I just wanted to make music at home, and then to share it. To experiment…really just have fun. I just wanted a challenge I’ve never done,” she says in the least-pretentious, arrogant-free tone imaginable.

“I wanna attempt to keep pushing myself into a new form of music. I want to look towards the future of music because everything made now is a reproduction. I wanna keep experimenting, I don’t want to get bored.”

At the tail end of last year Meg released ‘U.S. Girls On KRAAK’ (referencing the Belgian label, KRAAK, who released it). This time including a revision of Brandy & Monica’s The Boy Is Mine - a dark, bastardised interpretation engulfed in screeching and rotting industrialism.

“It’s in my blood. It’s the music that I grew up with and that grabbed me first. My love affair with it is probably not that good because it’s a love affair with the past.” Although conscious of the Retromania debate currently encircling pop ideology, thankfully it is her own composition, Island Song, that tops the record.

U.S. Girls is often associated with early Not Not Fun releases: Inca Ore, LA Vampires, Pocahaunted, and Peaking Lights, often crop up in the same conversations. Regrettably Pocahaunted is no more, Peaking Lights has moved away from the sound that links them, LA Vampires is low on Amanda Brown’s to do list, and Inca Ore’s similarity extends little beyond the aesthetic outlines.

The Colorado-Born opera singer talks about life in Spain,...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:39:00 +0000

The Colorado-Born opera singer talks about life in Spain, discovering Castile folk, and returning home to record her latest album.

Josephine Foster is the warm, kindly recording artist, too adverse to synthetics to be of this world. She is the singer listeners hold close to their hearts. She is the real, tangible romance, one of well-thumbed folk tales, of intimacy in plain expression. It wouldn’t take a fine comb to reveal how impersonal and calculated music can be. Foster is the antidote. “Making music is not about logical processes,” she writes via email, “It’s a way to resonate with wherever you are and whatever cultivate beauty you desire to share”.

Foster’s career could be seen as a continuous endeavour to construct the sounds of her locus.Graphic As A Star placed the poetry of Emily Dickinson in an intimate setting of friends and music, and her two records with The Victor Herrero Band are very much placed in Grenadine Sierra, Spain – albums of haunting folk tales recalling oppression under Franco, local churches, and life in the Sierra today.

“Where I live has a profound influence on me, in fact that first song on Perlas Puerto de Santa Maria was a melody I dreamt during a stay there several years ago. It is an old port town where many historic voyages departed from the old to the new world. So it made sense that we ended up returning to that town to record the album. We also arranged and recorded the music living by the Atlantic, and I hear and feel the sea in this music.”

She works hard to remove herself from the creative process and it is audible (as opposed to laudable). “All I write are just rhymes, and they don’t necessarily make sense,” she tells the arts and film group Harmonic Rooms, extolling the virtues of obvious rhymes. “Rather than emerging from oral sources, this latest album [Perlas] is taken from scores and folk songbooks. This is often just the poem, a melodic line and chords, which Victor and I liberally rearranged.”

Without obstructing the process of creation Foster applies a deft touch. Graphic As A Star, her sombre collection of songs based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, is a perfect example of this. Throughout the record there’s a restraint from contributing to the landfill where most music is dumped. Beyond the brilliance of her music, there’s a quality to Josephine that suggests she is respectful to the listener. That she is not driven by ego, nor a desire to be a pop star. Not even to be recognised, nor vying for our attention, rather, she shows an uncommon degree of caution.

However Josephine sees this slightly differently. That it is the avoidance of the complex, and a desire for the simple that bolsters her music. An idea that combines with an organic outlook on newness. “It’s hard for me to assess my work, but in general, very complicated song forms rarely capture my heart or attention. Broader and simpler themes to me make a song more durable and less likely to burn out. The new is something that happens by itself being open to the unknown.”

Foster’s music is noted for dynamic vocal phrasing, frequently jumping up and down octaves. An ability born out of her years studying opera. “I loved to sing from a young age, opera was attractive to me for its liberating impulse, because all the bland conforming pop filling the air was frustrating on a psychological level. Sung intervals could be compared to the muscular impulses in dance, also to the rising and falling in nature influenced by the elements. So the only limiting factor is the muscle itself, because the spirit behind it wants complete amplitude. I’ve noticed most free music in the world seems to find expression vibrating freely along the widest reaches of the voice. Commercial singing styles seem to reign in the voice, and repeat sterilised and limited spectrum frequencies.”

On her new record Josephine returns to Colorado, “I still feel love of the arid and rocky landscape, and understand how this shapes the people distinctly despite all the barriers we erect,” and draws attention to the, “subtle and expansive forms of information that are available to us”. It’s a land named after Spanish explorers describing the red river which runs through it. It’s a record that could soundtrack that journey, that could bring John Ford back to life, rushing along dolly tracks panning across the imagined Rio Grande.

Blood Rushing is a reminder that the digital sanitisation of events and the binary reduction of humans to Turing machines – inputters as a sorrowful outlook. Blood Rushing is an emotive, that Foster was compelled to act. But it also points to the linking of generations, of bloodlines, which acts as a theme in her writing. Panorama Wide deals with birth, and titlesChild of God and Underwater Daughter nod to bloodlines. It is the honest humanity of her music that lifts it up and above its contemporaries, floating on a masterly falsetto.

Nicki Minaj is a potty mouth. So fond is she of a “Motherfucker”...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:36:00 +0000

Nicki Minaj is a potty mouth. So fond is she of a “Motherfucker” that parents are dragging their very young children to the exit. Two albums in, and some of tonight’s attendees have listened through neither of them. With Breaking Bad in mind, here’s what happened after the kids left, BITCH!

‘Come On A Cone’ opens with Nicki Minaj seated in a neon-lit throne. Meant to resemble a rocket, as a cosmic video introduces us to a “landing” theme, it provides a suitable level of preposterousness for cheeky chops to announce her arrival. Peeking her head from out of the capsule she pouts and raises her eyebrows with the slapstick of Benny Hill. There is so much fun radiating from Minaj as she bounces across the stage. She’s got a great smile and wide eyes emanating joy, you could put her in a silent film and she’d still be a star. She looks amazing.

Her flow is dexterous and devilish, darting across tones, rhythms and pitches with the enthusiasm of an energised body popper. It’s ‘The Boys’ that would normally feature Cassie but here it’s just Minaj spitting, bitching, and losing her shit: “I don’t even break when I’m backing up / I swap on a nigga if he acting up,” flies out. Her lyrics are irrelevant and always irreverent. For all the verbiage she can jam into a minute of verse there’s never much reason to become too involved in the lyrics which shelter very little content. To précis the entire show, “I’m crazy funny, don’t fuck with me.” But if you were to give her some time lines like, “Big Sean, how big is you? Give me all yo’ money and give me yo’ residuals,” are up there with Riff Raff in the comedy rankings. Indeed, it’s the humour that saves it from smut. Here, “the boys” on stage are thrusting their hips at a crouching Minaj, who between this scenario is holding her microphone as a dick, and sliding down a fire pole. Had it not been performed as cartoon, and drenched in more denim than an episode of Johnny Bravo, the tone would have driven downwards. “Google my ass,” for instance, is more Bart Simpson than Kim Kardashian.

Without the dance troupe the show looks very minimal indeed. The stage is little more than its two-floor skeleton decorated with screens and projections. It looks between the warehouse of a digital consultancy firm and an acting school space. And, in a way, it works. So Minaj commanding the floor can get away with almost anything. She has a surprisingly elegant gate constructed from her on stage ease (and gluteal implants, allegedly). During one extended instrumental it is just her alone, rolling around the floor in a slow, carefree manner. It’s completely effortless and totally engaging.

Talking to the audience Nicki, because we’re familiar now, reveals a British accent which she believes to be very “Manchester”. It isn’t, and it’s highly likely she knows this. “Isn’t Mel B from Manchester?” She isn’t. And it’s less likely she knows this. But in her goofish way she’s charming us all. This isn’t refined, razor sharp culture, but it works. Elsewhere she presents some of her alter egos including Roman Zolanski. A fuller list of her characters would include The Harajuku Barbie, Cookie, Martha Zolanski, Rosa, Nicki The Ninja, Dexter, Onika Maraj, and my favourite, Nicki Teresa, a nun who heals Minaj fans. More than using these fictitious voices to force the idea that Minaj is somewhat kooky, they add to her lexicon, revealing her to be a more whole character, one who can command an idea.

Beyond this section Minaj wrestles with some of her radio hits. Curiously, many are presented with her off-stage with the crowd listening to a recording played entirely off a laptop. If Minaj has had to pay a price for her fame and popularity, it is in these watered down generic pop soars, these Guetta-soaked synths, these wet melodies, and these soppy attempts to emote. In tracks like ‘Fly’, delivered as a recording with a DJ to maintain the hype. The based glamour of Marilyn in fur collar, glitter bath and candy floss perm Minaj embarks on bittersweet ballad ‘Fire Burn’ proclaiming, “I hope you lay down in your sleep and choke on every lie you told.” To much an extent Minaj entertaining these facades makes for a textural contrast which bolsters her patter, and allows for lyricism beyond “dick in your face” explosives. En bref, it augments the theatre and deflates the act.

The set moves from dance to hip hop. Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock ‘It Takes Two’ is accompanied with technicolor psychedelia and drives through with a house pulse. At this point the show is racing through a myriad of themes sounds and ideas. Eventually it peaks with DJ Spinn and DJ Rashad’s ‘Mercy’ with Minaj turning the gaze on Rick Ross, “Fuck yo’ Lamborghini fuck yo’ Merc’ / got mo’ money in my fucking purse.” It’s electrifying even if she does entertain a ridiculous spiel about Romney who is elsewhere tonight. On the occasions she strays to her strengths, Minaj is electrifying. But the real winners tonight are the musics that have been elevated and transformed for a pop audience: the Juke, the jerk, the trap, the TEKLIFE. As wild and disparate as Minaj can be, the music brings together stronger, weirder, and more unusual influences. Both on song and by nature Minaj stands with Rihanna and Gaga as a great appropriator of cultures and styles, using personality to lock into an audience. Only Minaj can do it with a smile.

Famed for his Ministry of Sound residency at the height of...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:35:00 +0000

Famed for his Ministry of Sound residency at the height of ‘Superclub culture’, Harvey Bassett is grandmaster of the dance floor, an archetype of the smiley face generation.

With bouncing curly locks and an ear to ear grin he looks like he lives in an eternal state of bliss. Part of a strong lineage of classic DJs: channelling the inclusively of David Mancuso’s Loft parties, the edit culture of Larry Levan, and the communion of Alfredo Fiorito, Harvey is planning his return to the UK having emigrated to LA, “On the cheap seats after 9/11”.

But right now it’s midday in Venice Beach and he’s only just woken. Waiting for coffee to perk him up everything is a little hazy. Yet even when he is yawning himself awake Harvey is candid from first to last. As DJ and label boss Phil South remarks: “Harv is so adored by so many. He’s not one to let the hype get to him - the most mellow, lovely, humble and affable guy you could meet.”

He once said: “You can’t understand the blues until you’ve had your heart broken by a woman, and you can’t understand my music until you’ve had group sex on Ecstasy.” But these days Harvey has gone straight, kicking his vices to the curb. How’s sobriety treating you? “It’s all right,” he says with a tone that suggests he’s surprising himself. “It’s a weird and wonderful world being dry than high.”

Having worked in the game longer than most, a dry spell is probably long overdue. In 1988 Harvey began to run a night at London’s Gardening Club where he slowly built his profile. The big event at the time was Shoom, irregular era-defining raves along the M25 famously dismantled by a Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.

“Memories are a really odd phenomenon. It’s funny because I can’t remember the things I can’t remember. I always said I never went to Shoom but not so long ago I found in my archives a flyer from the 1st ever party. Lots of people claim they were there when they weren’t, so I thought I’d do it the other way.”

The past is something Harvey carries in his record bag. Although he is happy to play music from any pocket of pop culture, big bombastic rock and roll, funk, and disco feature prominently. And having befriended record dealer and music fanatic Gerry Rooney, Harvey would find himself digging through old LPs to find that hook.

“There have always been disco edits. Editing the music is an integral part of creating the 12” single. So most records at some point are edited to create an arrangement. At a particular point I remember Larry Levan was in town and he played an edit of South Shore Commission’s ‘Freeman’ and I asked Larry “What version is that? Where can I get that record?” and he was like, ‘well you can’t because it’s an edit that’s on an acetate I have only one copy. And I was like, “Oh dear.” So I decided to do my own.”

Starting with a tape machine Harvey acquired an Atari Mega STE (or Mega 4, the ‘four’ denoting the Ram capacity…in megabytes).

“I remember I often couldn’t get the whole track onto the hard drive. The computer made it, not any quicker, but made it quite a bit easier to splice together these edits, and Black Cock was born off the back of that. It was just a bit of fun. A way me and Gerry could indulge ourselves, and make edits of tracks we liked. It just so happened that no one had done that for 10 years. We were just on the crest of the wave that has become the disco re-edit phenomenon.”

Under the name Black Cock Harvey and Gerry would revisit tracks such as Bill Withers’ “You Got The Stuff”, Tony Silvester & The New Ingredient’s “Cosmic Lady”, and The Dells’ “No Way Back”. Taking a segment, or stem, they would restructure a piece to make it more dance floor friendly. With many of the tracks artefacts from 1976-78.

“I’ve always thought that society is going backwards. There’s no more supersonic flight, there’s no more going to the moon, there’s no more space shuttle.”

It seems strange that as House music was sweeping the UK club scene, music accelerating in both tempo and technology, Harvey was engaging with a nonlinear narrative, happy reinvigorating dusty classics. Reflecting on this today, when music culture has enjoyed a ralentisme since the early ‘90s, could it be Harvey himself who resembles the retro model?

“I’m not a retro model of DJ Harvey. My future hasn’t ended yet. I’m still the design phase for next years model, which is going to be more spectacular, more cutting edge, more on it, more driven, and more aware than all the last models of DJ Harvey.”

Today Harvey is working on Locuslossus, his project with engineer Josh Marcy. There’s been an album last year, and 2012 has seen 12” ‘Berghain/Telephone’ which has received heavy rotation throughout the summer. And despite the lack of bourbon he’s still running his night Harvey’s Sarcastic Disco on the lawless fringes of L.A.

“I’d always been a bit of an Americanophile, and California was calling: LA, voodoo, Mansons, Beach Boys, pornography, hot rods, movie industry, gangsters…you know, all the sort of fun things in life. I think it’s more the idea [of America] than the reality.” For a moment Harvey slips into a familiar territory flirting dangerously with ‘American Dream’ consensus. Typically his mind speeds off, kicking up dust in its wake.

“I’ve been trying to explain how I thought The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly was a documentary. It’s like some people take this sort of Wild West fantasy and believe it’s achievable. That loves go bang and people fall over and no one gets hurt. There’s a sort of mood to this place…the Hollywood Babylon…Fatty Arbuckle destroying hotel rooms in the ‘20s…the Malibu colony and the high life.”

“I don’t know whether you’ve seen the movie Sunset Boulevard with Gloria Swanson, where she won’t accept that’s she’s not a star in this Hollywood palace. That’s part of that delusion. There’s a huge delusion in the head of the actress but her reality is also wild too. That kind of thing is everywhere out here.”

You could be forgiven for thinking that U2 is the only band in...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:55:00 +0100

You could be forgiven for thinking that U2 is the only band in Ireland with the gumption to challenge social norms without the assistance of cable-knits. Thankfully Dublin-based DJ and music fanatic Darren McCreesh has put together Strange Passion, a compilation of Irish post punk acts to educate us all.

“I already had a particular interest in esoteric electronic music and post punk from UK, US, and beyond but knew very little about underground music from Ireland pre 1990. So I began to investigate and, with my focus very much on the post punk scene, was introduced to bands like Operating Theatre, The Threat and Chant! Chant! Chant! I was utterly blown away and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Beautifully diverse, dissonant and utterly obscure this was the scene that time forgot.”

The compilation is diverse in terms of subject matter: from gothic to political, debased rock to ambient synth. One element that is unique (to my ears at least) for music of this ilk, is the prominence of religion. “No Water” by Peridots, for example, is a macabre portrayal of self-harm, incorporating morality; “Fire From Above”, by SM Corporation, contains ideas of divine judgement.

“I am just about old enough to remember Ireland at that time. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Ireland up until the 1980s was living in a velvet version of the Iron Curtain. Just replace Communist dictatorships with what was effectively a church led state. It isn’t really any wonder that religion and a concern with Divinity finds expression in a variety of forms amongst these bands. Incidentally Peter Hamilton of Peridots and Steve Averill of SM Corporation both grew up in Malahide with none other than the members of U2 – probably just a coincidence though.”

The notion of a Velvet Curtain in Ireland is one widely agreed on, but its effect on culture is rarely discussed. One of the finest examples of this analogy with Soviet Communism would be The Virgin Prunes, who were more progressive than their dystopian peers, straying into the musical radicalism of Soviet-era bands such as Popular Mechanics.

“The Virgin Prunes was the most overtly anti-establishment musical act to emerge at this time and they revelled in confrontational primal acts which by their nature were an affront to Catholicism. An infamous appearance on primetime chat show The Late Late Show, was a tightly coiled performance that bristled with rage and hollowed out despair which seemed to channel a seam of covert unease. Something that very few were prepared to do at that time and could be said to have anticipated later revelations of institutional abuse which continued through to the 1990’s.”

While, “Institutional abuse” recalls the corruption of middle management that riddled the tail end of Soviet Union, “Primal acts,” could be used to describe artists such as Sergey Kuryokhin who was recognised for his aggressively conceptual performances, involving props such as spittoons.

For these artists, such a window of wild experimentation was all too short lived. “Certainly bands didn’t seem to stay together for very long, but they were soon replaced by others,” argues Darren, “Pretty much all of them became more pop oriented as the 80s progressed. It seems that as musicians became more proficient with synthesisers the more melodic their work became.”
It’s easy to think of U2 as a voice of a generation – and to overindulge in them. With Strange Passions, we see how they existed at an optimistic, humanitarian tip of a culture. One that, albeit briefly, harboured a vibrant democracy of sound far more radical and interesting than the vanilla rock we oft associate with the era.

Mother Monster, cult leader, harbinger of souls, “I want...

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:50:00 +0100

Mother Monster, cult leader, harbinger of souls, “I want to consume your creativity,” freak, self-marginalised somebody, wired to her fans, wired. The Born This Way Ball is a well-worn spectacle. The clothes look tatty, the stage tired, the dancers hen pecked.

The play house of a Disney castle, with its mechanised stairwells and movable facade from which Gaga appears dominates the stage. “Is it a castle housing a monster or a princess?” asks the sub-text. Before we are asked to question “Who is the monster?” as Gaga appears as both Valkyrie parading on a horse, snaring her warrior fans, and as a Gamesmaster head, floating in a cage of neon, bulbous eyes and disfigured profile. Gaga has more facets to her character than most.

“We’re not just a pop show. My dancers here are not doing it because I hired them…” she proclaims as part of one of many incoherent monologues. This one a thinly veiled attempt at a staff motivational talk. What she’s trying to get across is that all her staff, her production team, dancers, band, caterers and drivers have all bought into the Gaga “cult”. They are part of the singular entity that works together for the same goal. She is the mother, as a colony of ants, sat in the centre of the stage, before all her fans feeding her, and feeding off her. This is the culture of capitalism. Capitalism as culture: “You [the paying public] have made us into a culture,” she continues.

That she would even bother to go into the political mechanics of her business is but a slither of light into the political makeup of the show - which by-and-large resembles a Republican Party conference. “A new freedom… you could explode,” she imagines, in a segue vernacular of a wide-eyed political candidate. Hers is the freedom to carry arms. There are a lot of guns in the show: the vengeful bride, the all-American bandana gunslinger, the fem-bot ammunition brassier, the sartorial warrior. Hers is the freedom to swear, “Fuck. Bitch. Cunt… did I say cunt?” “I don’t give a fuck, bitch.” Hers is the freedom for sexual liberation. De-regulation, no government control, open the markets, “Romney, you have my blessing”.

Like Jeff Daniels’ anchor man in The Newsroom, Gaga occupies the enviable position of being both a hard right Republican liberals can love - demanding greater liberties upon the citizen. From this, she can act the neutral, equating her desire for absolute freedom to the civil rights battles such as sexual equality. And in doing so, harnesses the pink pound, and bleeds it for all its worth. I suspect she hates the Tea Party movement on the grounds she has a penchant for aggravating conservative Christianity. “Black Jesus,” she repeatedly names one of her dancers, in a move that scarcely references beyond the Madonna video. Such is the focal sphere of the show.

What hillbillies does she take us for? It’s 2012 for Christ’s sake! What are you doing shoving out-dated commodified Queer down our throats? We, Manchester, the only town in Europe to host European Pride twice, are so far ahead of this tacky Sex and the City garbage. We are Queer as Folk. Your vision of progression is backwards to us.

But there are these people that do exist in Manchester. One has been brought up on stage. Another is sat right in front of me. Some, notably the debutants, need to channel Gaga to find liberation. They need her to envisage their dreams, and the need her blessing of acceptance. It would be liberal fantasy to argue that Gaga is not needed in London or Manchester tonight. That ours is a culture far more progressive that that of Moscow (where the tour also visits). Even our great cities with their fantastic queer communities are fragile, and vulnerable. That they too need this ridiculous woman to sweep in and deliver her marketing message as if it were a political rally. It is to the credit of Gaga that she mothers these little boys lost.

The drum beat continues, its crashing symbols and over-produced toms. It is the ‘80s stadium rock beat. It is the George Bush Snr. It’s the Reagan beat. It’s Guns N Roses. It’s the sound of Texas. It’s Journey. So rarely does the show stray from the rigid pop machine, it leaves it cold and impersonal. As the narrative develops Gaga sheds her skin. From the ankle length dress she paraded in with a jewelled helmet shielding her face, we are offered a slow strip tease down to knickers and thongs. Emotionally the headgear is lifted, and in a bandana she offers what best resembles a punt at an Oscar. With her voice crackling as she delivers her love to the crowd, and set in the metre of the show, the heartbreak feels feigned.

If Aaron Sorkin was writing this…CORRECTION: Were Aaron Sorkin’s ex, and the eight writers he recently fired writing this, they would praise Stefani Germanotta for being “the greater fool.” For being the one who dared to commit, who dared to take the risks. And in a way she does. This festival of capitalism sees teams of ghost writers sit down and pen songs. Consultants dancing in the shadows. A social media machine greater than any other. A 2.0 website that is going to change the face of the pop industry for ever. Gaga is a great pop star in the same way a modern politician is great. She has the power, ability, and character to connect to a massive core of society that may otherwise feel disillusioned.

It’s a shame that her world is so entrenched in American culture. Leaving the only transposable thread that of “Freak” fetishisation. That she continues the “you are what you buy” mentality. I’m a freak, you’re a freak, “we were all born this way”. That when you buy Gaga you become Gaga. To go to a Lady Gaga concert is to be sold a political ideology, one that will never benefit you, but one that will try to inspire you. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors, and there’s a lot of bullshit, but when you see her riding in on an inflatable pregnant woman, legs akimbo, tatty and that closer resembles a supermarket chicken you can’t help but laugh along.

A recent portrait has emerged of Michael Jackson in the LA Times. It’s of him, drunk, locked away in his London hotel room. His manager frantically emailing an executive at the promotions company (AEG Live) back in Los Angeles, “He’s an emotionally paralysed mess riddled with self-loathing and doubt now that it’s show time.”

Lady Gaga, in all her regalia is the perfect image of self-loathing and doubt. Hers in a paradox between the “strong” and “confident” figure her critics and fans project upon her, and in her heavy layered eyeliner, a ghost of a broken Winehouse haunting her silhouette. She has brought the idea of the sullied celebrity - the Lindsey Lohan, drunk, high, emotionally fractured - and embodied it as if it were an act of grace. Tragedy as a clown would wear a mask. Holding onto her dominance before it is her in the London hotel. Hers is the live of love and death. Of Eros and Thanatos.

When the Lady Gaga team is at their best she can be this sharp, this dangerous, this deadly. She can embody this world. But tonight she didn’t.

An interview with Nicolas Jaar.

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 10:33:00 +0100

An interview with Nicolas Jaar.

A blog on Sun Araw & M.Geddes Gengras meet The Congos.

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:20:00 +0100

A blog on Sun Araw & M.Geddes Gengras meet The Congos.

A review of Dylan Ettinger ‘Lifetime Of Romance’.

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:14:00 +0100

A review of Dylan Ettinger ‘Lifetime Of Romance’.

A live review of Drake.

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:55:00 +0100

A live review of Drake.

A blog on Plan B.

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:12:00 +0000

A blog on Plan B.