Elgar

I was thinking of Elgar, whose 150th birthday falls this year, and this came up.

Things I saw this week when I did not have a camera to hand

A black swan.

A heron pause on the bank of a river before taking flight.

A horse underneath a motorway.

My uncle's remains lowered into the ground.

A baby's smile.

The sun on the water.

Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford

I've had a vague desire for a long time to be Miles Davis, or maybe John Coltrane, although apparently not a strong enough desire to get up off my arse and actually learn the trumpet or sax. The cello always seemed, well, just not a jazz instrument, really (I did contemplate trading up to the bass, but have you seen the size of those things?). I did see someone playing jazz cello once, but it didn't really convince me. So it's very gratifying to hear this splendid album by Basquiat Strings, an ensemble led by cellist Ben Davis and allied to the F-IRE collective, and hear just what I could have done if I'd had the imagination.

Davis studied with Miles Davis alumnus Dave Holland, and the album's very much in that sort of vein (there's even a version of "In a Silent Way". It's also rather slinky in its rhythms, in a way that brings Piazzolla to mind. If you've heard any of the other bands in F-IRE (Polar Bear, Acoustic Ladyland, etc) and enjoyed them, you should enjoy this, so stop dawdling and buy it.

Two Wheels Good

I cycled to work for the first time today. I feel inordinately smug about this. I'll draw a veil over getting hideously lost in Maida Vale.

Xanadu falling

The unusual situation of a gloriously sunny bank holiday is a good excuse to cycle along the Thames pathway from Abbey Wood to Greenwich. Of all the things in London, the river is the one that most consistently makes me glad I live here, and the route takes us right alongside the water for most of the journey.

We round the Greenwich peninsula, and circle the Millennium Dome. I thought at the time, and still do, that the building itself is an impressive looking structure, hamstrung by a lack of purpose. The problem with it always was that they built it and then wondered what to put in it, precisely the wrong way round to go about it. So it ended up filled with tawdry, empty baubles, and now sits forlorn, empty and surrounded by decay, a beacon of broken promises and disappointment, an apposite monument to Blair's government. I reflect on Tony Blair, the man who was so desperate to be liked by everybody, and who ended up being liked by nobody much at all.

En vacances

I've been on holiday. Here are some pictures. Happy Easter!

What use is a book without pictures and conversations?

I am very much looking forward to the next few days. This is for several reasons. One is the prospect of some time off work, and some rest. Another is the prospect of having some time getting out and about in some fresh air in good company. Another is the fact that I have got the new book by Bryan Talbot, Alice in Sunderland, which from what I've read so far will be a thoroughly absorbing holiday read. And I shall be going to see him give a talk about it next week, which should be fascinating, if his similar talk about The Tale of One Bad Rat (soon to be republished, I'm told) that I saw a couple of years ago is anything to go by. I'm also getting quite excited at the prospect of the return of Doctor Who. Yes, I am a geek. So what?

I'm also looking forward to some time away from certain annoyances, such as the person who's barely paused to draw breath since I got into the office this morning. Sheesh, can't some people shut up for 5 minutes?

Absences

There seems to be a chill in the air, a general ennui, disillusion and withdrawal. Where does this come from (apart from here)? Am I just imagining this, spurred on by a few coincidences and my own unproductivity to a hyperbolic conclusion? Maybe now that the days are stretching into the evening and the sun strains to bring in the spring people have simply realised that there are other things to do. Or perhaps it's simply a fallow moment before new buds appear. As I stumble over clumsy attempts to shake off my creative torpor I'm reminded of this poem:

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth's immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

The trouble with Thomas Ades

(While I was waiting for my friend to arrive I sketched a few of the people arriving at the hall, some of which are dotted about this post.)

BCMG, Arditti Quartet, Pokrovsky Ensemble/Ades

LSO St. Luke's, 25 March

This concert was part of a wider retrospective of Thomas Ades' music (the accent you see on his name is an affectation that I'm not going to dignify by using). I can't help but wonder at the reasoning of structuring such an event around a still young composer whose output numbers barely 35 works. Surely there are other composers with a more substantial body of work that deserves the exposure?

Still, I do have a guarded liking for some of Ades' music, so it seemed interesting to go along to this concert and hear several pieces together.

The opening work, a song cycle Ades wrote at 18, was a disappointment. "Five Eliot Landscapes" sets poems of T.S. Eliot in a style that might be described as "generic non-scary modernist". If I had to imagine how a teenager would set Eliot (not hard to do, as I did it myself) this is pretty much exactly what I'd expect - self-consciously "high art", with a few striking ideas amongst a morass of dreary note-spinning. I've always thought one of the problems with setting poetry is that you come up with a brilliant idea for one or two lines, and then have the inconvenience of having to set the rest of the poem too, and this was how these songs came across. All perfectly well executed (although I found myself distracted by the frequent extreme hand-crossing in the piano part - played by the composer - which seemed to have no real reason behind it) but ultimately unmemorable.

The Chamber Symphony, composed shortly afterwards, is a completely different matter. Here is a work that stakes its territory with precocious confidence, a jazz-tinged undercurrent fuelling an exuberant and vital piece. it does flag after a while (Ades seems happier writing fast music) but picks up admirably before ending in a slyly off-hand manner.

Living Toys is cut from very similar cloth, although written 3 years later. Again there are many exuberant moments, although I couldn't help but feel that it lacked the freshness of the Chamber Symphony. There's a lot of music here that comes across as the sort of thing a young man might write having just heard Ligeti, especially in the prominent horn part that plays considerably on natural "out of tune" harmonics. There's also an ill-advised reference to "2001: a Space Odyssey", bound to fail because the harmonics and glissandi Ades presents, effective though they are in their own right, can never evoke the death of H.A.L. as well as the distorted singing of "Daisy Daisy" in the film.

"Arcadiana" was written a year later, and is a very self-conscious affair that uses quotations from and allusions to other composers to no great effect. There's a deconstruction of "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations that has nothing to say about the Elgar and hence comes across as pretty but pointless. Occasionally striking ideas surface, but are never around long enough to make an impression. One gets the impression of a composer losing his nerve, and settling for writing acceptable "official" music rather than risk failure in the pursuit of something greater. I've been listening to the complete quartets of Elizabeth Maconchy, a composer whose astringent but approachable language might put her in the same category as Ades, but her works are altogether more substantial and hewn from tougher stuff than this rather limp affair.

(Why isn't there a major retrospective of Maconchy going on, in her centenary year? Her neglect is criminal, compared to the adulation that Ades routinely receives for a far lesser achievement.)

There's no doubt that Ades is a talented composer, but it's hard to see a coherent personality in his music. Maybe this will emerge in the coming years, but it feels too soon to be holding grandiose surveys of his work. Of course, the impetus behind this is, I suspect, more down to lazy programming and the influence of a certain coterie in classical music that Ades has slotted in with very effectively. He needs to take some risks, otherwise I fear he's doomed to be a composer of effective but uncompelling pastiche, polite music for polite people that upsets no-one and harms no-one. Music should never be harmless. There's nothing wrong with overt influences, of course, but I'm not convinced Ades owns his, in the way that Stravinsky does, who always sounds like no-one but himself, even when he's appropriating a style in as extreme a fashion as he does to Mozart in "The Rake's Progress".

Talking ofStravinsky, his "Les Noces" completed the concert. Stravinsky also borrowed from numerous styles liberally, but never sounds like anyone but himself. And how wonderful to hear the singing of the Pokrovsky Ensemble, whose raw, strident folk singing style energised this wonderful piece in a way that preened conservatoire voices never could.

There was another concert after this one, featuring works by Conlon Nancarrow, that I'd like to have stayed for, but I was disoriented enough by the clocks going forward without staying out til past midnight. Shame. Still, I can always dig out my CDs of his Studies for Player-piano.

Top heavy

Big people on little bikes - what's that all about?

I don't mean commuters on folding bikes with little Noddy-wheels, although let's face it that does make you look a bit of a twonk,* but young men on little bikes that make them look like clowns. I see this a lot round my way,** and it puzzles me. Do they not realise they look like twats carting their adult bodies around on a child's wheels? Or am I just an old fart who doesn't get it because I'm not Down with Da Kidz?


* Bromptons are the cycling equivalent of Macs, they seem to induce a similar air of smugness in their owners that makes you want to punch them. Hard.

**My way being somewhere near Chav Central, which may explain something.

Deconstructive criticism

An apocryphal tale of Morton Feldman, the ugliest composer who ever lived, reaches me. If it isn't true it ought to be.

Feldman's later music is notorious for its extreme length, and his second string quartet must be one of the lengthiest pieces ever written, clocking up at some 5-6 hours (yes, hours). Understandably, it's rarely performed in its entirety, due to the immense stamina it requires.*

Anyway, the story goes that a young quartet decided to take up the challenge, and having prepared themselves, they played this behemoth through for the composer. Feldman sat quietly through the performance for the full six-odd hours it took to perform it. On finishing, the quartet looked, tired but filled with a sense of achievement, to the composer for his opinion. Feldman stood up and announced:

"That was fucking rubbish."


* I believe the Kronos Quartet, for whom it was written, never performed it in full, although in recent years a couple of recordings have appeared, notably an excellent one by the Flux Quartet on DVD, meaning you can listen to it without having to get up and change the disc. If you've got the guts to sit through it, it's well worth your time.

I suspect the quote is inaccurate, mainly because it's highly unlikely that an eminent American composer would use the word "rubbish". It is, however, entirely probable he'd have used the word "fucking".

Drinking

It's a young man's game, really, isn't it?

Send in the clowns

It's every coulrophobic's least favourite day, Red Nose Day. One of those occasions where we fill ourselves with that squirming, embarrassed, enforced jollity so peculiar to the British. A day of desperately unfunny "humour", all because apparently we can't be relied upon to help out worthy causes unless gurning celebrities tell us to.

The thing is, the charities that benefit from it are all Good Things and worthy of support. I just can't help thinking, why can't we just, you know, give the money? Then we'd be both helping those who need it, and sparing ourselves hours of light entertainment hell.

Anyway, to prove I'm not a heartless curmudgeon (even though I clearly am), I shall suggest that you buy this book, all the profits of which go to Comic Relief.

Interrupted

I find it difficult to get to the end of a record at the moment. This is one of the problems with listening to CDs at work: The nature of my job means that I may be sat at my desk for ages, or I may find myself frequently having to get up and go somewhere else. This means I constantly have to pause whatever I'm listening to, and I find that after a number of interruptions I've lost the thread of the album and it seems pointless to continue with it. So another on goes in the drive and the process begins again.

When I was young I got it into my head that once a record was on the turntable (as it was in those days) it could not be interrupted; the passage of the music took precedence over me, and if I had to leave the room for any reason, the record kept playing and I just had to miss whatever happened until I got back. There's an impracticality at work there that I rather like. and I'd often find that on returning to the room, the act of coming in halfway through something made me hear it afresh, so I'd often notice something I hadn't before, just from the removal of the context.

Maybe I should do that again. What's preferable, to miss a large chunk of the middle, and possibly the end, or never to find out what happens in the end? Things are happening all over all the time outside our presence, after all. Life is in some ways a continuous coming in on something halfway through. And the one thing we all have in common is that none of us will ever find out how it ends.

The mind boggles

Remember that bit in Rocky where he's doing his training by punching a hung slab of meat? Well, you lucky people, you can now recreate that seminal scene in your own home with this fantastic new action figure. No, really.

Also, I was bemused by the list of books we haven't finished. I mean, I'll 'fess up to not finishing Ulysses (although I shall one day, oh yes), but what's so difficult about Vernon God Little? I remember it being an easy read. Are we becoming so dumb? Judging by this story, HMV seems to think we are.

Lunch with the Doctor

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Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

I'm not normally one to get excited about celebs, but my fanboy nerves did tingle a bit when I saw David Tennant filming an interview of some sort today.

Activity vs. Achievement

Some weeks you don't seem to get anything done, yet when you look back you can't quite work out why, as nothing seems to have left an impression on your memory. Is it because you've been too busy? Or are you being lazy? Is this a block, or just a natural fallow period? Are you drying up, or do you just need a holiday? Are you fed up with your job, or just your immediate circumstances? Was the week really that featureless, or is it just that it seems so after such a good weekend when you glimpsed a freedom you've been missing?

Maybe it's for the best to have a quiet evening pottering, washing, cleaning. Then a day of activity to follow. The thing is not to work or not to work - it's to achieve a balance between the two. Inactivity isn't necessarily unproductive, any more than business is necessarily constructive.

Happy Smith-Day!

I'm reminded by an entertaining article on BBC4's Front Row that today is Mark E. Smith's 50th birthday. Happy birthday, Mark!

Of course, in the unlikely event that he actually read this, he'd probably tell me to fuck off, middle-class wanker. He'd be right, of course.

You can hear Stewart Lee, among others, talk about why the Fall are great via the BBC's splendid listen again facility.


(Lego Mark E. Smith from here.)

The seaside! The seaside!

It's nice to get out, even for a few hours - especially on such a nice day as Saturday was. This is Whitstable. A stroll along the beach and proper fish and chips made for a restorative day. You can see more pictures here.

As a contrast, you can now download something rather more nocturnal - an mp3 of "Le tombeau de Feldman".

First (and not last, I hope) performance

Well, in the end the concert went off really well, lots of people said nice things about my piece, and they can't all have been being just polite, can they? I think the real credit should go to Toby, for putting together a really good programme and playing it so beautifully. I've been listening to the recording I made, and it still sounds good the day after - not always the case with recordings...

Thanks to everyone who came along. We have an idle plan to do the concert in Paris, so if that ever actually happens, it'll be a great excuse for you to have a weekend over the channel.

30 years of thrill power

I can't let 2000ad's 30th birthday pass without a mention. I wasn't there at the start, but it's been a part of my life for a very long time nevertheless. When it hit the newsstands in 1977 it was just the latest in a long line of British comics, cashing in on the renascent popularity of sci-fi that Star Wars was engendering. It built on its immediate predecessors Battle and Action in being a subversive, cool read that your parents didn't approve of. It was also clever - dripping with black humour and vicious satire, as well as out and out weirdness. It lost its way in the 90s, it could have folded (actually, if you read David Bishop's forthcoming history, you'll see it could have folded many, many times), but it came through and recovered, and is still here, after all its competitors have fallen by the wayside, almost the only comic left in this country.

There's been a couple of articles marking the anniversary, in the Independent on Sunday (a strangely apologetic affair) and online by the BBC (which does a better job of capturing the sense of what's so great and enduring about it). It doesn't have the audience it did in its 80s heyday, of course, but what does? Doctor Who is now acclaimed as a massive success for attracting the same sort of audience figures that got it cancelled in the late 80s. All audiences are fragmented these days, there are simply too many things competing for our attention for anything to have that much impact. But it's still here, still great, and rooted deep in British culture, and that's something to celebrate. So raise a glass and wish Tharg many happy returns, and another 30 years of thrills.

One shot

I was thinking about Finnissy, and Feldman, as I often do, and particularly having just written a piece honouring the latter, and having met the former at the same time as I first heard Feldman in Huddersfield in 1996 (a story I'll post here at some point, as it's quite entertaining), and from there about all the new music workshops and the like I've been to or been involved with over the years, and it worries me the attitude young composers are encouraged to have. I remember reading an interview with Feldman once where he said something to the effect that the normal thing for a composer to do is give up composing, it's actually abnormal to continue beyond your university/college years. And there's also the fact that, as 90% of anything in the world isn't very good, chances are if you're a composer you're not very good. And yet composers are encouraged to think of themselves as being on a par with all the undisputed greats, to write for posterity, music which needs many listens to be understood, when the fact is, your piece will almost certainly be heard only once. I've been lucky, I've had one piece played twice. Toby and I have a vague dream that we might repeat next week's concert in Paris, so maybe I'll be really lucky and have a second second performance. And it occurs to me that so much that's wrong with so-called contemporary classical music stems from this. We need to abandon our delusions of greatness, and remember that anything we write will almost certainly have one chance and one chance only to make an impact.

Mostly I think I'm OK, I have some degree of talent. But there's always the voice inside me nagging away: Am I really any good? Am I wasting my time? Why should anyone care? Am I really any good?

Stewart Lee - 90s Comedian

Once upon a time, we lived in the 90s. it was a fairly nondescript time - the Pixies had split up, and I'd left university and gone on the dole. Fortunately there were one or two things to cheer us up, one of which was Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun, which began on Radio 1, then transferred to BBC 2, then was inexplicably taken off air. It was superceded by This Morning With Richard Not Judy, another slice of comic genius from Rich and Stew that ran for 2 series on Sunday mornings before also being inexplicably removed from our screens.

Stewart Lee's profile plummeted for a few years, before he re-emerged as librettist and director for Jerry Springer - The Opera, which began in a tiny theatre in East London, and ended up a high profile West End hit, and the focus for raving fundamentalist Christians. Some of these experiences formed the basis for Lee's last stand-up show, which has just come out on DVD. I went to see this show in London in December 2005, and it was absolutely brilliant, although also uncomfortable, which was due to the provocative nature of the last part of the set especially, but also to the fact that at the time I was sat next to my Catholic sister in law. (I also managed, through a combination of trying to say too many things at once and being pissed, to make an utter arse of myself in front of Stew after the show, but that's another story.) Suffice to say the finale to the show is a story involving Jesus that is unlikely to find favour with those of a devoutly Christian bent.

"But what could this tale possibly be, that is so controversial?" I hear you ask. Well, you can find out by buying the DVD. Buy it. It's a masterful and thought-provoking piece of stand-up, with some important points to make about censorship, freedom of speech and the right to offend. And it's only a tenner. Go on, buy it.

Look at me! Look at me!

I'm second on Google! That's "the web", too, not your poxy old "pages from the U.K.".

Googling your own name is of course a vile sign of self-obsession, and I shall probably feel thoroughly ashamed in the morning.

A journey begins with a single step

I did something I haven't done for a very long time today: picked up a copy of the Guardian and had a look at the job pages. it's the result of a lot of thinking over recent weeks, especially last week when I was laid up sick, and actually feeling glad about it because it meant I wasn't at work. the job's become a terrible combination of boredom and stress, and I increasingly feel like I don't belong, and I'm wasting my time when I'm there.

I have a disadvantage that I don't really have any idea of what I'd like to do instead, but sometimes you reach a point where you need to shake things up, and I think that time is coming.

I had a lovely weekend in Devon, and standing on a beach in grey winter felt like a little glimpse of freedom.

Judge Ignatz

When you're nobbled by a virus (again! I never used to get ill at all) what better way to distract yourself than to do a valentine's mash-up of two of your favourite comics?

What do you mean, you don't recognise them?? Go here, here and here, then.

The Fall marathon 11: Reformation Post TLC

When I was a lad, there was one irrefutable proof that you were a true fan of a band. When talk turned to a classic record, you would know that you knew and loved this record better than anyone if you could declare: "I got it on the day it came out".

Of course, as age encroaches and the matter of bills and other such mundane use of money envelop our souls, we realise that it doesn't really matter what day you get a record on. It'll still be there next week, and it'll sound the same. And so we slide into a gentler relationship with our bands, and they slowly cease to be ours.

Sometimes though, you have to say to hell with maturity and keep the flame of obsessive passion alive, to keep a faith that this incidental luxury called music can be a transformative, vital part of life. So, here is the new Fall album, and I got it on the day it came out.

This is, of course, a brand-new lineup since "Fall Heads Roll", and there's a certain feeling of the band bedding in. Initial impressions: this year's style is minimalist - I'm reminded of the Monks album I was listening to the other day in the pounding, aggressive, repetitive riffing on display through much of this album. There's a lengthy and testing collage-y track ("Das Boat") the like of which hasn't been seen on a Fall album for a good while, and this seems one of MES's more belligerent outings of recent years. Plenty of sly humour if you want to find it, though - "I think they've over-done the Trout Mask thing" comments Smith at one point, only to quote "Veterans' Day Poppy" from that album a few tracks later. And "The Wright Stuff" offers a very funny lambasting of Celebrity culture, all the better for being delivered dead-pan by Elena Poulou (aka Mrs Smith) to an unexpectedly synth-pop backing. And the cover of "White Line Fever" is surprisingly affecting.

You need a few listens of any Fall album to get your head round it, really, so who knows what I'll make of it next week? That's the joy of it - knots to unravel, puzzles that twist and turn and shape-shift with every new look. As John Peel said - always different, always the same.

This is the end of the Fall marathon... for now. It's also my 100th post on this blog. I didn't plan it that way, honest.

Ups and downs

Some days are just awful. You force yourself out of bed, you drag yourself into work, you remember the stuff you forgot to bring just as you get there, you're surrounded by blithering idiot jabber, there's little of import to do and you spend the whole day thinking "WHY AM I HERE?!!".

Fortunately there are other days, which start with an evening out after the shit day, seeing funny stuff with cool people, then a night and a day and another night with someone special, with visits to arty places and seeing cool looking fire escapes and the cooking of roast dinner and Miyazaki films on the DVD player. the trips to hear a new piece you wrote, which sounds really cool and fill you with confidence that it'll be great at the performance, followed by too much beer for a Sunday afternoon, accompanied by jazz and talk of art and music, and plans involving such things.

And looking forward to the new Fall album tomorow!

The British Library needs you!

Read this:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2000823,00.html

Then go and sign this:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/

Oh, the weather outside is frightful... (2)

Ooh! Snow in winter! Who'd have thort it, eh?
Annoyingly, my trains seemed to run slightly better (or less shitly, to be more accurate) than normal. I can't even rely on the buggers to be unreliable.

it's already disappeared from W12, though patches of white still cling to the wild northern climes where I live. In Birmingham all the schools are closed again. Lucky sods, I'm sure it wouldn't have happened in my day.



The London Eye's gone all red. It's rather pretty, but disturbing as I suspect it to be a marketing gimmick to do with one the bearded twat Richard Branson's dodgy ventures.

Today seems to be Mad Fucker Day. I can't decide if it would be easier to have the lot of them carted off in a van, or just to have myself carted off. Surely if I got hold of a gun and went postal there's not a court in the land that would convict?

Fall marathon 10: The Unutterable/Are You Are Missing Winner/The Real New Fall Album/Fall Heads Roll

The Unutterable gives the sense of a well-drilled band who are probably shit-scared of their leader. At the time it came out I thought it was one of the Fall's best albums for many a year, even more satisfying for coming after a period when many in the press speculated that it was all over. Little things like "Das Katerer" - effectively a re-write of "Free Range" - give a sense that MES has to some extent reconciled himself to his past, and I guess from hereon there's a sense of the band being more willing to draw on its own history, less worried about pointedly refusing to revisit old ground. Especially welcome is the humour, more evident on this album than it had been for quite some time.



After "The Unutterable"'s fairly flash production, Are You Are Missing Winner contrarily reverts to a resolutely lo-fi sound. I remember being disappointed by this album when it came out, but time's been kind to it - the hyper-garagey tone stands up well, even if this isn't one of their best. There's probably a lesson about the perspective of hindsight to be had here.







The Real New Fall LP (Formerly "Country On The Click") is a step up again, though. Xyralothep sounds a convincing Lovecrafty name, but extensive research (i.e. a few minutes on Google) suggests that the name is MES's own creation. It's an opportunity to note the sci-fi element to the Fall, though. "Sparta FC" is brilliantly belligerent, how they got away with using this as the theme to Final score I'll never know.

And so to Fall Heads Roll, the most recent (until 12th Feb) album. It seems almost like a meta-Fall album, embodying the quixotic (beginning with an extended country-reggae number?!) the relentless grind (the wonderful and frightening "Blindness"), a reference to an old song and a tribute to Bo Diddley.

after 30 years, it's remarkable simply that The Fall are still around. It's positively astounding that not only is MES still here, but he's still at the top of his game. Having gone through all these albums over the past couple of months, I can honestly say that, some variation in quality aside (perfectly natural over such a long time) there isn't a single one that isn't good. I can't think of any other band of whom that can be said over thirty years.

These days it's very easy to think of the Fall as existing in some sort of separate time continuum, where each individual album fades into one huge welter of sound. it's nice to have been able to remind myself of each record's individual merits, and make some surprising connections. Who'd have thought that one of the constant threads that seems more and more prominent with the passing years would be dance music? Mark E Smith, for one, probably.

The Monks

The Monks were a group of GIs stationed in Germany in the 60s who decided to form a band. Nothing very strange about that, except that they shaved tonsures into their heads, wore black robes and nooses as ties, and eschewed the standard R&B repertoire of 60s garage bands in favour of such self-penned ditties as "I Hate You" and "Shut Up". They produced one album, the excellent "Black Monk Time", and imploded, although in recent years they have resurfaced and even played a few gigs. They were punk 10 years too soon, basically. Oh yeah, and they had an electric banjo, which is very cool, obviously.

I mention them because the album is the perfect listen if it took you three hours to get to work this morning (bastard trains, bastard buses, bastard everything) and then found yourself surrounded by people who wouldn't shut up. Oh, there were delays on the tram in Croydon this morning, were there? Did it take you 3 hours to get to work? No, didn't think so.

After a session in the downstairs store with "Black Monk Time" on VERY LOUD INDEED I guarantee you will feel much better, and able to move on to a different, more relaxing type of monk.

A short ride in an alternative machine

A spontaneous moment! As we leave the office, L tells me she's off to the Barbican, where ahead of the LSO concert of John Adams works there's a free performance of an arrangement of Mr Adams' "A Short Ride in a Fast Machine" for Gamelan, of all things. Well, I'm a sucker for free stuff, and there's bugger all on telly, so I tag along.

It's great, and when you hear it, it all makes perfect sense, of course - the pulsing rhythms and post-minimalist repetitions of Adams' style transfer very well indeed to the Gamelan. They play it twice, and it's better second time around - people have drifted away and it's easier to get a good view of the players. That ringing, metallic sound is captivating, a sound I know well from second hand imitations by numerous 20th century composers, and (somewhat to my shame) rather less so from hearing the genuine article. It's nice to hear the distinctive tonality, too - when you're surrounded by the western scale, as we all are, it's good to be reminded every now and again that there's always a different way to do things.

At work today, in the middle of researching something else entirely, I came across a review that I didn't realise existed of a piece of mine that was performed in 2001 (I already knew about the one in the Guardian). According to David Harrison of the Manchester Evening News, "The world premiere of Peter Nagle's Infinite Breathing proved a spectral sort of affair with attenuated chords in the violins and violas."

I suspect this is the sort of thing a reviewer writes when he doesn't like the music, but doesn't want to say so.

Sound vs. Noise (3)

Please. Just shut. The fuck. Up.

Joey Ramone is the only thing keeping me sane at the moment.

Scaledown

This is where the real fun in gig-going lies - 7 acts, none of which I've heard before, presented under the aegis of Resonance FM's "Scaledown" programme. It's billed as alternative/experimental - who can say what that'll involve? Could be great, could be awful - but it's free, so why not take the chance? And it's being held in a room above a pub, which automatically makes anything better.

We arrive round about 7, get the first round in, then hang about in the downstairs room wondering if we should wait until there seems to be some action, as there doesn't appear to be anyone going through the door to the upstairs room. Eventually we feel emboldened enough to go up, on the assumption that if we're not supposed to be there we'll be told about it. The room's small, it's almost like being in someone's living room. there are a few people milling about, mostly the organisers as far as we can tell. We sit down and nurse our pints, and people start to drift in. We wonder if we're the only people here who haven't come because they're mates with one of the acts or connected with Resonance in some way.

Two of our compères, Mark Braby and Dan Whaley, start off the evening with a rendition of a Copper Family song, "Babes in the Wood", before Whaley gets things going as the first act proper, under the pseudonym Big Ron Turner (one of many, as you'll see if you click through to his site). It's twangy bluesy stuff, which is the sort of thing I like, but it doesn't quite hit the mark for me. It makes me feel slightly bad to say this, because he's obviously deeply committed in his performing and deeply in love with the music.

Same Actor announces that tonight's a bit of an experiment for him, as he's left his laptop at home. His set divides into two parts, the first of which, he happily informs us, is inspired by the feeling of having stepped in some dog poo, and the second by the elation at having been shat on by a bird (it's good luck, you know). It's a minimalist affair, droning acoustic guitar which for the latter part is looped through some kind of sampler pedal (I assume - he's sat on the floor so I can't really see him) over which he then plays a sitar. it's quite hypnotic, although maybe lacking something - probably the laptop, judging by the excellent tracks on his MySpace page.

The Reactor Core Is Splendid consists of one man and his guitar, playing naive songs that have words that ramble rather than scan, that bring Ivor Cutler to my mind, for some reason. It's kitchen sink music, all about little details, which, while it does raise a chuckle or two, I can't help think lacks humour. On the back of these thoughts we wonder between ourselves whether it's humour or charisma that the performances so far have fallen short on - or whether these two things are connected.

Things perk up with the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, whose leader Martin White is the first performer tonight I feel has connected with the audience. (I wonder if it's partly that as the biggest band there, they have more friends in the audience, but I don't think that's it, although the fuller room obviously helps). It's funny stuff, stylistically out of the Weill/Eisler school of cabaret, with a healthy dollop of the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band thrown in for good measure, with settings of Poe as well as a song about John Cage's 4'33" and a heartfelt ballad about Euro-rockers Europe, which are very funny and leave us determined to catch them again sometime.

Nigel Burch is, as the pre-show publicity has it, a big man with a small instrument (a banjolele, to be precise) who rattles through some gleefully misanthropic songs that seem mostly concerned with the idea that people in love should not be permitted to live. It's what might happen to you if you grew old without shedding yourself of your youthful sense of the world's injustice against you. I Thoroughly enjoy it, my companion finds it to aggressive and bitter.




From one man with a tinny strumming instrument to another - Al Duvall look like he's stepped out of a Robert Crumb cartoon, dressed in cream suit and plantation tie. His songs are pure vaudeville, and seem to have a fixation with the act of being beaten up by one's love - "bare-knuckle ballerina" for instance. Lest this sound disturbing, I should point out that it's very funny, and he demonstrates that Americans in fact can do irony when he asks us to buy his album, thereby support the War in Iraq via his tax bill.

The final act is Mike Cooper who's been around since the sixties when he was part of the English blues/folk movement led by Davey Graham and John Martyn, and therefore the nearest thing to a star we've seen tonight. He's come to sing completely unaccompanied, so, he explains, as he rarely does this, he'll only sing two songs. In fact he's coaxed into doing a third, and all of them he sings with a dignity that ends the evening on an unexpected note.

I really enjoyed this evening. There's something in a small-scale event like this that moves me in a way that larger gigs don't. it's not to do with the style of music, or the quality - it's about the passion. These are all people doing what they do for love - the only payment any of them will get for this evening is what gets thrown in the pint glass that's been passed round the audience for donations - and there's a DIY aesthetic to the whole proceedings that's refreshing and inspiring.

There was recording going on, so listen out for some of this stuff on "Scaledown" on Resonance (alternate Friday afternoons), and keep an eye out for the next gigs at The Orchestra Pit. It'll be good for your soul.

A sudden attack of careerism

Last week I recorded myself playing (badly) a piece of mine for solo cello, partly to check the microphone I borrowed works properly with my mini disc recorder (hey, it was cutting edge technology 3 years ago, and anyway, it's better quality than mp3) ahead of the première next month, and also partly because recordings are always a Good Thing to have to foist upon those who might play your music (the days having gone, apparently, when such people could be bothered to read scores properly and imagine what the damn thing might sound like). You can hear a (badly played) extract here, if it takes your fancy.

So anyway, yesterday, I came across an application form for the SPNM's 2007 shortlist. It was obviously fate, so into the post today went a score and a copy of the recording. Now, I've been here before - I've had 3 pieces shortlisted by the spnm in the past. If I'd had more time to think about it I'd probably have um-ed and ah-ed about it, whether I was happy enough with the piece to submit it and the like, but as time was short and i happened to have the necessary stuff together to send, there was very little thought involved in the decision. Proof of the value of procrastination - decisions are much easier to make if you don't have time to think about them too much. Is it worth the effort? We'll find out.
All this sudden activity reminds me I haven't done much in the way of writing since New Year, just this little thing I scribbled down a couple of weeks ago and never got round to posting. Partly down to the bastards, of course, but as well as feeling like a bit of a self pimping whore today, I feel a bit guilty about my lack of productivity. Must try and get myself into gear.

Hooray for radio!

Maybe it's the Man-Flu making me even more of a grouch than usual, but isn't TV shit at the moment? The odd repeat (Life On Mars, Charlie Brooker) apart, it's wall to wall unwatchable trash that actually makes me wish Torchwood was still on.*

Thank god for the radio. Already today I've heard some great documentaries about memory, Woman's Hour, and some Beethoven. And I've got a Sibelius concert on Radio 3, a documentary on Herbie Hancock on Radio 2, Chain Reaction on Radio 4 and Lee and Herring on BBC7 to look forward to. And that's not even to mention all the stuff you can listen again" to on the interweb (like yesterday's editions of Ross Noble and Down the Line, for instance). And all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff on Resonance FM, where you really do never know quite what you're going to get (which is a Good Thing, of course). There's a ton of stuff there, so switch off the telly and use your ears.

Talking of radio, I've just heard professional shit-stirring twat Norman Lebrecht advertising his show this weekend on Radio 3, when his subject will be blogs. Read this, and then email him, and make him look like an ignorant fool.


*I must confess to a strange obsession with Deal Or No Deal, though. Especially this week, which has an astoundingly camp twat called Bunney on it, who sings a song about whoever's playing that day before he opens his box.

Man-flu and cake

The trouble with illness is that it gives you time off work to do all the things that you never get done, but robs you of the ability to do these things. So I find myself here, struggling to get my head around the fairly simple concept of drawing a new Big Dog cartoon, and feeling vaguely disoriented from lack of sleep and the Man-Flu (which is, of course, very different from a plain old cold). The situation is relieved by the fact that one of the last things I did last night before I succumbed to the lurgy was bake a cake, so I can now test the cold-fighting properties of my Genius Banana Cake. I know that cake is not a subject that normally comes up here, but it's never too far from my heart, and so in a spirit of generosity, I give you the recipe. this cake is the product of many hours intensive research, is a handy way to use up all those over-ripe bananas sitting in your fruit bowl*, and is widely acknowledged to be in the forefront of cakes. If enough of us bake it, it may even End War and Unite all Nations in Peace and Hope.**

2-3 bananas
9oz. self-raising flour
4 oz. brown sugar
4 oz. butter
2 eggs
2 dessert spoons golden syrup
nutmeg & cinnamon, to taste

Mash up the bananas. Cream the butter and sugar together***. Mix the two sludges together with the eggs and syrup. Add spices to taste, then mix in the flour. Pour the resulting goo into a greased cake or loaf tin, and bake at gas mark4/ 180° for about 40 minutes, or until done. Check with a knife or skewer, and turn onto a rack to cool. Although it's rather nice warm, too.

On a completely unrelated note, may I also commend to you Rachel Mayfield, whose album you should buy, because it's good.


*N.B. I'm aware this is a problem only suffered by sad live-alone types like me.
** N.B. this is a wild assertion, unverified by any fact.
***If you have a food processor, you can just bung everything in and whizz it round until it congeals.

Fall marathon 9: The Light User Syndrome/Levitate/The Marshall Suite

The course of these three albums saw the biggest upheaval in the Fall's line-up yet. First to go was long-time guitarist Craig Scanlon (incidentally, the one sacking M.E.S. has subsequently admitted regret for). So, following her unexpected reappearance on "Cerebral Caustic", Brix appears on the sleeve of this album, perhaps significantly, between M.E.S. and the rest of the band. Is the tile of The Light User Syndrome a suggestion that after the previous few years, when speculation had been rife in the music press about whether his notorious liking for a drink was getting the better of him, we are witnessing a more sober Smith? If you were to suspect that it meant one of the Fall's more easy on the ear moments, you'd be wrong. I didn't think of it like this when it came out, but listening to it now it's striking how minimalist and industrial it sounds, lending it an almost brutal quality. The moment at the end of "Chilinism" where the song apparently winds down, only to stutter into a fierce low-fi riff at the bark of "Chiselers!" is a classic Scary Fall Moment. All in all, it's mostly the scowling, vituperative Smith who's mostly present here. It's a thrilling and often terrifying album. Having said that, it's a typically unpredictable gesture to throw in a brass section at the end.

The Fall do Drum and bass? Well, why not? One of the things that's been surprisingly prominent going through all these albums is how consistently the Fall adapt all forms of dance music, and Levitate does just that. The sound here is less industrial, more cavernous, with not only breakbeats but fierce garage rock and even smooth jazz (!) thrown into the mix, though as ever the result sounds like nothing but the Fall. This album seems to have fallen through the cracks a bit - I suppose that after the previous one had put the band firmly back on track (as it seemed at the time), it seemed like business as usual, and maybe I took it a bit for granted, something you should never do. Coming back to it now it reveals new riches, and is definitely one to spend some time with.


It was at this point that the notorious New York gig happened that saw the entire band sacked onstage in chaotic circumstances. At the time the press reported it as the end of the Fall. Smith simply hired a new band and carried on (memorably asserting that "if it's me and you granny on bongos, then it's a Fall gig"). The Marshall Suite shows no sign of letting up, in fact at the time, after all the turmoil, it was thrilling to hear Smith back on top form. I guess the evolution of the band's dynamic is here complete, anyone who might be thought of as M.E.S's peer is gone, and the band now consists of a group of young musicians under his iron hand. Thus the impression here is very much that of a tightly-drilled garage band, with Smith exuding a resurgent energy, defiant and malevolent. it's also one of the most sheerly loud albums so far!

priorities

I was starting to formulate a very interesting, thoughtful and provocative post about the state of modern music on the tube home this evening, but it'll have to wait, as such thoughts must make way for this!

And indeed this!

Inspired by pandemian, I've written a Haiku to celebrate this Significant Day in the History of Birmingham City:

5-1! Yes! 5-1!
Enjoy the moment, Bluenose;
We'll be out next round.

Bastards

Well, it turned out to be a good gig last night, a good time was had by all, a few beers were enjoyed afterwards, and then I went home to find some bastard had broken in and nicked my laptop. I'm now sitting twiddling my thumbs waiting for the police to arrive. There wasn't anything crucial or irretrievable on it, and they didn't take anything else as far as I can see, so it could have been worse, but still: bastards.

Come to my concert!

so much excitement to talk about, so little time... so for now you'll have to make do with this (apologies to those not in London):

+++PIMP ALERT+++PIMP ALERT+++

Kensington Symphony Orchestra plays film music of the 80s and 90s
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 15th January, 7.30
And if you fancy a drink afterwards, come to the Mulberry Bush. If you see a speccy bloke with a cello, say hello, 'cause it's probably me.

Daniel Johnston

Last night I watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary tracing the career of this singer-songwriter, who's become something of a cult figure, namechecked by many prominent figures in the American indie/alternative scene (you can read about him here). I found it fascinating, but also unsettling. There is one very important fact about Johnston that colours any discussion of him - the fact that he has for many years suffered from Bi-polar disorder, and has had to be hospitalised periodically due to psychotic episodes.

As I watched people queue up to testify to his talent I found myself thinking of two other mentally ill musicians who have been brought to public attention: Wild Man Fischer, who was championed by Frank Zappa, among others, and the Australian pianist David Helfgott, whose story was dramatised/romanticised in the film Shine.

Fall marathon 8: Cerebral Caustic

Cerebral Caustic got some decidedly iffy reviews when it came out, as I recall, although I also remember that no two reviewers seemed to agree which tracks were good and which weren't, which may say something. At the time it seemed like an unusually retrograde step, away from the electro influences that pervaded the early '90s albums and back towards the krautabilly sound of early-mid 80s Fall. This may not be unconnected with the entirely unexpected reappearance of Brix.

As it happens, there is a clear return to the pop riffs of Smith(L.E.)'s first stint with the group, but there's a lot more noise and distortion layered over the top, which gives a combative feel to proceedings. I can't help but think that there must have been some unresolved issues between the former Mr & Mrs Smith, as there seems to be a recurring theme of sparring between the two through most of this record, most extremely in "Bonkers at Phoenix", where an out-and-out bubblegum song sung by Brix is overlayed with extreme electronic dissonance and M.E.S.'s barbed comments on the festival scene.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing, and the sense of retreading old ground that made this a slightly disappointing outing first time round has receded with time, so much that I feel inclined to declare this record a Neglected Gem. Not to mention that it has a damn fine title, and an excellent picture on the cover. And how can you not like an album which includes the line "On TV today somebody claimed their dog had been molested by a textile chemist"?

Jesus Christ!

Mark E. Smith is to play Jesus on telly!

Fall marathon 7: The Frenz Experiment/ I Am Kurious, Oranj/ Extricate/ Shift-Work/ Code: Selfish/ The Infotainment Scan/ Middle Class Revolt

Frenz=Friendly? The Frenz Experiment seems on the surface to take the Fall sound into a more mainstream, even chart-friendly place (it's even got a hit single on it!). It's not that simple, of course.

Slightly un-nerving that "Athlete Cured" shares a riff with Spinal Tap's "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock you tonight".

This isn't one of my favourite Fall albums, really. Not that it's bad, it just seems a bit too polished for my taste. It's got a vibe that could almost be described as amiable (almost!).

I Am Kurious, Oranj, on the other hand, crackles with malevolance. I guess the ballet theme got M.E.S. worked up good and proper, not least in his corruscating take on "Jerusalem". Add in such delights as the title track's warped reggae, and the reworking of "Hip Priest"'s line "He is not appreciated" into a battle cry, and you've got a splendid album, perhaps smaller in scope than a typical Fall record, but none the worse for that.

I'm trying (somewhat perversely) to avoid talking about lyrics in these posts, but there's no escaping the fact that Extricate was recorded in the aftermath of M.E.S.'s split from Brix, and there's a bilious quality that comes from that. I see the Amazon review reckons tht the Brix/pop influence disappears here, but I don't think I'd agree with that - it's certainly more abrasive than "The Frenz Experiment", but there are plenty of hooks there. Once again the Fall are ahead of the pack in their collaboration with Coldcut. And there's some wonderful humour amongst the bile, not least Smith's explanation of the origin of the title "I'm Frank". I've always loved this record, and it's still a corker.

Falling as it does btween two of my favourite albums, Shift-Work has always slightly fallen between the gaps in my perception too, as it were. So it's good to return to it and be reminded just how much good stuff there is on it, ranging from the angry (Idiot Joy Showland), the funny (A Lot of Wind) to the tender and moving (Edinburgh Man, Rose). Anyone who thinks the Fall are just about beligerence and bloody-mindedness should listen to these last two in particular. This album came out in the middle of the "Madchester" scene, and effortlessly appropriates those beats while surpassing the young upstarts. Overall, though, I can't shake the feeling tht this sounds like a transitional record.

I make no excuse for loving Code:Selfish purely for the reason that it has a song that namechecks Birmingham (albeit not in a flattering manner - though what else wopuld you expect?!). The electronic sound that has ben developing through the previous two albums blosoms here, and what you have is a dance-rock album, but about a million times better than such a thing has any right to be. Bizarrely, I found myself thinking of Bob Dylan when listening to "Just Waiting", not a connection I've made before. This album's obligatory field recording, "Crew Filth", appears at the end, which seems unusual in that I'd expect such a "difficult" track to be put in the middle where it's harder to skip. "Free Range" is as fine a single as The Fall have ever released, and retains its relevance in our world of continuing misadventures in Iraq, sad to say.

The last three albums were released by Fontana, but the label then sacked the band, who responded by scoring a top 10 hit with the first single from their next, The Infotainment Scan. This is where the dance/rave experiments blossom fully, industrial-strength production giving the whole album a meaty feel. It also features possibly their most unlikely cover version, Sister Sledge's "Lost In Music". Probably the nearest the Fall ever came to a party album.





Middle Class Revolt seems to take a step back from the dance influence, there are several songs here (e.g. "Hey! Student") that mark a big swing back to the rockabilly influenced side of the Fall. I remember being slighty disappointed with this at the time, partly due to the version of "M5", which I thought wasn't really a patch on the version they'd done for a Peel session the previous year. It sounds better thanI remember (although I still think the Peel version was better!), but there are moments on the album that feel slightly like Fall by numbers.

Cet homme charmant

Morrissey is apparently in talks to represent the U.K. at the next Eurovision Song Contest. This news fills me with a strange delight, even though I've never much cared for his post-Smiths career. Still, any source of a smile is good after this debacle.

Exciting news! My new viola piece will be performed very soon, details to follow soon.

Sound vs. Noise (2)

Today's experiment: Is it possible to filter out the inane twittering surrounding one, or at least abstract it so it becomes an ignorable background noise? It's got to be worth a try, anyway. I suspect this will require either an heroic effort or an heroic passivity.

In other news, I see that new science minister Malcolm Wicks has been busy demonstrating what an ignorant fucking cock he is. I hope all you teachers are brushing up on the real-life science of sonic screwdrivers.

Sound vs. Noise

So, one day of the new scene completed and I'm still sane, just about. I feel bad moaning about these people - it's not that I don't like them or anything. I just wish they'd shut up for 5 minutes. Maybe in time I'll settle down, feel less disorientated and get used to it. Or maybe this is a hint that it's time to find another job. Come lunchtime, I rushed out of the office and tried to find somewhere quiet to eat my lunch, not an easy task. I find myself longing increasingly for quiet, and increasingly aware of how difficult it is to find it. There's something uniquely irritating about unwanted noise, I think it's because you can avert your eyes from something you don't want to look at, but you can't avert your ears. I was looking at one of those mp3 players with noise cancelling headphones on some website or other the other day. Trouble with that is that it's still using music just as a blanket to smother the rest of the world, something I heartily disapprove of on the whole, and also it just cancels out everything. When I'm on the tube, I don't mind the noise of the train and the like, I rather enjoy listening to ambient noise like that (yeah, I know, weirdo). What really grates with me is the tinny hiss leaking from earphones. I suppose it's because it's something imposed upon the situation rather than arising from it. What I need is something that can selectively cancel out the noise I don't want to hear, and leave the sounds I want to listen to.

Id like to be tremendously Buddha-like and decide to choose to accept and listen to whatever sounds happen to reach my ears as simply part of the world. it's not easy to achieve that level of enlightenment on the Central Line at 8.30 in the morning, though.