Happy Monday one and all. There's so much going on between work and the usual dreadful events in the world that I don't feel capable of expressing it all and anyway, you must be bored with me ranting. Instead, how about a musical interlude - a round-up of what I've been enjoying recently?
Firstly, Euros Childs' latest album. He releases a faux-naif solo album every six months or so, always with a hand-written card tucked inside. I've bought everything all the ex-Gorky's Zygotic Mynci personnel have released since they split up. Nothing's quite like the unhinged Welsh teenage psychedelia they specialised in, but nothing they've done has ever been uninteresting. Annoyingly, Euros never tours near me.
Sticking with Welsh psychedelicists, the people behind Ectogram, Parking Non-Stop and various other groups have released what is for them a rather straight-forward album of lovely melodic songs under the name Spectralate.
crocodile tears from Robert Zyborski on Vimeo.
The follically-challenged chap was relentlessly rude to me about my taste in musics twice a week for ten years when I went to Cob Records, but we're great friends now and I have to admit (though you may not agree) that my tastes have if not improved, at least widened.
I've also recently bought the 4CD Bridget St. John album - a 60s/70s folk-rock singer I'd never come across before. She sings like Nick Drake mixed with Nico and the songs are reflective, thoughtful and lovely. Wish I'd come across her work before. The discs include this French live version - delightful to hear an English person speaking passably in another language for a change.
Radio 3 has been making a slight effort to include more female composers recently, which is good. Not because they should play anything by female composers just because, but because there are lots of really excellent ones who've been shamefully overlooked. R3 introduced me to Rachel Clarke's Viola Sonata: I love violas in general and this is a humdinger.
As it happens, I've bought loads of music by female composers recently so here are some of my favourites by Sally Beamish (more viola), Julia Wolfe and Pauline Oliveros (experimental drone accordion - what's not to like?).
I've also bought the latest New Order album, Music Complete partly because I buy everything they do, but partly because something interesting must be going on if they're referencing musique concréte. But I haven't had a chance to listen to it yet, mostly because I've been listening obsessively to Gwenno Saunders' Welsh-language SF-inspired solo album, Y Dydd Olaf. She was in the rather lovely English-language band The Pipettes, but this album is entirely different: electronic, political, futuristic and compelling:
Slowcore heroes Low's new album Ones and Sixes hasn't quite grown on me yet - I'm quite an obsessive follower but this one doesn't have quite the impact so far as the albums I think of as their classics: C'Mon, Drums and Guns and I Could Live in Hope. It may be a grower though.
The final album I've been playing an awful lot is one I'm just not sure about. I went to Andris Nelsons' last concert as conductor of the CBSO, which was marked by a premiere of a new piece by Eriks Esenvalds, the Latvian composer. The piece itself isn't out yet but it was interesting enough to persuade me to buy his orchestral work Liepaja Concerto and one of his choral pieces.
The orchestral one is pretty good - quirky European modernism with a Baltic twist, but Northern Lights is troubling me.
It's just too pretty (I love the glasses though). There are heart-stopping moments of beauty but I'm not convinced that that's what contemporary classical music should be doing. It's where the post-minimalists went wrong, and Esenvalds' choral music is at least partly within the Baltic 'mystic minimalism' strand. I can see where it came from: even extreme modernists like Penderecki went from this to this as religion countered the version of communism in which they grew up. I'm not against beauty per se: we need it, but I do think that modernism in music (and literature) attempted to represent the world as it is – ugly, dissonant, often incomprehensible – rather than as we'd like it to be, and that seriousness requires us to confront what is (not just modernists: hurray from Oliver Cromwell demanding his portrait be painted 'warts and all'). The mystical minimalists (see also non-Baltic Lauridsen and Whitacre and here for a fan's view) moved a musical language on from one which exposed the beauty of structures to one which returned to a form of magical thinking (if I'm not careful I'll start throwing around words like ineffable), or of propaganda, despite often being a pointed response to propaganda.
It's like 21st-century novels which tell a nice neat story about comprehensible coherent characters who overcome challenges to live happily ever after, all within 250 pages. Hard to do with a clear conscience in the midst of decay, decadence, mass murder and environmental degradation. And yet that's what we all (me included) read and listen to most of the time.
Which is all a very long way from Esenvalds, but what I think I'm trying to say is that his choral music is too easy, too comfortable. I know we all need to relax occasionally but I distrust escapism as reactionary. You don't have to be miserable to be serious: lots of humour does it too (I liked Hope: a Tragedy as an example of serious hilarity) but I think my definition of Literature or Culture in general is work which refuses to reinforce the artistic status quo, even if only in small ways. It should unsettle, or nudge your perceptions in some way. Gwenno's Y Dydd Olaf does that musically, lyrically (for non-Welsh speakers, just by being in Welsh) and politically. While existing in the far reaches of 'high culture', Esenvalds manifestly does not.
And now I'm going to listen to Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power as an antidote.
Showing posts with label Low. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Low. Show all posts
Monday, 19 October 2015
Tuesday, 14 May 2013
The glamorous life of the academic
Hi everybody. It's late afternoon and I'm only just posting something here. I must have an outrage gland deficiency or something.
The truth is that I've been suffering academic overload. Literally everything I deal with has come up today. There's the marking of course - dissertations first, particularly the discussions with the other marker to agree a grade. Then there's consoling distraught students – postgrads this time, trying to solve completely understandable dilemmas without causing offence or treading on people's toes. I've had several calls for union help, and I've received the readers' reports on two papers I wrote. Oh, and arranging visiting speakers for next year's research sessions. Plus the usual routine of gossip and meetings: last night the deputy head of the Quality Assurance Agency gave a very enlightening lecture. Amongst other things, he said that the posh universities tried to claim that inspection is really only for proletarian hellholes like The Hegemon, and that the Tories are pushing through their education-wrecking plans through quangos rather than face the scrutiny which comes from passing Higher Education legislation. I paraphrase, of course, but it's pretty clear that not having any mandate won't stop them behaving like North Korean Dear Leaders.
If you don't know how the system works, it's like this. You write a paper and submit it to the editors. They send an anonymised copy out to two readers who recommend whether or not to publish it, and if so, whether any revisions need making. Then you do the necessary and send it back, alongside a response detailing whether you ignored or accepted the recommendations.
Luckily, my papers were very well-received, but there's still work to do. The readers made some really useful observations about factual stuff, emphasis and structure: it's exactly how peer review is meant to work. But of course a lot of the alterations are time-consuming. For instance: I thought I'd got the right referencing system. Turns out I haven't. So I've got to go through every quote, footnote and endnote changing them. The guidance is 39 pages long. My eyes are bleeding… and the marking is staring at me balefully.
The soundtrack for the day has been Low - all 14 albums in reverse chronological order. Restful, beautiful but also deeply melancholy. Ideal for grading dissertations and theoretically dictating the course of students' lives. Tomorrow it's an early meeting supporting a colleague through a disciplinary hearing (let's face it: I'll be facing one myself if I keep blogging the way I am, so I need the practice), then more marking and in the evening, at long last, I'll go fencing again. I always find that the antidote to a big pile of marking is to spend an evening viciously attacking people with bladed weapons. Don't you?
Here are some of Low's songs.
and for melancholic fun, Galaxie 500's cover of the Rutles' Beatles parody 'Cheese and Onions'.
The truth is that I've been suffering academic overload. Literally everything I deal with has come up today. There's the marking of course - dissertations first, particularly the discussions with the other marker to agree a grade. Then there's consoling distraught students – postgrads this time, trying to solve completely understandable dilemmas without causing offence or treading on people's toes. I've had several calls for union help, and I've received the readers' reports on two papers I wrote. Oh, and arranging visiting speakers for next year's research sessions. Plus the usual routine of gossip and meetings: last night the deputy head of the Quality Assurance Agency gave a very enlightening lecture. Amongst other things, he said that the posh universities tried to claim that inspection is really only for proletarian hellholes like The Hegemon, and that the Tories are pushing through their education-wrecking plans through quangos rather than face the scrutiny which comes from passing Higher Education legislation. I paraphrase, of course, but it's pretty clear that not having any mandate won't stop them behaving like North Korean Dear Leaders.
If you don't know how the system works, it's like this. You write a paper and submit it to the editors. They send an anonymised copy out to two readers who recommend whether or not to publish it, and if so, whether any revisions need making. Then you do the necessary and send it back, alongside a response detailing whether you ignored or accepted the recommendations.
Luckily, my papers were very well-received, but there's still work to do. The readers made some really useful observations about factual stuff, emphasis and structure: it's exactly how peer review is meant to work. But of course a lot of the alterations are time-consuming. For instance: I thought I'd got the right referencing system. Turns out I haven't. So I've got to go through every quote, footnote and endnote changing them. The guidance is 39 pages long. My eyes are bleeding… and the marking is staring at me balefully.
The soundtrack for the day has been Low - all 14 albums in reverse chronological order. Restful, beautiful but also deeply melancholy. Ideal for grading dissertations and theoretically dictating the course of students' lives. Tomorrow it's an early meeting supporting a colleague through a disciplinary hearing (let's face it: I'll be facing one myself if I keep blogging the way I am, so I need the practice), then more marking and in the evening, at long last, I'll go fencing again. I always find that the antidote to a big pile of marking is to spend an evening viciously attacking people with bladed weapons. Don't you?
Here are some of Low's songs.
and for melancholic fun, Galaxie 500's cover of the Rutles' Beatles parody 'Cheese and Onions'.
Thursday, 25 April 2013
My life in rock and roll
It's not – as you may have assumed – all work work work here at Uppal Towers. I've been dealing with the influx of nervous dissertation students by going to gigs and dancing like a madman. I've seen five acts in two days: it's like being young again, if I ignore the ringing in the ears and tortured knees.
The first gig was in the local flea-pit, The Slade Room, where I've previously seen luminaries like Julian Cope, the Primitives and, er, The Nightingales. On the £6 bill: There's Someone In The Pond, a band whose name I didn't catch, and Dingus Khan. In the audience: about 50 people, dwindling to 12 by the time Dingus gave in.
TSITP are new and fun: once you ignore the matching red shirts declaring a White Stripes/Franz Ferdinand/Kraftwerk affiliation, you get raucous, funny garage rock with occasional tinges of metal and blues. Big dollops of the Pixies, Throwing Muses and the B-52s. Songs about taxi drivers abound. Female singing drummer. A Philippa Collins, if you will. So: a good start.
Un-named local band were either amazing, or awful. It all depends on your point of view. If you like songs that sound like Ocean Colour Scene, played with astonishing technical proficiency by three young men who have done little other than comb through Britpop C-list B-sides and practice relentlessly, then they're amazing. If you like songs with something to say, unexpected chord changes, spontaneity, fun and a bit of edge, then they're awful. I fall into the latter camp: all that skill misused. Between that and the cheesy attempts at audience participation, they'll be doing covers at wedding receptions before the year is out.
And then we get to Dingus Khan. I genuinely cannot tell you whether they were brilliant or bollocks. There were 7 men on stage. 6 wore painters' overalls. One wore a dress. 3 of them were drummers, 2 of them bassists, one a guitarist, one played an electric mandolin. On stage with them: a inflatable swan and a 1990s fax machine. They looked – and behaved – like a student drama society pitching up at the Edinburgh festival, and they were having an enormously good time. Perhaps a better time than the audience, which rapidly dwindled until it was barely bigger than the band.
The problem was the relentless semi-musical assault, which the video above doesn't convey, though it is their best song. They sounded like a cassette bootleg of a Pavement gig, copied over and over and over and over again, plus added sound effects from a steelworks. There were words, but I have no idea what any of them were. No light and shade was the problem: 40 minutes of maximum volume, and every song (or whatever) at exactly the same speed. Exhilarating, but also massively self-indulgent. I'm afraid to say that I skipped the opportunity to have a drink with them afterwards, for fear of reacting violently to exuberant youth. I'm allergic to both 'wacky' and 'zany'.
So, on to last night. Off to the Glee Club in Birmingham, for another gig by one of my longstanding musical addictions, Low. On paper, a rock band comprising two Mormons (one a recovering drug addict) might not sound that enticing, but they are and always have been superb. They have two of the best voices in music, and their repetitive, hypnotic, slow-paced, ethereal, stately songs offer a profundity that most bands will never approach. Oh yes: another singing female drummer. More please!
I first saw Low a few weeks after being exiled to the West Midlands, having been a long-time devotee. In an upstairs room in a semi-derelict pub, so many people crammed in that sweat dripped from the ceiling. The only way to get a drink was to pass £5 through the crowd: 20 minutes later most of a pint would get back to you, the rest cooling the bald spots of your fellow gig-goers as it passed over their heads. The performance was equally intense, to the point of being transcendent.
The support act was a chap called Hebtronix. He lacked any stage presence entirely: I thought he was the roadie when he got up, after which it became clear that we were witnessing something between a therapy session and a much-needed cathartic breakdown. Armed only with a guitar and a sampler which he used to loop said guitar, he created claustrophobic, off-kilter tracks overlaid with the occasional self-hating lyric. Strange as it might be, I rather enjoyed it once I got over the initial pity and concern for the mental health of this special needs Frank Zappa.
But Low, Low were something else. Intense, committed and beautiful. Here are a few of their recent songs - they've been going for over 20 years, so I can't represent their many phases.
The first gig was in the local flea-pit, The Slade Room, where I've previously seen luminaries like Julian Cope, the Primitives and, er, The Nightingales. On the £6 bill: There's Someone In The Pond, a band whose name I didn't catch, and Dingus Khan. In the audience: about 50 people, dwindling to 12 by the time Dingus gave in.
TSITP are new and fun: once you ignore the matching red shirts declaring a White Stripes/Franz Ferdinand/Kraftwerk affiliation, you get raucous, funny garage rock with occasional tinges of metal and blues. Big dollops of the Pixies, Throwing Muses and the B-52s. Songs about taxi drivers abound. Female singing drummer. A Philippa Collins, if you will. So: a good start.
Un-named local band were either amazing, or awful. It all depends on your point of view. If you like songs that sound like Ocean Colour Scene, played with astonishing technical proficiency by three young men who have done little other than comb through Britpop C-list B-sides and practice relentlessly, then they're amazing. If you like songs with something to say, unexpected chord changes, spontaneity, fun and a bit of edge, then they're awful. I fall into the latter camp: all that skill misused. Between that and the cheesy attempts at audience participation, they'll be doing covers at wedding receptions before the year is out.
And then we get to Dingus Khan. I genuinely cannot tell you whether they were brilliant or bollocks. There were 7 men on stage. 6 wore painters' overalls. One wore a dress. 3 of them were drummers, 2 of them bassists, one a guitarist, one played an electric mandolin. On stage with them: a inflatable swan and a 1990s fax machine. They looked – and behaved – like a student drama society pitching up at the Edinburgh festival, and they were having an enormously good time. Perhaps a better time than the audience, which rapidly dwindled until it was barely bigger than the band.
The problem was the relentless semi-musical assault, which the video above doesn't convey, though it is their best song. They sounded like a cassette bootleg of a Pavement gig, copied over and over and over and over again, plus added sound effects from a steelworks. There were words, but I have no idea what any of them were. No light and shade was the problem: 40 minutes of maximum volume, and every song (or whatever) at exactly the same speed. Exhilarating, but also massively self-indulgent. I'm afraid to say that I skipped the opportunity to have a drink with them afterwards, for fear of reacting violently to exuberant youth. I'm allergic to both 'wacky' and 'zany'.
So, on to last night. Off to the Glee Club in Birmingham, for another gig by one of my longstanding musical addictions, Low. On paper, a rock band comprising two Mormons (one a recovering drug addict) might not sound that enticing, but they are and always have been superb. They have two of the best voices in music, and their repetitive, hypnotic, slow-paced, ethereal, stately songs offer a profundity that most bands will never approach. Oh yes: another singing female drummer. More please!
I first saw Low a few weeks after being exiled to the West Midlands, having been a long-time devotee. In an upstairs room in a semi-derelict pub, so many people crammed in that sweat dripped from the ceiling. The only way to get a drink was to pass £5 through the crowd: 20 minutes later most of a pint would get back to you, the rest cooling the bald spots of your fellow gig-goers as it passed over their heads. The performance was equally intense, to the point of being transcendent.
The support act was a chap called Hebtronix. He lacked any stage presence entirely: I thought he was the roadie when he got up, after which it became clear that we were witnessing something between a therapy session and a much-needed cathartic breakdown. Armed only with a guitar and a sampler which he used to loop said guitar, he created claustrophobic, off-kilter tracks overlaid with the occasional self-hating lyric. Strange as it might be, I rather enjoyed it once I got over the initial pity and concern for the mental health of this special needs Frank Zappa.
But Low, Low were something else. Intense, committed and beautiful. Here are a few of their recent songs - they've been going for over 20 years, so I can't represent their many phases.
Thursday, 5 July 2012
Snap, crackle and pop
I see NME's music photography competition is up and running again. I was going to enter but discovered that the file and shot size restrictions are so limiting that none of mine qualify, and I'm damned if I'll compress them to within an inch of their lives.
So instead, a small selection of my favourites:
So instead, a small selection of my favourites:
Low, Manchester. Trying to do something slightly different with focus
David Wrench at the Little Civic, with Julian Cope
Talking of Cope… reality's answer to Zaphod Beeblebrox
Lead singer of the Primitives, Little Civic 2012
Same again
Matt, of the Nightingales. He's so fey.
Alan, also of the Nightingales. Not so fey.
Duelling guitars with the Nightingales
And a couple from Richard Thompson at Warwick Arts Centre:
Being a bit shambolic, I don't have much advice for gig photography. I do have a regular habit though: no zooms, no flash. Use a 50mm f/1.8 (or a 1.4 if you've more money than me) wide open, fast shutter speed and a high ISO. Easy.
Friday, 20 May 2011
A New Low?
I saw the wonderful slowcore band Low last night, at Manchester University Students' Union (while the rest of the city went to see Rush, unfortunately. It was in their smallest, darkest subterranean bar and wasn't sold out, which was a little disheartening: I can't ever imagine not wanting to hear Low and despair that the rest of the world doesn't feel the same way.
However, it didn't bother the band. They delivered a set of ethereal beauty, leavened with the occasional loud, impassioned song. They were, in a word, perfect, and the new album (C'Mon) is a thing of stunning wondrousness.
As an aside, boo to the security, who ban the use of 'cameras like that', i.e. good ones (without any policy displayed anywhere). Hence these snatched and unsatisfactory shots.
However, it didn't bother the band. They delivered a set of ethereal beauty, leavened with the occasional loud, impassioned song. They were, in a word, perfect, and the new album (C'Mon) is a thing of stunning wondrousness.
As an aside, boo to the security, who ban the use of 'cameras like that', i.e. good ones (without any policy displayed anywhere). Hence these snatched and unsatisfactory shots.
James in the murk
Sleepingdog (support act)
Mimi Sparhawk and Steve Garrington
Mimi Sparhawk and the audience
Low
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Camera Corner
I'm off to Manchester tonight, to see Low, a wonderful slowcore Mormon rock band (enticing, no?). Ben hates them, I think they're one of the best bands of the last 15 years.
I'm taking my camera - and just read this very good guide to taking good shots in such places. The last time I did gig photography (David Wrench and Julian Cope) it came out very well - though my Richard Thompson shots weren't quite as good (but his violinist liked them).
I'm taking my camera - and just read this very good guide to taking good shots in such places. The last time I did gig photography (David Wrench and Julian Cope) it came out very well - though my Richard Thompson shots weren't quite as good (but his violinist liked them).
Tuesday, 10 May 2011
Incidental music
I've had this going round my head all day: House of Love's 'The Beatles and the Stones'
And therefore the Low track - 'Hatchet' with the same refrain:
And therefore the Low track - 'Hatchet' with the same refrain:
Friday, 1 April 2011
Thursday, 31 March 2011
It's Mumblecore, and it's back!
Actually, mumblecore refers to American indie films whose 'indieness' is mostly a matter of featuring bearded slackers mumbling into their facial fuzz, as opposed to clean-shaven white-toothed Hollywood stars.
However, I have a huge soft spot for the equivalent in music, and it seems to be the trend of the year: Bon Iver, Deerhoof, Megafauna and co all seem to be taking The Band's hirsute template and stripping out the showmanship. I've long been a devotee of the bands this lot have followed: Will Oldham (Palace, Palace Music, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), Bill Callahan (aka Smog and (Smog)) and Low (Mormon drug slowcore), so I'm hugely pleased that Callahan and Low have new albums (Apocalypse and C'Mon) out next month, and I can spend spring feeling melancholic.
I also love this line from Callahan's books, Letters to Emma Bowlcut:
Here's a taster - one of Callahan's most accessible tracks from last year's Eid Ma Clack Shaw, his catchily claustrophobic 'No Dancing' and Low's 'Words'.
And if you like that but think it's all a bit pretty, try some Slint. Mmm… mathrock
However, I have a huge soft spot for the equivalent in music, and it seems to be the trend of the year: Bon Iver, Deerhoof, Megafauna and co all seem to be taking The Band's hirsute template and stripping out the showmanship. I've long been a devotee of the bands this lot have followed: Will Oldham (Palace, Palace Music, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy), Bill Callahan (aka Smog and (Smog)) and Low (Mormon drug slowcore), so I'm hugely pleased that Callahan and Low have new albums (Apocalypse and C'Mon) out next month, and I can spend spring feeling melancholic.
I also love this line from Callahan's books, Letters to Emma Bowlcut:
"I'm not mild-mannered, but you may want to bring a book."
Here's a taster - one of Callahan's most accessible tracks from last year's Eid Ma Clack Shaw, his catchily claustrophobic 'No Dancing' and Low's 'Words'.
And if you like that but think it's all a bit pretty, try some Slint. Mmm… mathrock
Thursday, 15 October 2009
More Sad Hits
(That's an in-joke, by the way - the title of another Damon and Naomi album). However, here's an even sadder song: Low covering the execrable Bee Gees' song, I Started A Joke to stunning effect. There's also a faster version on their recent DVD which is, weirdly, even more melancholy.
Low are a great band. Utterly sad and intense, and two-thirds Mormon, one-third recovering heroin-addicted Mormon, yet so utterly ROCK. I've loved them for years, but only saw them once, in the swety upstairs room of a rubbish pub in Wolverhampton. The place was so packed that once rooted to a spot, you stayed there (stuck to the floor). Acquiring a beer meant passing a £5 note backwards. Eventually it reached the bar, and a glass would begin the return journey, reaching you with probably two-thirds of the liquid remaining. The non-Mormon in the band would sometimes furtively swig from a can, braving the glares from his bandmates, and between them they produced the loudest, loveliest noise I've ever heard.
Low aren't the only band to cover I Started A Joke: here's Faith No More doing a rather fine version!
Low are a great band. Utterly sad and intense, and two-thirds Mormon, one-third recovering heroin-addicted Mormon, yet so utterly ROCK. I've loved them for years, but only saw them once, in the swety upstairs room of a rubbish pub in Wolverhampton. The place was so packed that once rooted to a spot, you stayed there (stuck to the floor). Acquiring a beer meant passing a £5 note backwards. Eventually it reached the bar, and a glass would begin the return journey, reaching you with probably two-thirds of the liquid remaining. The non-Mormon in the band would sometimes furtively swig from a can, braving the glares from his bandmates, and between them they produced the loudest, loveliest noise I've ever heard.
Low aren't the only band to cover I Started A Joke: here's Faith No More doing a rather fine version!
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Wig out
I don't sing the praises of non-Britpop indie bands nearly enough - I love Field Mice, Galaxie 500, Low, Ride, Stereolab, Velocette, The Go-Betweens and loads of others and have well over 20,000 records in my room to prove it (and no money). Turn up your speakers and rock (metronomically and exponentially) to Super-Electric by Stereolab.
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