Novel Magazine #06

the creative publication for the north-east issue six /// jan-feb free ///

/// Max Adams /// Cloud Commission /// Matt Ferguson /// Micheal Finnigan /// Darryl Ibbetson /// Toby Lipman /// Jen McHugh /// Joe Turnbull /// Katee Woods

the money issue

novel

06

prefab77 stop.the.press. make your franklin verbal terrorists rockwell by parra triptik sumo jaunt gavin websterbeth jeans houghton

2012 has arrived and, shockingly, Armageddon has yet to wipe out our sinful race. It is a fantastic relief then to bring you issue 6 of novel, the ‘money’ issue, in which we have compiled your creative contributions on the topic of money. Over the last year we have provided a much needed alternative to the tired North-East mags which have bored us all for so long.

We have also catered you with much needed roach material, unobtainable from the glossy pages of inferior publications.

In just under twelve months we have worked with and published the work of hundreds of writers, artists, photographers, graphic designers, musicians and creative people. In fact, with our connections, we could probably start the most bohemian and least threatening gang in the history of gang culture.

We have also worked with the biggest and most important cultural venues in the region without turning into dicks.

So, one year on from our launch party at the Biscuit Factory, novel is having another party, this time, at the BALTIC. Stop.The.Press. takes place on Friday, February 3rd. Come and help us celebrate or simply to enjoy the live artwork, the music and the obscenely mint crowd.

novel emerges emphatically from a profound desire to consume art, literature and culture, in both an aesthetically pleasing and tangible way. Consumption need no longer be such a dirty word. Much of novel’s content is timeless, so once read, why have it cast to the landfills? Printed on thick, uncoated, renewable stock, novel is as textural as it is textual. After all, it is still the palpable pulp we call paper that artists and writers turn to first as a medium for expression. With the majority of novel being composed from the creative contributions of local writers and artists, it acts as a much needed platform from which talented individuals can build a portfolio, as well as inform the public of their work, websites and upcoming displays or events. novel plays host to a plethora of art, media and prose, as well as previewing and critiquing upcoming local and cultural events. Still in its early stages, novel is sure to transform through time and space, as it becomes even more ingrained into the fabric of the cultural North-East. We pride ourselves on being a local publication with highly interactive qualities and our website offers you all the chance to comment on the content found within; as well as suggest new topics for upcoming issues and new ideas for features and editorials.

art : ready made

interview with local street art collective

nightlife : jaunt music : well aye london!

the ethos of caning it with Jaunt local music scene: Triptik Records, Verbal Terrorists, Rob Heron & the Teapad Orchestra and BJH&THOD

online : mint mods

make-your-own-franklin: defacing money for a frisk

games : indie gamer

a look at two lesser known video games of 2011 creative sector design agency

design : sumo design

fashion design by artist parra & essential brittish accouterments

fashion : rock your clothing well comedy : gavin webster

exclusive interview with northern comedian an archaeologists perspective on the global financial crisis

themed : only time will tell themed : the ticking time-bombs of money

artists and their wages

themed : love’s greeting

themed :

free culture online... or is it?

Editors (Print & Web) Kerry Kitchin kerry@novelmagazine.co.uk Lee Halpin lee@novelmagazine.co.uk

Sub-Editor Joe Turnbull

Design Kerry Kitchin kerry@novelmagazine.co.uk

Social Media Ruth Comer ruth@novelmagazine.co.uk

what is fiat money?

pros and cons of internet downloading

On-line Choice Pick: A local film maker has set up his own Film production Studio, in Japan. Jody Irving is a film maker, DJ and Street artist. He first made a name for himself hosting house parties and spinning records for a hip hop group before hitting local headlines due to a romantic mural he painted on an inner city, industrial rooftop in full view of the city’s commuters. In a move he has called a ‘true leap of faith’ Jody recently migrated to Japan to set up White Elephant Films. Irving contacted novel to make us aware of his project and we’re now posting his films on our website.

There are already three of Irving’s films currently being watched on novel’s site.

These videos reflect Jody’s larger than life eccentricities, his history of music production – accompanied, as they are, with intoxicatingly mellow sound tracks – and his fascination with characters who live their lives outside of society.

Contributors: Writers

Max Adams, Michael Finnigan, Toby Lipman, Matt Stoppard, Tim Shaw, Joe Turnbull, Katee Woods.

Artists, Illustrators and Photographers

The Cloud Commission Matt Ferguson mattssamples.blogspot Darryl Ibbetson Jen McHugh jenmchugh.com The Unliely Lads theunlikelylads.co.uk

www.novelmagazine.co.uk Twitter: @ novel_magazine Facebook: /novelmag

Front Cover: This image is a piece from local street art collective PREEFAB77.

Turn the page to find out more...

novel issue 6. Published bi-monthly by Novel Magazine, all rights reserved. Printed in the UK. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Opinions expressed in articles are those of author and do not express the opinions of the publisher.

ready made.

PREFAB77 is an urban arts collective producing artwork that melds styles from graffiti, tattoo flash, pop art and street art. They draw inspiration from their region’s heritage of workers unions, social struggle and political movements to create hard-edged, stripped down images. They weave small pieces of popular culture, vintage NME headlines and pure rock ‘n’ rebellion into traditional iconic imagery. The group has been alive for four years and has exhibited its work at Lazarides gallery London and BLDG in Kentucky.

PREFAB77 combine artistic materials from the various art styles they draw upon using a mixture of spray paint, acrylic, varnish and inks, working mainly on wood and paper. Their work can often be seen beyond the studio and onto the street in the form of wheatpastes and building scale pieces. Novel readers may well be familiar with the work of PREFAB77 via a building scale paste up depicting a balaclava wearing face on the side of the Ship Inn in the Ouseburn valley.

After collaborating with a series of commercial giants including Ride Snowboards, Converse and Nike, they have become more confident with their direction which takes them along a commercial route while maintaining their artistic roots and style.

art \\\ the money issue

What has been the most exciting place your work has taken you?

We somehow find ourselves in the most bizarre of places through Prefab. From the small town of Covington, Kentucky, (where we were granted keys to the City), to Huntington Beach, California, we’ve been blessed with some amazing trips. The most exciting / bizarre has to be Hanoi, Vietnam, where we found ourselves taking part in a huge event and creating live art in front of the infamous ‘Bangkok Hilton’. Very strange indeed.

With most of prefabs pieces being centred around the degradation of society and authority, what is the goal you’d like to accomplish with your work?

We strive to strike a nerve with people really. Every piece we do people either like because it’s beautiful, or because they relate to it somehow. We’ve had many emails from people who’ve bought our ‘Enemy of Promise’ (exploding phonebox) print saying how much it takes them back to listening to The Jam in their youth. People really relate to the attitude and content of the pieces which I suppose it the goal!

How do street artists such as yourself turn what you are doing into a commodity and a desirable collection for art buyers? How do you take it from the streets into the gallery?

Putting work up in public is just one part of what we do. Our first ever show was an exhibition of limited prints and was immediately popular and desirable, with very little street work having been seen by most of the people who attended. The artwork itself is just as appealing as a screenprint, or on a wooden board, or a canvas, as it might be on a brick wall in a back lane.

Are you usually given a design brief when pasting murals or are you generally given free reign to use the space as you desire?

It really depends on the event or occasion, but if commissioned, usually it’s free reign as long as the content isn’t offensive to anybody. The larger the event, or more exposure it will get, the tighter those reigns become...

Who are some of your favourite active street artists in the UK? JR, D*Face, Vhils, WK Interact, Banksy.

Given legal carte blanche, what would be your ultimate place to do a piece and what would you create?

The most obvious answer to that has to be our (long sold-out) piece ‘TIDE OF SHIT LAPPING’ onto the door of No.10 Downing Street.

the money issue /// art

jaunt, meaning: a pleas Lee Halpin might have salvaged an image of himself as the bookish, magazine editor type, but he used to gurn it up with the proper sketchiest of munters in venues that have since been raided and shut down. Reliving his former glory days of 35cl Southern Comfort bottles and Mitsubishi’s, the novel editor catches up with old friends from Jaunt, Newcastle’s biggest house music night.

Images courtest of TheUnlikelyLads.

I first met up with the Jaunt team back in 2007 whilst working at the Club Camp David, a sad and recent casualty of Newcastle’s nightlife. I was working on the bar with Tom Rankin whilst Chris Blackhall (of Blackhall and Bookless) was playing the occasional set on weekends. Rankin and Blackhall are two of the brainchildren behind Jaunt, a house night that started in a single, lesser-known venue on the peripherals of Newcastle’s night life and house music scene. Founded by seven close-knit and spiritually experimental friends, united by a love of parties and house music, it quickly became a night known for its euphoric energy and its spirit of friendship. Just four years later and Jaunt has performed sets in London, Croatia and Ibiza and has uploaded podcasts that are tuned into to by hundreds of thousands of listeners: check out www.jaunt.podomatic. com A few weeks after my first shift at Camp David, Rankin and Blackhall invited me to Jaunt at the legendary Red Rooms (another sad casualty of Newcastle’s night life) where I would meet the other founding members of the squad, Chris Bookless, Richard Rowell, Liam Vance, Michael Thomson and Tyree Anderson. One of the few things I am capable of recollecting about this experience is hearing music and tracks I’d never heard before. This wasn’t a typical house night where you could anticipate

nightlife \\\ the money issue

many of the records in a set simply by listening to the radio the week before. Jaunt’s DJ’s had the independence of mind and the creativity to produce their own original sets, “None of us try to follow trends in house music. Of course there will always be tracks in our sets that are influenced but we would never change the style of music we play to fit a trend.”

The Jaunt experience was a genuine eye-opener and the type of experience that validates clubbing as a legitimate and fulfilling pastime.

Prior to meeting the Jaunt team I’d always counted myself as a hedonist and a keen partaker in the decadence of the club and house party environments. However, seeing these guys party made me reconsider the parameters of what it meant to ‘cane it’, “We really do have a big passion for partying. We know a lot of people reading this will say, “yeah, so have we”, but anyone who has met us or been to Jaunt will know that we really, really, love to party”.

After this epicurean cherry-popping I went on to spend a great deal of time with the group. Listening to the group converse and observing images on their bedroom walls of Shiva and other deities it very quickly became apparent that the hedonism of partying and music was secondary to something more profound within the group. It was important to them that Jaunt had an ethos and an element of spirituality, “Through partying, sharing music and spending extended time together, unhindered by society’s do’s and dont’s, people can really develop their own personalities; relationships can blossom...allowing endless possibilities to unfold in the rest of people’s lives. This is what Jaunt has meant for the seven of us.”

sant trip.

It is this unfettered love for music, partying and, moreover, the spirituality that has grown from it that made Jaunt stand apart from other house nights in the region. Four years on and Jaunt have upped their game and spread their partying principles further afield, “We’re doing larger branded parties (We Love..., Zoo Project & Circo Loco) at Digital and Legends. Eighteen months ago we started putting on parties down in East London which are going really well too.

After a series of parties at Dalston’s Russian Bar we’re now focussed on anything out of the ordinary, Loft parties, basement parties, warehouse parties. Basically, the more unlicensed and weird, the better.”

Although the group remain loyal to their home town it seems putting on parties of the nature they intended became too much for the northern authorities, “It would be nice to do more weird parties like that up here. Between 2009 and 2010 we actually did a series of secret unit parties in the North-East. We transported hundreds of mentalists on buses from the city centre to a special industrial location. Once you were in you were in and the buses came back at 6am. Unfortunately after the last one the venue was shut down by the Police, such is the nature of the local police forces; a load of blokes with nothing to do! “

in 2008 and 2009, “The sunset party boat we did with Mono_cult at Hideout festival was very special...but the Ibiza parties were really successful... we managed to play the Red Box at Space for ‘We love’ which definitely added to our notoriety.”

Somehow the group’s ethos and spirit seems to translate wherever they go and the friendly vibe they created in their home town travels with them, “We pride ourselves coming - we think

on this

being shines

open, warm and welthrough at our parties.”

Sun, sea, sand and...sensational sounds, the Jaunt team have partied in locations most of us can only imagine and they’ve racked up some pretty awesome experiences on their travels, “There’s nothing quite like standing on a rooftop terrace with twenty of your best friends, tripping, while the sun sets and gives everything a deep red glow to a backdrop of what sounds like the most amazing tracks you’ve ever heard in your life.”

“Things seem to go a lot smoother on the illegal party front in London. Maybe their Police have more real crimes to solve?”

Ah the life of an international DJ. I would have to add to ‘open, warm and welcoming’ zany, inebriated and mad-for-it but the group are otherwise fairly accurate with their descriptions of themselves and the ethos of their nights out. Jaunt’s refreshing take on the house music scene can still be experienced without having to jet off to Croatia and Spain as Jaunt is currently back in Newcastle and performing regular parties at the recently refurbished Cosmic Ball Room on Stowell Street.

Jaunt went international in the summers of 2008 performing at Hideout Festival in Croatia before going on to host weekly parties in Ibiza

Don’t forget to download and follow Jaunt’s podcasts at www.jaunt.podomatic.com

The scope for such activities is apparently much wider in the Southern provinces and this is partly what led to Jaunt spreading their wings,

the money issue /// nightlife

Matt Stoppard and Tim Shaw talk about TRIPTIC’s latest releases.

When you think of Hip Hop, House and Dubstep, Newcastle isn’t the first place that comes to mind. London, Chigaco, New York, Detroit, Paris and Manchester are amongst the few cities that are credited with making huge contributions to the heterogeneous catalogue of electronic music we have at our fingertips today. However, a recent BBC documentary about Hip Hop in the north of England revealed how much national music media overlooks fledgling talent in cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

To a similar extent, media attention regarding recent developments in electronic music has been almost exclusively centred on London. Whilst nobody could overlook the influences of a vast roster of dubstep, techno and garage producers based in the capital, it seems unfair that artists with similar levels of talent lack the appropriate platforms for exposure in northern cities (with Manchester being a notable exception).

TRIPTIK Music is aiming to address this imbalance, with these key criteria kept at the forefront of our progress: Essential, Eclectic and Electronic. Our closely affiliated monthly club night Inertia, showcases the TRIPTIK sound and hosts many of the local DJs and producers we love.

When I first started looking for producers to sign to TRIPTIK, I didn’t have to look very far. Joonipah, a producer and Dj with an extremely mature sound and unique style, lived on the same street that one of our team grew up. His ‘Whupah EP’ was our first release, and after some persistent social networking and heavy exposure at underground Newcastle clubnights the tracks have caught the attention of several UK Bass heavyweights.

Garage pioneer MJ Cole has lauded the title track for its Future Garage sensibilities, whilst UK Funky luminary Marcus Nasty included several tracks from the ‘Whupah EP’ during his popular Rinse FM radio slot. It is incredibly rewarding to see major industry trendsetters recognise the EP, and allow it to thrive on the sort of platform that it deserves.

For our second release, I didn’t even have to leave my house to get the contract signed. Mr Blazey, a leading light in northern Hip Hop, lived in the room downstairs from mine. As I heard ‘Slonality’, his second solo album, being crafted through my floorboards, it was extremely exciting and I knew it had to be signed. Boasting an enviable selection of soulful samples, the album is a wistful collection of down-tempo hip-hop instrumentals, incorporating the kind of hazy, warped electronics championed by visionary labels like Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder. Standout tracks like ‘All The Lovers’ and ‘Slower than Snails’ apply a carefully measured amount of melancholy, and ‘Slonality’s evocative instrumentals truly demonstrate the maturity of Mr Blazey’s sound.

Mr Blazey’s output certainly hasn’t slowed down since then, with a brand new release due out on TRIPTIK. Released on the 20th February, the MUSH! EP promises to deliver more intricate productions, this time with a lean towards Middle Eastern drum patterns and stretched out ambient soundscapes. His ear for diversity earmarks Mr. Blazey as a quintessential TRIPTIK artist, and whilst the future certainly looks bright for him and labelmate Joonipah, we are relishing the opportunity to release more quality electronic music from the regions as-yet unearthed gems.

Mr Blazeys - MUSH! EP, released on TRIPTIK Music, will be available to buy from iTunes from 20th Febuary 2011. Album Artwork by Madeleine Richie.

music \\\ the money issue

well aye london!

You need look no further than your own door-step to find talented musicians making and producing their music with the highest calibre; collaborating and performing with some of the most well respected musicians in the industry. All of the local acts featured here have albums available to buy and are currently receiving attention on a national level.

Inroducing Newcastle’s most booked act, Rob Heron & The Teapad Orchestra.

Rob Heron & The Tea Pad Orchestra play an eclectic and original musical brew of 1930’s swing, gypsy jazz, hokum blues, cajun, and country, all with similar themes of debauchery, dandyism, disasters and drink. Formed in Newcastle upon-Tyne in 2010, they have already made quite an impact on the city, with their very own regular night at the Cumberland Arms, “The Tea Pad Presents...” showcasing fellow bands that play anything from jazz to rockabilly. The cats that make up the Tea Pad are: front-man and full time dandy, Rob Heron; mandolin wizz-kid, Tom Cronin; Orcadian Accordionist, Colin Nicholson; Double Bass player/ part-time hip-hop DJ, Rob Blazey; Newcastle’s own Django, Ben Fitzgerald on lead guitar; and the talented, suit case bashing Dav Shiel on drums. With a set that comprises of both self-penned songs and old speakeasy favourites, The Tea Pad

Novel interview Beth Jeans Houghton ahead of the lauch of her band’s new album, ‘Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose’ and their upcoming February gig at Gateshead City Hall.

Hi Beth, how are you today?

Dav just found an eyelash and a piece of glitter in his espresso and ate them both because he didnt know what else to do.

Ok. Your latest album Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose is out in the new year. How would you describe it to the musical layman?

Like your first: cut knee, banana, wank, calpol, whitey.

What was it like working with producer Ben Hillier?

Ben is six foot two inches of pure flamboyant dinghy. He enjoys long walks in the dark and is a great listener. He believes in the music and brought out the colour in our eyes.

You’ve supported some fantastic acts such as Bon Iver, Mumford & Sons and Cornershop. Have you learned any important lessons from them about performing live?

It’s always good to look happy onstage and always remember to snaffle the rider.

What would your ideal miniaturised height be?

Flat with the circumference of a 10 inch pizza.

You actually went to the same school as me in Newcastle, Heaton Manor. Your brother used to come round and play Warhammer with my brother. How would you rate our old school? You’re obviously doing quite well. I’m filling skips on the side, just to make ends meet.

I hated Heaton Manor, apart from Mr Lightfoot and Mr Grey who looked like an owl. And Dav had nothing to compare it to. David ‘Podge’ Fantozzi used to steal his violin and make him chase him.

What does it take to make it in the music industry these days? Do you think it’s more difficult being from the North-East than say some of the bigger cities like Manchester and London?

Ask us again when we’ve made it. I dont however believe that the city has any major influence over success.

My mate Richy says that for the past 6 months he’s been stalking you on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace. Is this flattering?

I’ve been stalking him back. Is that creepy?

What’s next for BJH&THOD? Our record ‘Yours Truly Cellophane Nose’ is out on February the 6th. You can pre order it here:http://bethjeanshoughton.sandbag.uk.com We will also be touring the UK in february in support of the album and play our hometown album launch at Gateshead Town Hall on February 25th. Everyone should come its fancy dress.

Orchestra are sure to make ones feet tap and booty shake. They released their debut recording “Teepy Eepy” in the summer of 2011; a five track EP of all original material, soon to be followed by an album. As well as an album, their plans for 2012 include supporting bands such as, New York based The Sweetback Sisters, The Martin Harley Band, and friend Beth Jeans Houghton, as well as a performance at the Sage Gateshead’s Americana festival in July. Be sure to catch one of their Cumberland Arms nights...next one is a Mardi Gras party on February 17th, featuring Cajun music and food.

North-East Hip-Hop collective Verbal Terrorists release their new album featuring collaborations with some damn fine and prestigious acts.

The War on Terra is the new album from North-East hip hop act, Verbal Terrorists. VT are back with more hard-lined political rap, original beats and some new friends. This is the type of hip hop for fans who remember when the music and the lyrics had important messages, for people who remember when Chuck D said ‘fight the power’.

VT have an understanding of hip hop in its socially conscious and non-materialistic traditions.

Emcee’s Nobull and Drop Dead Fred are lyricists with strong beliefs and a will to inform and educate. With their lyrics they seek to challenge the status quo and spread truths that they believe are deliberately suppressed. On this album they offer a counter-culture perspective on issues such as the August riots, the expenses scandal and bankers bonuses with a level of research and articulacy lacked by the vast majority of artists producing hip hop in the UK today.

The War on Terra is not your average hip hop album; it departs from the usual clichés whilst at the same time moving with more positive trends by introducing hybrid sounds that fuse time signatures and drum beats from a selection of new music such as grime and dubstep. A variety of flows and bar patterns accompany these sounds and time signatures as emcees Nobull and DDF flaunt their ability to spit double-time verses and use complex multi-syllabic rhymes as well as more standard rhyming.

Featured on this album is emcee Akala who many of you will recognise from Channel 4’s ‘life of rhyme’ programme which he presented. Adding even more clout and prestige to this album is platinum album selling hip hop legend, stic.man of Dead Prez.

Attracting artists of this calibre is an outstanding achievement for a local act and such collaboration is testimony to the sort of industry recognition VT are presently receiving.

Check out VT and ‘The War on Terra’ at www.verbalterrorists.bandcamp.com “Capitalists play for monopoly stakes,real life pains are to them just a property game, whilst the bottom play the lottery and solemnly pray. I don’t stick to the script I just spit tight flows, I rip this to bits when I kick nice prose, I’m pissed at the pigs so I blitz live-o, cos I’m lifting the lid on the sick five-oh. Mass production, mass consumption, its critical mass in this mass-dysfunction . Mass confusion, mass corruption our class has to suffer for this crap to function.”

the money issue /// music

mint mods The United States $100 bill is perhaps the most recognizable promissory note in the world. Often referred to as a Benjamin or Big Frankie (due to the portrait of ex-president Benjamin Franklin), this note is synonymous with hitting the big time.

It even gets a mention in popular music and if you’re unlucky enough to find yourself - for whatever reason - in Liquid on a Friday night, you might hear Fatman Scoop ask you to hold one up in order to qualify your social status. If you don’t have one, lower denominations are also acceptable: $50 bill, $20 bill and even a $10 bill; but nothing lower. And if you’re a chickenhead then shut the fuck up.

But what exactly has Fatman Scoop got you holding up? Money is no longer backed by gold

Dekker Dreyer / Los Angeles

Kerry Kitchin talks lime-pickle, illuminati, and the value of money. lllustration above courtesy of The Cloud Commission.

and we are no longer able to redeem gold in exchange for notes, despite what the queen promises. Essentially, money is just the physical manifestation of an abstract value, and this value relies solely upon our trust, which in turn, is dependent upon the authenticity of the embellishments on the surface. These securities, along with the esoteric, Freemasonry, Satanist and illuminati symbolism, is what holds the whole monetary system together. Isn’t that nice?

Cue the Make Your Franklin online community project. An opportunity for artists, designers and anyone really who fancies having a go at modifying the legendary ‘Benjamin’. On makeyourfranklin.com those behind the project describe it as being an “international bearer of a cultural reflexion”. Not quite sure what that means but it’s easy enough to follow the link and download your very own high resolution version of the existing U.S. $100 bill, to redesign as you please.

Like any young lad living in a time of economic despair, forced to eat lime-pickle from the jar because apples from the local supermarket have become an unaffordable snack, any opportunity to stick it to the man and get him where it really hurts by redesigning his monetary instruments, is one that I simply could not resist!

The website also hosts a gallery where people from all over the world have uploaded their own mint mods, some of which we have displayed below. We also took the opportunity to commission our favourite local street art collective, The Cloud Commission, to create a bespoke re-design for us which is shown above.

Fermoyle / Evanston

Kolin Weidmann / Paris

Psycho / Merignac

online \\\ the money issue

Alexander Sotirov

Sylvain Weiss / Paris

Martin Joubert / Paris

This online feature comes in partnership with amazingstuff.co.uk who brought the make your franklin project to our attention after they featured it on their own website. Amazingstuff was founded by two local lads with the aim of collating all the truly amazing things to be found on the world wide web into one cleverly designed website. Much like Novel, amazingstuff is largely a submissions based project, giving everyone the opportunity to contribute.

Check it out and get involved!

Terraria / PC Imagine a world where the SNES didn’t die a lonely death back in the 90s and the lovely people at Nintendo continued to develop charming 2d platformers well up to the present day. If that had happened I’m sure that at some point last year you’d have plugged Terraria into your wellworn Super Nintendo.

Well we all know it didn’t but it is definitely the feeling you get when you put Terraria on for the first time. So much so that I don’t think you’d be surprised to see Mario pop up along one of the various biomes. Although to peg Terraria as simply a platformer would be doing it an injustice.

you in your quest for survival. That can be anything from weapons to armour, furniture to piggy banks and a great deal more.

Some of the most sough-after loot is found in any of the games randomly spawning dungeons. To enter these dungeons you will have to defeat the dungeon keepers who are usually too big to wholly fit on the screen. One of them for example is called the eater of worlds and is a gigantic, spine ladened worm not unlike one of the sandworms from Dune.

Defeating these monstrosities is no easy task which is why it’s so great that you can tackle the adventure with more than one player. It’s also much more fun that way. Playing co-operatively makes the game more accessible as you can work out together how to craft new items and where and what to do next which alone can be very frustrating in the early hours.

The aim here is to survive the night and then to survive a little better each day until at one point you become adept enough to go out and explore the vast treasure filled dungeons that spawn randomly in each new world.

For those of you that have played Minecraft the format will be familiar but for the rest, you start by building yourself a home out of the materials you mine from the world and hope that it’s sturdy enough to withstand the onslaught that comes each night. That’s right, I’m talking zombies. If you make it through your first night you can begin to make use of the games clever crafting system to aid

So if you are looking for a game that rewards the creative and adventurous or if you are looking for a little nostalgia then Terraria is an excellent choice, but be prepared to spend a lot of hours simply digging. It also makes me wonder why the miners of yesteryear were complaining so much.

indie gamer

Novel’s game reporter Michael Finnigan takes a look at some of the lesser known indie games of 2011, with reviews of Terraria and To The Moon.

It’s well and truly 2012, and that glorious Christmas I spent boozin’ and playing computer games is just a hazy memory. But in my opinion, 2011 will go down as one of the greatest years in gaming history, with releases like Zelda, Skyrim and Battlefield 3 under its belt. I however, wanted to take a look back at some of the indie games that were brushed under the rug.

To the Moon / PC To the Moon will forever be known as the game that makes you cry. Only one other game in my long career also holds that title, Ocarina of Time and that was only because my time in Hyrule had come to an end – I was young, forgive me. To the Moon on the other hand is a truly personal story of a man on his deathbed who wishes to visit the moon. I must warn you though it is a rather a ridiculous premise: A team of scientists have been called out to a large countryside manor to help an elderly man fulfil his lifelong wish before he dies of old age. They do this using cutting-edge technology that allows them to alter the memories of anyone hooked up to the machine.

The only problem is that John, our elderly old man, never mentioned why he wanted to visit the moon and it is up to the scientists to explore the vast recesses of his mind and find out exactly why. Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Along the way players will visit a number of important events in Johns life that transform him from a faceless, old man lying on his deathbed to a well-rounded and truly believable human-being that, by the end of the game, you truly feel for.

The thing about John, though, is that he isn’t always a likeable character.

Like the rest of us he is somewhere between good and bad, meaning players experience his life at both extremes. To give you an example, you will play through a section where John meets his future wife for the first time and then later through a section where he is rather dissatisfied with his marriage and isn’t afraid to let that show. This is also the reason why this game is so successful, because the characters are so well-rounded.

To call To the Moon a game though is a bit of a stretch. It is only four or five hours long and is perhaps far more adequately described as an interactive story or point-and-click adventure and the times when you are asked to attempt a puzzle or anything resembling gameplay you find yourself desperately clicking through it to reach the next plot point.

Do not let that dissuade you because To the Moon is so superbly written. The great thing about independent games like these is that they are unafraid to tackle the bigger issues, like death, and you come away feeling like you have experienced something unique. And even though it only lasts for a few hours, you will be thinking about it for days. Without a doubt this is one of the best games of 2011 and you would be a fool to miss it.

the money issue /// games

sumo design Sumo is a Newcastle based design agency that specialize exclusively within the creative industries.

With a team that has dedicated years towards understanding cultural venues, they have worked on branding, campaigns, print and digital projects for some of the country’s most well known cultural institutions.

Some of their clients include Gallery North, National Glass Centre, The National Gallery and New Writing North. Sumo have recently moved their offices into the newly refurbished creative hub, The Toffee Factory, in The Ouseburn where they are set to become even more engrained into the fabric of the cultural North-East.

>>>BOUND Bound is a collection of short stories written by writers who live and work in County Durham. Commissioned by New Writing North for Creative Partnerships Durham and Sunderland, the book seeks to explore the creative impulses of the Durham environment. Our brief was to create a unique publication.

We worked with the artist Tanya Axford to develop a book design which would become a work of art in it’s own right. The book invited the reader to fold each page as they progressed through the publication, this transformed the book in to a colourful paper sculpture.

What led you to the decision to specialize in doing design work specifically for the creative industries?

Like most agencies, we started off taking any work, but we quickly realised that we loved working with clients in the arts. Going to festivals, visiting galleries and being creative are what interests us and we’d much prefer to help promote those things than do anything else.

What’s different about working exclusively in this market as opposed to taking on any design job?

We’ve got a huge amount of experience in promoting the arts and that means we start every project with a lot of knowledge about the sector.

If for example someone came to us to brand a new gallery, we’d have a good idea about how that could fit into a crowded cultural landscape, and how we could make it stand out.

Roughly how many projects do you take on each year?

We probably work with just under twenty clients each year, we turn down a lot of work and try to

<<<GALLERY NORTH Gallery North is the latest addition to Newcastle’s burgeoning art scene. Sumo were approached to to develop the brand identity for this exciting new contemporary space. The space brings two projects together under one roof: Gallery North, which will bring international names to the region as well as showcasing emerging homegrown artists, and Graduate Studios Northumbria, a studio resource created to support and nurture emerging creative talent.

The new brand was based around the concept of the venue as a ‘creative space’, not a passive place to view art, but a place of expression, creativity and inspiration. This big idea was reflected by a bold and confident logo which forms a frame for images, becoming a living space for creativity in its own right. This symbol was based on the modernist architectural style of the gallery building, linking the logo visually to the physical space and helping it to stand out from other nearby galleries and arts venues.

>>>DEMOCRACY Selecting what is worthy of display in an exhibition is normally the remit of expert individuals. Democracy aimed to challenge this with an exhibition which asked the public not only to submit work, but also to evaluate what should and shouldn’t be displayed. Our aim was to create the most democratic exhibition in the world. We began with an open call which asked designers to submit a piece of work that responded to the theme of democracy through our exhibition website. As submissions were made, the website became a forum for public evaluation of the design works, with users commenting on individual pieces and voting for what should be included in the final exhibition. The 51 pieces of work which recieved the most votes were exhibited digitally in the gallery space, each sized depending on the number of votes that it had recieved. By digitally displaying this work we could continue to encourage visitors to interact with the exhibits by voting for the pieces that they felt most deserving from their mobile phones or through a paper ballot.

All votes from mobile phones were instantly reflected in the digital exhibition by resizing the artworks to reflect the new vote.

design \\\ the money issue

just take on projects which excite us.

Is it a hindrance or a benefit operating from the North-East?

I think that Newcastle Gateshead has a fantastic reputation in the cultural sector. The North East is seen as a real success story in cultural regeneration and people want to tap in to our experience of that. I also think that we live and work in a really inspiring city, we’ve just moved in to the Toffee Factory in Ouseburn and we are surrounded by exciting crea-

tive businesses and cultural venues like Northern Print, The Cluny and The Biscuit Factory.

Are there any websites, blogs or magazines in particular that are a great source of inspiration for you?

FormFiftyFive which is a design blog was started by someone in our office a few years back is something we all have bookmarked, but we find inspiration in the strangest places from Hungarian flea markets to Japanese food packaging.

In such a competitive employment market, how can a young graduate designer make themselves stand out?

I think that internships are a really key way to make contacts and find work. Just don’t be weird, we’ve had a guy who only ate ice lollies, a girl who told us about waxing her boyfriends ass and someone who turned up with their mum on the first day. None of them found work with us.

>>>ENGLISH HERITAGE PICNIC CONCERTS Set in the idyllic and beautiful grounds of two of England’s top stately homes, Audley End in Saffron Walden and Kenwood House and Estate in London, the English Heritage picnic concerts have been part of the summer concert season for over 50 years. With ticket sales for the concerts in excess of 110,000 every summer, Sumo were set the challenge of creating a new identity for the concerts to encourage attendance and continue the success of the concerts.

We created a unique illustration style to excite and entice the audience which is sympathetic and complimentary to the English Heritage brand. The bright and colourful palette portrays the atmosphere and summer vibe of the event. The illustrations will appeal to a broad demographic, showing different characters and surroundings that provide a taste of the concert. It aims to make the person looking at the marketing materials visualise themselves and their friends at the concerts, and ultimately make a ticket purchase.

>>>ICE RINK - NATIONAL HISTORY MUSEUM How do you inspire people to take to the ice during the busy Christmas period in a city where they are spoilt for things to do? That was the challenge presented to us by The Natural History Museum when they asked us to help them promote their winter ice rink. Positioned outside the world famous museum from the start of November till mid-January the ice rink epitomises the glamour of the capital during the winter months. Our solution uses a playful collection of illustrations to capture the excitement, magic and stylish atmosphere of the event. A strong blue background used across all media helped the marketing stand out and using a single colour design kept costs down. The flexible illustration allowed us to quickly implement the campaign across a range of media from press adverts to underground posters, from leaflets to banners, online and on the ice rink.

the money issue /// design

rock your clothing well

Darryl D Davidson (Trickle Clothing)

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From a Trickle point of view, its important for us to be associated with a brand like Parra. Trickle is about the underground, discovering something new and interesting. Parra sits really well alongside cult brands like PAM, Long and Soulland and finds its niche nicely between streetwear and boutique. Personally I like the idea that you need to be in the know to understand a Parra piece but equally its eye catching graphics have a wide appeal. The Rockwell tees make me want to learn more about his work as an artist; which can only be a good thing!

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Self taught Dutch artist Parra is an underground star with a cult following. Young party animals search the streets and bars of Amsterdam to tear down and collect his posters and flyers and his work is treasured by a generation of design fanatics. His style is that of post-Pop imagery, vibrant hand drawn letters and surreal characters. His hand-drawn typography and esoteric character creation are reminiscent of screen printed poster designs of the 1960s and 1970s.

Championed by the galleries as well as his underground followers, Parra has become a respected and eclectic artist with worldwide recognition. Applying his calligraphy and characters across the disciplines of drawing, painting, animation and sculpture, Parra has a varied body of work with an easily identifiable style.

Growing up with his painter/sculptor Father, Parra’s childhood was illuminated by colours, oil paint, wood, weird looking pictures & Rubenesque paintings. He takes only a select few commercial design jobs per year and devotes the bulk of his artistic endeavours to flyers & posters for friends and admirers, making his work available for everyone to use, keep or discard as they wish.

Parra’s artwork also penetrates the world of fashion.

Parra co-runs Rockwell, his own skate wear clothing label. Rockwell clothing is branded with trademark images, characters and lettering from his artwork.

Rockwell is currently being stocked by one the freshest clothing stores in Newcastle, Trickle Clothing on High Bridge Street. (trickleclothing.co.uk)

fashion \\\ the money issue

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Designer Jamie Milestone founded London Undercover in 2008 in an attempt to make people reconsider and ‘take pride in the most quintessentially British accessory’. To be fair to Jamie and his team, the standard and quality of design is unbelievable in today’s market of wash it and it’s fucked, Primark gloves and H & M scarves.

They’ve managed to reproduce the craftsmanship and sturdy reliability of the classic umbrella but imbued it with modern designs making it acceptable to the new Millennium generation. We think they’re class and on the days we wish to look a bit more dandy we rock our London Undercover umbrellas. (londonundercover.co.uk)

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The people who might just pull it off though are London Undercover, a proper intriguing and very new men’s fashion company focussing exclusively on stylish accessories.

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To our generation the umbrella has not been the must have fashion accessory. Like the bowler hat we labelled it suitish and resented its arrogant representation of the stip-upper-lip Britishness we were keen to shake off. It’s fair to say that the umbrella is quintessentially British but its connotations of priggishness and arrogance have surely lost hold in a society where women in miniskirts walk city centres with Playboy umbrellas fit with bunny ears and all. However, these are definitely not the people that will once again make umbrellas cool. Not a chance.

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the money issue /// fashion

novel film \\\ the money issue

Describe what type of a comedian you are?

A funny one that doesn’t wear a suit.

Were you always funny as a youngster?

No not really. I tried too hard when I was young then had no funny bones in me at all as a young teenager.

What’s your favourite one liner joke?

Salman Rushdie, we’ve seen a lot more of him since he went into hiding (Ian Cognito circa 1992) What’s the most fucked up you’ve been on only £20?

Drinking in the 80s (it was less than a pound a pint) What is your take on the global financial crisis?

Great! As far as I’m aware, no one has starved in the developed world as a result.

Perhaps we can learn to all save up for things again.

Who do you think should feature on the British £20 note if we were to replace Scottish economist Adam Smith and why?

Fred Goodwin. On the note it should say ‘don’t spend what you don’t have’ Who was your favorite comedian growing up and what is your favorite joke of theirs?

Les Dawson. I had a letter from the bank the other day. I knew it was from the bank it was nailed to the door with a wreath Who do you think are the funniest people in the country today?

Tony Law, Sean Lock, my Dad sometimes.

Why are there dozens of Scottish comedians on the scene but only a handful of Geordie comics?

Simple population percentages.

With the new addition of The Stand comedy club on High Bridge, Newcastle, do you think stand up comedy is set to become even more engrained into the cultural fabric of the North-East?

Who knows, I hope so. We have some great acts coming through, we could just do with a few more.

What is the best thing about being a Geordie?

Being able to look after yourself just by using your accent. Believe me you back off a bloke with close cropped hair and a Geordie twang on his own with a bag in a tube station in London late on a Saturday night. That was a night I got out of trouble!

gavin webster

Gavin Webster has mint patter and he’s getting graft out of it. Fair one. He’s been touring the country and has worked with actual famous comedians like Jason Manford and Sarah Milliacan from on the telly! So now he’s got more clout for people who actually attach significance to that sort of bollocks.

Obviously he needed that verification of his talent and now he’s got it. Well done Gavin.

Well, we thought he was class well before he did ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and we’re hoping they haven’t polluted his unadulterated Geordieness. In fact, if he starts talking with a posh accent we’re going to glass him. Gavin tells jokes about staffies and working men’s clubs in a proper accent that threatens the right levels of imminent violence and that’s why we like him. Gavin is performing at the Journal Tyne theatre on Friday 2nd March.

He was too busy polishing Jason Manford’s shoes to do a proper interview but he did muster some response to our questions for him between easing the dog shit out of the grooves of Manford’s soles with a thin stick.

To book tickets to see Gavin Webster at the Journal Tyne Theatre, call 0844 493 9999 or book online www.thejournaltynetheatre.co.uk. Tickets cost £14 full, £12 concession. Suitable for ages 16+

the money issue /// comedy

lessons for the future from the not so recent past

only time will tell...

Archaeologist and author Max Adams casts a cynical eye over recent financial turmoil and reflects that there is nothing new under the sun. Using Romans and Vikings, among others, as his examples, he argues that we, as a society, ought to take more responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in, and suggests that if we bothered to learn the lessons of the past we might avoid making some of the same mistakes in the future.

Whether or not we will, only time will tell. Illustration is by one of novels regular contributors, Matt Ferguson.

themed \\\ the money issue

It’s a grisly scene familiar to any war correspondent: bodies lie unburied in open sewers by the roadside.

Normally bustling markets are deserted. The water supply has dried up. Animals scavenge among the ruins of a town where the rule of law has broken down and the inhabitants have fled. The regional economy has collapsed. It could be anywhere: Libya, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Zimbabwe. It isn’t though, it’s Britain. The date is 450AD. The only witnesses to the devastating impacts caused by the collapse of Roman Imperial administration on the towns of Britain are not camera crews or journalists, nor yet loss-adjusters. They are archaeologists: the disaster-recovery risk-assessors whom no-one pays any attention to because, well, they wear beards and old sweaters and smoke pipes and think pieces of broken pottery are interesting.

Who cares? The people who should care are politicians, economists, risk managers; dare one say bankers and, well, all of us. The past is a vast library of catastrophic mistakes; archaeologists and historians are its librarians. Go ahead, ask them. What happens when you don’t prepare for a pandemic? What happens when you cut down the last tree on an island and can’t build yourself a boat? What happens when you have what everyone else wants and they are desperate to get it? Ask the archaeologists of the Pacific about the fate of the Easter Islanders, or the scholars of deserted medieval villages in England where all the peasants went. Ask them about the Vikings. More about the Vikings later.

Okay, so all that has gone. This is the modern world: we have planners and managers who prepare for disaster and by and large they do a pretty good job. Don’t they? The events of the last few years, in which dozens of financial institutions of apparently (dare one say it) rock-solid stability showed themselves to be nothing more than reckless candy-floss chancers, have shattered that illusion. They’ve all been at it: even the most prestigious investment banks in the world have been paying their debts with what turns out to be Monopoly money. And now we find that whole countries, entire economies are bankrupt, their apparent stability a mere chimera: the houses they built, which looked for all the world like a solid asset, seem in fact to have been constructed from a deck of playing cards, one previously used in a dodgy poker game.

A plague on them all. But actually, the real fools are those who allowed it to happen: the politicians and, one might add, voters, borrowers, shareholders, who fell for it. Blame us all. Blame society. The promise of unfettered economic growth, which seemed too good to be true, was just that. Western economies, both ancient and modern, are based ultimately on the production of surplus food and the exploitation of cheap labour; if not ours, then someone else’s. It is a concept predicated on the limitlessly-projected future value of the ever-growing fruits of production and an ever-increasing population.

Is that a good idea? Is planning the Christmas feast before you know what the harvest will be like (and when you have told the turkey it won’t get fed ‘til next week) a good idea? It seems pretty stupid when put that simply. Britain’s greatest prehistoric white elephant, Stonehenge was built of the fruits of a labour force that produced corn and meat sufficient to spend its sweat equity on lugging huge stones about the countryside. It might seem a little crazy to us; but at least it was built after the surplus was collected, not before. That is not to say that early farmers were smart-

er than we are. Their insurance against failure was negotiated, by drugged-up shamans, with spirits whose willful contrariness was precisely as arbitrary as the fortunes of the stock market. We still have our shamans, although we call them something else: from henge-funders to hedge-funders is not such a great leap. The fact is, you can’t have your cake and eat it.

Is the unavoidable economic reality as simple as that? Well, yes, if you care to take a cursory glance at the past. One might cite the ancien régime in France, whose profligate royal cult of consumption and lack of an efficient tax system resulted in pancontinental turmoil and the invention of the guillotine (watch out Athens). By contemporary contrast, the dullness of King George III’s Britain, with its frumpy Protestant mercantile pragmatism, fostered an empire based not just on exploitation but on a very moderate 3% interest rate, a huge professional navy and, horror of horrors, an income tax to fund its expansionist wars.

Back to the Romans. What went wrong there? An over-expanded military bureaucracy, lack of devolved regional government, failure of food production and the arrival of hordes of economic migrants from the east, is what went wrong. Plus ça change.

Taking a closer look at Britain’s failure in the Roman Empire is instructive. Rome was expansionist, economically and culturally. Its economy was military by nature and by construction. It pushed its frontiers as far as they would go, then built tariff walls (in our case seventy-three miles long and twelve feet thick) to protect its civilising Imperium. It did not conquer to plunder, but to seed economies which it could dominate. Sound familiar? It’s precisely what Britain and her European competitors did in the 19th century dash for colonies. And it’s what America has been busy doing since 1945. America did not invent economic protectionism, nor yet the idea of an economy based on the armaments industry.

And she did not conquer Iraq for its oil, but for the redevelopment contracts. The new Libyan government, incidentally, seems to be wise to this particular historical lesson; they are handing out contracts on the basis of what’s in it for them.

Britain’s failure when Rome withdrew her Imperium was to ignore the obvious signs. She did not develop a sustainable, devolved domestic economy, so that when the troops left so did the cash and the cash-based industries. Her protectionist attitude towards the ‘barbarians’ of Pictland and Ireland provoked their furious jealousy; and when the writing appeared on the wall (actually, it was a letter from Rome saying, in effect, so-long and thanks for the fish) she sold her own defence contracts to the Germans – or Angles and Saxons, as they used to call themselves. Almost as ridiculous an idea as selling off assets like water and energy so that, in the end, a country, a people, owns nothing.

Well, these things happen, and we shouldn’t be surprised when they happen again… and again.

In Marxist terms Rome was a tragedy which we are replaying as a Whitehall farce. But to go back to those nasty bearded voracious plundering Vikings, supposedly the world’s most successful asset strippers before Genghis Khan and the invention of Private Equity companies. The first Viking longboats arrived off the coast of Northumbria in 793AD and proceeded to relieve the humble monks of Lindis-

farne of their carefully nurtured treasures. The monks were excellent farmers and managers who invested in technology and craftsmanship as well as cheap labour to build monasteries and illuminate beautiful books. They worked the prevailing system with immense skill, acquiring land and cash assets, and in return guaranteed their sponsoring kings eternal joy in the afterlife: it was the ultimate futures market. It worked, just like capitalism, so long as everybody had faith.

Sadly for the monks, the Vikings didn’t – at least, not the Christian faith. As our first great historian, the Venerable Bede, was quick to ask, though, if you give all your land to the church, what are you going to feed your army with? In 793 there was no army to stop the longboats when they landed on Northumbria’s over-exposed coast. The Vikings came because young Scandinavian men couldn’t get married until they had accumulated sufficient capital assets; their annual raids on Britain and Ireland fulfilled these socio-economic needs so long as there were easy assets to be stripped. And so every year for seventy-odd years they went a-raiding for their annual cash bonuses; and no monastery, no maiden, was safe from their predations. There’s nothing you couldn’t teach the Vikings about short-selling.

Get rich quick, fellas, before the loot runs out.

But the Vikings were by no means as stupid as Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis made them look in the 1958 Hollywood movie. In 865AD they came to stay. They did not come in their millions – there may have been about ten thousand of them. They had no intention of wiping out the population of these islands. They rather smartly married the daughters of Anglo-Saxon thanes and insinuated themselves into the squirearchy. They inherited lands rather than stealing them; they enthusiastically patronised the church. Hundreds of English place-names – the so-called ‘Grimston’ hybrids which attach a Viking personal name to an Anglo-Saxon ‘tun’, or village – attest to the success of this brilliant and sustainable policy. And more than that: they turned waste into farmland and built trading settlements; they made things; they came up with new products and innovative techniques for fabricating goods. York’s Viking archaeology is a prime witness to this enterprise, just as New York’s skyline testifies to the old American dream based on hard graft, thrift and enterprise.

The Vikings integrated and contributed – far more than the Normans, who simply killed the English aristocracy off and replaced it with a brutalising and rapacious elite whose wives were reluctant to follow them because the English food was so awful. No wonder they feared the revolting peasants.

What comes around goes around. No doubt the architects of the great banking collapse of the early 21st century will escape with their personal fortunes intact and reflect that, on the whole, they have done rather well for themselves. We may all hate them, but as a breed they will almost certainly survive, protected by high walls and barbed wire and the fawning caresses of Government. As for society… will we ever learn to take the long view? Only time will tell.

The form book is not promising, I’m afraid, although it is full of instructive examples if we can persuade ourselves and our politicians to pay attention in history classes. And incidentally, when we librarians of disaster draw up our lists of do’s and don’ts from the past, number one is always, will always be… never, ever, go anywhere near Afghanistan.

the money issue /// themed

the ticking time-bombs of money: debt , inflation and interest

Joe Turnbull produces the type of articles some would dismiss as the work of a conspiracy theorist only Joe’s work is distinctly lacking in bullshit and argued with the authority and research of an academic.

Fiat money. The entire global economic system is founded on it, so you’d think that it would be pretty well known. But I’d wager that a large percentage of you reading this article won’t have even heard of the phrase, and that an even larger percentage wouldn’t know what it actually means (and no, it doesn’t count if you quickly go off and Google it before reading on). And that’s no slight on the intelligence of Novel readers (a more enlightened bunch than most, I’m sure). Rather, it is testament to how unquestioningly accepted the current monetary system is. It is also helped by the smoke and mirrors of modern economics; shrouded in jargonistic language and concealed using ridiculously complicated mathematics, which is enough to perplex most members of the public, (even those shrewd enough to read Novel) and thus pacify any attempts to understand, let alone criticise the fiat monetary system.

remains the de facto currency that global trade is carried out in. So now we find ourselves in a situation where the entire global economy is run by fiat paper money, not backed by anything tangible.

The incredible thing about this system is that the only thing supporting all of the major global currencies: Dollars, Euros, Yen, Pounds, you name it, is pure faith. Our entire global economic system is based on nothing more than a promise that these essentially worthless pieces of paper can be exchanged for goods and services and that they always will be. And yet it works, well, it has up to now...

Paper money dates back at least as far as 10th century China where it was used to save merchants the hassle of transporting large quantities of heavy coins across long distances. This paper money was convertible into gold and silver but the system eventually began to collapse in the 14th Century as the ruling Yuan Dynasty began printing more paper money than it had in gold and silver reserves which led to hyper-inflation. An ominous warning for our current system...

Commodity based currencies tend to be fairly stable as in the case of gold and silver, there is a fixed and finite amount of them which in turn keeps inflation in check. To increase the money supply by say $10 billion in a system based on gold or silver you would have to prospect, mine and process $10 billion worth of gold and or silver.

Fiat money on the other hand is much more volatile as the amount of paper money able to be printed is virtually limitless, in fact only 3% of the global money supply actually exists as paper money, the other 97% exists purely in digital format traded from bank to bank and as such is subject to wild oscillations in the global economy.

This stems from the way new money enters into circulation under the current fiat system. To understand this we also have to understand the system of ‘fractional reserve banking’ which almost all modern banks operate under and which underpins the entire fiat monetary system. The basic principle of fractional reserve banking is really quite simple; banks are able to loan out nine times the amount of money that they actually hold in reserves, thus creating nine times more money out of nothing.

The Gold Standard and the proceeding Bretton Woods agreement ensured a similar system was in place throughout most of the global economy from the 18th Century until 1971, when President Nixon ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold. The dollar was and

Therefore, to increase the money supply by the same $10 billion under the fiat system, the government would simply print $10 billion in notes. These notes will be stored in a bank that will then be able to create nine times that amount due to the fractional reserve sys-

Essentially, fiat money means money that only has value because of a government decree or some form of regulation; that is to say, it has no fixed or intrinsic value and is not directly convertible into anything else. Fiat money has nearly always taken the form of paper as opposed to other types of currency which are based on commodities such as gold or silver or even livestock and tools.

themed \\\ the money issue

tem, so the money supply will in fact be increased by $90 billion. So where does this $90 billion of ‘new money’ get its value from? Unlike with the $10 billion of newly prospected gold or silver which would add new value to the money supply, the $90 billion of new paper money actually borrows its value from the existing paper money in the system thereby reducing the value of every dollar in the system; this is what is called inflation. Problem is, inflation tends to happen at a faster rate than wage increases and when this happens ordinary working people’s real earnings fall.

Even in the times of ‘booms’ in the economy inflation is experienced but during times of stagnation and recession it is even more acute.

This is because inflation occurs when the expansion in goods and services does not match the expansion in the money supply (i.e. how much money is printed). $1 in 1913 would be worth $27 in today’s money; that amounts to a 96% devaluation in the dollar, and other currencies are much the same. This process cannot go on indefinitely; at some point paper currencies will devalue so much as to become completely worthless.

The other astonishing thing about the fiat system is that many central banks, that is, the banks that print the money, are privately owned.

Take the US Federal Reserve aka the Fed, it is a privately owned bank which regulates itself and is able to make a huge profit. For the US government to print more money it must sell ‘government bonds’ which are basically just an I.O.U. from the government to the Fed, equal to the amount of money printed. That is to say, each dollar is created out of indebtedness to the Federal Reserve. Not only that, but the Fed charges interest on every dollar printed. When you understand this process it becomes clear that under a fiat system money is debt.

The more money countries print the more debt they are in, the more debt they are in the more money they have to print to pay off that debt and so on. This can be seen in the way some of the most ad-

vanced economic powers in the world have incredible levels of national debt including the US, Japan, Germany, France and of course the UK; even China has a public debt which is 33% of its GDP. Now here’s where it gets really dumbfounding. That $10 billion we mentioned earlier would have cost $10 billion in governments bonds plus a little bit of interest. Then when that $10 billion gets turned into $90 billion by the banks it is loaned out with interest attached. When you consider that this process of charging interest twice occurs every time new money is printed it doesn’t take that much to work out that there isn’t actually enough money in the world to pay off all the debt in the system. That is to say, the fiat monetary system is a system of perpetual debt. It is a mathematical impossibility for all the debt owned both privately and publicly to be paid off to the central and commercial banks. And the thing about debt is, it tends to get worse over time.

When you consider these facts it does seem that the current system of fiat money and fractional reserve banking has had these ticking time bombs of inflation and debt caused by interest inherently built into it from the start. Given the current state of the global economy it does really beg the question ‘is it the fiat monetary system that has got us in this mess?’ And if not, ‘is it this current mess that will bring down the fiat monetary system?’ Given the current poor performance of the global economy the fuse of the inflationary timebomb is only getting shorter. If people’s faith in the system begins to waiver money will only devalue further seeing as all that gives worthless paper money its value is people’s belief in the fact that it is valuable. The current unravelling of the Euro could be the first step. Once you realise this, the need for all the smoke and mirrors becomes apparent; there is a lot at stake for some very important people in our collective blind faith in the fiat system. Then again, you could argue there’s even more at stake for the rest of us if we don’t wake up to it soon.

the money issue /// themed

love’s greeting

On the 30th of June 2010, the £20 banknote, which boasted a portrait of Sir Edward Elgar was withdrawn. The current £20 note shows Adam Smith, the Kirkcaldy-born hero of neo-liberal economists. This sends an uncomfortable message to those who value the idea that England’s culture is most flatteringly represented by a great composer, scientist or by the greatest and most humane of all playwrights, Shakespeare.

Banknotes showing Faraday and Shakespeare have also been withdrawn although Darwin persists on the £10 note. A conspiracy theorist might suspect that Darwinian ideas on survival of the fittest can be all too easily distorted to support the prevailing ideologies of markets and winner-takes-all economic outcomes. A cynic might reflect that this very conveniently reinforces the idea of the intrinsic fairness (implying that it emerges from a scientifically validated natural process) of the rich ending up ever richer and the poor ending up ever poorer.

Perhaps the Bank of England, by its choice of banknote avatars, is attempting to reinforce this harsh message in a subliminal, if unexpectedly subtle way.

Would Elgar have been pleased to be represented on a banknote?

He was a deeply insecure man, very conscious of his lower middle class origins, and perhaps over-eager to present himself as a pillar of the establishment. A neurotic, sensitive, creative genius who projected a public persona resembling a retired colonel or country squire he never felt – and probably never was – fully accepted by the class he aspired to join. My guess is that he would have been delighted. This was the genuine deal – if they put you on banknotes, you’ve arrived.

On the other hand, he was never very clever about money. There is a story that on passing a busker who was playing his popular salon piece ‘Salut d’amour’, he saw the coins in the busker’s violin case and complained ‘that’s more than I ever made from it.’ He had, in fact, sold the rights for a fixed sum (two guineas or five guineas depending on who tells the story). He regularly bemoaned his loss of ‘interest’ in his creation and tried to recoup his lost potential earnings by rearranging it for small orchestra, republishing it with a new companion piece and ultimately by recording it. The new piece, ‘Mot d-Amour’, is beautiful but unmemorable, and while many people would recognise ‘Salut d’Amour’ if they heard it, even if they had no idea who composed it, not even most Elgar enthusiasts know its companion.

The bulk of the earnings from ‘Salut d’Amour’ undoubtedly went to the publishers until its copyright expired in 2004, seventy years after Elgar’s death.

What Elgar has in common with the modern recording artist and his removal from the twenty pound note.

Words by Toby Lipman. Illustration

by Darryl Ibbetson.

Posterity’s verdict on a musical work bears no relation to the monetary reward gained by the composer at the time it was written. Performers have always been better paid than composers, and this seems as true in popular music as in classical. Great rewards also accrue to impresarios, which is why composers such as Vivaldi and Handel spent much of their energy not only in writing operas, but in producing them, in order to gain the greatest possible share of the profits. Writing original music was not the primary concern, and both Handel and Vivaldi, like most of their contemporaries, shamelessly ‘borrowed’ (i.e. plagiarised) from other composers when time was short.

Music, unlike most other art forms, truly exists only in performance. A painting by Cézanne or Rembrandt is a tangible object with a value set by the market (of course) out of all proportion to what the artist received when he first sold it. The score of ‘Salut d’Amour’ is literally worthless. It can be downloaded from the internet without payment and printed in order to practice and perform it. Of course if the original manuscript ever came up for sale, it would fetch a respectable price. A short manuscript in Mozart’s hand of incomplete sketches is estimated to make £80,000 to £100,000 at auction. One wonders what the chronically impecunious composer would think of the irony that his disposable scribblings, which do not even contain a complete performable work, are valued so highly now that he is dead and unable to benefit from them.

Not that composers have always failed to profit from their manuscripts. Vivaldi, having achieved an international reputation through his published concertos, found that he could generate a greater and more reliable income by selling manuscripts to wealthy customers.

This removed the necessity to negotiate terms with his publishers who, although they served Vivaldi well when he was directly involved, may have been tempted by his fame to assemble and issue other, less reliable, sets without his approval. In some cases these amounted to what we would call pirated editions. Vivaldi earned a lot of money during his career, but was something of a spendthrift, living an extravagant lifestyle whenever he had the means. Like Mozart, he died in poverty in Vienna, still searching, at the age of 63, for a paid posi-

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tion or an opportunity to produce an opera in order to replenish his finances.

Biographies of composers often discuss their financial struggles at length. In all genres musicians seem to have an ambiguous attitude to money. On the one hand they all have to live; on the other they really do want to make music. Do they want money so that they can make music, or do they think music will bring them a fortune? There is no direct relationship between a composer’s or performer’s artistic merit and their financial situation. Orchestral players in the UK are highly skilled but earn comparatively low incomes. Some performers are plainly mediocre but become rich and famous despite this – you only have to watch the X-Factor to appreciate that (and that the impresario once again takes the lion’s share of the spoils). But genuinely talented musicians, both classical and popular, also become rich and famous. Maybe they are smart or lucky, but you don’t doubt their commitment to music and their music touches your emotions. In this case you like to feel that their wealth is a happy by-product of their music, not its raison-d’être.

The career of the early nineteenth century violinist-composer Paganini exemplifies these contradictions. He became an international celebrity and made a huge fortune. Audiences were astounded by his brilliant technique. Nothing like it had been heard before. Women fainted during his performances and it was believed that he had made a pact with the devil. An over-enthusiastic fan reported that the devil had been seeing guiding his bow. He kept his written down solo parts secret so other violinists couldn’t work out how he achieved his effects. There is no doubt that he set out to make a lot of money and succeeded brilliantly.

However he also wrote huge quantities of technically less demanding light chamber music, usually with guitar, the instrument he preferred to play for relaxation. These seem to have been written to be played

with his friends at home, and he published very few, continuing to compose for no obvious reason other than his desire to do so. Even his most important published work, the 24 Caprices for solo violin, seems to have been intended more as a musical legacy, a demonstration of what was possible on the violin, than as a serious way of making money. He once stated that he considered his most important contribution to music was his gift to Berlioz of 20,000 francs, which relieved the (as usual) financially embarrassed Berlioz for a while of the need to earn money by journalism, and bought him protected time to compose one of his greatest works, ‘Roméo et Juliette’.

While Paganini dedicated his fearsomely difficult Caprices ‘Agli Artisti’ (to artists), Elgar dedicated his sentimental little masterpiece ‘Salut d’Amour’ to his wife. Marketing was probably something of an afterthought in both cases. It is impossible to put a financial value on music itself. People make music or listen to it because it pleases them and often evokes deep emotions. Some make fortunes, most don’t.

The pleasure it creates is unrelated to financial reward or cost. Amateurs struggling through a Haydn quartet, or members of a school rock band, can experience delight which they could not buy for any amount of money, while an expensive ticket to the opera or to a superstar gig may bring disappointment for all sorts of reasons.

Music today, like art, literature and sport, is systematically commercialised. It sometimes seems as though it is just another of the ways minorities can acquire obscene amounts of money. But, also like art, literature and sport, it has a meaning and life wholly divorced from material considerations. Like Elgar we use it to express love, like Paganini we use it to stretch our capabilities or to relax. It enhances our lives as emotional and social beings. These cultural benefits are threatened if music is exploited solely as a commodity, yet without commerce how can it flourish? The challenge is to reach a workable balance between these competing economic and cultural needs.

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free culture online... or is it?

The internet and the advancement of recording technology; arguably amongst the most significant developments in the last 150 years which have had a profound impact on the way we receive and experience culture. No longer do certain types of music and art belong to certain groups of people. The general public has access to the widest range of music and art ever, as it’s beamed through cyberspace into households, schools, cafes, libraries, and workplaces. You don’t have to travel to Paris to see the renowned Mona Lisa, Bali to hear the shimmering music of the centuries-old Gamelan tradition, or Germany for the award-winning Berlin Philharmonic. It’s all readily available at the click of a button, for free.

Free access to culture means that class and other social boundaries are transcended; the enduring associations between classes and specific art forms are blurred. Can’t afford a ticket to a performance? Watch a live stream online or download to enjoy later.

Accessibility seems unquestionable but how does this affect our experience of culture and the values we ascribe to it?

A large part of the change results from where we experience it.

Armed with the relative freedom to choose the location of our experience, we remove the music from the concert hall and the art from the gallery. We can listen to Boulez conducting Debussy in the bath without the whole orchestra crammed around the sink, Daft Punk in the car without alerting the national press, or Jimi Hendrix

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while cooking a fry up without worrying about tripping over guitar leads, let alone reincarnating him from the dead. Recording allows us to experience sounds and visuals in our own space and time, and the element of physical presence is somewhat deemphasized.

Listeners now have an observable active role in receiving and reproducing culture.

Listeners also take part in how they receive culture. In the case of music, you can slow it down, speed it up, listen through headphones, replay, turn up the bass, switch it off; listeners can effectively recompose a piece, and they can recompose it differently every time they listen to it in their own space and time. This leads us to the culture of the remix which has grown exponentially since the advent of the internet, and specifically, YouTube. Seemingly anyone can download a tune, mess around with it on numerous software packages, and upload as their own personalized remix affording a new form of power for the apparently passive consumer.

However, has the vast amount of free music available on the internet decreased our value of it and increased our self-indulgence? I have to admit, I am guilty of skipping through tracks after listening to twenty seconds in search of the next new tune, but just because I may skip through it once, it doesn’t mean I won’t return and appreciate it more at a later date. That is the beauty of recording.

Money and the arts have always had a problematic relationship, whether it’s conditioning the type of art that gets produced, restricting groups of people from accessing it or reducing its artistic value to monetary worth. Is 99p really a fair price to pay for a song

Katee Woods is currently studying for an MA in music at Oxford University. Her second article for Novel examines the pros and cons of free that you may listen to again and again, that will provide emotional support or intellectual challenges, trigger nostalgia and memories, online music. Illustrations by Jen McHugh. give you a boost when you’re feeling down or get you through your 9 to 5? When music was first sold as a commercial cultural product for individuals to own, it had a tangible value, a physical hold-in-your-hands item. Now that a large proportion of music is online, free and exists in virtual space, we lack that tangible value.

Except you could argue that it’s not a lack; it’s a new found value, that of participation, involvement and sharing.

By defying ownership, the culture of the remix and free music online also defies the traditional notion of authorship. And conveniently, in the past, to make money from music, advertising agencies had to have a marketable author, a star. Maybe, just maybe, the dynamicity of culture available online will gradually devolve the celebrity culture of the star as more people upload their individual and personalized cultural contributions.

However, the so-called digital revolution does not come without its downfalls. Far from the utopian vision of a ‘global village’ and equal access, increasing disparities in computer technology and access to ICT equipment is leading to larger inequalities between global superpowers and poorer areas. Censorship remains a huge issue as governments and influential forces attempt to strangulate information flows to maintain power and control. Places including Barbados and Jamaica gained their independence only to be infiltrated by US telecommunications giants, effectively meaning they were hurried into returning power to traditional colonial forces

in order to participate in global affairs. Despite the advantages of the World Wide Web, access and participation clearly comes at a cost.

Power is always shifting, and it seems as if now a large percentage lies in the hands of the multinational information and telecommunications companies. This obviously presents a moral dilemma. Free culture – good because it widens our knowledge of other cultures, increases participation and transcends (to an extent) social boundaries. Free culture – bad because the money is merely changing hands from the artists, musicians and those directly involved in cultural production, to the corporate communications firms. Not to mention, the vast majority of online content is produced by people with regular access to communications equipment resulting in a flow of predominantly Western-centric knowledge. To say that the internet is global is one thing, to say that it represents globally is another. I think my conclusion is one of balance. The benefits of accessing free art and music, and participating in the production of culture are indisputable, but equally beneficial are the experiences of live performance, seeing original physical art, reminders that culture is made by humans. And that’s why, although I can’t always afford to attend gigs and concerts, and I enjoy the fact that I don’t have to in order to experience it, I will always pay for music produced and performed by independent musicians, and support the live local scene wherever I am.

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Issue 7 of novel will be the ‘print is dead’ issue. Once you’ve taken the time to recover from the postmodern genius inherent in the irony of a print publication about the death of print publishing, please compose yourself.

After composing yourself please compose work in relation to the fairly recent decline in printed media, the rise of amazon, the fall of Dillons book shop, small press scenes, online publications and lowly independent magazines forced to acknowledge their own shelf life in a pretentiously self-reflexive format.

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