Squeaks, pops and Scratches: Adventures in Vinyl

It has been a long time in coming. It must have been over a year ago when I decided that it was time to test the idea that vinyl is the preferred listening choice of the 'serious' or nostalgic music lover. Although I was brought up with vinyl I would hardly call myself nostalgic for it since it always seemed a bit of a palaver setting it all up and then making sure that the needle was in the right place. It was when my house-mate pointed out that you placed it on the edge of the record to start rather than have to find the songs manually that I realised that perhaps I was a little bit out of my depth. I realised I was even more out of my depth when it took me over three hours to work out how to record the lps through the computer; after much knashing of teeth it was possible to be confident that the software that came with the record player was clearly rubbish rather than it being my fault for being unintelligent when it comes to technology. Fortunately Audacity saved the day and much knashing of teeth and tearing of hair later I worked out how to record the lp, save it to itunes and convert it to MP3 all in one evening. To quote the Inspiral Carpets, 'Nobody said it was gonna be easy...' It became slightly more surreal when some of my worst concerns about buying second-hand records on ebay and in charity shops came true and the lp simply would not play and any amount of cursing at it would not compel it to not jump and not crackle like a crazy coco-pop monkey on lsd with maracas, however it reminded me that someone had obviously loved the album so much they had played it to death (that one of these records was 'Sulk' by the Associates was quite pleasing in that respect if it was not so frustrating in wanting to listen to it...). Anyway the said purchase has opened up a whole new world of music, chiefly because it enables me to seek out even more obscure stuff from the 80s that is only available in vinyl, yay!

Summer Sundae 14-16 August 2009 (a review in bullet points for brevity)

Good things about Summer Sundae 2009 (general)

• It didn't rain - hooray for sun!
• It clinched more space from Victoria Park so there was more room to walk about and the sound clash from the various stages was less pronounced
• The Garden was relaxing if you wanted some peace and quiet... ha ha albeit with lots of screaming children having a pillow fight
• Now the Charlotte is gone Summer Sundae is one of Leicester's few hopes of seeing new bands and it did not disappoint!!
• The Streets got swine flu so Idlewild jumped to headline!!

Bad things about Summer Sundae 2009 (general)

• Having to avoid psycho ex-housemates
• Disorientation caused by a larger site to play about in
• Electronica largely absent this year - too much reliance on guitar and whiny folk singers, get rid!
• Some strange choices of time-tabling
• Constant queues in the Ladies toilets (but when doesn't that happen???)

Notable bands at Summer Sundae (in no real order of preference)

• Wild Beasts - the mad poets of Kendal were glorious. These guys deserve to be HUGE - who else would dare sing sweetly choir boy about diverse and unpleasant (ahem) subjects as snogging drunken in alleys, yobs on a night out, fathers being ignored by the courts and the sordid dreams of shiny-shoed men?? I lost my heart in that tent
• Idlewild - thanks to the defection of The Streets Idlewild were promoted (thank goodness) to headliners and gave a rollicking set of over an hour despite being unprepared for it, although the passion and anger of former years has definitely mellowed (but that's what you get for being over 30)
• Minnaars - described as math rock crossed with indie dance not sure exactly what that means but definitely exuberant and kicking the retro guitar-synth into the twenty-first century, set the tone whereby younger bands put some of the more established bands to shame for their sheer panache and verve
• The Kabeedies definitely get a mention for the best on-stage banter of the festival, not sure their sound is doing anything new but fun all the same like swallowing a whole bag of minstrels in one go
• The Charlatans - Tim Burgess just stepped out of his time machine looking like he had never left the 90s. Like Idlewild the Charlatans rose to the occasion with the right amount of nostalgia / new song ratio and invited the crowd to feel touched by the wonder of their presence (or something like that) - anyway it proved that clunky Oasis stole the crown that should have belonged to the Charlatans
• Kevin Hewick proved that people over 50 do not have to be staid and boring and can lie on the stage playing their guitar with their teeth. But only just.
• Monotonix defy any kind of description except they are completely bonkers - playing scuzzed-up dirty rock and roll IN the audience - a security guard's nightmare they must be - moving their instruments around, only wearing pants, chucking water, hairy and sweaty, leaping off balconies, a drummer who is the personification of Animal - audience participation to the max and proving that it can be done. Monotonix I salute you
• Ou est le swimming pool - strange sartorial decisions abounded (bat-winged cardigan with nowt underneath? tank-top gym wear? check shirt and hairband with moustache? Shirt and jacket like dodgy club promoter?) kind of wonky pop by a boy band who hate each other's guts
• The Cheek - are they the new Menswear of the twenty-first century? Or is there something brewing in their heads which will blow us all away with its total awesomeness? Only time will tell but there was a good attempt at feigning aloofness whilst trying not to laugh as the sweat drips from the chin

The disappointments

• Mystery Jets - pretty dull really except for their one good song about being in love with a girl who lives two doors down, since they sacked the Dad it seems to have gone downhill
• The Domino State - wanted to sound like Echo and the Bunnyman and the Chameleons, sounded more like Richard Ashcroft without the Verve, bloated and dull
• Broken Records - unforgettable folk whining, the first of many
• St Etienne - it was amazing to finally see Sarah Cracknell in the flesh and with a feather boa but there was something lacking in the performance, bit flat and they only played one really really good song, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, the rest was slightly drivel (sorry)
• Bon Iver - less said about this the better as only more whiny folk. Should have been on in the day not the evening, its like getting a sparkler and it fizzing out before it even starts
• The Zutons - like Bon Iver it makes me feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain - both these bands are so popular but they just leave me cold. Zutons had no warmth no sparkle just sounded conventional and adding nothing to the musical lexicon - very disappointing ending to Summer Sundae this year

Bands I should have seen / seen more of

• 65daysofstatic - VERY VERY LOUD but sounded promising
• Micachu and the Shapes - clashed with The Cheek and our allegiance was to the boys from Suffolk
• Hugh Cornwall - punk and post-punk relic
• Future of the Left

Ou est le swimming pool prove that sartorial decisions are not their strong point

The Charlatans - effortlessly good

The Kabeedies - blurred but bouncy

Someone forgot to inform the drummer about the visual aesthetic - Minnaars

The Wild Beasts - obliterated by light and poor camera on mobile phone

The best way to see (and hear) the Zutons - slightly out of focus

Yawn, yawn - Bon Iver

Suffolk's finest - The Cheek

choose your own adventure - heartsrevolution

'choose your own adventure' books were always a bit of a con: firstly, of course you could only choose the adventure in the parameters of the author's imaginings (sometimes quite sadistic if it was one by Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson, such as monsters with huge numbers of eyes bursting open in blisters from their backs that lounged in pools of disfiguring acid, ice maidens with slaves controlled by metal collars that could burst and kill them, beautiful women enslaved within magic armour that forced you to kill them whilst tears rolled down their face, haunted houses owned by devil worshippers far more vindictive than any hollywood fright fest, vampires with biscuits made of blood to catch the unwary adventurer... who knows what impact such things have on the intensely open minds of young persons) and the fiendishly complicated and ultimately time-consuming approach to fighting monsters meant that it was always more tempting to choose your own outcome (vanquishing the monster of course) and keep going backwards and forwards through the options until the happy ending was reached. heartsrevolution on the other hand are a boy and a girl and 'choose your own adventure' is a deceptively simple, though compulsively hectic rush of adrenaline which despite its cutesy exterior hints at a dark heart beneath.

veil veil vanish - into a new mausoleum EP

Goth somehow suits the eternal greyness of Britain, desperate to glean something elaborate out of the mishmash of brutal box like houses and grotesque Victoriana that blights our nondescript towns. The Cure and their ilk are as familiar as the cracked pavements and greasy windowsills on the high street even if the black lace gloves and creepy makeup is largely gone. Now the Americans come to steal our monopoly on melancholy. Veil Veil Vanish from San Francisco, not somewhere to be immediately associated with the intense mournfulness that spreads slowly and with intent from the speakers. I wanted to think 'they are trying too hard' after all the Ep is entitled 'into a new mausoleum' and it's like duh death and goth how obvious. I wanted to hate it. To take songs like 'Reproach' and gleefully tear them to shreds (which the masochists would probably love if they have a goth-like inferiority complex). To use the fact that they appear on the Cure tribute album 'Perfect as Cats' covering 'The Upstairs Room' as evidence that you may as well go and listen to the original instead. Instead it's been on repeat all evening. It is the blissfulness of colliding guitars, exploding into the aural equivalent of gazing up into the wonder of a starfilled night; the intense anxiety / obscurity of those shattered by existence and needing to sing about 'shadows dripping like honey kissing'; the exhaustion of feeling captured in sound.

white rose movement - kick / cigarette machine

Named after an abortive movement by students from Munich to oust Hitler from power, the band known as White Rose Movement epitomises dystopian world views of Ballard, Foxx et al tied to the pop bombast of Duran Duran - yes its another eighties throw back electroclash special but WRM do it so well you can forgive them for being a little bit derivative. Dancing towards the apocalypse, the power of 'Kick' (their debut) lies in the tunes they meld, speaking of the sleaze, tension, general nastiness of 21st century life, narrated by the sensual, sulky vocals of singer Finn. Certainly there is something inextricably sexy about synthpop, perhaps its the breathy vocalists the genre seems to attract, which both Finn and (former) bandmate Taxxi demonstrate (the double xx there perhaps another nod to pioneers like John Foxx?), alongside a catalogue of teasing yelps, random screams and emotional outbursts that makes this album so vital, so alive in its conception of 21st century nightmare. Like the movement known as 'New Miserablism' e.g. Interpol, Editors, White Lies etc there is more than a hint of violence driving the melancholy, but unlike say the White Lies for instance there is no compromise in 'Kick' as to there being any hope that we will break out of this; you can kick and scream and rail all you want but we are stuck in this mess. So you might as well revel in the seediness, in the sleaze and leap in with guts. Check out 'Speed' and 'London's Mine' for maximum exhilaration, 'Girls in the back' cuts deep whilst the hidden track after 'Cruella' is to swoon for. Also for the record; Newest single 'cigarette machine' (how quaintly subversive) sounds like Elvis had he been hanging round the English high street too long and ingested the local patter.

Balgay Hill: A play about Dundee, Billy MacKenzie, The Associates, about heroes, fame and home

History is (mostly) straightforward. Events happen, are recorded by a number of eyewitnesses, whether written down or carried in the minds of those who experience it. These become the definitive 'facts' which give us our sense of identity, our sense of who we are, the sense that we are the product of a long line of Others - that we are here today because of their actions. We impose upon it a beginning, a middle and an end. And because we are a perverse species we mostly like to insist on a happy ending.

Even music is prone to such gross simplification. Not so 'Balgay Hill' a play which reflects the inter-connectedness between home, our sense of belonging and the memories which become (formalised as) our histories.

"Neither James (Brining, Director) nor I wanted to write a straightforward bio because nothing about Billy or his story is straightforward. He is an amazing character full of contradictions trailing a litany of legends in his wake. He is a different kind of hero blessed with an extraordinary voice" (Simon Macullum, Writer).

Balgay Hill is (loosely) the story of Billy Mackenzie, maverick and magnificent singer with The Associates, told through the interwoven lives of four individuals from Dundee, where Billy was born and now rests close to the titular Balgay Hill. At first I was uncertain as to how this could be accomplished without seeming forced in terms of incorporating Billy's (larger than) life into the lives of mere mortals (so to speak), however it was very sensitively done, with the main framing device being a video that one of the characters was making about Billy's life as, they quite rightly said, there is no real, lasting memorial to him. Only fragments of a life that was lived for the briefest of moments in the spotlight; the seminal being when Billy shimmered onto the Top of the Pops stage - wearing a black beret and raincoat, seemingly trying not to laugh at Alan Rankine and the chopsticks stuck in his hair - rightly identified as a key moment (as beautifully described by Simon Reynolds in 'Rip it up and start again'). Such fragments can be misleading - how much do we really know about someone like Billy?

"To think you learned to know someone and find / That you don't know, don't know them at all." (Club County, The Associates)

Whilst Billy's life provided the structure for the events (the details of which would be familiar to anyone with more than a passing interest in The Associates, they cannot help but attract big stories to them), there was always some blurring between what belonged to the life of the character, and what belonged in the life of Billy. This was effective in that it created a real sense of how memories operate, they are often jumbled and incoherent, hard to fathom as to their time and place until we place them into a narrative. These memories were not existing as something given, but we had to piece them together, to give them meaning.

"I found a coin and washed away the silt / I found a shiny coin / A coin whose head was slightly to the tilt / Who'd leave it there in silt / guilt?" (Nude Spoons, The Associates)

Whilst it seems ironic that going by his singing voice you could have thought that Billy Mackenzie was as likely to have come from Saturn than from Dundee, also poignant was the emphasis within the play, in the words of writer Simon Macallum, "our relationship with the place of our birth". And although Billy himself left Dundee several times he always came back. Two of the characters in the play had never left, one never really belonged there, and the last only returned (as was implied) to die there, according to the Japanese saying. Sadly this was the same for Billy, who was found in his father's garden shed in 1997 having taken a fatal overdose. The closing of the play on Balgay Hill, close to Billy's final resting place, no happy ending, no tying of the ends reflects (for me) the reality of memory, there is no end, and with there being no end the memories will live on, gathering their own momentum; not Billy-as-he-was but Billy-as-he-is-remembered which will necessarily be different depending upon who is doing the remembering. Yet this is the nature of memories, they are idiosyncratic, highly personal and indisputable, the perfect foil to the 'boring old history' that we are forced to learn because someone tells us it is important. But it got me thinking, why do some memories endure more than others? Which memories of Billy will endure and which will fade? All in all it was more than a curiosity piece, it was a thoughtful and engaging work which deserves a lot of success. Now I wonder if Take That the Musical will have the same effect....

"So what if this party fears two? / The alcohol loves you whilst turning you blue / View it from here, from closer to near / Awake me!" (Party Fears Two - The Associates)

Some pictures....

Looking across to The Law from Balgay Hill

Looking across to the 'Silvery Tay' from the cemetery on Balgay Hill

The Dundee Rep Theatre

The best record shop I have visited in ages, Groucho's in Dundee

NB All quotes from Simon Macallum are from the 'Balgay Hill' programme; song lyrics from The Associates album 'Sulk'

Crystal Stilts - Alight of the Night

The name Crystal Stilts sounds like one of those magical objects found only in European fairytales; like Baba Yaga's house that spins on chicken legs, the nettle shirts that Elisa must knit for her doomed brothers or the singing ringing tree that restores the morally bankrupt Princess to goodness.  Likewise the sounds constructed by the Stilts are somewhat vague and ethereal, with a tinge of the typical English weather.  If drizzle and mist could sing, rather than whisper with eerie precision in your ears, 'Alight of the night' might be the consequence.  Singer Brad sounds like he is enveloped in the stuff, his melancholic drawl subsumed beneath the weight of the ponderous production, recalling the wooziness of sinusitis, or that early sensation of numbness when operating on little sleep.  The world becomes cocoon-ed, perhaps a little indifferent, a little detached; its rather reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine and Shoegaze bands, but without the excruciating  ear-bleed.  Whatever - the results are beguiling, particularly songs 'The Dazzling' and 'Departure' which set a simple repetitive rift against bass-lines that chog along almost jovially alongside the mournful (and unfathomable) vocals, the slight melodies weaving in and out.  The power of the rhythms rise above the murk and prevent this album sinking into its own navel, creating an oddly uplifting experience.

Do the Mussolini (Headkick)

In the movies machines almost never listen to music, indeed they seem to go out of their shiny way to avoid it.  So the machines in the Matrix might get some stirringly creepy soundtrack to their human-growing activities, but in the reality they would only be listening to the hum of the electricity generated.  Cybermen may have a glorified I-Pod attached to their 'ears' but it is doubtful they hear anything more than the stomp stomp of their heavy feet as they go about their deleting business.  However if machines were going to listen to music it would be tempting to consider that they would not look much further than Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire, surely the most suitable soundtrack to any dystopian nightmare?  There is no softness in their creations, no hint of the natural world in their stark soundscapes, brittle textures and distorted vocals.  So whilst some songs recall beauty, some revel in the soppy-ness of love and human relationships.  Not the Cabs.  'The Original Sound of Sheffield '78/'82' could only be forged in the fires of Steel City, the sweat and grind of the mill, the continual threat of gory accident or death, hastened by the dilapidation and griminess of everyday existence.  It's like heading back to the Industrial Revolution in a rusting shopping trolley, as told creatively through tape cassettes and voice modulators, guitars pushed to their limits through electronic veils.  Obscure, obscuring.  So "Nag Nag Nag" worms its seedy way into your skull, un-fathomable instructions barked in bleary voices, seemingly recorded in a wind tunnel.  "Do the Mussolini (Headkick)" constructs its beat around metallic intestines, churning through the sewers of human existence to spew out only garbled messages.  Whilst the woozy clatterings of "Yashar" are imbued with traces of Eastern melody, generally this is a grim, if satisfying, trawl - satisfying in that it reminds forcefully that music does not always have to be a pleasant or uplifting experience - it can be discomforting, unsettling even.  Take the saxophone on "Wait and Shuffle" merely a discordant meandering, only here it sounds threatening, as far away from the smug tedium of jazz as can be imagined.  Then in 1983 'The Crackdown' lets us imagine how it might be if the machines decided that they liked to disco.  Only a very imaginative (and un-self-conscious) individual might attempt a shuffle to "Baader Meinhof".  Anyone might move themselves around to "24-24", still cloaked in urban tension, but far more accessible with it.   Still, even if the beats are more familiar, the dissonance only becomes greater with immediacy; imagine Britney Spears doing a cover of "Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself), imagine if pop could be this discomforting?  (Although the sight of Britney, post breakdown, continuing to gyrate on stage is pretty discomforting in itself)  Chinks of light are also beginning to appear in the darkness; "Animation" with its shiny guitars and jaunty, if jerky, rhythm effectively creates machine-funk, "Diskono" escapes the dirge that otherwise drowns its comrades, describing (perhaps) the ecstasy rush of LEDs, and, of course, "Just Fascination", the closest to a conventional song as the Cabs are willing to provide, sent askew with its claustrophobic atmosphere - the prototype of electro-Goth.  The future is bleak, (if) the future is Cabaret Voltaire; listen to it and despair.

The searing sound of Cabaret Voltaire - 'Nag Nag Nag'