EFP Issue 4

04 Sept/Oct Issue

Exeter Flying Post Sept/Oct 2011

FREE!

Politics Arts Music Culture

The chaos issue Anarchy in the UK, Exeter BID, Dad by Neil Snowdon, Fred V & Grafix, The Toilet Review. + More!™

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Recruitement Drive

Content

Welcome Back!

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ue

The chaos iss

Contents

anarchy in the uk

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bid 09jack's ways of words

graffiti in exeter 17 idiom 19 fred v & grafix 21toilet review

11 story by neil snowdon 15

We haven’t been too familiar with order at the EFP over recent months, hence our brief hiatus. We have since added to our team and furthered our media platform, with flyingpostmag.com, our newly vamped-up and refreshed website going live last month. But we’re back in print and, after trying to bring order to our own organisational chaos, we bring you the Chaos Theory issue. A take on what Chaos means, whether artistically, musically or socially will unfold out of this rather ironically ordered issue.

We like to mess with categorical contradictions here at the EFP just as Michael Goffman likes to mess with his bowel movements. Or like graffiti artists make a mess of industrial landscapes. Or DJs like to create rollercoasters. We’re full of contradictions at EFP and we’re hoping you find sense in idiosyncrasy.

Or, at the very least, enjoyment in Chaos. As always, it’s been fun putting such dynamic writing together and we hope you have fun reading it.

Managing Editor: Gustavo Navarro Editor: Sam Hall Sub-Editor: oliver tolkien Photo-Editor: Robert Darch

Art Direction: mash hall Layout Design: ed price Front Cover Photo by: robert darch Front Cover Art by: nia gould

Contributors: Nia Gould, Steve Maclean, Benjamin Borley, Jack Cunliffe, Patrick Cullum, Neil Snowdon, Sharanya Murali, Dan Rayner, Patrick William Bethell, Whitey Fisk, Michael Goffman. mail@exeterflyingpost.com | www.flyingpostmag.com | Printed by cowdallsprinters.co.uk

Recruitment drive Exeter Flying Post Recrutement drive2011 2011 We are looking for a web editor to join If you’re a writer, photographer, designer, our expanding team. If you’re interested or illustrator - come and join our network in what we do and have previous web/ of Devon bloggers! Contact us at editing experience contact us at:

mail@exeterflyingpost.com

mail@exeterflyingpost.com

send us a link to your current blog. tell us about yourself and why you would like to join the team.

If you’re a writer, photographer, designer or illustrator and would like to contribute If you’re interested in advertising with us, to the EFP and see your work published, contact us at: contact us at:

exeterflyingpost.ads@gmail.com mail@exeterflyingpost.com

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Anarchy in the UK

Anarchy in the UK

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Steven Mclean tells you why, contrary to mainstream media, the UK has not yet seen true Anarchy.

What are anarchists? Given nothing to go on other than post-riot newspaper headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s someone prone to arson and looting. The Daily Telegraph went with “ANARCHY SPREADS”, the Daily Mail mixed things up a little adding the prefix ‘the’, The Sun simply exclaimed ‘ANARCHY’, while the Daily Star opted for the predictable ‘ANARCHY IN THE UK’.

Aside from demonstrating the lack of diversity within the tabloid and right-wing press, these headlines do little to ease misconceptions about what is already a greatly misunderstood political philosophy.

In one way the word ‘anarchy’ used to describe what others might call ‘lawlessness’ or ‘mayhem’ on Britain’s streets is reasonably apt. In the Oxford Dictionaries, the first given definition of the word is, “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority or other controlling systems.” But it’s the second definition, and the word’s original meaning, “absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal.” This describes the anarchist’s desired political landscape.

Nowhere does it mention a penchant for fires or theft.

Anarchy In The UK? Not If You Understand Anarchism

Photo ‘Adrian stone’ by Ben Borley

general consent?

Do you believe that most politicians are selfish, egotistical swine who don’t really care about the public interest? Do you think we live in an economic system which is stupid and unfair?

Do you believe that human beings are fundamentally corrupt and evil, or that certain sorts of people (women, people of colour, ordinary folk who are not rich or highly educated) are inferior specimens, destined to be ruled by their betters?

Graeber suggests if your answers to these questions are: yes, yes, yes and no, you are well on your way to being an anarchist. Of course, you could be of different political persuasions and arrive at the same conclusions, but Graeber is highlighting that anarchism is a philosophy increasingly aligned with people’s sympathies as the world becomes less fair.

Of course, those with the greatest motive to discount anarchism as a legitimate political philosophy are those in the positions of power it seeks to dispose of. So it was hardly surprising when the police recently issued this press release urging the public to report suspected anarchists:

That’s because anarchism is really nothing like what people are told it is. In an essay entitled “Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!” the American anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber poses a series of hypothetical situations:

“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local Police.”

If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?

This demonisation of anyone who identifies as an anarchist is reminiscent of McCarthyism, as Ellie Mae O’Hagan pointed out in the Guardian back in May. Actually though, the police’s definition of anarchism – which looks suspiciously like the Wikipedia entry on the subject – is accurate enough, without explaining the improvements to society its

Are you a member of a club or sports team or any other voluntary organisation where decisions are not imposed by one leader but made on the basis of

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advocates theorise. So what are they?

To find out, and so that I might help dispel some of the myths routinely disseminated by mainstream media rather than add to them, I recently attended an anarchist meeting. You might think ‘anarchist meeting’ sounds like an oxymoron, but while there are different schools of thought, organisation without hierarchy is generally accepted as essential among anarchism’s adherents.

Far from being populated by unsavoury characters intent on reducing UK streets to rubble, in attendance were editors; high-ranking union members; Phd. students; a charity CEO; an anthropologist; a shop manager and a software engineer. There were plenty of others whose careers I didn’t ascertain, but everyone there seemed friendly, intelligent, and generally the kinds of people who want to improve society rather than smash things up. (Though there was the odd Rasputin-like beard and funky hairstyle) As I discovered, central to anarchist philosophy is the belief that the concentration of power - hierarchical systems where a few at the top are given disproportionate influence over everyone else - is destined to lead to unfair societies and corrupt governments.

Anarchy in the UK

More than that, some anarchist theory suggests that problems in society like crime are exacerbated, if not created, by hierarchical systems as a symptom of being powerless in a world where power is everything.

Several intelligent questions were asked at the meeting, including how a hospital – one of the most hierarchically run organisations there is – would operate without a centralised decision making process.

The answers given didn’t quell my doubts about how emergency situations could be dealt with without individuals having the authority to make the kinds of quick, important decisions where ‘jazz hands’ style consensus might not suffice. But points about monetary savings through the removal of layers of bureaucracy, and cheaper, not-for-profit drugs, made the kind of sense often missing under profit driven systems.

In general, anarchism is about genuine democracy and empowerment, where everyone is equal and nobody is afforded a platform to exploit others for profit. It isn’t perfect - as shown by the different trains of thought within the movement - and I still have my own doubts about how things would work under an anarchic system, but with the way the global economy looks right now, few would argue capitalism is without grave faults either.

“You might think ‘anarchist meeting’ sounds like an oxymoron, but while there are different schools of thought, organisation without hierarchy is generally accepted as essential among anarchism’s adherents”

Stephen Quick

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BID

BID

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Sam Hall speculates what BID would have meant, and could still mean, for Exeter.

Wealth Gaps and Slim Margins:

Exeter Business Improvement District fails to be implemented Photos by Benjamin Borley

A false dawn has passed for Exeter Business Improvement District (BID), a controversial initiative to improve Exeter’s city centre trading environment, when the floating campaign group were voted against 51% to 49% by businesses that fell within the proposed section of the Exeter city centre.

When the EFP heard of the BID campaign as early as June, we were preparing to open up a debate regarding what would seem to be an inevitable victory for an initiative that has been ushered into over 110 towns and cities within the UK without much fuss, other than from the small businesses who felt marginalised by such a scheme.

Exeter BID would have operated by demanding a levy payment from businesses within the supposed district at a rate of up to 1.5% of their current land rental that they pay Exeter City Council, creating a fund of over £700,000 for a panel of 12 business directors to spend on improving the district’s trading environment.

In an economic climate that is already tenuous at best, businesses were likely to be reluctant to pay an additional levy for work that was assumed to be the job of the Exeter City Council whom they already pay a substantial rate for the privilege of their central location within the county capital.

And further to this very basic economic concern, Urban Planning academics have speculated that BIDs have simply marginalised small businesses within city centres by creating a wealth gap

between those that lie within the proposed district and those that don’t. Even though relatively small businesses would be paying a smaller levy amount, being within BID the scheme is equally as beneficial to them as it would be to the larger businesses.

This is fantastic for their interests, of course, but for those businesses of comparable size, but of unfavourable location, they are forced to look on enviously as the general business amenities within the outlined area are improved.

As the small businesses within the supposed district benefit from greater footfall and security, for example, their economic circumstances are only likely to improve where as the circumstances for small businesses elsewhere in the city can only get comparably

worse, and so creating a wealth gap. And as time progresses, wealth gaps have only proved to grow. It would seem BIDs are inherently undemocratic due to this very basic characteristic.

And this is without mentioning the destiny of the annual funds for the initiative is held only between a powerful dozen, not between shop owners themselves.

But, for whatever reason, the small have outvoted the big businesses in their rejection of Exeter BID. Whereas the wealth gap created

by BID is likely to be large, the numerical difference between those in favour and those against was slim.

After all the speculation, this would be the most encouraging fact for BID campaigners. Expect BID to be back.

‘‘Whereas the wealth gap created by BID is likely to be large, the numerical difference between those in favour and those against was slim.’’

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Advert

Jack Cunliffe

Jack’s Ways of the Words This week our pretentious word of the moment is sybarite, a noun that means a person dedicated to sensuous pleasure and luxury. The origins of the word come from the opulent city of Sybaris in Ancient Greece. A city embraced by two rivers, the Crati, and the town’s namesake, the Sybaris (from which it was rumoured if your horse drank it would become bashful and shy – a problematic symptom in hot weather but one which the city dealt with admirably), and also nestled against a generous trade bearing sea. Sybaris is thought to be the first town to invent the concept of intellectual property, but it is likely that they stole the idea. As can be imagined due to the river and sea trade alongside property that could exist in one’s

mind alone, the Sybarites were rich beyond care and were thought to live lives of hedonistic excess. In modern usage, you could describe someone at the bar who does not take but one nut, instead he takes the bowl and then complains of the quality whilst smearing them over his ecstatically smiling face and rotund torso as ‘a sybaritic bastard’, or ‘a greedy unruly little sybarite’, upon which exclamation you will be deemed a pretentious monger of words, trading etymological fossils as you yourself slowly fossilise. The beauty of these rare and interesting words you see is that they cannot be used without significantly lowering people’s opinion of yourself, even in the face of what really can only be described as sybaritic behaviour.

Illustration by Patrick Cullum

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Neil Snowdon

Neil Snowdon

DAD

began to worry that one of them was going to die.

“It’ll be alright,” my dad would say.”I’ll get it sorted.”

Short Story by Neil Snowdon He wrote at night, when we were all in bed; my mother, my brother and me. I’d lie there in the dark and listen to his fingers pattering across the keyboard – hear the occasional grunt or laugh as he read back over something that he’d written – and know the world was spinning safely on its axis.

“Best time for writing, the middle of the night, when everybody else is sleepin’. The night is thick with dreams. I just sit and wait for one to whisper in my ear.”

But I think I always knew that part of it was hiding pain.

He published in the small press and on-line, wrote a play or two for Radio 4, but he never made a living at it. A little money here and there, but not enough to leave the day job: not enough to pay.

When I was very small he owned a bookshop, and we all lived together in the flat above. We still live there today, but the shop has gone [the way of all flesh]; a casualty of the Recession and the fact that we are living in a time of atrophied imagination... or so my dad would say.

“When people lose the will to wonder, lose their appetite for awe, then what’s the point of reading? Why put in the effort?”

They liked to swarm in shadows he said, gather in dark corners and underneath the bed. That’s why he kept the light on low.

He used to smile when he would tell me that. His eyes would flash and he would wink at me like he Fundamentally, he said, the was telling me a great secret. And I problems of the world all stemmed always half believed him, because I from that. wanted to believe my dad was magic. “Without the ability to imagine,

to dream, we cannot empathise.

Can’t imagine what it might be like to be in someone else’s shoes.

And without empathy, what are we!? Unthinking, uncaring, uncivilised... we’re barely bloody human! A society that can no longer imagine something better, imagine a way to improve, is a society on the wane. It is a society that is isolating itself from its fellow man and from the world...”

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used to this new job. Not used to anyone telling me what to do, except your mother.”

“You’re not writing though...”

He held up his hands, the palms smudged black But he didn’t go to see the doctor, and he didn’t with newsprint. see a nurse.

He got a job at Smiths instead, out at the Motorway “I’m still working with words though, see? Up to my Service Station on the edge of town... and I began to elbows in ‘em all day long!” watch him wither.

I really thought that he was dying then.

He smiled at me, but it was a strained smile. It didn’t He worked shifts: seven ‘til three and three ‘til eleven, reach his eyes... and I did not smile back. and he’d come home with a sigh, his whole body I couldn’t. hunched like he was permanently cringing, a knot of It just wouldn’t come. tension in his jaw like he was choking something back.

He’d hug my mum like he was hanging on for dear life, His own smile faded and he looked down at his hands in his lap. and hug me and my brother just the same. It used to scare me just a little, to be held so tight, and it made “The words are there, but they’ve become a fog. Lost my brother wriggle like a cat in order to be free. their shape and meaning. Like a foreign language, and I The sound of typing in the night slowed down don’t know what they say...” then stopped.

I started having trouble sleeping.

On-screen the cursor pulsed, impatient and insistent, The sound of his fingers on the keys was the sound of a top left of a brand-new page. whispered conversation with his dreams. I needed the From outside we heard the sound of breaking glass... sound to know that all was well and happy. laughter and shouts... people heading from the city One night I woke from something that was not quite a centre down toward the night clubs on the quay. nightmare. Heard him coming home. Heard him switch on his computer with a sigh then sit in silence... and I got up and went to him and asked if he “The wolves are in the streets again...” was going to be okay. “...splintering diamonds with their teeth.”

“I’ll be fine. Just tired at the moment; still trying to get

I can still hear him saying that at dinner one night, stabbing at his plate and talking as he chewed. I was only six or seven at the time.

In the months before we had to close the shop, things got tense and quiet, and I was often sent into another room to entertain my little brother, while my parents whispered worriedly about ‘Debt’.

They talked about it the same way they did my Grandad’s cancer, and I

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Photos by Robert Darch

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He looked a question at me.

I shrugged, embarrassed.

“Something I was dreaming...”

His eyes glistened. The first hint of a heart-felt smile.

“Shall we go out? See what they’re doing?”

We left a note for mum in-case she woke up worried.

I threw my clothes on over my pyjamas, then we stepped outside, closing the door gently behind us. The chill November air stung our eyes and bit our cheeks. We filled out lungs with it. Sharp and fresh as ice-cold water; it made us gasp and shiver.

Frost glittered on the pavement like shards of broken glass, turned molten by the streetlamps that caught our misty breath and made it look like we were breathing fire...

We headed up the hill toward the city centre, toward the smell of cigarettes and beer and burger vans that floated like an oil slick on the night. Pubs and bars exhaled warmth and yeast and laughter as we passed them, while outside, on the streets, the haze of perfume from the orange ladies who cackled in their bobby dazzler skirts and dresses, and the aftershave from the shouting men in short-sleeved shirts, mingled sweet and sour; vivid as a rainbow smeared with vomit.

Shouting, laughing, fighting, spewing, snogging, dancing, tottering and stumbling and falling to the ground. The city pulsed and sang. And neither of us said a word of it. Just watched it all and drank it in.

I was happy just to be there: outside, in the night, with my dad.

Neil Snowdon

And then the lights went out...

And people gasped and groaned.

The background beat of music died, and hush fell on the city.

To this day I don’t know what caused it, but the entire city stopped.

Went dark...

I looked around and everyone was looking up in wonder; staring, still and silent at the sky.

The fighting stopped.

The laughter stopped.

The dancing and the snogging and the singing...

Everything. Everyone.

With the light pollution gone, the stars were revealed in all their glory, unimaginably beautiful, incomprehensibly immense.

It was overwhelming. Awe-inspiring.

I felt a kind of inverse vertigo, like I was falling upwards, up into the night.

I reached out and grabbed my dad, clung on for dear life.

I looked at him.

He wasn’t looking upwards. He was staring at the people.

His eyes were wide and wet and he was grinning as he stared.

And he looked happy.

He took me in his arms and held me tight. And we stood there, silently... Staring at the people...

Staring at the stars...

Waiting for the light.

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Colour and Chaos

Colour and Chaos

Colour and Chaos: Graffiti in Exeter

“In the presence of colourful and creative tumult, planned or unplanned, order is disconcerting.”

Photo by Whitey Fisk

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Sharanya Murali experiences kaleidoscopic dissonance on the walls of Exeter.

Graffiti. Bursts of style and colour, flavoured words and excited images, all sprawled across walls as cleverly charted chaos.

I’ve seen graffiti in various places in Exeter but they have merged into the backdrop of my daily life. I no longer notice them. The graffiti on the walls of the subway near the quay. The graffiti on the massive wall next to Harbour Sports.

So my formal introduction to graffiti in Exeter is given

by Exeter graffiti artist, Sheva. We meet on the High Street on a rainy morning for my tour. As we walk towards the Exeter Phoenix, which is our first stop, I ask him about the perception of graffiti as vandalism, and about graffiti as an art movement. Sheva willingly explains. The general perception of graffiti is vandalism, he says, but there’s so much more to it than that.

There is a difference between a graffiti artist and kids who use spray cans to paint racial slurs in inappropriate places. There are people, he says, who don’t really follow the rules of graffiti – they paint on houses and on religious buildings, which is very disrespectful.

The Phoenix has a separate site, next to the actual arts centre, reserved for graffiti. This strikes me as a great move, for it destroys the misconception that graffiti connotes vandalism. Sheva points out that a lot of graffiti is commissioned – and the Phoenix is an excellent example of that. Before we part, Sheva tells me about other hidden and lesser known graffiti spots in the city.

A few days later, Whitey, the EFP photographer, and I are at a huge warehouse by the quay. It belongs to the Book Cycle and is used by them to sort out books. The books lie in awkward piles and the graffiti appears to support the crumbling atmosphere. Broken panes of glass filter in shafts of sunlight, and the place is silent except for our footsteps and the sound of flapping wings. Rusty metal boards, blue plastic tanks, blocks of cement and a house made of cardboard boxes lie around me, covered in graffiti. Words curl around the house of boxes in colourful loopy scrawls.

Walls are black, mint green, dirty pale pink, banana yellow, covered with writing.

My eyes fall upon a distorted painting of a man’s face.

His features are exaggerated and grotesque. Purple shadows, yellowing teeth speckled with white, smoke coming out of his nostrils, bulging eyes, illuminated by hazy green light in the background. Parky 2011 it says, in small clear writing in a corner.

I make my way towards it, and suddenly, the words are colliding with each other and forming planes of images I didn’t realise could exist in that colourful,

ordered universe where artists understand the scope of space and dimensions that exist before them.

Nothing makes sense. I can’t see the man’s features, which a few feet away had been so clear. What I had before me was chaos.

One half of his face looks like a purple elephant on drugs. The smoke looks like mist, or sprayed snow, against a green traffic light. The purple teeth look like pillows, his lip like the covers of a bed slept in. His wrinkles look like a purple harp being strummed by a dusty wind. Or a trident poking out of the jaws of a shark. One wonders.

I step back to see what the man’s face looked like before I moved in, because it seems impossible to me that what appears so ordered in its lopsided anarchy could be so overwhelmingly chaotic on close inspection. It seemed to invert the idea of chaos itself in graffiti.

Chaos needs a background too. Is it much more ordered than we think it is?

I walk towards a wall of bright blue with lots of silver on it. At a distance, it reads as “snok.” If you move closer, it looks like gravestones glistening in the night, with congealed blood caking on their bald heads.

Dripping viscously through the O in O. Sliding down the slope of the N. There is an empty patch – one of the only plain patches in the whole warehouse. It takes me a few minutes to realise I’m looking at the sky through broken glass. In the presence of colourful and creative tumult, planned or unplanned, order is disconcerting.

The other site we explore is Jamie’s wall on Station Road Park. According to Sheva, the wall was painted as a tribute to Jamie – a graffiti artist – when he died, by a friend. The purple writing is simple and elegant.

The wall is pink, and is peppered with gold and blue stars. “In memory of Jamie Bruce”, lies scribbled quietly in a corner.

It is a single wall in the middle of the park. The presence of sand and grass enhances its contrast against the setting sun. It stands alone. On closer inspection – the letters are falling over each other, like folds of a silk ribbon. But they still look like letters of a word. Chaos here is re-defined, again, because I discover the chaos only a distance, aided by the surroundings. I think to myself that it is a fitting idea for a memorial, because everyone can read the quiet rebellion in the art.

One of the traditions, Sheva says, is to write over. Take as much space as you can. I understand. Art as palimpsest is one of the oldest tricks. Re-write histories and layer it, because we try so hard as humans to be chaotic and it’s the easiest way to achieve that.

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Idiom

Idiom

IDIOM

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So, with that topic out of the way, where do you think Metal is going right now?

“Not going anywhere.”

“I thought it was going to die out, because it got almost to the point where there wasn’t much left to be done; every tuning had been done; every breakdown had been done; every solo had been done. People are now stripping it back to its roots, as we said with the bounce and the groove.”

I discussed this with a friend of mine and he believes that Metal has fallen victim to sub-genre?

Gustavo Navarro interviews one of the South-West’s most celebrated Metal bands.

Tell me a little about yourselves?

“We are a four-piece new wave/new metal band from Devon. I guess that’s the best way to describe it.”

Let’s start somewhere simple!? The name of the band – Idiom – this may be pretty lazy research but the Oxford dictionary second definition of Idiom is ‘a characteristic mode of expression in music and Art’ – what are the characteristics of the band and how do you express yourselves through music?

“We are who we are and we don’t pretend to be anyone else.”

Short and straight to the point. You guys once described yourselves as “old metal” instead of “Nu-Metal”?

“We were mainly referring to the Nu-Metal with lots of breakdown and lots of screaming, just really heavy, and it seems to repeat over and over again the same old sound. We were much more influenced by the old generation – not so much Metallica and etc – but more early noughties Metal.”

A Sound Guy once told you that you sound like metal when it was fun, which implies it no longer is?

“It’s all this mindless aggression. It really didn’t matter if you had flat-peak or flash-hoops or how you looked – it just didn’t matter. We are influenced by the Nu-Metal side of it – the bounce – when people came in and just bounced, it wasn’t about people standing there with their arms crossed trying to look cool; there was no Capoeira dancing.”

Capoeira!?

“You know all those hardcore moves? It isn’t about that; it’s just the bounce.”

Is the pussy still the same as it was for 80’s metal bands? (all laugh) “If anything, now they look younger.”

Dangerous grounds?

“Yeah, you don’t want to spend the night in a cell.” (It takes me awhile to stop laughing before composing myself ).

“Yeah, with all the Hard-core, Breakdown-core, Mathcore, Screamo etc. So when people ask what is Idiom the thing we say is Nu-Metal, so when it changed from the Metallica period to new sounds coming in to it like Hip-Hop and electronic. I mean Metal is quite broad, so I suppose you could say we are BroadMetal or Broad-core.”

Of course, with sub-genres there are always little pockets of groups and styles, as in any type of music there is an opinion that bands that make it are sell-outs – would you say is the same for Metal?

Photos by Dan Rayner

“You know all those hardcore moves?

It isn’t about that; it’s just the bounce.”

what we do and the Devon crowds are just happy to go to shows and listen to the music.”

On your website you are described as being at the fore-front of the Rock-Rap revival. Any favourite rappers that influenced your rhythm and rhyme on stage?

“At the moment when we’re on tour we listen to stuff like Tupac, Professor Green and Example, but when we were younger we were listening to stuff like Head Pe and Bizkit.”

“Even more so. I think that if a band comes out and does two albums, they got screaming, and as soon as a bit of singing comes in everyone doesn’t want to know. For example - The Architects – all the scene kids love them, so You’ve ever thought about starting your own genre, like Wurzels meets Metal? when their new album came out which has great hooks, awesome riffs – scene kids don’t think it’s cool anymore.

“If this doesn’t work out, we’ll give it a go.”

You have to be who you want to be.”

How have your South-West roots influenced you?

What’s next for you guys?

“We are going to studio in a about week now. We are “We are from the same village (Silverton). It’s pretty small and we went to a local school.” (After that I went recording with James Loughery, who did Skindred, on a tangent trying to find a degree separation between from Avril Lavigne to Tom Jones, then we’re off to the them and me – I named about twenty odd people who Dairy Studio where Slipknot have recorded. It will be a full-length album.” they might know – that really went nowhere.)

I think for us the South-West is much more chilled out, So a chaotic (there it is) schedule? in the main cities it’s fashion orientated scene, down here the fans really respect and support their local “Yeah, if we can have a day-off it will be a bonus.” bands. In the capitals people are constantly shifting their opinions about bands, but we just keep doing

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Fred V and Grafix

Fred V and Grafix

Photo by Patrick William Bethell

Interview: Fred V & Grafix

Oliver Tolkien discusses influences, musical niches and ambition with Devon’s rapidly rising Drum and Bass duo.

Those of us who have been living on or nearby Earth for Now that that’s out the way, how did you guys first get into producing music? the last year or so will probably have heard of Liquid Drum and Bass duo Fred V & Grafix. Frederick Mark J: “After emerging from the pre-pubescent Ska-Punk Isaac Trapnell Varhman, 21 (pictured above left), and scene, everyone started getting into dance music at school Joshua Melrose Jackson, 20 (above right), have caused – prominently Pendulum. Then a guy called Ed Tolkien such a stir thus far on the dance music scene that, at their tender ages, the precocious pair’s rise to the upper- showed me Dj Marky and I never looked back. I had a bash reaches of the Drum and Bass hierarchy seems a formal- at producing it on Fruity Loops when I was about fourteen and found it really tickled my fancy.” ity. What is it about this fresh-faced-checkered-shirtclad pair that has brought the Drum and Bass scene so promptly to its knees? A pair who have been pushed by F: “I started messing around with Acid Pro – the program I still use – at 13. I used it for a couple years before I disDanny Byrd, Logistics, Brookes Brothers, Netsky and covered Drum and Bass, which I started producing straight Camo & Krooked, and received regular airtime from away. With two years practice behind me it was a bit easier.” disk-jockey heavyweights Annie Mac, Chrissy Chris and Zane Lowe – the latter of which readers may have Where’s the best gig you guys have ever played, recently heard strumming himself to ecstasy live on and why?

Radio One over their new release, Room to Breathe.

The pair took time out of their chaotic schedule to talk J: (without hesitation) “Hospitality Cambridge - my personto the Exeter Flying Post about their hopes, fears and al opinion. We were obviously excited, but didn’t have the dreams for the future. highest expectations as we had the graveyard shift. We were Joshua, Frederick, thank you for chatting to us. First convinced it would be dead but when we got there, there was a massive queue outside and by the end of our set there things first: what’s your favourite film(s)? was a good 800 people raving. And we had the hospital crew behind us – Logistics, Nu:Tone, Tony Coleman et al.”

J: After a lot of umming and erring, claiming he has a plethora of favourite films and doesn’t want to say something he’ll regret… “I’ll come back to it”... He eventually settles with The Goonies.

F: “Sh*t...difficult question...maybe Inception. Or perhaps Orange County – not many have heard of that one but it’s got Tom Hanks’ son in it...

F: (Fred instantly agrees) “The Junction in Cambridge is a great venue. Joker was supposed to be on after us but he was half an hour late so our crowd was massive. We’d played in front of crowds that big before but everyone went f*cking mental. Maybe the sound system was better than usual or something but everyone was absolutely going for it. Best vibe ever.”

“Maybe if I make it big I’ll be able to fund my roller-coaster designing career.”

What do you think you would have been in life if Drum and Bass didn’t exist?

(Note: Dub-Step/House/Techno/Avante-GardeMinimal-Regressive-Progressive-Hoomi*-Core-Producers, etc, are not viable answers.) *Perhaps today’s most prominent form of Mongolian Throat-Singing.

J: “So I can’t be a different type of dance music producer?” (Definitely thought I’d made that abundantly clear) “…ah well, Good question! Erm…maybe, I dunno, I’m not really good at anything else, maybe a chef. I love food. Serious fan of food, so probably a chef. Or a cowboy-astronaut-billionaire.”

F: “Hoomi-core! For sure!” (Fred also misinterpreted the question and instantly says he would have become a Hoomi-core producer.) “Well... when I was about ten, I was obsessed with roller-coasters. I played roller-coaster tycoon a bit too much, and got consumed by the idea of becoming a roller-coaster designer. I’ve been to Alton Towers like seven times and I still love roller-coasters. Maybe if I make it big I’ll be able to fund my roller-coaster designing career.”

Does your rising success prove that rurality is not necessarily a hindrance to making it big these days?

J: “Rurality? Is that some kind of Dub-Step?” Following a brief explanation of words meaning… “Ah right, yeah, for sure. It doesn’t matter where you’re from; as long as you have the Internet you’re set. If you can plug your stuff online and network via AIM/Facebook/Soundcloud etc, you’re in with a shot. I think we have proved that, a little. It’s all very well living in central London but it takes just as long to download music there as it does in Ottery St. Mary.”

F: “I hope so. I don’t think you have to be in London because of the Internet. It’s all good as long as you have the Internet. Everything, literally everything, is done online today.

Here’s a curveball: Of the two of you, which do you feel is the better producer?

J: (Laughing) “That is a bit of curveball…I see Fred as musically superior to myself. Just in General. So yeah, I’ll say Fred, and Fred better say me!”

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F: I dunno... we’ve each got different strengths. I think Josh’s synths are really good...I can’t really say anything else can I? It’s an impossible question to answer! I think we both work well together because we make up for each other’s weaknesses (clearly Fred doesn’t think Josh is the better producer).

Sorry about that last question… anyway, any phobias?

J: “Wasps. Standard phobia. I’m not actually sure if that is a phobia, but it should be (incidentally, it is a phobia, known by its Latin name as ‘Spheksophobia.’) Hate ‘em. And Cher Lloyd.”

F: “Maybe heights...apart from when on a roller-coaster, obviously, but I hate looking over cliffs. I can’t think of anything else, apart from general things like the world ending.

Everyone’s scared of that. Mega-tsunamis – put them.”

If you could infiltrate the mind of any Drum and Bass producer in the world and fuse their powers with yours to create a hybrid Drum and Bass superhuman, who would it be and why?

J: (Without hesitation) “Sub Focus. Sonically his music is, for me, perfect. It’s the music I wanna sound like the most, in terms of the crisp finish and quality engineering. Sub Focus all day long, 100%. I’m sure Fred’s would be much different…Burial or something like that.”

F: “Cripes... such a tricky question. Ok, I’m gonna say Bonobo. Black Sands is the best album of 2010, and I’ve been trying to make some of that sound in my own tracks. I just think he’s the best producer, and I wish I could create music like his. As an all-round musician, he’s as close to flawless as you can get.”

Seeing as this month’s issue has a chaos theme, it seems an inevitable question, but what’s your take on the recent riots? Angry chavs or Socialist uprising?

J: “Errm… I dunno. I sit in the middle on that one really. Actually nah I’ll say Socialist uprising; it sounds good. But on a serious note, I don’t like to see local homes and business getting f*cked over. I feel their pain, but don’t agree with their methods.

F: “Angry chavs, I think. I watched a great YouTube explanation that someone had for it, all about how the tax system has encouraged single-parent families. Statistically the children of single parent families are more likely to commit crimes. It’s not an excuse but in a way it kind of explains it. Angry chavs is definitely a part of the answer, but there’s clearly something else going on”

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Exeter Flying Post

Toilet Review

Toilet Review

Toilet Review

Exeter Flying Post

22

“Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his a*shole to talk…?” So goes the famous William Burroughs passage in Naked Lunch. The following review is a selfexploration piece about relief and environment.

Michael Goffman is known being loquacious, but armed with laxative and a few too many espressos, the toilet exploring extraordinaire assesses Exeter’s best known facilities.

EFP writer

“Research has shown that people are more likely to remember toilets then the food they eat.”

Exeter Castle Cell Toilets -

Under the Guildhall -

St. Thomas Public Lavatories -

Quay Public Lavatories -

Hidden away at the Castle is perhaps the most unusual toilet in Exeter. Previously used as the Exeter Crown Court, now a frivolous property for high-brow events, film-shoots and a martial arts gym. Under the halls where prisoners awaited their fate lie a number of individual prison cells, now refurbished into toilets. I sit down on the John inside a metal clad room disguised in pseudomagnolia walls, the door lock bolts shut, and there is a single obfuscated window pane that allows you to peer inside. The toilet seat is cold and I shiver and bellow panting cold breaths even in mid-July. My stomach churns – an eerie feeling creeps over me – probably the eight shots of coffee. I heard that was the last place that Harold Shipman took a dump. Probably just rumours but it certainly adds to the tension.

We pass by the glass paneled archway that looks over Bartholomew Street.

The entrance to the toilet is above street level but underneath the masses of “high-end” shops in the Guildhall. The toilet door swings open and I am met by an unwelcoming blue light. I look down at the invisible contours of my veins, I can feel them but they are visibly swallowed by the blue lights. I do my deed and pull at a roll of John Wayne loo roll (rough, tough and sure taking no shit). I wash my hands, dripping water over the floor as the hand drier makes a disturbing noise before spitting a puff of smoke – it’s broken. I grab more of the John Wayne stuff before swiftly departing.

Everything is bolted shut. If you were a toiletries kleptomaniac this would be quite a challenging and unrewarding heist. A train speeds past as I am sat upon the John, the whole place trembles. The man next to me sounds like an ogre in a pit of despair and swarms of flies circle around me hungrily awaiting their supper. I look up at the door in post ablution reverie and my eyes are met with seedy and explicit pornographic writing.

Who ever took a big old dump before I came here needs to fess up because it ain’t flushing. The toilet is basically a cavern. Whoever chose the tiles for the wall and floor had not even an inch of modicum of self-respect, or was colourblind – they are a stained brown and the walls started to remind me of the floater lying in the metal bowl. There are burn marks everywhere and a big old sign hangs over you which says No-Smoking. I use the 3 in 1 wall box that squirts a centiliter of soap, then a trickle of water falls upon you, finally like a fat asthmatic kid, the handrier blows into your hands. I suggest you use the pub next door.

A*shole says – In-house massage service and writings on the wall make for entertaining read.

A*shole says – More than a thousand years of development in toilet technology and you make me shit in a cave.

A*shole says: It’s not natural to dump under blue lights.

A*shole says: I am sh*t-scared.

St. Georges Meeting House Definitely the swankiest toilet I frequented on my water closet adventure.

Research has shown that people are more likely to remember toilets than the food they eat in restaurants and pubs. This is probably why this grand toilet is in a Wetherspoons pub. The walls are panther black and smooth.

The whole place smells like lavender fields, even the toilet seat (looking back now I’m not sure why I sniffed it, it must be one of those snake-charmer tricks). Even the writing on the wall is a little more high-brow – ‘Tories love bankers who rip us off ’. The condom machine nearby says that they care about your sexual well-being. The curved marble walls are a receptacle of extraordinary beauty, every sensuous curve has the beauty of the human figure but more divine.

A*shole says – I am singing high-praising falsetto farts while bellowing “I found a home.”

Photos by Whitey Fisk

Mud Pit Across From Amber Rooms Technically not a toilet, though it is widely used in the dark haze of a Saturday night. I avoid going into the Amber Rooms toilet, not because it’s poorly equipped or unhygienic but because it seems like the only facilities in Exeter where the clientele is comfortable to gaze across the urinals and compliment you on the girth of your member. So I dash across to the unlit lane to have a quick wiz instead. The problem is that it is so widely used that it is now worse than Glastonbury on its wettest day, so you slowly sink into the amassed excrement. Word to the wise: avoid spanky white trainers.

A*shole says – A*shole refuses to comment.