Friday Night Muzak - Boris

It's been getting a little too folkified round this joint recently, so to remedy that, here's some Boris with My Neighbour Satan (question: does that mean Boris live at number 665?)

Friday Night Muzak - Broken Social Scene

Arthouse or Mainstream? Let's Have Both!

Contains spoilers for Blue Velvet

I saw Blue Velvet when it first came out in 1986 – it was the first movie of that particular ‘type’ I’d seen and, although my friend and I emerged blinking form the cinema asking each other “What the flaming fup was that all about?”, I loved it. David Lynch has always made films that are defiantly ‘arthouse’, but what really distinguished Blue Velvet for me was that it seemed to exist at a crossroads between ‘arthouse’ and ‘mainstream’ cinema. To be honest, I’ve always had problems trying to distinguish between the two anyway (I’ve often asked myself why arthouse films can’t have more car chases, and conversely, why a lot of mainstream cinema has to be so unrelentingly dumb). Trying to put it down to an explanation that mainstream cinema relies predominantly on a traditional three act structure (as Karel Segers suggests) doesn’t really do it for me. If there are distinct differences between the two, they’re far more subtle than that.

Perhaps a major distinction between arthouse and mainstream cinema is the fact that in an arthouse film the dots are not immediately joined up for you. This can apply not only to the film’s narrative, but also to its visual style as well. By not providing an explanation of every little narrative or visual detail, a film can quite easily slip into the ‘arthouse’ camp, where it’s remarkably easy for a seemingly random detail to inspire someone to say, “What’s going on there, then?” (which was exactly the question I was asking myself throughout Inland Empire).

Blue Velvet is a case in point – during the concluding scenes, Jeffrey walks into a scene of torture and carnage in Dorothy’s flat. The scene is not explained via a huge landfill of exposition, so the onus is on the viewer to try and piece the various bits of elliptical logic together (that said, good luck to you if you try this with Inland Empire).

Now take an example that exists at the other end of the spectrum: Joel Schumacher’s Flatliners. For me the most notable feature of this rather daft bit of mainstream fluff was the striking visual of an injured dog: a memorable detail completely spoilt by the fact that it’s ruthlessly explained away. A director such as David Lynch would have felt no desire at all to have done this, which seems to me to form a distinction between the two ‘styles’.

Of course, ‘arthouse’ and ‘mainstream’ are not mutually exclusive. Here’s Karel Sagers again:

The darkest film I have recently seen is PRINCESS, a revenge tale mixing anime and live action. Subject matter: pornography and child abuse... the film was told in a traditional three act structure. Even if you believe your film will appeal to intellectuals only... you will need that conventional story structure. Because today without it you have no audience.

As above, I’m not sure that this is entirely correct. Princess is again a film like Blue Velvet that sits quite comfortably at the crossroads between mainstream and arthouse, which is absolutely fine by me. Given the problems that Tartan Films have been having recently, it might even be tempting to say that the market for arthouse films is in decline – this isn’t because audiences are somehow demanding more conventional story structures, but probably because ‘arthouse’ is in a constant process of being co-opted into the mainstream: perhaps Christopher Nolan’s successes of recent years are particular cases in point. And besides, whenever I hear the over-used term ‘blockbuster with a brain’, it invariably means that the brain has been borrowed from an arthouse sensibility – and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

Friday Night Muzak - Slab!

This recently digitised video has just shown up on the Ikon Video site at YouTube, and what a treat it is, from possibly one of my favourite bands of all time. Never mind the fact this is from 1989, People Pie still sounds impassioned and urgent today - tag team it with a video that feels like a shovel round the back of the head, and you have four minutes of extreme viewing pleasure (and one of the heaviest bass sounds ever to grace vinyl). Enjoy!

Friday Night Muzak

Wire's new album Object 47 is out July 15th, so what the hell, it's Friday: here's Eardrum Buzz from 1987.

7 Songs

Oooh, I’ve been memed by the Target obsessed Mr Stickler (honestly, Rob: Starship Trooper featuring Sarah Brightman? Zoiks!):

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring.

Well, let’s see now:

1) Holiday in Cambodia - Dead Kennedys (picked out the first album today for a blast).
2) Create and Melt – Dali’s Car (don’t ask, please).
3) Love and Mathematics – Broken Social Scene
4) The International Tweexcore Underground – Los Campesinos!
5) Glasgow Mega Snake - Mogwai
6) Fucked Up Kid – Kevin Drew
7) New Year – Death Cab for Cutie.

(Thank God this meme wasn’t called 9 Songs, otherwise this post would have been another anti-Winterbottom rant).

OK, I tag Robin, Lucy, Elinor and Rachael, although I suspect they’ve all been ‘done’ already – so consider yourselves double memed! Or something.

Off on a Tangent, Part 11 - Everything is Connected

Over the next few months, this blog could turn into a smorgasbord of musical mayhem with a frenzy of gig going, reviews and rampant Question & Answer sessions sprouting out all over like so much damp cress on a warm windowsill...

First off, I wrote this back in August last year about a band called Slab! – the thinking man’s industrial noiseniks. And stone me, the band’s two prime movers – Stephen Dray and Paul Jarvis – have both left comments on the post. I’m trying to arrange a Q&A session right here for them at some point (plus some unreleased music?), so stay tuned. Slab’s MySpace page has also attracted the attentions of their last drummer, Rob Allum, who now plays with Turin Brakes as well as being a founder member of The High Llamas. To say I am excited by all these developments would be the understatement of the century.

Strangely enough, the chap who set up the Slab! MySpace page is Tim Elsenburg, who fronts up the rather awesome band Sweet Billy Pilgrim. Tim has previously played with Martin Grech, whose song Open Heart Zoo was used a few years back for a Lexus advert. My wife loved the song, so I bought her the album not really expecting much of a big deal. Like – wow – how wrong was I? Open Heart Zoo is pleasant enough, but it doesn’t really prepare you for the full-on brainstorming onslaught of Dali. I’m still trying to get to grips with Grech’s second album, Unholy, which is austere and noisily mentalist in equal measures. His third – released last year – is apparently another about face, this time into the realms of introspective folk (I suspect that’s his Kerrang audience safely alienated then!). Tim has also remixed David Sylvian, and has collaborated and toured with David’s brother Steve Jansen (I never was a huge Japan fan, but have an unfortunately neurotic tendency to buy everything that David Sylvian ever releases). Tim’s blog is awash with tour stories and details of Steve Jansen’s inexplicable (and highly amusing) fear of lifts, and is well worth a visit.

Gig-wise, I have the following to look forward to:

UK Subs, Freebutt, Brighton, May 5th – the last time I saw the Subs there were two tattooed lunatics down the front fighting anybody who had the sheer audacity to go near them – so much so that the band had to stop playing several times to wade in and sort them out. Punk rock! The fact that my brother ended up being best of buddies with these two lunatics is neither here nor there.

Battles, Astoria, May 14th (support from Liars) – Battles continue their ambitions for world dominance by moving up a league from the Koko to packing out the Astoria – and rightly so.

Feist, Albert Hall, May 23rd – the last time I saw Feist was at the Komedia, a small(ish) venue in Brighton. The gig was fantastic. And here she is a year later selling out the Albert Hall – just shows what a fantastic album, an iPod advert and some Vanity Fair coverage can do for your career.

Broken Social Scene, Shepherds Bush Empire, May 25th – similarly, the Scene have moved up a notch from the Koko to the Empire (where Crackerjack used to be recorded). The last time I was at the Empire was for a Helmet gig, which featured – rather bizarrely – a stage diving Paul King! All together now: Love, and Pride! Time to grow a mullet and spray paint those Doc Martens...

The upshot of all this is that if you play in a band and hanker after fame, riches and endless critical praise, the place to be featured is – well, obviously – Unfit for Print! Battles, Feist and the Scene have all gone onto bigger and better things since being featured in these hallowed pages (the Subs have had their turn, I reckon!), and I like to think (in my entirely delusional and brain softened state) that it’s all down to UfP! Sheesh! I should start my own record label (coincidentally, my resemblance to Rick Rubin is really quite scary). Bearing in mind the good fortune this blog bestows on all and sundry, I’ll have a go at reviewing the Sweet Billy Pilgrim album as well – it hasn’t been off my virtual turntable (better known as a CD player) for at least a fortnight and I feel the overwhelming urge to write about it.

And no, I didn’t screw up last week’s meeting with the producer/director. Not a lot to report back on at the moment, but more as it develops...

The MP3 Files, Part 1 - Feist, La Sirena

I'm feeling very pleased with myself at the moment, as I've just figured out how to stream audio from this blog. Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone and his/her dog has been at it for years, but for the technologically retarded (i.e., me), this is a huge step forward. The next step: programming the DVD-R (I suspect this may be a step too far).

So, here's the first in an occasional series - this is from Leslie Feist's difficult to find first first album, Monarch. Click on the link below and the track should play in whatever Media Player you have on your system. Yowsa!

Feist - La Sirena

Off on a Tangent, Part 10 of many – Dif Juz.

What with our current culture of download-whatever-you-want-whenever-you-want-on-demand, it still comes as a huge surprise that, no matter where you look, certain commercial artefacts are just not available. Want a copy of Leslie Feist’s first album, Monarch? No can do. You can download it from a BitTorrent site, but don’t hold your breath in the expectation that a bonafide copy is going to find its way into your possession. Want a copy of Slab’s second album Sanity Allergy? No way bud, unless you trawl E-bay for rubbishy second hand copies. However, if you think these are rare, it’s nothing when compared to Dif Juz’s Who Says So? released on Red Flame Records in 1983.

Dif Juz were signed to 4AD Records, the home of the Cocteau Twins and a whole pile of homely, occasionally strange, gothic winsomeness. Every now and again, a band such as Pixies would emerge – all shouty and brilliant and raw and rock n’ roll – or Colourbox – berserk dance pioneers better known for their collaboration with AR Kane that resulted in the insanely successful Pump Up the Volume – but otherwise it was This Mortal Coil, Wolfgang Press, X-Mal Deutschland, and Red House Painters. Nothing wrong with that (I love all these bands), and you could almost make the argument that Dif Juz slotted right in alongside these more ‘generic’ 4AD bands.

Note the almost in that last sentence.

The aspects that set Dif Juz apart from their peers are all things you probably wouldn’t expect to see of a ‘generic’ 4AD band. Their sound – on the album Extractions especially – was pristine. Their musicianship was the work of real virtuosos. Listening to the records again, you start to realise how much of it must have been improvised through incessant jamming. The structures seem somehow jazz inflected as well. Add to this that almost everything they recorded was instrumental, and you start to get an idea of just how different they were – not only in comparison to their 4AD stablemates, but in comparison to just about everything else around at the time as well.

Here’s the video for No Motion from Lonely is an Eyesore, a 4AD compilation released in 1987 – probably the band’s last recorded output.



The thing I love about this video is the fact that they all look so delightfully stroppy – bear in mind that this was back when any appearance in front of a camera was considered selling out (where Top of the Pops was akin to supping with Satan himself). To give you an idea about Dif Juz’s ‘strop heritage’, bear in mind that Richard Thomas went on to drum for the arch-stropsters themselves, The Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s all change these days of course – any band signed to even a semi-serious label will no doubt receive some media training at some point (pah! Where’s the fun in that?).

Extractions may not seem hugely innovative to our modern ears, but the number of bands who have taken it as an influence are probably too many to mention. Godspeed!, Radiohead, Do Make Say Think especially, who seemed to have taken Dif Juz’s love of dub and instrumental repetition about as far as it’s possible to go.

And as for Who Says So? – the closest you’re going to get to the Dif Juz of Extractions is Roy’s Tray. Song with No Name Part 2 is all atonal saxophone bleatings and skittery beats, whereas Pass It On Charlie sounds like a Brazilian tropicalia band penning the theme tune for The Third Man – it really does sound that unique. Even the band’s obsession with dub as a genre in its own right throws up a brilliant experiment in the shape of Channel (bizarrely enough, Dif Juz recorded an album with Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry that resides to this day in the 4AD vaults, unreleased). That said, The Dub Song, which ends the album, is not one of the band’s greatest moments.

Of course the natural end point for the mostly experimental music on this mini album is the brilliant Extractions, which is well worth checking out. That doesn't mean to say that Who Says So? doesn't stand up well on its own - it does; it's just a shame that hardly anyone has had the opportunity to make this judgement for themselves.

Off on a Tangent, Part 9 - More Slab!

I wrote about Slab! here some time ago, and I’m pleased to say that, for a band that’s been defunct for nearly twenty years, they appear to be gaining a good deal of attention, both on the net and beyond.

First off, there’s Slab’s My Space page, set up by Tim Elsenburg of the folktronica outfit Sweet Billy Pilgrim (check out the fantastic tracks Bruguda and the gorgeous Meantime here).

Tim is also writing a piece on ‘songs that changed my life’ for The Sunday Times – the song chosen? Dolores, by Slab!, which you can hear on the MySpace link above. Without a doubt it’s the best track on the album, and probably (for me at least) amongst some of the best – and heaviest – music ever recorded. And lurking underneath the massive beats, drum machines and scuzzed out bass, there’s an honest to goodness tune. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Oh, and if anyone can track down any pictures of this elusive band, let Kevin know on artpics@sunday-times.co.uk

Off on a Tangent, part 7 – Monarch: The Lost Album of Leslie Feist

Monarch (Lay Down Your Jeweled Head) was Leslie Feist’s first solo recording, released in 1999 when she was just 23. Subsequent releases have had the benefit of major label clout behind them, but Monarch was released on a tiny Canadian label, and was predominantly sold at shows. It’s been out of print for years, and apparently copies go for more than $500 on EBay (when they ever appear that is).

Even getting to hear the songs on the album is difficult enough. There’s a dodgy Russian mp3 website that apparently has the whole thing available as a download, but my credit card doesn’t have a death wish, so that’s out. However, there have recently been a couple of BitTorrent sites with the whole album available for download (one’s here). My technical ability in this area is positively laughable, but over the weekend I managed to grab all eleven tracks in glorious all singing, all dancing MP3 format.

And it’s absolutely fantastic.

There’s obviously a reason as to why this album has been out of print so long, but I’m damned if I know why. If it was a major departure from Let It Die or The Reminder, then I could understand – but it isn’t. Songs such as It’s Cool to Love Your Family or One Year AD wouldn’t sound out of place on Feist’s new long player, and a song such as La Sirena (two fifths Cocteau Twins, two fifths torch song, one fifth ambient guitar wig out) is as gorgeous as anything that Feist has ever recorded (sorry, I haven’t a clue how to post MP3 files on this blog thing – someone write and give me a tutorial).

However, all this leaves me in a bit of a quandary. I used to work with a guy who downloaded all his music for free using a variety of undoubtedly dodgy websites, which to me is a crime on a par with touting concert tickets on EBay. The problem with Monarch is that it’s simply not commercially available in any form, nor is it likely to ever be so. All the 'official' MP3 sites I looked at turn up nothing but dead ends, so what’s a guy to do? I could send Ms Feist a few Canadian dollars, but unfortunately I don’t have her PayPal details ;-)

So for the moment, I’m enjoying the album for free, which just doesn’t seem right somehow.

Perhaps I need to make a donation to some musician’s benevolent fund or something ;-)

Opportunity Knocks, part 3

This just in from Mandy.com:

Vacancy: Screenplay Writer
Employer: The Zed Resistor Company
Location: London
Duration: 6-12 months, starts Immediate

The Zed Resistor Company (http://www.zedresistor.com/) is currently inviting submissions for completed feature length screenplays for consideration of next production.

Please send synopsis and plot information to: pauln2000@blueyonder.co.uk.

Web: http://www.zedresistor.com

Apply to: Paul Allan-Slade

Bad grammar aside, why not give it a go? What have you got to lose apart from your dignity and an internal organ?

Off on a Tangent (Part 3 of many)

Lack of Knowledge - Grey EP, 1983

This 7" single appeared in 1983 on the Crass label, home of the original "dog on a string" brigade and perhaps the sole inspiration for smelly anarcho crusties across the land. However, on the face of it, this lot were different. From what I can gather, Lack of Knowledge were predominantly led by Tony Barber, who now plays bass for the Buzzcocks: they toiled around the usual anarcho gig sweat pots where their drainpipes and skinny ties attracted odd looks. The fact that they only played a handful of gigs perhaps shows that they didn't fit into the punk ‘scene' very well. Bear in mind that at the time, Crass Records specialised in apoplectic punk rock and wildly left of centre experimental nuttiness: spoken word EPs, a novelty Christmas record played entirely on a pocket Yamaha synthesiser, even a single by Captain Sensible. Merely admitting you could play an instrument to a proficient standard would automatically elevate you over the amount of angry punk rock detritus the label shovelled out with alarming frequency. However, it wasn't just the musicianship that elevated LOK - it was much more.

The four songs on this single are LOK's finest ten minutes. Even the LP that followed a little later - Sirens are Back - couldn't match what these guys did here. OK, so it's only four songs, but whatever it was - a fluke of a fluctuating line up or the attentions of a sympathetic producer – LOK were never able to reproduce what they did on this single. Comparisons to Joy Division are perhaps inevitable given the New Wave tag, but where Joy Division's sound was often cold and alienating, LOK's is warm, lush, pensive even, which is ironic given their lyrical concerns: Northern Ireland, imminent nuclear collapse, a dispiriting vision of the future that still sounds strangely contemporary today.

These concerns are a pretty good match with those of the other bands on the Crass roster, but LOK are more subtle – these guys want to tell stories rather than swear and sneer and carry on. And besides, this is hardly what you call a genre puck record: We’re Looking for People features a riff that isn’t the obligatory three chord racket – good god, the song even features a literate guitar solo! The drums are a little militaristic in keeping with the Crass house style, but are kept down in the mix, and just as well – man, that bass player can play! Another Sunset is flooded with (shock, horror) expansive keyboard washes which add to the melancholic vibe: this isn’t punk rock as we know it, and thank god for that.

Having the publicity that being 'signed' to Crass Records afforded them, LOK were never exactly obscure in the same way that Slab! were. The records that followed Grey made you wish they were. After Grey, they thrashed away with the obligatory three chords as the compilation Americanised demonstrates (where the criteria appears to be quantity not quality) – which makes Grey seem like a complete aberration. Sirens are Back has its moments, which certainly does not include a clunky funk work out halfway through Weapons Range (someone’s been listening to too much Pop Group). The fact that this record is self-produced speaks volumes. It really isn't very good.

There was a slight return to form on Chainsaw Records 12" Sentinel, but it sounds a little clumsy, derivative even, probably the result of recruiting a 'trainee' bass player in the shape of Karen Gower, Tony Barber’s girlfriend (the legend has it that when she joined the band, she had never played a bass before, let alone picked one up – subsequently, she was told to “fucking well hurry up and learn it’”!). The internal rhythmic engine that fuelled Grey had changed, and not for the better.

The thing that amazes me about LOK is the fact that after the triumph of Grey, they slowly returned to the punk formula of three thrashy chords and general lack of imagination. Tony Barber went on to play bass for the Buzzcocks in 1993, and since then LOK have not exactly done a lot. Ah well – perhaps expecting them to top Grey was asking a little too much.

Off on a Tangent (Part 1 of many)

The first of an occasional series that has nothing to do with screenwriting whatsoever. As I might’ve mentioned before, I might infrequently go off on a tangent and indulge in my tastes for noisy, obscure music that no-one else has ever heard of. To prove this, go to my ‘Profile’ page and click on the word ‘Slab!’ under music (second line). Go on, do it now, you know you want to.

Bloggers with favourite music that includes Slab! – No Profiles Found

No other person in the entire blogging universe lists this band.

I don’t think you can get more obscure than that.

Try plugging Slab! into Google and see what you come up with. Apart from a Brummie metal band who have nicked the name, not a lot.

In some respects, these facts make me feel incredibly smug, inasmuch as I know about this band and the rest of the world doesn’t. However, for the most part, I feel massively aggrieved that such a brilliant and essential record has passed people by without anyone noticing.

The following review is a sort of adaptation of the one on Amazon (I wrote that one too).
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SLAB! – DESCENSION – Ink Records, 1987 (re-issue - Release Records)

Re-issued from a long deleted vinyl release, this is still one of the few records that I would unhesitatingly define as 'essential', purely because there's nothing out there either before or since that quite sounds like this.

Forget the scary looking band photo, all silly hats and mullets. This was originally released in 1987, so perhaps they can be forgiven.

Imagine Michael Gira from Swans waking up one morning with a nagging pop tune in his head, but only being able to play it with the volume turned up as loud as it will go. Or the scuzzed up, stroppy older brother of Material's Memory Serves. Or Trent Reznor slumming it without a major record deal, forced to record in the shittiest south London studios that his meagre dole money could afford. If any band melded together such a disparate range of musical styles, emerging at the other end with something that still sounds entirely modern, progressive and above all unique, then I wanna hear it.

Before this record, Slab had released three 12" singles, noted for their dedication to a particular type of Clintonesque groove, albeit somewhat scuzzy – slick, geometric basslines with bursts of jazzy horns all married to a droll vocal delivery. All very listenable, but very late eighties: a little contrived maybe – studied, over-polished perhaps. Slab! was a band with a plethora of members, so maybe a degree of democratic watering down was to be expected.

Nothing this band did before quite prepares you for the assault of Descension.

'Slab' just about sums up this record. Tunnel of Love, the opener, hits the ground screaming with a burst of white noise guitar sampled to sound like no other guitar you've ever heard in your life. If this is a statement of intent, it works. From this point on, there is no let up.

This is like the soundtrack to the scariest movie you've never seen. Undriven Snow melds a discordant two note guitar riff with a surprisingly melodic vocal, the bass bucking and warping, threatening to take the whole song down some dark alley and give it a damn good kicking.

Think of Descension as an industrial jazz record with all the stops pulled out.

This is dark stuff – drone laden, dubby, loud as hell, the classic definition of lo-fi. Put this band in a 48 track digital studio and they wouldn't make any sense. Slab! need that dirty, scuzzed out sound, that rough around the edges feel that you can only apparently find in cheap, decrepit south London studios.

Slab! rip into every song as if their recording time is on a meter. Everything sounds urgent, impassioned. Dolores is a huge stand out track, at once both paranoid and immense, the hushed verse giving way to monstrous beats, hesitant horns punctuating a fierce bass line.

Improvisation is high on the agenda on tracks such as Dr Bombay and Moosleand, where Slab slip effortlessly slip into a relaxed, scuzzy loungecore, improvising effortlessly around skittery piano notes and erratic beats – the sound of a band confident enough to know that they can get away with this and still make it compelling. Even the way in which the tracks have been recorded suggest an urgency. There is a real desperation to get this stuff down onto tape before the moment is lost – ticks and buzzes, feedback, strange industrial clankings, buzzy amps – all have their place here. Even the primitive samples are ragged, punched in when required, speed of the essence.

And all this is before you enter the paranoid, cinematic world that Paul Jarvis’ lyrics conjure up. The album’s openers – Tunnel of Love and Undriven Snow - read like narratives from serene but ultimately disturbing short films. Dolores is an unsettling dream of environmental collapse – “On the banks of a river, in a sweltering town, She can sense there’s great sickness in the water supply.” Vigilante justice groups roam the streets in Gutter Busting, kicking down doors and dealing drugs with impunity. If this sounds exhausting, it is, but this is exhilarating stuff. Music played by a band straining at the end of its tether, music teetering on the edge of collapse.

Two bonus tracks are included from the People Pie 12", but they already show a band retreating, as if the excesses of Descension were merely a freak aberration. As good as the reworked People Pie is, it can't disguise a move into a more commercial sound – backing singers, a guitar solo, a lot less of the ‘knackered studio aesthetic’ that their previous sound was rooted in – details that Descension does not concern itself with at all.

And why should it? Twenty years on, this sounds as good now as it did then.
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In short, if you want to know where Trent Reznor gets the majority of his ideas from, check out this album.

Slab! released a further album entitled Sanity Allergy a year later, also on Ink Records. To date, this has not been released on CD – my vinyl copy is still playable, but only just.

Just for fun, look what happened to their bass player, Bill Davies.

On a screenwriting related note, the first script I ever wrote was called Descension. I sent it to Planet 24, who asked me, "Is Descension actually a word?" Well, no – technically it isn’t, but it’s a damn great record. It’s a crying shame nobody’s even heard of it.

Later in the week I'll be discussing the difference between a bitch slap (as administered by Gordy Hoffman in the previous post) and a pimp slap (as administered by a well known UK script editor), so stay tuned!