Kühlen Sie deutsche Kultur ab

For reasons unknown...except to say that one thing leads to another (but I don't know what started it)...a confluence of German culture has occurred here in my bunker...

I'm listening to this...

Watching this...

Flicking through this...

...the text of which I don't understand, not being able to read German -

but here are some pictures from it...

And I've just started reading this...

...which, as you know, can be linked to the second item.

I-F - Roll The Dice - A Dubstep Dilemma - Party Sounds For Proper Adults With Taste

I’ve been away for a week and I just know you all missed me....

There’s a layer of dust on these keyboards...to match the one coating my brain...so I’m trying to blow it away by playing I-F’s 1998 album, ‘Fucking Consumer’ (one of the greatest album titles ever) - fucking loud...‘I Do Because I Couldn’t Care Less’ seems to be doing the trick...followed by ‘Spiegelbeeld’...the thumping echoed beat and bubbling synth...splendid...

   I made the connection clicking through links to the past and found that Ferenc E. van der Sluijs’s album sounded like a masterpiece of Nu-electro, which may or may not be a proper genre...and if it is, I doubt that it’s produced any masterpieces...except this.

   The ‘big hit’ was ‘Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass’, my least favourite track. Compared to the rest it sounds like a self-conscious attempt to reach the masses. ‘Energy Vampire’ is much more my kind of thing. It’s synthesised song reminds me of something from a sci-fi B-movie...about vampires...on Mars.

   There’s also a cheeky acknowledgement of John Carpenter’s pared-down techno soundtrack genius in the form of ‘Assault On Radical Radio’.

There are echoes of Carpenter again on Roll The Dice’s ‘Into The Ground’ – some of that menace he created, anyway. The album, ‘Roll The Dice’, is one of the best new things I’ve heard recently. Somehow these two Swedes get sounds from machinery that sound fresh. I don’t know how they do it. Is it a matter of pressing the right buttons? I like to think they’ve built a Heath Robinsonesque computer comprising of cogs, levers, a pulley system, tubes, chains and wheels. It sounds like that’s the kind of machine they used for ‘Into The Mild’ anyway. Their sound is both epic and refined; almost improvisational in effect at times. It’s partly the spawn of German synthesised sound, but mostly unique in arrangement, mood and ideas.

I’m enjoying Wiley’s ‘4 Shots’ from the ‘Avalanche Music’ LP but anyone over 40 shouldn’t talk about dubstep because they’re in danger of sounding as if they desperately want to ‘keep up’. Not that there’s anything wrong with ‘keeping up’, but I know from experience that when that feat becomes an effort there’s something wrong. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow (or in this case the drift, away from modern urban music). It’s not for you because a) you’re no longer a teenager, b) you’ll always be two steps behind what’s really ‘happening’, c) it’s important to retain your dignity and avoid embarrassment by flaunting your fogeyness, d) unless you live in a Hackney tower block it’s not relevant.

   I’m dead against listening rules.

  But...displaying enthusiasm for urban music when you’re middle-aged is as bad as if you were to wear trousers that deliberately show your pants...whilst pushing a pram.

   Then again, they say appropriate behaviour in relation to age changes with each generation and that men nowadays are prone to boyishness. But there are limits.

   Perhaps, as a 45-yr-old, the most radical thing you could do now is wear a tweed suit, smoke a pipe and listen to Mantovani – although if you did I would think you were incredibly hip.

I’m not much of a fucking consumer when it comes to music these days, but I did pick up this Johnny Keating album for £1 from an Oxfam shop the other day, just for the sleeve. It’s also in brilliant condition. Listening to it, I instantly feel mature and sophisticated because it naturally conjures up the era when there was classy Adult Music made for husbands and wives (and lovers) who could still throw a good party and perhaps play some Johnny Keating along with Bacharach, Barry and Frank. To my surprise, some of it’s really good, especially the opener, ‘Mirage’, which is finger-snapping quality, complete with congas driving the rhythm. That and ‘The Prank’ are as fine as anything Quincy Jones did in his 60s prime.

Of Time & Politics

One of those afternoons...clicking around in the endless library of sound that is Spotify...downloading some music...staring at the screen, out the window, into space...then at the clock again to wonder where the hell all that time had gone...well time is always going somewhere; namely, away, by second-by-second, minute-by-minute and so on...

   So much time has passed since I saw an old friend that I bumped into yesterday...made me feel quite nostalgic for times past, of course...a lot of years past...I travelled in time whilst moving forward through space on my bicycle after meeting her...

   I came across this beautiful album by Fennesz a short while ago and as it plays it kind of suits my mood, which is not melancholic but more...contemplative...of what I was like when I first met this girl over twenty years ago...what I was doing...which mostly consisted of passing time in a coffee bar with other deadbeats on the dole...boring them rigid preaching the gospel of Jazz, no doubt...along with raging against the Thatcherite machine because back then I was a Socialist...perhaps I still am, with a small ‘s’...whatever that means...but in truth I have no faith in any political system because...because I think deep down we should believe in ourselves above all else, which is not to advocate selfishness, but to gain strength from all that we are, all we want to be, rather than rely on politicians to supply a satisfactory climate for living...

   Yes, I know that the laws they pass will affect us all in some way, but whatever they do, to react emotionally, to be angered, upset, frustrated, depressed by them is futile...we elect a new dictator...that’s all...and I once enjoyed taking part in the riot against the poll tax, yes, it’s true...as a socialist or anarchist? Probably both, although they’re contradictory beliefs...

   Now I steel myself against whatever’s coming from the new coalition of waxwork dummies...the automatons of their respective parties...the politically castrated new generation, the ‘young’ shiny-faced, smooth-skinned Middle England policy-makers...propagandists for polite dictatorship in place of spirited radicalism...let’s see what happens...the revolution will be sanitised...

Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)

Having recently read Armitage Trail’s 1930 novel of the same name, which kick-started the big screen spin-offs, I thought I’d take a look at De Palma’s version again, not having watched it for a good twenty years.

   All Tony Montana has at the start of his Miami life is his balls and his word, and as he says, he ‘don’t break them for no one’. Well this ball-bustin’, X-rated macho fest has fuelled many a male fantasy in the subsequent years. The poster’s a best-seller, and boys can get their photos taken to look like Montana, would you believe. Why anyone would want to be this archetypal model of self-destruction is beyond me, but as Tony tells the diners in a restaurant, ‘You need people like me’, and viewers have wanted, if not exactly needed, big screen gangsters since the roaring twenties.

   Tony’s off the boat from Cuba along with all the other exiles. Is this really a communist propaganda film? I’m sure Castro would love it. ‘You know what capitalism is?’ Tony asks at one point. ‘Getting fucked’. And if The Man doesn’t fuck you, do it yourself by OD-ing on ill-gotten wealth and cocaine.

   ‘We’re losers, not winners,’ says Montana’s wife during the powerful restaurant scene. She lives in a kind of coked-out coma; isolated, alienated not only from Tony, but the world. Tony, meanwhile, is bloated from all the power and wealth he’s accumulated. His dinner table speech is a brilliant expression of disillusionment from the pen of Oliver Stone. Perhaps only Stone could match the excess of an era with such a manifesto against greed and capital(ist) gains. His talent and De Palma’s ability to depict vulgar grandeur and set-piece slaughter create a delirious portrayal of the American Dream as nightmare.

   Much of Scorsese’s romancing of the gangster looks like the work of a Mob groupie compared to this film. The appeal of Marty’s anti-heroes is understandable, to a degree, especially when sexed up by choice cuts of hip music and smart clobber. But Montana? For all his swagger, he remains a little man, plagued by insecurity, rampant egotism and paranoia as he roars down the road to Hell.

   Crucial colours here seem to be red and white; the blood that boils in Tony and bursts out of all those bullet wounds, and the mountains of coke inhaled by him and his wife. By consuming so much of what has made him rich he is, of course, devouring himself.

   De Palma and Stone pump up the self-loathing and decay to such a level that it can only explode, as it does, in a climax of emotional agony before a spectacular flood of blood and guts.

Hit The Road, Monte (and Kenneth)

Been soaking my eyeballs in America pop culture iconography recently, starting with the bad trip that is ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ (1971), wherein hippy petrol heads James Taylor and Dennis Wilson hit the road on what feels like an eternal downer. It’s a cult classic – yes – but...isn’t it also a comedown after the previous decade’s high of new-found ideals and cultural revolutionary zeal? Monte makes what happens as exciting or interesting as listening to a marijuana plant grow. But these boys don’t even do drugs (just burgers and Coke – the all-American drug). Warren Oates is the only live-wire as an insecure serial liar sucked into the race, and I found him more interesting (likeable, even) than The Driver and The Mechanic. ‘But it’s all existential’, you might say. Maybe it is, and maybe I’m missing the point. If the point is the pointlessness of going on the road in search of anything, ma-a-n, because, well, you know, there’s nothing to find and no place worth getting to, Hellman delivers. It’s a cynical 70s riposte to Kerouac’s joy and kicks two decades before. If I had produced this, I’d have told Monte: ‘Look, you can contemplate the futility of life for young people now and the nihilistic existential nature of life in a world of shattered dreams but, you know, at least make the car races exciting.’

From cars to bikes and Kenneth Anger’s ‘Scorpio Rising’ (1964) – known as an underground classic, which I’m sure it is. The camera lingers lovingly on the muscle-bound biker boys (of course, this being our Ken) along with the contents of Bruce Byron’s room (thus highlighting the pop culture significance of all its artefacts) – before going on to a biker’s party where the boys (straight boys) lark about acting gay. Then there’s the sacrilegious church scene in which the biker rants (unheard) from the pulpit. There’s a Nazi flag too – what is Anger saying? Religious zealots are no better than political ones? It all plays out to a soundtrack of choice pop tunes, the use of which pre-date every filmmakers use of pop and striking imagery – for that, you must give Anger credit, along with his humorous use of a Hollywood biblical movie cut into all this. Anger was a rebel, for sure, but whether he had a cause or not, I don’t know.

Demdike Stare

In their dark satanic mill up North, Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty construct industrial-strength beats and weave wicked sonic textures for your listening pleasure. Since Canty works for crate-diggers Finders Keepers, who released Sam McCloughlin & Alison Cooper’s ‘Supernatural Lancashire’ (elements of which undoubtedly qualify as ‘pastoral hauntology’ - a real genre, honest), therein lies some kind of connection, surely.
   Demdike, by the way, was the other name for a notorious 17th century witch, Elizabeth Southerns, of Pendle, Lancashire. Miles Whittaker also records as part of Pendle Coven. Perhaps that explains why this music gets such great reviews. I mean, you don’t want to take any chances and end up being cursed, do you? Perhaps these two like nothing more of an evening than to curl up on the sofa and watch Coronation Street rather than boil frogs and drink the blood of babies, but I’m not about to be the first to slate their music, just in case. Why should I? Everything they do hits the spot.

  

I’ve only just caught up with their album, ‘Osmosis’, and it’s easily The Best Album I Never Heard Last Year - a superb creation, packed with devilishly dark sounds, demonic (that’s enough black magic references) drones, dub and twisted techno-inflected treasures. Berlin – Detroit – Kingston...Manchester? Why not? I’m not sure whether they’re Mancunians, actually. The point about the album is that it’s cast a spell on me – I can’t stop playing the damn thing and I haven’t experienced that kind of obsession for a long time.

   ‘Haxan Dub’ (‘Haxan’ being a famous 1922 film about Devil worship) reduces the form to its bare minimum with snippets of percussion, subterranean bass and scratch rhythm. It’s a glorious take on the art just when I thought the genre had been exhausted. ‘Janissary’ is insanely infectious with its swirling strings and raggedy pop-synth melody dancing throughout. ‘Haxan’ gives the best of Basic Channel a run for its money, minus that label’s tendency to excessive length. ‘Conjoined’ is all tribal percussion topped by a light, teasing touch of techno counterpoint to the percussion.

   The album refers to genres without aping them. It’s all in the mix, the choice of samples and so on.

     

Now there’s ‘Forest of Evil’, which consists of two tracks, ‘Dusk’ and ‘Dawn’; enough to keep anyone occupied for many plays on a trip through their sinister world – a long journey into the night where strange thing go bump, swish, bang, thump – all expertly arranged so as to whip us into a ritualistic fervour. It does me, anyway.

   The tracks consist of ‘movements’, dare I say, without wishing to sound pretentious, and I especially like the latter part of ‘Dawn’, which begins with strings that become consumed by the crackle of technology and clanging of metal.

   The perfect horror soundtrack for a post-industrial world where something ghostly lurks in the machine.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

Anyone who treats January Jones like a piece of meat warrants being beaten up, dragged through a river behind a horse, bitten by a rattlesnake and getting his nose busted by a coffee-pot. So border patrolman Mike Norton gets what he deserves, for that and shooting an innocent Mexican. OK, so Estrada was in America illegally, but he was a good cowboy and gave Pete Perkins his horse, which in West Texas is just about the greatest thing one man can do for another, probably.

   Tommy Lee Jones directed this and plays Perkins with the same world-weariness that defined his sheriff in ‘No Country For Old Men’. Along with the Stetson, he wears that attitude very well. Obsession with fulfilling Estrada’s wish should he die first drives Perkins on in search of his friend’s final resting place. But does it actually exist? And is the woman in the photo really Estrada’s wife?

   There are two especially great sequences; one when they meet a blind man living alone, and another when Perkins tries to make his dead friend’s hair look a little better.

   This is a fine film, imbued with tragedy and irony. It travels from small-town American life to the rugged beauty of a wilderness where answers and possibly even redemption might be found.

Tomorrow Is The Question - A Vote For Ornette Coleman

Tomorrow is the question and this Wednesday it will be a big one for voters in the UK. I may be pre-empting the prelude to polling day, but I’m not about to take to the soapbox to spout my political views, so you needn’t worry. Perhaps, like me, you’re sick of political views. I got election fatigue the day after it was officially announced.

   Ornette Coleman said Tomorrow Is The Question back in ’59 with the title of his album, and that’s been on my mind as well as in my ears over the last hour. Listening to it again, I wonder how it came to be that such astounding sounds got made. Music is a mystery to all but the experts yet even for them I doubt that the question of Ornette’s sound can be fully answered. Like Monk, his sound is a inscrutable.

For me, Ornette’s question regarding tomorrow takes precedence over the Political one. Perhaps that makes me shallow, but I do adhere to the Church of Cultural Consumerism, after all. And as a member, I feel it my duty to swear some kind of oath to Ornette (with my hand firmly planted on a copy of this album). “I hereby declare that I shall live by the truth, and nothing but the truth, of great art such as this, so help me Ornette.”

   Those who do not speak of Politics fascinate me more than those who do. And I don’t mean people who are incapable of thinking beyond their next wage/meal/car etc. The absence of Political commentary is, in a way, as big a political statement as those made by folks who can talk for hours about hung parliaments and electoral reform. Yet if I had a bunch of friends and we were in a bar I could no doubt talk for some time about how much I dislike modern Politics.

   As I age, however, I become more vacant. Thus, the largely unoccupied space between my ears is more conducive to allowing a deluge of music to replace what others might consider to be Important Thoughts.

   Tomorrow remains an unanswered question in Ornette’s music, which only raises more questions because despite (and because of) his musical system, it is open to interpretation, understanding and appreciation. These puzzles he constructed...the labyrinthine nature of the solos, of the whole body of work...where are the answers and what route should we take through the music? We must logically start at the beginning, but two minutes in I frequently find myself quite lost; ecstatically so.

   There is the melody of ‘Turnaround’, but that in itself does not conform to the rules...and is usurped by a bass solo where bass solos should not be, namely, first in line. And Don Cherry plays trumpet like a child discovering the joy of a new toy whilst Ornette plays the blues in the form of some abstract truth which only he may comprehend.

   The ghost of Charlie Parker is audible in this music. No surprise since he haunted all alto players. But Ornette did more than most to banish the spirit of Bop by asking the big question: what about tomorrow? The following year he delivered one answer, ‘Free Jazz’, which was insane. No-one had dared to record a piece so long, never mind so apparently anarchic. It’s as if he had pondered the question long and hard throughout 1960 before deciding that leaping into the unknown was the only answer.

   Tomorrow may always be the question for those living crazy lives of spontaneity and I applaud anyone who has miraculously escaped the restrictions and routines of ordinary daily life. For most of us the questions relate to such fascinating dilemmas as what time to go to the supermarket, whether to do the washing, what to wear and so on. Your society needs you. Without our kind, it would fall apart! That’s not to say that the ordinariness promoted by politicians is to be commended. How tiresome they are with their insistence on good old-fashioned ‘values’ based on the pretence that working hard, being a normal family and behaving decently will automatically bring happiness.

   I admit there’s something to be said for the comfort provided by a routine, and the security granted by a job. Still, as a form of relief from this predictability, some of us revel in the great escape route supplied by musicians such as Ornette Coleman. In his musical world, tomorrow is a question that can never be answered by politicians.