The Stool Pigeon Music Newspaper Issue 031

The Stool Pigeon MAY 2011

# thir-

ty-one

Charlie Parker ‘Handyman’ in Charlieland Plus Bill Callahan Kode9 & The Spaceape tUnE-yArDs Alice Cooper Micachu Raekwon Chris & Cosey

FREE

The Stool Pigeon number thirty-one

May mmxi

“All channels open and flowing freely.” Cosey Fanni Tutti

Contents 06 09 11 26 27 28

leaders & letters miss prudence trog news business news court circular certificates

31 32 34 37 46 48

micachu chris & cosey kode9 and the spaceape comics bill callahan raekwon

49 50 54 56 57 58

tune-yards travel arts horrorscopes tea break print

59 60 64 76

moving images albums demos sports

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Small Print Editor: Phil Hebblethwaite editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Creative Director: Mickey Gibbons artdept@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Contributing Editor: Alex Denney alexdenney@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Interns: Alex Glynn, James Roadnight Published by: Junko Partners Publishing

Address: The Stool Pigeon 21a Maury Road London N16 7BP UK Online: thestoolpigeon.co.uk twitter.com/pigeontweets facebook.com/thestoolpigeonmusicnewspaper myspace.com/thestoolpigeon General enquiries: info@thestoolpigeon.co.uk +44 (0)208 806 0023

Words: Jeremy Allen, Daddy Bones, Alex Denney, John Doran, Tom George, Rory Gibb, Ben Graham, Phil Hebblethwaite, Lev Harris, Ben Hewitt, Toby Jenkins, Kev Kharas, Rory Lewarne, Alex Marshall, Jazz Monroe, Niall O’Keeffe, John Robb, Cyrus Shahrad, Hazel Sheffield, Son of Dave, Cian Traynor, Luke Turner, Thomas A. Ward, Zachary Weedon Photographs: Macomber Bombey, Chris & Cosey, Simon J. Evans, Jake Green, Dan Kendall, Rob Low, Gary Manhine, Greg Neate, Florian Oellers, Optigram, Ingrid Pop, Laura Ramsey, Tod Seelie, Erika Wall, Anna Weber, Jackie Young

Comics, cartoons and illustrations: Krent Able, Jodi Burian, Richard Cowdry, Lawrence Elwick, Mickey Gibbons, Lewis Heriz, Paul O’Connell, Michael Parkin, Carlos Slazenger Advertise: Contact Phil on editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk or +44 (0)208 806 0023 Printed at: The Guardian Print Centre, Rock Roberts Way, London, E15 2GN

The Stool Pigeon Dead Letter Dear Cass McCombs, wanker. Love, The Stool Pigeon There reaches a point in the male musician’s life — over 40, few albums in, not as rich as they’d like to be, nor as recognised — when suddenly they’re prepared to compromise. And so it was that we received a call asking whether we’d like some face time with Bill Callahan when he was in London a month or so ago. Not a big deal, you’d think, but here’s a man who despises being interviewed, possibly because he’s shockingly inarticulate for an obviously intelligent man. As Alex Denney points out in his excellent piece on page 46, Bill used to insist upon doing interviews by fax, and the whole idea of that is actually very funny.

Two points here for the younger musician: if you do hate the idea of music hack scum like ourselves asking you simple questions, have a sense of humour about it. You won’t seem like a hateful cock if you do. Also, pay attention to the fact that Bill is clearly panicking about not being where he wants to be with his music, and should be. Of course, the more an artist refuses to comply with the machine, the more anxious the machine becomes to know about them — up to a point, anyway. Then the machine gives up and the artist feels lonely, unappreciated and possibly broke.

We’ve become used to shy, bedroom-bound producers — usually of the dubstep ilk — hiding behind email interviews, which is totally unacceptable. Really taking the biscuit, however, is singer-songwriter Cass McCombs, who apparently only does interviews via letter these days. Journalists expected to write to him — with a frigging fountain-tip pen, probably. Wanker. I mean, who does he think he is? Horace Walpole?

Crappy Medium Carpal tunnel — I love you. Internet all day!

I’ve been reading Vanity Fair a lot recently and in among the stories on the shitting royal wedding and Kennedy dynasty are the really interesting pieces — on the economic crisis and, in particular, the internet. Vanity Fair must have flipped out a decade ago when it dawned on them that the real icons of the modern day are not swash-buckling politicians or sexpot actors, but coding geniuses. Good on them, though, for taking these people very seriously, especially that holy trinity of übernerds: Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and their bastard cousin, 4Chan creator Christopher Poole. These three dudes must be pissing themselves at the fact that they’ve become heroes within pop culture, and so it is that Cyrus Shahrad reports in his piece on Raekwon (page 48) that the Wu-Tang MC once visited the Facebook HQ, where he signed the guest wall. Insane, really, when you think about it.

Furthermore, new star of hip hop and social networking junky Lil B recently said: “I already conquered MySpace, I conquered Facebook… Shout outs to 4Chan, all the internet hackers, anybody that’s on the internet all day, and you slouch, and your back hurts, carpal tunnel — I love you. Internet all day! We’re hurting. Radiation from the computer is hurting my eyes, I love it.”

That, of course, is the greatest quote of the year, but it’s also worrying. Or rather, if it encourages blind faith in the internet, we’re all going to hell in a shitbasket.

People rightly expressed concern that “global aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company” Lockheed Martin were commissioned to undertake the UK census and I’ll remind you what (an admittedly paranoid) Marilyn Manson told us about them back in issue 22: “They invented the LP record, and the colour television. They also invented the satellite, and every bomb ever dropped. They invented the black box. They owned the Twin Towers, and the planes that flew into them.”

A reputable company to entrust with your private information? Fuck that. And now that the EU are at last insisting that sites like Facebook offer us the ‘right to be forgotten’, isn’t it time to consider using new legislation to crawl back into the shadows again?

I don’t mean to sound like kook, but at least consider what 4Chan’s Christopher Poole told Vanity Fair recently: “Mark [Zuckerberg]’s vision of the world is that you should be comfortable sharing as your real self on the Internet. He thinks that anonymity represents a lack of authenticity, almost a cowardice.” Hence Facebook’s new facial-recognition software that’s capable of identifying strangers in photos.

Scary shit indeed that throws up massive philosophical questions and — goddamn it! — now I see where Cass McCombs is coming from, and I absolutely sympathise with Taylor Kirk from Timber Timbre when he says on page 22: “It’s amazing to me that we’ve got to this point where we go into a show knowing that it will be on the internet in a few hours in the shittiest medium. And for what? I don’t get the motivation. I just don’t understand it. I think it’s a real shame.”

Letters Sir, I’m through with being cool. That’s it: I’m handing in my resignation. Just thought I’d let you know.

Where I grew up, you got your arse kicked for being different, but that drew you towards like-minded margin drifters — people who were able to turn you on to life-affirming music; people who had your back when the next beat-down came along. This no longer seems like a possible scenario. There is only indie.

I don’t know quite when it happened, but at some point the ‘alternative’ dropped any remaining vestige of seeming different and became an all-inclusive umbrella. The status quo has accumulated the discontents. The music I live for has become associated with some passionless conglomerate of self-congratulatory bearded dweebs in plaid shirts playing to audiences with their arms crossed. No one dances; no one moshes. I now leave Rough Trade with what I assume to be great music tucked under my arm only to be filled with hollow self-loathing at the sound of today’s idea of weird, avant garde and hip.

How does this concern The Stool Pigeon? In your last issue, a noticeable amount of your interviews started off by stating that the musician in question was sitting in a café. Of course they’re sitting in a café. They’re indie cunts. Reminding me of that fills me with contempt for what would otherwise be perfectly listenable music. I’m oppressed by trendiness and I don’t know what it’s doing to me.

Maybe I’m just getting old; maybe I’ve just spent too much time in East London.

Either way, I’m out.

Yours sincerely, Paul Campbell, London Sir, as someone who has occasionally taken out personal ads in your classified section [cancelled for this issue, don’t ask why – Ed], over the last year or so I’ve noticed that those of a more, shall we say, esoteric bent have seen their kinky requests make it into the letters page. That hardly seems fair. Cramming my declarations of interest into as few characters as possible has so far got me diddly squat. Therefore, you owe me.

Sex-wise I’m not into anything even remotely niche. But fuck it — if that’s what it takes, I’m game. Know of some weirdo reader who wants to meet in a shady hotel to indulge their Super Mario Brothers fetish? Give us your best shot. I just want some action. Too much to ask?

Steve, aka Horny, Haringey, London Sir, I’ve been reading your Twitter stream and it sounds like you could do with getting out more. Maybe you’ve been spending too much time in the office and have lost touch with modern means of seduction. Please find enclose my personal guide to dating. Guaranteed to leave an impression.

—Whenever you give a compliment, end it with the words “for a girl”, said as sardonically as possible. As in: “That skirt looks really nice on you... for a girl.”

—Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, come back sopping wet, and offer no explanation.

—Eat only the parsley at dinner, lament the wasteful excessive meat and potatoes garnish.

—Fill pants with mulch, let a little fall out from time to time, and whisper: “Oh no, it’s happening again.”

—Upon meeting him/her, scrape finger across his/her shoulder, taste and say, “You’ll do.”

—Greet date with the classic, “Give me five, up high, down low, you’re too slow.”

—In an accusing tone, constantly compare your date unfavourably to Gollum, as in, “Gollum didn’t smoke.”

—Attempt to do napkin origami. Fail. Be ruthlessly hard on yourself with “I suck” and “I’m such a loser!”

—Respond at entirely inappropriate times with comments like, “Is that a threat or an invitation?” or, “Do the math.”

—After successfully cutting meat, exclaim proudly, “I am the shit.” Do that “raise the roof” gesture.

Regards, Robin, Colchester Sir, there was a lot to like in that last issue. Well done, Mr Pigeon. I invite you to frolic in my fort made of sofa cushions and blankets. It’s dope.

Sandra, Bristol Sir, I was intrigued to learn in the last issue of your fine organ that Kings Of Leon choose to broadcast their successful rock-star status by ferrying themselves about on Segways behind the scenes at live performances. As a long-term unemployed who has dreamed for some time of hitting upon a formula for success at interview, I thought you should know I’ll be making two-wheeled entrances as a candidate for entry-grade administrative roles from now on. Wish me luck.

J. W. Cooper, Widnes

Leaders & Letters 6

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

Gaddafi, Collins, Prince Andrew… the dirty bastards!

February 18 Oh my Christ, Adele is number one in 17 countries! She’s massive!

February 28 So Nelly Furtado donated the $1m she earned performing a show for Colonel Gaddafi to charity, did she?

Did she only work out yesterday that he’s a nasty, vile dictator? Come on Nelly, the clue’s in the name!

Colonel Sanders, Colonel Tom Parker, Colonel Abrahams, Colonel Mustard… bastards, the lot of ’em.

Anyway, I can’t keep writing this diary entry as I have to go online now and donate all the money I earned from Negative Press last month to Save The Children because I’ve just worked out my boss is an absolute cunt. Nelly’s certainly like a bird in the brain department, the daft bitch.

March 1 OMFG! Charlie Sheen has joined Twitter! I’ve been watching this tragic saga unfold, though the more I watch, the more I just can’t bear to tear myself away. It’s the media equivalent of a shit-leaking tramp being chased down the street after he’s stolen an orange from Camden Market — sad, yet brilliantly funny at the same time. I haven’t laughed so much since Bernard Matthews died and my friend Demelza screamed “Bootiful!”

The worst part about what’s going on with Charlie is the fact it’s such a great talent lost. Have you seen Hot Shots! Part Deux? How he keeps a straight face right the way through

that movie I’ll never know. It’s a shame he never did any more French cinema.

What’s amazing to behold is how idiots look at him as some kind of champion for the underdog. The Americans hear him say “winning” and they all cheer, because they don’t understand irony. If you saw Michael Bolton in the diner and complimented him on his mullet, he’d probably say, “God bless you,” and order a celebratory round of freedom fries. It’s also escaped a lot of people’s attention that Sheen has hit women in the past. Maybe they deserved it, who knows? If you want equal rights then you’ve got to take a pat in the mouth occasionally — that’s what my mother said. But she was in a home for the criminally insane for setting fire to a gypsy caravan at the time.

March 6 Collins has left the building! That’s right, the flabby ballsack that is Phil Collins has said goodbye to show business for good, and good riddance, I say. Does that mean Genesis are over as well? I hope Tony Banks and Ernest Rutherford aren’t going to ask that poor bloke from Stiltskin back again after they messed him around so much last time. Stiltskin did that one song on the Levi’s ad that sounded like the Smashing Pumpkins. Everyone went out and bought it and said, “What’s this shite?

Turn it the fuck off and put Pearl Jam back on!” Then, when all hope was lost, out of the blue comes the call from Genesis. A miracle! The chap thinks he’s hit pay-dirt when Phil

‘Nasty Fucker’ Collins comes back fresh from dumping his wife by fax and ol’ Rumple is unceremoniously sacked and banished to the highlands to lick his balls, weeping bitterly every time he gets in a taxi because the driver is obviously listening to Magic FM, and every third song on that godforsaken station is ‘Su-sufucking-sussuddio’. Heartbreaking.

What sort of a name is ‘Sussuddio’, anyway? My bet is that it wasn’t her name at all. Collins no doubt met this poor starstruck minx in a bar giving it the Big I Am, got her paralytic and took her back to his place to show her his blue-veined custard chucker.

She wakes up in the morning and Collins is sat up in bed grinning with his flabby moobs hanging over the bedspread looking right pleased with himself, and he says, “What’s your name again, baby?” dead cheesy-like.

She’s about to ask for a soluble aspirin, but when she catches sight of him she realises she’s going to be sick. Going through her head are the words ‘make something up, make something up...’ And then it all comes out of her mouth. “Soluble.

Su-suuuddiiooooo. Oooh-ohhhh-bbbbleeeuuuuugghhh!!!”

I bet that’s how it happened. The dirty bastard.

about to embark on the most important day of their lives, and all Andrew can think about is which bridesmaid he wants to take up the shitter. He’ll probably order them all to do him by royal decree and they’ll have to say, “Andrew, with this cock you’re really spoiling us.” The dirty bastard.

March 6 That Prince Andrew has been up to no good again. Trade Ambassador?

Tradesman’s Entrance Ambassador more like. The only people he should be an ambassador for is Durex, the dirty bastard. Just think of poor Kate and William. There they are

March 25 Loads of my friends are going to march through London tomorrow because of government cuts. There’ll be trouble and I’m definitely not going. Do you know why? Because it’s Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday. All the LOLZ in the world!

March 23 I’m so distraught! Liz Taylor has died. She was an absolute goddess, right up to the very end, even when she got all old. She was stylish and sexy, and knew how to keep people interested — by not being on TV all the time and keeping a dignified silence when so many others don’t know when to shut their big fucking mouths. She set a fine example that I wish so many others would follow.

She was my heroine and now she’s gone. The way she used to smoulder on screen with Richard Burton was a sight to behold, and even though they never lasted, there’s a frisson captured on the silver screen that means they will forever be frozen in posterity as one of the most divine and undeniably beautiful and orgasmic couples that ever laid eyes on each other. I’ve never actually seen any of her films but they show clips all the time, don’t they?

Miss Prudence Trog The Stool Pigeon May 2011

9

Song birds THUNDER Balls EDINBURGH, Scotland. A sports journalist who The Stool Pigeon used to work with scored a free round on an expensive Scottish golf course. Drunk talk with his playing partners in the clubhouse afterwards turned to the best sex they’d ever had, pricking the interest of Sean Connery who was drinking alone on the next table.

When the former James Bond was leaving, he doffed his cap to the foursome and coolly said: “Petula Clark. 1964. Up the arse.”

HAMMER Horror LIVERPOOL, Merseyside. A friend of a Stool Pigeon contributor has the dubious distinction of having slept with both Lemmy and Timmy Mallet. Timmy, as it happened, was a perfect gent who offered to buy her breakfast the next morning. However, things soon went awry when a passer-by shouted, “Oi! Where’s your hammer?” at Timmy. “It’s not a fucking hammer, it’s a mallet!” he bellowed back viciously. Our friend slipped away, discreetly and at speed.

FRANKIE Soil EDINBURGH, Scotland. While The Stool Pigeon was out on the piss in Edinburgh recently we came across Rick McMurray from Ash at a fancy-dress party. Done up as comedic tormentor-of-the-weak Frankie Boyle, Rick was celebrating the imminent birth of a little one.

Then a space cleared on the dancefloor and he mysteriously found himself alone. Asked if everything was okay, Rick slurred, “I think I’ve shit myself.” Soiled but unbowed, he continued drinking.

MIGHTY Python KING’S CROSS, London. It was with some amusement, and possibly shock, that Guardian deputy features editor Tim Lusher tweeted a Goldie quote from an Evening Standard interview: “On a night out I used to have a litre and a half of vodka, two Rohypnol...” Not to be outdone, Guardian music writer Alexis Petridis reminded his colleague that at the height of the drum’n’bass don’s cocaine madness in the 1990s he insisted on being addressed as… Biggus Dickus.

James Pants gets his knickers in a twist distorting the sounds of the fifties Words

Daddy Bones

Photograph

Jake Green

Since the dawn of sound recording, artists have gone to extraordinary lengths to produce and capture a special sound. Guitar amps punctured on marbled stairwells, violinists submerged underwater, chimes struck in a dry desert breeze — whatever it takes to satisfy the demands of the sonic muse. Mind you, plenty of shit happens by accident. Stones Throw Records’ resident weirdo, James Pants, credits the aural aesthetic of his latest album to 1950s records, brain pills and having to keep the noise down in his dad’s bible study.

“Basically, my wife and I moved into my parents’ basement in Colorado Springs,” James cheerfully explains, “which was kind of nice, but also a little bit peculiar. My dad’s a Presbyterian minister and has this study with thousands of books on the life of Martin Luther, spiritual formation, Bible concordances, etc. He was kind enough to move a bit of it to a broom closet in his church so that I could record in his study. So, really, this album is credited to the goodwill of my father.”

Restricted by the constraints of the space generously made by Minister

Singleton, James didn’t have room for the full range of gear used on his first two acclaimed albums, Welcome and Seven Seals. “I ended up using really small keyboards,” he enthuses; “a Yamaha Portastudio, and a Radio Shack Custom Tone that had all these great sounds like ‘Goblins’ and ‘New Age Of Earth.’ For the drums, I had to be very quiet, so I used simple MIDI boom-ch-boom-ch stuff and, strangely, the result came out better than any of my other stuff! Also, I started taking brain medicine during this time, so I think I was able to focus better. Found out I was bipolar this year. Fun times.”

Musically, the oddball singer-producer has moved on as his record collection has grown. Having named himself James Pants as a pun on James Chance, the eighties no wave star, he set out in

2006 with tints of his almost-namesake, calling his leftfield synth-funk style ‘freshbeat’. Since then, things have just gotten darker and weirder. He’d digested a lot of doo wop and fifties teen sounds — “Sadie Hawkins dance stuff,” in his words — for the latest effort, though they’re barely recognisable through his fogs of distortion; a sockhop in an asylum, if you will. “I try to get pretty out there,” he admits.

It’s great, freaky material and begging another descriptive title, but the album itself is eponymous. “It was supposed to be called Love Kraft,” he pines. “I think that was my greatest album name I’ve ever come up with. I was reading a bunch of H. P. Lovecraft at the time. Basically, all was set, artwork and all, then somebody tipped me off that there was a record by Super Furry Animals called Love Kraft, with the ‘k’ and all! Worse, it was from 2000-something; if it was from the early-eighties or whatever, I’d have no qualms about re-using a name, but this was unacceptable. I really didn’t know. I’ve never even listened to the Super Furry Animals.”

Though he recently upped sticks and moved out to Köln, Germany to work for the Red Bull Music Academy and expand his horizons, James still records and performs solo. “I’m a big fan of the tacky, cruise-ship style entertainment,” he says, smiling, “always have been. All my music is kind of seen through that lens. I really don’t like collaborations and have a hard time working with other people, at least regarding music. I feel like bands need to have a dictator in order to be really good. I don’t really feel comfortable being a dictator, so I just do it myself, 100 per cent. I’m really not an arrogant guy, or mean or anything, I just don’t like collaborating with others on music.” He shrugs. “I’d love to do some production for others though at some point — Phil Spectorstyle. I guess that means I need to start bringing a gun to sessions.”

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News The Stool Pigeon May 2011

11

Son of Dave This is the summer of hate. Tonight the fiesta will come. It’s the summer of hate.

Here comes an historic summer.

I’ve shaved, plucked, replaced missing buttons and teeth, fasted and had a lung flush. It’s going to be a riot.

Oh, so many furious people! So many wars going on all at once, and our Smug Leaders’ priority at the possible end of military and royal rule in the Middle East was to travel there with an entourage of arms dealers.

The Brit Awards came and went without so much pathetic Britdrunkenness on telly this year (not that I watched it). That’s a good sign. Some good bands won, and the mainstream humans got to hear a few things the cool kids knew about four years ago. Job done.

Spring arrives and the many are realising they won’t be able to afford an Easter holiday. Maybe they write letters to New Zealand, Japan, or Egypt, where they have relatives or friends in chaos. They are grateful nothing threatens us here. Our Smug Leaders have managed to convince the many that it is somehow everyone’s responsibility to carry the burden of debt that was caused by banks and bad governing; a debt that doesn’t exist in countries like Canada or France, where banks were better regulated. The coalition has put a Tory Roman Catholic in charge of the BBC Trust, Chris Patten, and made sure Rupert Murdoch gains full ownership of BSkyB, thus ensuring any competition to the BBC is also a right-wing ally.

This information is all available through your local Starbucks wi-fi cappuccino, so why should you have to read about it in this barroom-floor rock’n’roll paper?

Because it’s inseparable from the music, you little punk. Even the most vapid pop stars are now trying to make a token stand against something. The bubble of fun and safety has burst. Are you gonna bury your head in the Ibiza sand with the normals next door?

This summer is going to be a complete bloody riot. Already the student protests over ungracious course fee increases have proved that kettling is still standard procedure despite ‘enquiries’ and ‘findings’ after the G20 affair, with Ian Tomlinson dead and so many beaten to discourage protesting.

You won’t dance to pop ads created by teams of songwriters

and Chardonnay-swilling record execs in sterile studios in Sweden, no. You will steal Arcade Fire albums and the words will inspire you as much as Dylan’s vaguely protest songs did in the latesixties, and you will put on your hoods and boots and hit the streets.

Some might still wonder if it’s cool to cause a fuss. Isn’t protesting just a naïve reaction to complicated issues being dealt with by far-more qualified people?

Ho ho, never has been, silly muffin. The census you’ve been dutifully been filling in is being carried out by American arms giant Lockheed Martin, a company with such a dirty dishonest record Machiavelli wouldn’t hire them.

But our Smug Leaders are paying them £150 million to carry out the census, and trusting them with the information.

And as the cuts drive us mad, severing every limb of our social funding, snipping away what’s ours in the name of self sacrifice and stiff upper lip, Barclays Bank defers paying billions of tax indefinitely. The Smug Ones’ priority is to draw attention to the welfare cheat and shut down coastguard stations instead of changing laws which allow Boots to pay corporation tax of only three per cent. The old tax haven game saves so many billions for the big corporations, while the cuts snuff out libraries and sports centres. Tory priorities are to keep The City thriving, oil pumping, and power theirs.

It’s never black and white, right and wrong, I know, but without a strong opposition the pricks will goose step all over us. In the midnineties, playgrounds were sad concrete shitholes before Labour put money into them. Tories have put a stop to that, too. In most European countries they subsidise music venues. In England? Bloody Ha! The Smug Ones’ priority is to bring in a Goldman Sachs man to the Bank of England monetary policy committee. The cult of the businessman sucks money out of anything that lives for lack of being able to sing in tune.

Here comes the summer!

Dancing in the streets and running from horses. I might even profit from all this activity. I’ll sell you a Son of Dave handkerchief to mop the bleeding baton bruise on your noggin. This summer is gonna be a great one. I’ll see you there.

THE RIFF JUST GOES ON, DEMAND ROCK LOVERS Words John Doran Photograph

Florian Oellers

Recently

The Stool Pigeon was DJing to a bunch of jabbering ingrates in a house of ill repute near Kings Cross in this nation’s ugly capital.

Under the questionable spell of some foul-tasting crystals, we came up like Ming The Merciless while playing ‘Shrinking Moon For You’ by Wooden Shjips. After seven or eight minutes of warmly reverberating riffage a punter came over to the DJ booth, barely able to control himself because he was shaking so much.

Unfortunately it turned out he was shaking with uncontrollable rage not ecstasy. “Will you make... this... riff... stop?” he sputtered.

The answer, of course, was ‘no’. And here to explain to this 9-5-workin’, pastel-shirt-with-the-button-downcollars-wearin’, Fosters-drinking sucker why the answer to this question is a quantum impossibility, is Mr Ripley Johnson of the psychedelic rock bands Wooden Shjips and Moon

Duo: “Well, one way to look at it is that the riff does not and cannot ever end, because nothing does. And that is the philosophical and maybe spiritual angle to the whole repetitive and minimalist approach: you can tune into certain realities if you choose to pay attention and focus. I’m very much into the Buddhist idea that the only reality is the present moment and that there is no future or past; they are just mental constructs. Which is why wanting the riff to end is just a waste of mental and emotional energy.

“The riff goes on, accept it.”

Acceptance of the riff is truly the first step towards enlightenment — or enheavyenment, if you prefer.

While Wooden Shjips are the unstoppable narconauts dealing in rapturous deep brain thrombosis, coming on like an unholy alliance between Suicide and Loop, Moon Duo are the other, lighter, side of the same extremely psychedelic coin. Featuring Ripley on vocals and lysergically blis

News 12

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

ACCEPT IT, MOON DUO tering guitars and his partner Sanae Yamada on keyboards and machine rhythms, the band take a much more holistic (and more drug-free) approach to blowing minds on their debut album Mazes, which references everyone from The Velvet Underground to Hawkwind, Relatively Clean Rivers and The Grateful Dead. Ripley, a prodigiously badger-bearded gentleman of rock, says: “We definitely try to bring psych elements other than a heavy, druggy vibe with Moon Duo. I’m a big fan of that easygoing California psych vibe, so I think that comes through sometimes.”

The guitarist is rapturous on the subject of being in a band with one’s girlfriend: “It rules. I think it often makes for a much more civilized experience, especially on tour.”

The album is born out of love in a number of ways, however. It is a love letter of sorts to that hub of freewheeling, sun-dappled psychedelia, San Francisco, as the pair wrote it in

the city before leaving for their new house in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Ripley says: “We recorded it in our house in San Francisco and to me it sounds like a San Francisco record. Thematically, it’s generally about leaving that city and moving on. So that’s how I hear it.”

He even says that the perfect place to hear it would be “driving down Highway 1 in California, from San Francisco to Santa Cruz”.

Out on the road the big wheels keep on turning and that riff keeps on rolling. Accept it brother, just accept it.

Mindful production team Instra:mental becoming essential players in UK dance Words Rory Gibb

Damon

Kirkham is explaining the attitude that informs his Nonplus+ label’s varied approach to A&R, its release schedule flitting from ASC’s lustrous drum’n’bass to the mangled lo-fi electro of Actress and Kassem Mosse. “It’s about leaving an imprint of good music, like other artists have done for us. Music that takes you back to a time or triggers certain emotions — that stuff never dies.”

Music’s link to specific times and places has informed a lot of discussion around the UK’s dance music continuum.

With roots stretching to the earliest days of hardcore, certain elements — the Amen break, the pitched-up diva vocal — run as strands through its entire history. As Instra:mental, Kirkham and fellow producer Alex Green are hardwired into that lineage, though their label’s eclectic output and their own rapidly mutating music defy any linear logic. In 2007, frustrated by a stagnating drum’n’bass scene, they re-emerged after a six-year hiatus to spearhead a dramatic shift. This new sound — ‘autonomic’ — was inspired by their interest in a wide range of musics and was introduced to the world through a regular podcast. It signified a return to the genre’s futurist roots, loosening beats, slowing tempos, returning space to its packed structure.

But true to restless form, the duo have moved away from the sound they pioneered. Debut album Resolution 653 is something else entirely — a muscular electro hybrid that upholds Instra:mental’s reputation for experimentation but travels down chilly and conceptual new avenues.

Alternating between acidic force and slowly drifting synth work, it’s as much mood piece as dancefloor artefact.

“Because we love sci-fi, we set out to write a themed album a couple of years ago, but it didn’t work,” says Kirkham. “This one came together spontaneously and sounds really like a stark, dystopian city. By accident it’s ended up being the album we wanted to write.”

Patterns of influence move full circle. Inspired by those that came before — play Source Direct’s effervescent ‘Secret Liaison’ alongside Instra:mental’s music, and the connections crackle like electricity — the duo have unwittingly become a further node in the bass continuum.

“So many people have said that [our podcast series] has opened their eyes to experimenting again,” continues Kirkham, “not just in drum’n’bass but everywhere.”

They’re certainly leaving an imprint: by fusing genres, Instra:mental’s music has formed a crucial link in an ongoing evolutionary process.

News The Stool Pigeon May 2011

13

Shopkeepers of the world unite 5:30am. I’m heavy with sweat after the rudest of awakenings. A nightmare was on me. Tearfully observing the stagnant bovine carcasses in the delivery freezer, I notice Lady Gaga appearing from nowhere. She pushes me onto the cold tiles. Tearing into my flies and vainly searching for my negligible member, she spits Mr Porky’s into my petrified mouth, dressed in meat. I cry out but nobody hears my screams, and her face becomes Michael Winner’s. That’s the last time I eat out-of-date couscous from the anaerobic digestion shoot.

7:00am. If England is mine and it owes me a living, then why am I flogging my guts out in retail?

When I was younger I thought Ebitda was an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical sung by deaf children, whereas now earningsbefore-interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization punctuate my silences and stoke my ambition. I want to be driven, but teararseing recklessly in a mini like Marc Bolan, and how I wish a tree would swish from the Brentford roadside and thwack my head into eternity. Oh pulverize me, lurching branch, and free me from the purgatory! I went into this profession a pig, and I’ve come out a sausage.

7:30am. Saturday. At least we’ll be quieter, as the Orthodox Jews aren’t allowed in. I fill in the census safe in the knowledge that there will be no guests staying tonight... or any night. For nationality I write ‘Irish blood, English heart’.

My penis maybe Scottish, though, because it’s blue, veiny and it hardly ever goes anywhere warm.

The meat-wagon 1:00pm. arrives. I lock myself in my office and weep violently. It’s 20 minutes before I realise the needle on Dusty In Memphis has been revisiting the final groove over and over.

4pm. The final hour and I encounter anger. The customer wants to know why we’ve no corned beef. “Fray Bentos is evil,” I tell him and he carps meekly, flustered. “I would agree with you,” I say with Wildean promptitude, “but then we’d both be wrong.” As security ousts the idiot, I reflect on my glorious putdown. Then I remember I saw it in a chip shop next to a sign reading “credit will be given to OAPs (if accompanied by both parents)”. I go home, I cry and then I want to die.

her voice. It’s a technique reflected in her video for the first single off the album, ‘Doorway’, which sees Rostron’s features transformed by a finely sculpted and oddly masculinelooking nose. “[With this record] I’m playing around a little bit with gender,” says Rostron. “It’s just something I find really interesting — thinking about the limitations of defining things on a gender level.

And then I just thought, ‘I really want to do that visually as well; to try and create a person that you really don’t know — not just if it’s a man or a woman — but really what it is.’

“But it’s like this person has a really strong presence; it’s magnetic, it’s telling you something and you’re moved by it. With the prosthetics I just put some putty on my face to alter my features, and suddenly found that if you change the brow of your face, actually your gender becomes very difficult to discern, because if it’s not too big and it’s not too small it’s... strange.”

The video found an unlikely fan in director Miranda July (of Me And You And Everyone We Know renown), who wrote to Rostron to say she thought it radical because, as she put it, “who’s actually adding to their nose nowadays?” — an insight the musician is evidently tickled by.

And although W isn’t without its moments of dark mystery (‘Going Wrong’ and the bizarrely moving ‘The One’ spring to mind), it’s clear this is a record unafraid of flirting with the absurd.

“It’s funny, a lot of people say the record’s dark,” says Rostron. “But I actually find it quite uplifting. I mean, if I think about a track like ‘Milky Blau’, for example, which I have to say is my personal favourite on the record, there’s something slightly hysterical there, but it’s also really funny at the same time. And the lyrics are definitely about something uplifting, not dark or foreboding.

“It’s the same with the pizzicato strings, I love them because they’ve got this weird combination of being dramatic but also slightly comical as well, and those are my two favourite feelings, really. It’s interesting when I’m performing — there’s something empowering about it that I really like, but you’re always just on the edge of embarrassment; just on the verge of being, possibly, humiliated for life. There’s that very fine line of disaster.”

One track on the album, ‘I Am Your Man’, has Rostron ecstatically yelping, “Hey, me! I’m the right man for you,” and yet it’s never quite clear whether she’s singing as a man, woman or some sort of garbled projection of a male ideal. “I started singing that when I was improvising.

At the end it just reminded me of something Mick Jagger would do, like, ‘I’m yo’ man,’ sort of thing. Daft.

But at the same time maybe I do feel like I’m someone’s man, you know?”

Gender-bending pop artist Janine Rostron has a nose for the absurd but she will forever be Planningtorock Words Alex Denney Photograph Macomber

Bombey

rom the masked confessionals of Fever Ray to Ariel Pink’s freaky, hauntological missives, much has been made of late about artists who tap into the uncanny, exposing dark undercurrents at play ’neath pop’s primary-coloured surfaces. But for Bolton ex-pat Janine Rostron — daytime alias of experimental artist Planningtorock — twisting familiar tropes out of shape is a far more playful business than that.

Rostron released a debut under the future-conditional pseudonym in 2006, five years after her move to Berlin, and has since collaborated with Fever Ray’s Karin Dreijer Andersson on Tomorrow, In A Year, the Charles Darwin opera soundtrack released to the puzzlement of many early last year. Now she’s back in solo guise with a record on DFA, the cryptically-titled W, and she’s sounding better than ever before.

A weird and wonderfully expressive collection of songs comprising atmospheric electronics, mad saxophone intrusions and show-stopping, pizzicato strings, the record is nonetheless dominated by Rostron’s gender-ambiguous experiments with

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Chapter 1V. WHAT IF THE BEATLES HAD NEVER EXISTED?

his is something we occasionally ponder in the secretive lair of my velvet-strewn gentlemen’s club.

We love The Beatles as much as the next weasel, and who indeed could not fall in love with those jaunty tunes and that spendthrift optimism? “You never had it so good,” said Prime Minister Wilson as the young men burst out of the suburbs with their Neanderthal fringes and twangy guitars. For a brief flicker of time, you were even allowed to have what was so quaintly termed ‘a regional accent’ in show business.

The Fab Four also allowed a whole host of talent to sweep the charts and into the heart of the business. Many came from their hometown. Where would we have been without Jimmy Tarbuck or Ken Dodd? Two of the funniest men alive, I tell thee! It only seems like yesterday that Doddy was giving me sound advice on how to avoid the taxman and Tarby was teaching me ‘jokes’. And where indeed would we be without Cilla Black, eh?

The Beatles also opened the doors for a floodgate of talent from Gerry And The Pacemakers to the Dave Clarke Five. The Dave Clark Five, or the ‘Tottenham sound’, was the biggest thing in the UK in the sixties, and I know this from watching endless Ready Steady Go re-runs, brilliantly edited by their drummer — Dave Clarke himself!

What chance did The Beatles stand when bands like these were around?

Some say that The Beatles themselves invented lots of things, like long hair, drugs, moustaches, and free sex, and put the sixties on the map. They sang a song about a walrus while Ken Dodd had the best selling single of 1967.

The summer of love was kidnapped by a diddyman from Knotty Ash! The sixties were a time when woman had sex and were made to feel grateful, the word lothario made it into tabloids and pop music took over the world.

There were hippies, zippies and beatniks somewhere, but not where I lived, mind — that was full of hard-looking blokes with short back-and-sides.

We can thank The Beatles for trendy prime ministers like Tony Blair, who always wanted to be in a band, and the Electric Light Orchestra, and maybe for ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, the Rolling Stones’ greatest moment. And also for the word ‘fab’.

T

News 14

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

Fyfe Dangerfield of Guillemots

BINARY OPPOSITION PERSONALITY TEST Conservative / Labour Through The Window Pane / Red Fish / Fowl Facebook / Twitter Rihanna / Beyoncé Matt Cardle / Rebecca Ferguson Cocaine / Weed Rollies / Straights Alien / Predator Beatles / Stones Lennon / McCartney Looks / Personality Blond / Brunette Rocky / Rambo Indian / Chinese X Factor / Strictly Come Dancing PC / Mac Kate / Wills Diana / Camilla Megadeth / Metallica Recording / Gigging Kanye West / 50 Cent Blur / Oasis Morning / Night Old Media / New Media 33 / 45 Charlie Sheen / Martin Sheen Vaccines / Brother Whiskey / Vodka Sweet / Savoury

Adele / Radiohead Punk / Hippy Fry / Laurie Jessie J / Katy B Nature / Nurture Capitalism / Communism Vic / Bob Car / Train Christianity / Satanism Humans / Animals Men / Women Half-empty / Half-full Fiction / Non-fiction North / South Denim / Leather Winter / Summer Beavis / Butthead Dre / Snoop The Simpsons / Family Guy Email / Letter The Wire / Mad Men City / Country Connery / Moore Cat / Dog NME / The Stool Pigeon The Quietus / Drowned In Sound The Stool Pigeon / The Quietus CD / Vinyl Football / Cricket Death / Glory

Charity Poster for Japan Our buddy Lucas wanted to do something more than just giving some money, so he and some friends came up with this beautiful poster. It’s available for a minimum donation of £20 / $32 / Euro 22 from the URL below.

http://www.andandandcreative.com/ supportjapan/ All proceeds will go to the British Red Cross Tsunami Appeal.

Dark Dark Dark saw the light by jacking it all in for music Words Thomas A. Ward Photograph

Tod Seelie

If their

name were anything to go by, Minneapolis’s Dark Dark Dark would have you believe that their music was of a gloomy disposition. You imagine that if you uttered those three words in front of a mirror one tempestuous eve, all manner of unearthly spirits would emanate from the grave to haunt you for the rest of your listening life. Luckily, this is only a half-truth.

“The name started out as a joke — for the kind of darker folk music that we were playing — and we just took it to the extreme,” explains frontwoman Nona Marie Invie. “There is a lot of this kind of music coming out of Minneapolis; there’s a real community of amazing unsigned artists whose music is really accessible. And there are a lot of opportunities to play with different performers and to be inspired by them.”

The word ‘community’ comes up a lot in conversation with the softly spoken Nona and her co-frontperson Marshall LaCount when

discussing the troupe’s background. They met in Minneapolis five years ago and then, they say, “travelled around collecting people that we got along with”. Soon, individuals of a similar disposition from as far away as New Orleans and New York, as well as from Minneapolis, came to form the sextet as it stands today. Then their local community became a global one as they promptly skipped town and wandered the continents searching for influence and education.

“People hold on to their college and day jobs and say, ‘I wish I could go on tour and travel but I can’t,’ and we just went and did it,” says Marshall. “We essentially volunteered to not see any money for four years, not live anywhere, only play music, never get a job, never do this, never do that, and we have forced it to work. We don’t have a mortgage or children; we sacrificed on it, and gambled.”

The gamble paid off, it seems, and Nona maintains that the band are content with their nomadic life.

“The body and mind can’t be stagnant,” she attests. “We meet so many amazing people on the road and get to hear so many bands that we certainly wouldn’t get to hear if we had stayed home.”

Experience and a sense of spiritual freedom weigh heavily on their second album Wild Go (debut The Snow Magic was released in 2008, also on Supply And Demand Music) a breathtaking mix of pop, southern swing, traditional American roots music, chamber folk and Eastern European sounds. It’s an esoteric blend of influences gathered like kitsch souvenirs, only to be arranged to form a singular, evocative whole.

“We’re bigger hippies than we appear,” says Marshall. “We just tend not to dress and act like it.”

Is that why you, Nona and cellist Jonathan Kaiser appear naked on the front cover of the album?

“I think the meanings are layered and open to interpretation and I appreciate that,” he responds. “I like that it is revealing and intimate, but not too much so. I know people see it as daring and I also appreciate that, but I don’t see it myself. I think we bare a lot more than that in our music.”

It’s hardcore mixing studies with producing says Koreless

Wedding Songs

by John Doran

SIX OF THE BEST R I G H T U N R OYA L P I S S - U P

Tracks that won’t get played at Bill and Katie’s do

BY THOMAS A. WARD

Lewis Roberts, aka Koreless is the latest producer looking to find an alternative discourse to dubstep’s classic boom boom clap womp womp aural signature. “I’m trying not to pigeonhole my music into anything particular, like postdubstep,” he says of the deep and captivating 2-step sounds that are found on his debut double A-side single, ‘4D’/’MTI’.

“But I see it as a kind of electronic soul... Well, something like that, anyway.”

The 19-year-old Welshman says his previous attempts at forging a musical path under the pseudonym of Nadsat (the fictional argot used by the teenagers in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange) led him to “pretty much rip off Burial”, although he still cites the mysterious producer as a major influence: “Listening to him on all the different levels that he works at got me excited, and made me want to have a bash at music myself.”

As Koreless, he has found a sense of space and ambience within his music that transcend general preconceptions of socalled ‘post-dubstep’, and stand in perfect contrast to the sounds he remembers from his hometown of Bangor: “Poor reggae, bad drum’n’bass and really dodgy, wobbly dub nights.”

Roberts now resides in Glasgow where he’s a second-year student of naval architecture (“I come from a long line of naval architects,” he jokes). And it’s in Glasgow that he’s discovered a city open to his musical ideas, not least since Rustie and Hudson Mohawke headed south to London. “I tend to

concentrate on my music for a week and then my studies for another,” he explains. “But it’s been pretty mad in the last few months. It’s a nice little scene here where everyone is together, speaks to each other and shares ideas.”

The immediate future looks more than promising for the young upstart, and the capital has already been calling with the likes of Gilles Peterson, Benji B, Huw Stephens, Jamie xx and James Blake all giving him his props. There’s also forthcoming collaborative work with Sampha and Lone in the pipeline, plus he’s looking to get his head down and finalise a live set in time for summer.

With regards to making an album, Roberts says: “I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz — not as a direct influence, but more for the rhythms and movement... I’m looking to make a flowing piece of musical unity, where it can take the listener somewhere.”

Now that would be a discourse with a difference.

DAVID BOWIE ‘Be My Wife’ (1977) The one ‘normal’ song off The Thin White Lunatic’s masterful album Low loses its veneer of normalcy when you watch the video shot to go with it. Against a white background Bowie is a clearly distressed cocaine addict pretending to be a clearly distressed cocaine addict pretending to be a rock star. “Marry me,” in this instance appears to be a metaphor for, “Please help me, I am lost in an alien world of angst and terror.”

BILLY IDOL ‘White Wedding’ (1982) Never has anyone used the metaphor of a wedding to mean getting back with an ex in such a threatening manner. “WOARGH! Take me back home now!” screams Idol like an Austrian with a secret basement.

CHUCK BERRY ‘You Never Can Tell’ (1964) This story of Pierre and Mademoiselle, two young people who prove the old folk wrong by sticking together and making their marriage work despite their callow youth, was written by a man who had an unhealthy interest in young girls himself. In fact he was serving time for “transporting a 14-year-old over the state line” when he wrote this chipper ditty.

IKE & TINA TURNER ‘I Think It’s Going To Work Out Fine’ (1966) You couldn’t make it up, could you?

ANTI-NOWHERE LEAGUE ‘Woman’ (1982) Punk rock wasn’t all about fighting the system. Sometimes it was about dressing up Chas and Dave’s sense of humour in tartan bondage trousers. While not as nauseating as John Lennon’s song of the same name, ‘Woman’ starts off as a love song before quickly descending into witless misogyny after the protagonist gets married. We need something to redress the balance...

THE DEAD KENNEDYS ‘Life Sentence’ (1987) Because you would only have been given seven years if you’d murdered the useless cunt instead of getting life with no parole for marrying him. Am I right, ladies?

A C H I N G LY BEAUTIFUL “…he constructs poignant settings of guitar, piano, drummachine and string-synth pads for songs whose achingly beautiful melodies and understated delivery mask sometimes bitter sentiments.” Andy Gill, Independent “Sam Beam’s career arc has an appropriately graceful, gradual trajectory to it — a solo singersongwriter who, as Iron and Wine, crafted achingly beautiful folk songs that attracted an evergrowing fanbase…” Davin O’Dwyer, Irish Times

Norwegian noiseniks Deathcrush sleighing audiences, causing mayhem Words Ben Hewitt Photograph

Ingrid Pop

“We won’t necessarily respect your freedom,” warned Norway’s Deathcrush before they swaggered over to play our Ja Ja Ja showcase in London last month. And they were as good as their word. After a 12-month boom, which started in relative obscurity and finished with them becoming one of the Nordic artists to name-drop, they turned the punters of The Lexington into drooling and befuddled converts with just one set.

“Even though we’re clearly not a metal band, our Norwegian rape, murder and pillage Viking helmet heritage might be what separates us from your UK and US noise bands,” says the band’s Linn Nystadnes of their distinct no wave, no prisoners sound.

She, along with Åse Røyset, spent three years studying in Liverpool before heading back to Oslo. Deciding that the only drummer they wanted to work with was Andreas Larssen, they moved to his small hometown of Trondheim for a six-month trial period. “Bye bye boyfriend, apartment and jobs,” says Nystadnes.

The decision to up sticks was a wise one; it wasn’t long until they had an offer from Sleigh Bells to support them for some European dates, and since then the US band have taken them under their wing, recently advising them to ditch SXSW and play with them in New York instead. “We became best friends from when we went on tour with them,” says Røyset.

“We’d been asked to support them in Oslo but we never got it confirmed, so we thought it had fallen through. On the day of the gig, [their management]

said: ‘We still want you to support them, can you come and soundcheck?’

And I was like, ‘Um, I’m at work. We’ll see what we can do.’ But we played the gig and it was amazing.”

With Nystadnes claiming the band feel “no pressure to release an album”, it may be some time before we hear an LP, but that doesn’t stop them from being bullish about the future. “We may have some of the same influences as other bands that have received attention in Norway, but we don’t sound much like them,” she says. “I’m not trying to set us apart here — I’m just saying that we didn’t start out with a goal to learn how to do what our heroes are doing and then make something of it.

“Idols are idols for a reason, but there are many ways to honour the past without getting stuck in it.

Teaching it a lesson, for example…”

“Baron buoyed each tune with tasteful energy, often palming his drums; and Osby — normally more aggressive — burned with a blue flame on Billy Strayhorn’s achingly beautiful ballad, ‘Chelsea Bridge’.” Paul de Barros, The Seattle Times “Puro Instinct’s music is at once achingly beautiful and massively unsettling.” Kenneth Partridge, Spinner “The gorgeously fragile, vocal harmonies on ‘No Way’ are achingly beautiful, breaking out into a soaring finale.” Ben Weisz, Music OMH “A thought-provoking, achingly beautiful film, as it continues to be gut-wrenchingly bleak, Mulligan hits home with a killer line that doesn’t so much offer hope, but comfort.” Becky Reed, This Is Fake DIY Follow Achingly Beautiful on Twitter @solovelyithurts

LIGHT ASYLUM INDUSTRIAL FACTION

question hangs over New York’s Light Asylum, and heavily: why haven’t they been signed?Be —The duo of Shannon Funchess, 39, and Bruno Coviello, 31, started putting tracks online about 18 months ago. Every one of them was great: pounding dance tracks stacked with Bruno’s industrial synths and drum machine beats.

The songs were filled with brilliant imagery as well, all about either an impending apocalypse or equally apocalyptic relationships. “Nail me to the cross in a darkened alley, the prince of peace doesn’t have to know about it,” went a typical line.

But the best thing about them was Shannon’s voice: an almost operatic contralto that couldn’t be more powerful. The last person to sound anything like it was Grace Jones.

Lots of people unsurprisingly raved about them.

Rumours abounded that they were going to sign to 4AD or Mute. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem told The New York Times that he was breaking up his own band so that he could produce them.

Then nothing happened. It went quiet, even as the band continued to put more amazing tracks online.

That quietness extended to their debut UK gig in March at Club Motherfucker — a fun, if dingy night in south London. The club was celebrating its eighth birthday and they’d flown the band over especially.

But only about 20 people seemed to know who they

A

were. And few more seemed bothered when they took the stage.

During their set, though, that question of why they’re unsigned got all the bigger. They were stunning. Shannon especially, couldn’t have been a more memorable presence. Squat, tattooed, muscular and wearing a studded leather cap, she spent the first few minutes doing warm-up exercises like a boxer. Then she just glared at the crowd, and let her voice and emotions hit them.

Bruno, to his credit, stayed out of the way with his synths.

Right at the end, they tried to hawk some CDs. Someone asked if they had any vinyl. “We will soon,” Shannon said. “We’re just waiting for the right label.”

She didn’t sound convinced.

It’s two days later, I’m meeting the pair in a London pub and, in person, Light Asylum are not what you’d expect. They still look as ‘in your face’ as they did on stage but there’s no intensity to them — no fierceness, no drama. It’s as if all that’s been drained out of them by playing.

They’re pleasant enough talking about their backgrounds. Shannon says she spent the last few years “lending” her voice to the likes of TV On The Radio and !!! while she “worked out exactly what it was I should be doing”. But they’re also pretty dull and, worse, they don’t seem to have much of an idea what their music’s about.

When I first ask Shannon about their songs, she says they’re a reaction against her strict Christian upbringing: “For me, this is a way of exorcising all that

The New York duo burn brightly on stage and, as Alex Marshall discovers, blow a fuse off it.

dogma that was pressed on me as a child.”

Bruno agrees. He grew up Catholic.

But dig deeper and there doesn’t seem to be a hint of dogma in their childhoods. Bruno spent his teens going clubbing with his older brother and making house records. Shannon played in punk bands and took advantage of her parents being overworked (“I formed my first band when I was 12. I named it Inebriated Arsonists”). Moments later, she starts complaining about people thinking her music has anything to do with religion at all. “I’ve never said ‘Jesus’,” she explains. “I haven’t quoted the Bible.”

If I were an A&R thinking of signing the pair, I’d have made my excuses and left at that point. This is the sort of band you want writing manifestos, not sounding like they can’t string an idea together.

Eventually, though, right at the end of 30-odd minutes of chat, some of the on-stage intensity does reappear.

It turns out you just need to piss them off. Shannon starts trying to explain the band’s music again, saying it’s “music for apocalyptic times”, a reflection of what’s going on in the world right now: “earthquakes and shit”.

Does she think we’re actually living in the end of days? It’s the third time I’ve asked her to clarify an answer in the space of a few minutes. She gets annoyed, glares. No, they’re just influenced by the general atmosphere in the world right now, she says, and adds: “Look, the music’s bigger than us. It’s this energy or force that comes to us and can’t be explained away. I mean, that force can affect everyone, right? I can’t explain why, if I put a gun to your head right now, you wouldn’t want to let me shoot you.”

News 20

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

The MINAH Bird. festival in already the best Shining light on the north. points are musical stop-off In Leeds your of Shopkeepers, n tio Na A d an Jumbo, Crash Johnson rprised that Ripley and you’re not su s recently wa o Du n oo jips/M from Wooden Sh Social Club aring a Brudenell photographed we Piccadilly it’s d Mancunian an t-shirt. Or you’re af Institute, De e Th y, Da & Records, Night l: Probe and gbee… Liverpoo Wowie Zowie, Kin old days, the in a llow, Korov effield: Hairy, Mellow Me Sh t. as ipping Forec but now The Sh endary Rare & leg the d an ars Bungalow and Be op. If you’re store. Amazing sh Racy book/record ley, but it as Be b Bo itely know you’re in Hull you defin ies cit se tter which of the really doesn’t ma ommunications ec tel s like e on from because no into music, arring their way companies crowb ertines at Lib e Th d ore an and seeing Param it. t cu g t didn’t fuckin Leeds last year jus se funny new tho of e on is al’ ‘Boutique festiv you know rating a gig’, but if expressions like ‘cu and that rst de un l u’l implies, yo of the what the former all ar ne ed somewhere one is badly need s for less-orditite pe Ap e. ov ab cities mentioned d film) in to mention art an nary music (not far as as d an st ea rthwest/ ons, Yorkshire, the no ac Be d an to be sated Scotland demand tip of the ern uth so the on which takes place , will do m August 11 to 14 Yorkshire Dales fro ng the sti ho is n eo e Stool Pig t precisely that. Th ling righteous abou fee ’re we d an main stage t involved with ge to g itin wa it. We’ve been . like this for years something exactly n the boration betwee lla co a is s on Beac ny of the people ma l, va sti Fe Moor Music menand shops already behind the venues ers of mb me n, go Wa n s Iro tioned, promoter London t on Field Day in the team who pu folk including the er oth of ne and a ton b Pony val and the Clu Leeds Film Festi . Four hts nig b clu t en em and Modern Amus tickhit s-s p-a ea ch and nights, three days music, but also the s re’ the e ets. Of cours word, s, movies, spoken live film re-score dance ts, jec pro ion lat theatre, art instal ach. and, oh yes, a be ers: among many oth Booked already, or, Hudson Flo ry cto Fa Jamie xx, ruff, e Woon, Mr Sc Mowhawke, Jami tom an Ph e Th , Kimbie Toddla T, Mount Mason, Twilight lly Wi ar, Be lar Band, Po ples, Anika, The Ap Sad, Ducktails, Votel, dy An le, op Pe Ghostpoet, Wolf tch t, Spectrals, Du Emmy The Grea zes, Pariah, Ma , an nm da ma Uncles, Ra Star , D/R/U/G/S, Demdike Stare stic nta Fa et, Isl S, AiN Slinger, iLiKETR it.

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Simon Le Bon of DURAN DURAN on punk and post punk

“We were an avant-garde outfit when we began, but we were also very ambitious. And when the media came into contact with us, particularly journalists who had a grounding in what came after punk — which was very austere, political, industrial, and had no colour to it — I think they felt what we were doing was a betrayal. We wanted colour, flamboyance, romanticism, aspiration and optimism after all that pessimism. Punk to me was fucking bright colours.

It had black as well, but the one thing punk wasn’t was grey. It went grey after punk. We wanted to bring the spiky hair, the dye, the make-up, and the fun. And we had a sexual tension and threat. Boy George said we were ‘like milk’, which I just thought was stupid. ‘Girls On Film’ was actually political in a way. It was a feminist statement, for sure. And you had all these little girls singing along with it in their bedrooms…”

As told to Simon Price for The Quietus

Rest Your Bones About the Black Country, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford once told us: “You've got pioneering bands that have come from that part of the world and have left a significant mark in the picture of rock’n’roll.” That’s something of an understatement and the Home of Metal series of cultural events, taking place from June to September, will both examine and celebrate the Midlands’ contribution to heavy rock. Witness pieces like this righteous handmade quilt, on show at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

News The Stool Pigeon May 2011

21

The Resonant Case of

TIMBRE TIMBRE Now here’s a band that pine for privacy We speak to TAYLOR KIRK as he limbers up to the release of a new record with his group

Song birds LADY Killer STATEN ISLAND, New York.

Any of you laydeez out there apply for the internship with Ghostface Killah that he advertised on Twitter? You’ll be in caring hands if he takes you on. The rapper’s weekly ‘Words of Wisdom’ when he posted the ad concerned ‘How To Make Your Girl Happy’. “Go on boat rides and shit,” he suggested, along with “have a little cake for her” and, well, “you gotta eat her pussy... But don’t suck the shit too hard, nahmean?”

FRENCH Connection PARIS, France. On a recent trip to France to promote her new album, Adele was asked to make a lastminute live performance on TV. Concerned that taking up the station on their offer would mean missing the last Eurostar back to London (and a scheduled slot on Radio 1 the next morning), her people put in a call to Nicolas Sarkozy, apparently a big fan of the singer. Happy to help, the president instructed his personal police escort to close roads and chaperone Adele direct to her Eurostar carriage.

WITCH Hunt MANHATTAN, New York. At a gig in New York in March, Salem kept an expectant crowd waiting for a full hour past their allotted stage time. An attempt to follow the hip hop cliché that the last thing on a rapper’s mind is punctuality? Nope.

According to our source, their entourage had brought an “industrial” quantity of drugs along with them, which security discovered and almost led to the gig being pulled.

LIVE Wire LOS ANGELES, California. It’s boring hearing rich rock stars moan about downloading, right? Not when it’s Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar. In what amounts to possibly the most ridiculous proclamation by a rock star ever, he recently said: “[Aliens] were plugged into me. It was a download situation. This was long before computers or any kind of wireless. There weren’t even wireless telephones. Looking back now, it was like, ‘Fuck, they downloaded something into me!’”

he bare-all conviction of Taylor Kirk’s singing voice can be traced back to an existential crisis. Before Bon Iver built a career on his man-withdraws-to-cabin backstory, Kirk quietly did the same, forming Timber Timbre with an altfolk album he prefers not to dwell on. was deeply depressed; kind of just trying to put my life in order,” he says. “I had to leave Toronto and be on my own for a bit.” a farm house in rural Ontario, where he grew up, Kirk laboured through maintenance work for friends while recording on a four-track at night. Previously a drummer with a rock and jazz background, he found himself picking up a Bible and an acoustic guitar, discovering a new way to express himself. did turn to faith,” he says. “That coincided with discovering all these early recordings of spiritual music, so it all came together at a formative time. I tried to emulate the feeling of those recordings and find heavy metaphors I could hide behind.” ee albums after that first release, 2006’s //Cedar Shakes//, the crackling fidelity has been polished, the instrumentation enriched, but the essence remains the same. There are spells and séances, hunters and heretics, always tussling between light and darkness. The songs hum with a spectral magnetism, the glowing embers of gothic country and backwoods blues stoked to sound fresh.

“I

At

“I

Thr

“I

used to think that making music meant reinventing the wheel, so for a long time I was just doing what I thought would be the obvious thing to do. Eventually I just stopped... resisting.

I allowed myself to follow that traditional meter or whatever — the thing that came naturally; the thing that is in our collective unconscious from the history of music. It’s all been done, for the most part, on record.” ber Timbre’s latest, //Creep On Creepin’ On//, catches the band at their most popular, with a “daunting” 18 months of touring ahead.

Yet Kirk still remains something of an enigma. His bandmates, multi-instru-

Tim

mentalists Mika Posen and Simon Trottier were lined up, one after the other, when an interview was requested. urprisingly, Kirk’s will to preserve an aura of mystery around the music makes him a reluctant interviewee. Sitting in a Montreal café, his sentences are fragmented with uncertainty, an apologetic “I don’t know” truncating most answers. then an incident is mentioned. While performing at London’s Rough Trade East last May, Kirk halted the show to chide a woman for taking pictures.

It was an uncomfortable moment and one Kirk sighs over now. “I felt so awful to single her out like that but at the same time I was mad.” intensifies unexpectedly, becoming assured for the first time. “It spoils it when every detail of an artist is revealed by a Google search,” he adds. “It’s amazing to me that we’ve got to this point where we go into a show knowing that it will be on the internet in a few hours in the shittiest medium.

And for what? I don’t get the motivation. I just don’t understand it. I think it’s a

Uns But He

real shame.” k, 29, has little time for perfectionism either. He avoids rehearsals and multiple takes, doesn’t listen back to the albums once they’re finished and doesn’t try to sell the older material at shows or work them into performances. Furthermore, his bandmates met on the night they made their live debut in Timber Timbre. perhaps he’s onto something, given the number of spine-tin-

Kir

But

gling moments — well-placed whispers, thundering kick drums, melodic epiphanies — springing from the music’s darkest passages. at’s the most exciting thing,” he says. “But I never know.

The excitement of capturing a really nice moment on record feels so fleeting; I think it’s impossible to identify when that’s happening. But a physical response to a song, yeah…” He laughs. “That’s kind of what it’s all about, right?”

“Th

Wo r d s C . Tr a y n o r. I m a g e A n n a K . O .

News 22

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

YOU’LL DO A DOUBLE TAKE WITH MISTRESS OF DISGUISE GAZELLE TWIN Words

Jazz Monroe Simon J. Evans

Photograph

-clad pop stars sing utilitarian pop songs and we accept that as art.

Others wear lobster-shaped hats and squat in big eggs and therein, we are told, icons are made.

But recently a trend towards more subtle explorations of the self has emerged. Fever Ray, Austra, Jónsi and, closer to home, Dimbleby & Capper are all helping keep local fancy dress outfitters in business. For Gazelle Twin’s Elizabeth Walling, performing in disguise was originally a means of avoiding awkwardness onstage, quelling fears of exposure harboured since her Yorkshire upbringing.

“I wasn’t a normal child,” Elizabeth says, laughing. “I was always very nervous, very shy, very clingy, very frightened. Whenever I had the opportunity to piss about in costumes I would. It allowed me to do more things, made me more confident, and it’s exactly the same now. It empowers you in some way.”

Inspired by Max Ernst’s shapeshifting Loplop creation, Elizabeth’s stage outfit is a means by which to distinguish and distance herself from the sexu-

Scantily

ally and emotionally explicit female pop stars du jour. It’s been road tested only once — at a “prototype show” in the vaults of the nowdefunct Shunt venue in London — and the reception was equal parts bemusement and reverence.

“People were a bit creeped out,” Elizabeth effuses. “I really liked that. It felt good to not just be looking out at an audience and making eye contact, or not making eye contact, or whatever I used to do.”

The now-Brighton-based Elizabeth was born into an artistic family, schooled in classical theory and self-

taught in the visual arts. After cutting her classically-refined pearly whites on cold, hard electro jams, she abandoned her bandmates to delve into “a slightly more epic-sounding field of instruments and possibilities”.

This has a whiff of the understatement about it: fantastic forthcoming debut LP The Entire City sees These New Puritan-ical horns and unearthly vocals twist beyond a sliver of human semblance, resplendent in a chthonic throb of synth and military drumbeats.

With influences ranging from Karin Dreijer Andersson, venereal horror filmmaker David Cronenberg and choral Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo, the Elizabeth Walling show could have taken any number of routes. Gazelle Twin happily became an umbrella for all of them.

“You see a lot of people doing everything the same way and being sexy, really overconfident, or the opposite — humble, little girl-like. I don’t feel comfortable with any of those so I’d rather just be… nothing. I’d rather just confuse people and be a whole mixture of stuff.”

With her spectacularly expansive vision — including a virtual, interactive version of the album in the pipeline — and chilling tunes to boot, Gazelle Twin assures us that when we look into the bottomless dark of our humanity, we needn’t be disturbed when something startling, odd and inhuman peers back at us.

A spot of bother inspired Austin trio Love Inks to pen their si gnature song Words Alex Denney Photograph

the the serpent serpent is is biting biting its own tail im not older nor more experienced than i once was im younger and have learned nothing the serpent is biting its own tail

the inner is the outer the serpent is biting its own tail

looking into the atom is looking into the univers and looking into the univers is stairing up into the open face of god the serpent is biting its own tail

Jackie Young

They say you shouldn’t bring marriage into the workplace, but Love Inks think they might just have hit upon a solution. The Austin, Texas trio do slinky, minimalist pop that sounds barely even there on record and, as it happens, that’s an apt description for a group that almost failed to swap vows in the first place.

“I’ve played in bands with Kevin [Dehan, bassist and hubby] before,” says frontwoman Sherry LeBlanc.

“After the last one, he vowed we would never play music together again. But with Love Inks I promised I’d be on my very best behaviour. There has to be a separation — it’s like if we’re arguing about something, you can’t bring that into practice. And with Adam [Linnell, guitarist] as well, we have to make sure we get that balance between hanging out as friends and as a band.”

Whatever work/life boundaries were drawn up behind the scenes, Love Inks’ music is all about the teasing, lo-fi intimacy evidenced on their promising debut album, ESP. The band took a mixtape of early Rough Trade releases compiled by Dehan as the jumping-off point for their eerie, pillow-talk songs, which sounds like Young Marble Giants going for a moonlit skinny-dip with Fleetwood Mac. Brilliantly, Love Inks take their name from a ritual described in a 1934 occult volume called Magica Sexualis — also a name which nearly didn’t see light of day, until fate intervened for the greater good.

“We wanted to go with ‘Shred Shop’, but it was the name of a major skateboard company,” says LeBlanc, laughing. “So we started looking and we found this book. There’s a chapter about ‘love inks’, which are what you get when you produce ink from burning old love letters, and mixing the ashes with a bunch of other stuff so you can write with it to persuade future lovers.”

Does that explains how you and Kevin hooked up, then? “No! We just thought the whole concept was beautiful — going to that much trouble to woo somebody. But you can pick at it in so many ways. Some people think of it as talking about sexual juices, other people think it’s about tattoos.”

One song on ESP’s mercurially short set, lead single ‘Blackeye’, nails their impressionistic colours to an intriguing mast, with LeBlanc cooing, “You got a black eye on your eye, baby / Tell me was it from a fight.”

“There’s this shameless, horrible paper we have in town here called Busted,” the singer explains.

“Anyone who gets arrested gets their mugshot in there; you can buy it for a dollar at the gas station. And on the front cover one week there was the guy from the band Harlem with a black eye. We never found out what actually happened, but when I sing that song I go into character, like someone who’s really distressed with their man coming home or whatever.

Because if I was just thinking of fucking Busted I don’t think it would carry the same emotion.”

Feeling Peckish THE DRESDEN DOLLS’ CHOCOLATE COURGETTE CAKE Serves 6 INGREDIENTS.— 110g soft butter or margarine 8 tbsp vegetable oil 340g granulated sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp vanilla 110g sour cream 450g shredded courgette, with skins on 225g flour 4 tbsp cocoa 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp nutmeg 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda Chocolate chips (optional) FOR THE ICING.— 30g butter 6 tbsp milk 1tbsp cocoa 450g sugar 225g chopped nuts, your preference PREPARATION. — Mix margarine/butter, oil and sugar.

Add eggs, vanilla, sour cream and courgette. Mix well then add dry ingredients, mixing again. Put in 9x13 or similar-sized pan, greased, and bake at 350ºF (180ºC) for 45 minutes or until cake is done in the middle.

Bring the first three ingredients of icing to a boil, the remove from heat and add the last two ingredients, and mix.

Pour on hot cake. Cool cake and eat.

Taken from ‘Lost In The Supermarket’, Soft Skull Press

News 24

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

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BANDS PLAYING AT SXSW

crumbs

Race to sell MySpace as users leave in their millions

2,000

Toughie Apple

SIEMENS

6 month share price 6 Month

1,500

Number of bands playing

Having spent many years living dangerously, Salman Rushdie has lost his fear of making powerful enemies. Describing himself as a reluctant Apple ‘serf ’, Rushdie went on to say that CEO Steve Jobs is “destroying publishing, just as he previously destroyed the music industry. No one makes money except Apple.” He then called up Jeremy Paxman calling his mum a dick while doodling an Allah stickman on Chuck Norris’ head.

1,000

Suckers

500

0

Timeline 1987 - 2011

Source: SXSW

ALBUMS UK MARKET VOLUMES BY FORMAT 2006 - 2010

70

Format

60 50

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2010 share

2010 +/-

CD

151.4m

131.4m

123.0m

112.5m

98.5m

82.2%

-12.4%

LP

0.251m

0.205m

0.209m

0.219m

0.234m

0.2%

+6.8%

40 30 20

Sep 10

Oct 10

Nov 10

Dec 10

Jan 11

BT is apparently locked in negotiations with EMI and Universal at the moment with the aim of launching a free music download service to all of its 5.5m users.

The aim is to stop these websavvy swine pilfering file-to-file songs from illegal portals like Pirate Bay. A brilliant idea with one fatal flaw... nobody is paying for anything. Shall I tell them or will you? If you won’t buy this ice-cream, Eskimo, then I will be forced to give it to you. See if I care.

Asian Occasion The sound of elation can be heard all over the radio at the moment thanks to the news Asian Network has been saved. Or rather the sound can be heard coming from the Asian Network.

The honkeys are all too busy grooving to Elbow and blaring out 6Music on the school run, but when someone tells them they’ll be delighted. The fact the digital channel has had half its funding cut and will need to grow figures hasn’t dampened the mood.

Hot Spot Spotify has just declared that one million people have been driven to the point of madness by gas ads, given up, got the credit card out and started paying for the service. It didn’t exactly word it like that in the press release, but we know. Apparently 15 per cent of all Spotify users are now ‘active users’. So what about the other 85 per cent? That’s a lot of spot ifs.

Business News 26

Digital

2.8m

6.2m

10.3m

16.1m

21.0m

17.5%

+30.6%

Other*

0.277m

0.194m

0.154m

0.146m

0.104m

0.1%

-28.9%

TOTAL

154.7m

138.1m

133.6m

128.9m

119.9m

Feb 11

Free Dumb

+7.0%

* Other includes cassette, minidisc, DVD audio, DVD video, DMD and 7” box set albums.

Source: MW research/OCC data.

MORE CRAP NEWS AS PRS REPORTS A DIP IN ROYALTIES step up, two steps back,” sang Bruce Springsteen in 1987 while he was still perpetuating the myth that he was a regular blue-collar kinda guy with a spanner in his hand rather than a multi-trillionaire living in a big fucking house. The idiom he adopted, however, could soundtrack the recent travails of the collective music industry. A while ago we reported what could be described as a divot of good news when single sales were up slightly, thanks to downloads.

Now we could be at tipping point again.

PRS has reported a further slump in CD sales and say royalties collected last year fell for the first time ever.

That could mean one of two things: one, the staff at PRS have been sat around in their office doing Soduku and eating donuts, or, two, digital piracy and a fall in high street sales means total royalties collected are down one per cent to £611.2m from last year. This time next year profits could be lower than Leonard Cohen’s ballsack.

“One

though we are for the latest technology, there’s nothing more embarrassing than when it moves on without you. There you are faxing all your friends, inviting them to a fun-packed soirée at your house where you’ll have a marathon of Horris Goes Skiing as you serve up an orgy of cheese breville and all the Sodastream pop a belly can hold down, then a cybernote zaps into your living room via an electronic cloud reading: “WE HATE YOU. WE’VE MOVED ON... TO THE 21st CENTURY. SPUFFMUNCH”. MySpace must feel a little bit like that now.

Rupert Murdoch, a man so staunchly antiquated he gets his servants to wipe his flabby ass with steam-pressed dock leaves, bought MySpace in 2005 for £330m. At the time it looked like the all-conquering mogul was about to corner another form of media, this time social. Around the same time struggling broadcaster ITV purchased Friends Reunited for £120m, and oh how we laughed at this staggeringly short-sighted piece of business. The station offloaded it again in 2009 for a token £25m. As MySpace is submerged further in sticky stuff, that damage limitation exercise looks shrewd.

Arctic Monkeys thrived thanks to the portal, which helped create a buzz around them. However, given that it was the first of its kind, MySpace made errors — it was riddled with spam, it was ugly and it smelt — but its biggest mistake was not being Facebook. MySpace’s slicker competitor eliminated the spam, the Technicolor vomit and probably took its own office Tom out the back and shot him. Suddenly Facebook was like an invite to the Playboy Mansion while you’re sat in your grief-hole wanking to livegranny.com.

But then a stroke of luck. Facebook struggled to obtain a music licence.

Maybe it could be saved after all!

Unfortunately, Spotify was about to steam in and offer the other thing MySpace did badly, and desperate attempts to build a music editorial service and streaming platform (steaming platform more like) ended in inevitable fail.

Between January and February, MySpace lost more than 10 million unique users worldwide. Furthermore, it’s losing senior executives with alacrity and, as a shell-shocked News Corp. pressed the panic button, Courtney Holt, President of Music, left the building. MySpace is now up for sale. Will the last person out turn off those fuck ugly graphics?

Robert Ashcroft, chief executive of PRS, stated the obvious: “The loss of high street outlets, the slowdown in physical music sales as well as the challenges capturing the full value of music usage online has meant that for the first time we have seen royalties collected dip.”

Combined digital and physical sales in 2010 slid seven per cent to 120m units leaving the likes of HMV on its hind legs begging for Winalot. The slump in CD sales is such that Mercury, home to Arcade Fire, The Killers and U2, has decided to dispense with flogging physical singles altogether except on special occasions. Presumably that means they they’re going to release Razorlight’s ‘Musketeers from Hell’ look at as a picture disc when they finally make their comeback.

Ashcroft called on the music industry to work together to support the emerging digital market in the UK. The other alternative is raid Springsteen’s mansion and make off with his silver.

by Jeremy Allen May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

Courtney pays up for ‘asswipe nasty lying hosebag thief’ tweet WHETHER you

regard Twitter as the province of the pithy or the domain of dullards, it is an inescapable part of life. Critics of the social networking phenomenon like to regurgitate the cliché that it is full of people listing what they just had for dinner. That might be dull in your world, but were, say, Col. Gadaffi tweeting, he might declare “this morning I imbibed a kilo of bugle and drank from a goblet hollowed from the head of my enemy’s first born”. Those detractors have either never used Twitter or have been clearly following the inanities of the wrong people (Stephen Fry), because in actuality many celebrities are far from restrained, revealing very quickly there are no limits to their fatuousness, and no ends to their desperation. If Twitter solely existed to drive PR executives batshit crazy, then that in itself would be a good thing.

For those that like to air their grievances in public however, beware — the ramifications can be very expensive indeed. Courtney Love has just been forced to settle out of court thanks to libellous accusations she made at fashion designer Dawn Simorangkir. Simorangkir claims the indiscriminate abuse volleyed at her by Love damaged her professional reputation.

Former Maiden singer subject of rule by iron fist SHOWBUSINESS is littered with stories of riches-to-rags even more tragic than Cannon And Ball’s descent into evangelicalism, but in this case, dear reader, the fickle finger of fate not only diverted its attention from the subject, it quite literally gave him the bird.

Filed under ‘Where are they now?’ for the last three decades, Paul Di’Anno, formerly of Iron Maiden, can be presently located doing nine months for benefit fraud. The singer, who was forced out of Maiden in 1981 claiming that being in a band with Steve Harris and Rod Smallwood was akin to working with Nazis, has ploughed a furrow altogether more fallow than his East End counterparts.

Iron Maiden decry the misfortune

LOCAL GOVT. DIGEST & REPORTS,

Presided P.HEBBLETHWAITE

LONDON.

over &

by M.GIBBONS.

A DAWN RAID by

WESTMINISTER COUNCIL

Up Before The Beak

As REPORTED by

JEREMY ALLEN TWO FLAGONS OF BREAST MILK ICE-CREAM

Seizing of milky treat prevents potential legal action by music’s current leading lady.

On Thursday March 4th, 2011 the sticky situation was quickly resolved

POP GOES

GAGA

In one bile-strewn missive, Love referred to her as an “asswipe nasty lying hosebag thief”. In another she claimed Simorangkir had “a history of dealing cocaine”, then that she’d lost “custody of her child”. And your mum blew Prince Andrew. While this gushing torrent of shit might have seemed amusing at the time, Love — who has since relinquished her hands-on approach to social networking — has finally agreed to pay Simorangkir $430,000 in damages over the next three years.

“One would hope that, given this disaster, restraint of pen, tongue and tweet would guide Ms Love’s future conduct,” gloated Simorangkir’s legal representative. of being ignored wholesale by the mainstream press as they sell out the biggest stadiums in the world while being flown everywhere by their swashbuckling replacement singer Bruce Dickinson. Meanwhile Di’Anno, real name Paul Andrews, has plied his trade as a sometime butcher and chef, while keeping the rock’n’roll dream alive in bands like Gogmagog, Nomad and Di’Anno’s Battlezone.

Sadly, Di’Anno was busted by the Department of Work and Pensions after an official came across a YouTube clip of him jumping around during a live show in 2006. The internet is a rat, I tell thee! He was judged to have made £67,500 while claiming disability benefit — hardly Robert Maxwell territory, though the judge said: “Your greed has cost this country a lot of money. It took many years to track you down. In 2007 you performed at 69 venues. In 2006 you performed 67 times. I do not accept you only got expenses.”

Di’Anno will have to serve at least four months before being eligible for release on conditional bail.

Never let it be said that Lady Gaga is out of touch with what’s going on in the world. While some stars like to insulate themselves in a womb-like bubble, Gaga only turns up to parties in them, carried on the shoulders of serendipitous serfs who in another life could be holding up ‘Golf Sale’ signs. Planet Earth’s most powerful pop star has her finger on the pulse and her ear to the ground.

She’s also had her head in the newsagent freezer checking out the Zooms and Two Ball Screwballs. And therein she discovered Baby Gaga, an ice-cream made from, shock horror, human breast milk. Believing the product to be a misuse of her image, Queen Gaga has made it clear she is not amused.

“A global superstar has taken umbrage at what she describes as a ‘nausea-inducing’ product,” said Matt O’Connor, owner of the Icecreamists parlour in Covent Garden. “This from a woman with a penchant for wearing rotting cow’s flesh.”

Gaga claims the anarchic whipperuppers of controversy have “ridden the coattails” of her reputation, though O’Connor hit back, claiming a star who has recycled “the entire back catalogue of pop culture” should sweep her own side of the street first. He added: “How can she possibly claim ownership of the word ‘gaga’ which since the dawn of time has been one of the first discernable phrases to come from a baby’s mouth?”

Regular readers of The Stool Pigeon will remember Icecreamists have some previous, having agitated the Sex Pistols in 2009 by using a logo not unlike Jamie Reid’s 1977 cover of ‘God Save The Queen’. Unlike her mainstream-subverting predecessors, Gaga may not need to take further action. Westminster Council’s food police turned up on the day after Baby Gaga went on sale, stating food produce made with “bodily fluids can lead to viruses being passed on and, in this case, potentially hepatitis”.

“What bad luck!” I hear you cry.

Perhaps, though, it should be noted as one of the founders of Fathers4Justice, O’Connor is no stranger to the odd publicity stunt.

LOU’D Behaviour

‘Laughing’ Lou Reed’s bossman Tom Sargit has allegedly been up to some very old school managerial behaviour worthy of cricket batwielding Lep Zep governor Peter Grant. The dispute stems from an apparent outstanding bill owed to one Adrian Smith, who’d been hired to find a personal assistant for Reed.

When bartering failed, Sargit is alleged to have threatened him, saying: “Our guys in Israel are going to fly in and they will kill you.” Nice.

JA Wobbles

Ten years ago Ja Rule was the hottest rapper in the game, whereas now he’s readying himself for a twoyear stretch in chokey for gun offences, which could be compounded by £1m he owes in taxes. His name disproves the idea of nominative determinism — the theory that a person’s moniker has an influence on their destiny. Perhaps they should change his name to Ja Lifeandcareerhavegonedowntheshi ttermate.

KNIGHT Moves

Kanye West has finally caved into Suge Knight after the Death Row boss got shot in the leg at one of West’s parties in Florida, 2005.

Claiming he’d not been given adequate security, Knight is said to have received an undisclosed sum from West, which we’re guessing amounted to an Argos gift voucher and a packet of blues, to keep his pecker up. A police investigation failed to lead to charges and a further civil suit was thrown out of court. Knight then resubmitted another, the jessie.

D’OH Boy

Actung dieb! Pete ‘he puts the d’oh into’ Doherty is now alleged to have taken part in the robbery at a record shop in the German town Regensburg, where he is filming a movie with Charlotte Gainsbourg.

A guitar and records were stolen by three drunken men speaking in English, said one eye witness, who has no doubt just who it was putting his shit-encrusted fingers through a broken window. “It was Doherty, I clearly recognised him!” she said.

Court Circular The Stool Pigeon May 2011

by Jeremy Allen

27

Announcements Please email your announcements to editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk

Forthcoming Engagements MR. MICHAEL BUBLÉ & MS LUISANA LORELEY LOPILATO DE LA TORRE. The engagement is announced between Michael, singer, and Luisana, actress and former musician, of Erreway fame.

MR. MARK RONSON & MS JOSEPHINE DE LA BAUME. The engagement is announced between Mark, producer/musician, and Josephine, model.

MR. GETHIN JONES & MS KATHERINE JENKINS. The engagement is announced between Gethin, former Blue Peter presenter, and Katherine, singer.

MR. SAM COOPER & MS LILLY ALLEN. The engagement is announced between Sam, decorator, and singer-songwriter Lilly.

Marriages DANESH—HENSTRIDGE. On February 14, former Popstars contestant Darius Danesh wed Canadian actress Natasha Henstridge in a secret, low-key ceremony.

Births COOK—COOK. On January 23, to Simon and Helen, Stool Pigeon readers, a girl, Darcy Cherry-Alice. Both parents are very proud.

STEWART—LANCASTER. On February 16, to musician, and eight-time father, Rod and former model Penny, a boy, Aiden.

CULLUM—DAHL. On March 2 to jazz singer-songwriter Jamie and television chef/former model Sophie, a girl, Lyra.

Marvin Sease, R&B singer b. 16.02.1946, d. 08.02.2011 Bud Reed, bluegrass pioneer b. 16.01.1918, d. 12.02.2011 George Shearing, jazz pianist/composer b. 13.08.1919, d. 14.02.2011 Rick Kulwicki, Fluid guitarist b. 07.07.1961, d. 15.02.2011 JP Fraley, bluegrass fiddler b. 1923, d. 17.02.2011 Phil Vane, Extreme Noise Terror singer b. 1965, d. 17.02.2011 Terry Clements, Gordon Lightfoot guitarist b. 22.07.1947, d. 20.02.2011 Joseph ‘Red Dog’ Campbell, roadie b. 27.03.1942, d. 21.02.2011 Clare Armory, Excepter vocalist/dancer b. 1975, d. 24.02.2011 Darryl Morden, music journalist b. 14.03.1958, d. 25.02.2011 Diane Izzo, singer and songwriter b. 1967, d. 25.02.2011 Mark Tulin, Electric Prunes bassist b. 21.11.1948, d. 26.02.2011 Rick Coonce, Grass Roots drummer b. 01.08.1946, d. 26.02.2011 Eddie Kirkland, blues great b. 16.08.1923, d. 27.02.2011 Jonny Preston, rockabilly pioneer b. 18.08.1939, d. 04.03.2011 Herman ‘Roscoe’ Ernest, jazz drummer b. 28.02.1919, d. 06.03.2011 Mike Starr, original Alice In Chains bassist b. 04.04.1966, d. 08.03.2011 Jack Hardy, folk singer and songwriter b. 23.11.1947, d. 11.03.2011 Hugh Martin, theatre and film composer b. 11.08.1914, d. 11.03.2011 Joe Morello, Dave Brubeck Quartet drummer b. 17.07.1928, d. 12.03.2011 Augustus Owsley Stanley, Grateful Dead soundman b. 19.01.1935, d. 13.03.2011 Todd Cerney, country songwriter b. 08.08.1953, d. 14.03.2011 Sherman Washington Jr., gospel great b. 13.12.1925, d. 14.03.2011 Ferlin Husky, country legend b. 3.12.1925, d. 17.03.2011 Jet Harris, Shadows bassist b. 06.07.1939, d. 18.03.2011 Ralf Mooney, steel guitarist b. 16.09.1928, d. 20.03.2011 Pinetop Perkins, blues icon b. 07.07.1913, d. 21.03.2011 Frankie Sparcello, Exhorder bassist b. unknown, d. 22.03.2011 Kevin Foley, Bash And Pop bassist b. 1959, d. 24.03.2011 Corey McGriff, DJ Megatron b. unknown, d. 27.03.2011 Harley Allen, country singer-songwriter b. 23.06.1956, d. 30.03.2011

Divorces

LOLEATTA HOLLOWAY WENTZ—SIMPSON. The divorce is announced between Pete, Fall Out Boy, and Ashley, recording artist and actress, after three years of marriage.

Deaths Gary Moore, blues rock guitarist b. 04.04.1952, d. 06.02.2011

Chicago-born Loleatta Holloway’s early career in gospel produced a couple of recordings (as a member of The Caravans) and she briefly toured her own review; all since overshadowed by her success as a deity of disco.

In 1971, she met producer and future husband, Floyd Smith (who is not the jazz guitarist of the same name, as is often stated) who introduced her to Atlanta’s Aware label, where he cut two LPs of classic

Southern soul, Loleatta and Cry To Me. Aware closed its doors in 1976 and she was swiftly picked up by Norman Harris for the Salsoul subsidiary, Gold Mind, whence her legend in the disco oeuvre began. Sensational tracks such as ‘Runaway’, ‘Hit And Run’ and ‘Love Sensation’ epitomised the exuberance of New York’s golden era of nightclubbing and have remained staple DJ anthems since their release; all have been remixed, reissued and sampled heavily in dance music. The vocals from the latter song were famously lifted by Italo-pop pretenders Black Box for their 1989 hit ‘Ride On Time’ (the year’s biggest selling UK single), resulting in litigation that revitalised Loleatta’s career for the house music boom of the 1990s.

Her recording career trailed off gradually, though with occasional peaks, and she performed until this year, when a coma and heart failure silenced one of disco’s most famous voices. Daddy Bones Loleatta Holloway, disco icon, b. 05.11.46, d. 21.03.11

SMILEY CULTURE Smiley Culture, whose hits ‘Cockney Translation’ and ‘Police Officer’ pioneered a distinctive reggae-rap style that garnered fans as diverse as writer Simon Reynolds and the Queen (who, Smiley said, told him she listened to his records in Buckingham Palace), died on March 15, 2011 from a single stab wound at his home in Warlingham, Surrey.

Born in 1963 and brought up in Stockwell, South London, Smiley Culture — real name David Emmanuel — practised ‘chatting’ over rhythm tracks under the name Emmanuel Brown while still at school.

Later he became a DJ with the Saxon Studio International Sound System, where he worked with artists such as Maxi Priest and Tippa Irie, before being signed by London-based Fashion Records.

His first record, ‘Cockney Translation’, a playful pseudo-lecture on cockney patois, did not enter the charts on first release but was played on Radio 1. Its modest success both paved the way for and helped inspire the number 12 hit ‘Police Officer’, the hilarious autobiographical tale of being stopped on suspicion of drug use but let off thanks to the fame of his first single.

Karl Marx said history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then farce; Smiley’s allegedly self-inflicted death, which took place while he was being taken into police custody on drugs charges, reversed this, highlighting the underlying seriousness of the issues behind his 1984 hit. His family intends to employ an independent pathologist to verify the cause of death. Rory Lewarne Smiley Culture, reggae singer and DJ, b. 10.02.1963, d. 15.03.2011

G-FUNK SINGER NATE DOGG’S LIFE A RAP AT JUST FOURTY-ONE The Stool Pigeon interWhen viewed Snoop Dogg in 2009 and asked about Nate Dogg’s health, Snoop said: “It’s kinda hard to explain, but he’s doing alright, so y’all just keep praying for him and he’ll be up out of it sooner or later.”

Nate, then in his late-thirties, had had a stroke. If that was shocking in itself, news that he had passed away on March 15 devastated the rap world. Nate Dogg wasn’t just the goto man for a golden vocal and a solo artist in his own right, he was adored by the hip hop community. He was one of the ultimate dudes — a G-funk originator and a funny motherfucker at that. In 2002, he appeared on celebrity Weakest Link in the US (and came third)…

Anne Robinson: “Nate Dogg, why are you keeping your hands in your pocket?”

Nate Dogg: “So I won’t steal nuthin’.”

Nate Dogg — real name Nathaniel Dwayne Hale — was born the son of a pastor in Long Beach, California in 1969. If he’d come of age in the 1970s, he might have been in a vocal group like The Delfonics. He’s a classic example of a soul singer who started out in church, then moved into entertainment. First, he served three years in the marines before forming the vocal group 213 with Snoop Dogg and Warren G. Nate and Warren would go on to have a smash hit with the Grammy-nominated ‘Regulate’ and naturally 213 — a Los Angeles area code — also got its props in the Ludacris hit ‘Area Codes’, which Nate memorably took the hook on.

Along with Snoop and Warren, Nate was given his break by Dre and came to prominence on both The Chronic and the soundtrack to Murder Was The Case, an 18-minute film inspired by the Snoop track of the same name. His solo career might have taken off better if he hadn’t got caught up in legal battles with his first label, Death Row, and indeed he’ll be better remembered as a singles man who was among the most-in-demand male singers in hip hop. Eminem, 50 Cent, Redman, 2Pac, The Game and Xzibit all used his baritone to great effect. It’s as Ice Cube raps on the Westside Connection track ‘Gangsta Nation’: “It must be a single when Nate Dogg singing on it.” Phil Hebblethwaite Nate Dogg, G-funk singer, b. 19.08.1969, d. 15.03.2011

Certificates 28

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

THE CARGO COLLECTIVE

AN ALMAGAMATION OF RECORD SHOPS AND LABELS DEDICATED TO BRING YOU NEW MUSIC

MATTHEW COOPER

BONGOLIAN

STAGGA

COMET GAIN

HOLLYWOOD SINNERS

DIVA

SOME DAYSARE BETTER THAN OTHERS Eluvium mastermind provides this charming and haunting soundtrack TEMPORARY RESIDENCE LP / CD

BONGOS FOR BEATNIKS Sees the return of The Bongolian, AKA multi-instrumentalist Nasser Bouzida with a furious paced bongo - Crazed Hammond beat happening. Dig it!

BLOW UP LP / CD

THE WARM AIR ROOM Dubstep meets Hip-Hop with an unnerving array of post everything riddims from Stagga, the creator of the smash, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Sick As Sinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

RAG & BONE CD

HOWL OF THE LONELY CROWD )HDUOHVVO\ SDVVLRQDWH DQG ÂżHUFHO\ LQtelligent, Comet Gain return with their ÂżQHVW DOEXP WR GDWH :LWK SURGXFWLRQ

by Edwyn Collins and Ryan Jarman of The Cribs.

FORTUNAPOP! LP / CD

DISASTRO GARANTITO Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s garage rock kings make the craziest Latino rockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;roll music ever â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a mixture of seventies punk rock and the most fun sixties garage band sounds.

DIRTY WATER LP / CD

THE GLITTER END Diva Dompe founded BlackBlack, supplied bass grooves for Pocahaunted. First solo album and it beams with 80s noir, vibrant tropicalia & mutated pop CRITICAL HEIGHTS CD

MADAM

GIRLS NAMES

THIS WILL DESTROYYOU

SARAH NIXEY

THE KITS

GONE BEFORE MORNING â&#x20AC;&#x153;Romantic enough to paint even the worst times in a glamorous half-light, 0DGDP LV D UHDO ÂżQG´ *XDUGLDQ â&#x20AC;&#x153;Smoky,nocturnal atmospherics with D SRS VHQVLELOLW\´ ,QGHSHQGHQW SHILLING BOY RECORDS CD

DEAD TO ME Belfast 3 piece Girls Names debut album, following US releases on Captured Tracks & Slumberland.

Self-styled â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;dark popâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, channeling the Mary Chain & Birthday Party.

TOUGH LOVE LP / CD

TUNNEL BLANKET QG DOEXP E\ 7H[DQ SLHFH 7KLV :LOO Destroy You delivers epic-in-scope soundscapes casting changeable shadows across vistas of inspired, DPELWLRXV DPSOLÂżFDWLRQ MONOTREME LP / CD

BRAVE TIN SOLDIERS Black Box Recorder singer presents atmospheric tales of yearning and past lives swathed in luxurious melodies that rise like ectoplasm to haunt the imagination.

BLACK LEAD RECORDS CD

LEAD US INTO TEMPTATION :LOG H[SHULPHQWV ZLWK *DUDJH 5RFN and Surf Pop from Aussie band The Kits. Produced by Chris Bailey (of The Saints).

POP CRIME RECORDS CD

HELP STAMP OUT LONELINESS HEART

CRYSTAL STILTS

BOA MORTE

HORSE GUARDS PARADE

YOUANIMALS

INVISIBLE SYSTEM

FELDBERG

IN LOVE WITH OBLIVION )ROORZV WKHLU FULWLFDOO\ DFFODLPHG ÂżUVW LP with an album of spooked 60s SV\FK RUJDQ KHDY\ SRS WKDW FRQÂżUPV WKHP DV ÂżUVW FODVV SXUYH\RUV RI haunting, atmospheric post-punk.

FORTUNAPOP! LP / CD

THE DIAL WALTZ â&#x20AC;&#x153;Like Smog or Bonnie Prince Billy or any great purveyors of rural lament, Boa Morte offer warm solace through the perpetual tumbling of the VHDVRQV´ 7KH ,ULVK 7LPHV KICKING A CAN RECORDS CD

TEN SONGS Follows a successful 2010, which saw the band support Pavement, play â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;All Tomorrows Partiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and record a BBC introducing session.

MORTEN INDUSTRIES CD

CRIMES, CREEPS & THRILLS Debut album from the Derby six-piece featuring singles â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Shotgun 9DOHQWLQHÂś Âľ:KDW $ 6KDPH /RUUDLQHÂś and â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Halfway To Heartbreakâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

THIS IS FAKE DIY RECORDS CD

STREET CLAN A world fusion album from rock & dance, to reggae & post-punk. ,QFOXGHV 3RUWLVKHDG 6NLS 0F'RQDOG (DW 6WDWLF 6WXDUW )LVKHU +ROH Courtney Love), Ethiopiques.

HARPER DIABATE RECORDS CD

DONâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T BE A STRANGER 'HEXW DOEXP E\ ,FHODQGLF GXR Feldberg who warp gorgeous, glacial pop-songs with heart-wrenching sentiment. For fans of Mates of State, Rilo Kiley & Galaxie 500.

SMALLTOWN AMERICACD

JENIFEREVER

ATLANTIS

THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX

KODE9 & THE SPACEAPE

YOUNG WIDOWS

BRIAN ELLIS

SILESIA â&#x20AC;&#x153;Their brightest, most immediate long-player yet. The Swedish quartet entwines elegant atmospherics, turbulent rhythms and snappy accesVLELOLW\ WR PHVPHUL]LQJ HIIHFW ´ MONOTREME LP / CD

MISTRESS OF GHOSTS Digs into the worlds of dark ambience, industrial metal, and progressive rock to deliver a whirlwind of noise and rhythm.

FIELD CD

FUZZ 7$% DUH EDFN ZLWK RQH PLQXWH track of 50 back-to-back riffs. See Atomic Bitchwax with Quest For Fire, Naam and Mirror Queen. April 27 London, UK - Underworld TEE PEE CD

BLACK SUN Much-anticipated second album from hyperdub founder kode9 and his long-term lyrical foil the spaceape HYPERDUB 2LP / CD

IN AND OUT OF YOUTH AND LIGHTNESS Post-punk blasts shining cracks of lights through pitch black neo-noir fever dreams, clearly become a more sinister and thought-provoking beast.

TEMP. RESIDENCE LTD - 2LP / CD

QUIPU 3rd solo album from lead guitarist of ³$VWUD´ %ULDQ FUHDWHV WKH LOOXVLRQ RI D large band with his Prog Rock, Jazz Fusion epics. For fans of Pink Floyd, Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra.

PARALLAX SOUNDS CD

Poundingly beautiful, self titled eponymous debut LP of alluringly VHGXFWLYH VRQJV IURP 0DQFKHVWHU Belfast gender symmetric 6 piece.

WHERE ITS AT IS WHERE YOU ARE CD

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Pulling Strings MICACHU’s record with the London Sinfonietta orchestra is about bending everything out of shape.

Words by Ben Hewitt Photograph by Gary Manhine

“I’ve got fucking loads of work to do when I get back,” grumbles Mica Levi.

A diminutive figure clad in a scruffy hoody and jeans combo, with a mop of dark unruly hair atop her head, she’s been holed up in this quiet Shoreditch bar all afternoon to discuss the Chopped & Screwed collaboration between Micachu And The Shapes and the London Sinfonietta orchestra that was released as a live album last month. And she’s been drinking. Now, attacking a sturdy lump of cheese with

oldest specialist music institution in the country — and excelled in compositional study, violin and viola, before switching her focus to grime, garage and avant-garde pop.

“I did quite well ignoring all of that training until I became an adult,” she says. “If you do it too intensively when you’re young… it’s good for you, but when you’re younger you hate it. It’s boring, it’s repetitive and you don’t want to do it. I thought it was bullshit. I played football and I did beats — they

sometimes, when your back’s up against the wall, you do better.

“You feel like a bit of a charlatan, with this group of mature people who are professionals, and you’re stood in front of them. I felt like a chancer. At the end of the day it’s very different to the pop world, the way these people work. They’re soldiers. It’s like an army. If you go over rehearsal time, they’ll just pack up and leave. Not because they’re soulless, but because they’ve got to make their money.”

were my passions.”

Even though Levi’s now left her classical roots behind, it’s hard to imagine that such a learned grounding in composition didn’t stand her in good stead for this project. But she says such illustrious beginnings provided little solace before the show in May last year: “It was horrific. It was exciting, and it felt ambitious, but the preparation was stressful and getting up and doing it was stressful. But that also brings another aspect of survival:

Mica has to pack up and leave, too; there’s that work to be done at home, another show with the Sinfonietta to prepare for, and — one assumes — a second album proper from Micachu And The Shapes to start thinking about soon. But she’s not letting any of it phase her. “It’s basically a load of old bollocks,” she says, shaking her head dismissively and trying to shrug off any of Chopped & Screwed’s deeper significance for a second time.

Don’t believe that for a second.

a blunt toothpick and trying to force me to eat a gherkin, she’s claiming that the album’s lyrics are “all just a load of bullshit ”.

But Chopped & Screwed doesn’t seem like it’s about a load of bullshit.

‘Medicine Drank’, with its woozy, warped instrumentation and visions of “gold [that] glistens in slow motion” sounds like the hazy heights of a nefarious bender; ‘Low Dogg’ is an account of booze addiction; and ‘Fall’ is about getting so disorientated that

accomplished orchestras to make a piece of music about getting fuckedup. “That was part of the attraction.

But all of those guys in the orchestra… they might look straight-laced, but they’re the worst. Rock’n’roll should take a tip from them. Those classical musical guys… they drink.

They’re way more crazy.”

The London Sinfonietta sounded Micachu And The Shapes out about working together for a one-off concert after seeing them play an acoustic show last year. Determined that any collaboration wouldn’t just be a lush but lazy string-laden affair, Levi gave each of the nine players involved in the project a CD she’d compiled full of chopped and screwed hip hop beats.

Consequently, it’s a composition that doesn’t hanker after the polite applause of the stuffy concert hall, and doesn’t dilute the weird and wonky pop that served as the hallmark of The Shapes’ debut album Jewellery with soulless grandiosity.

you end up falling on your arse.

Isn’t this actually a record about getting leathered?

“Well, I sort of got in mind the idea of taking drugs,” she says, grinning. “‘Medicine Drank’ is actually about enjoying a night out, with people listening to slowed-down hip hop and seeing lots of lights — when you’re out and everything seems euphoric…”

“I was trying to take the piss out of the situation,” she continues, referring to enlisting one of the world’s most

Instead, with its constant speedup/slow-down shifts in tempo and repetition of blurred sounds and shapes, it’s more like a percussive and peculiar mixtape. Micachu And The Strings this most certainly isn’t.

“You’ve got to do your thing and be honest about it, otherwise it’s going to sound half-arsed,” she says. “It’s so easy to just add strings and make it sound expensive.”

A classically trained musician, Levi attended the Purcell School — the

Features The Stool Pigeon May 2011

31

> Death Factory To Fenland > > > > >> At home with >> electronic and industrial >> music pioneers >> Chris & Cosey >> >> >>> Words by Luke Turner >>> >>> Photograph by Chris & >>> Cosey >>> >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni >>>> >>>> Tutti’s >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> living room floor, >>>> >>>> next to a glass display cabinet >>>> >>>> containing gnomes, Daleks >>>> and other sci-fi ephemera, >>>> >>>>> sit two knackered cardboard >>>>> boxes. >>>>> >>>>> Delivered by courier while >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Cosey was collecting me >>>>> from Kings Lynn station >>>>> in Norfolk, >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>

they’re packed with old video cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes, part of the Throbbing Gristle archive that takes up an increasing amount of space in the converted Victorian village school they’ve lived in since 1984, a few years after the group disintegrated for the first time.

The demise of Throbbing Gristle after a remarkable few years of operation — five pioneering albums released on Industrial Records, the first completely independent label; notorious gigs, including one that provoked a near-riot by the boys at Oundle public school; being branded “wreckers of civilisation” by Conservative MP Nicholas Fairburn for their infamous 1976 debut at the ICA in London — allowed Chris and Cosey the space and freedom to properly embark on both their music and relationship, both of which had overlapped with Throbbing Gristle and the end of Cosey’s time as partner of fellow band member Genesis P-Orridge. After TG had ceased to exist, Chris and Cosey had been living in North London but, as Cosey explains, “We were running to stand still, and the vortex which is London sucks you in the minute you step outside the front door. We found that very counterproductive to what we wanted to do creatively and practically.”

They found the school after an attempt to purchase a former church had fallen through, with much of its appeal having to do with its remoteness, in part to avoid Cosey’s stalkers. (“One found me, though,” she says. “We got home and there was a letter through the door.”) Initially, they were so short of funds to work on the fabric of the derelict building that Cosey had to commute to work in London: “I was still stripping for the first six months to pay for the playground to be taken up.”

Nevertheless, Cosey looks back at the time fondly: “I don’t even remember thinking about being poor because we were so happy. We were doing what we wanted with music, our son Nick was here and the house was here. If it was falling down we could repair it at some point.”

Their music, too, subsidised the creation of what was to be their home and working base, allowing them to become what Chris describes as “a cottage industry”. He continues: “We had to do a project to pay for the roof or the windows.

We’d spend advances on getting the plastering done and buying gear.”

To allow them to work quickly, they built a phenomenal home studio that they use to this day.

Inside it are enormous Mac monitors, synthesisers sprouting wires and a picture of Cosey from her days as a pornographic model on the wall above a blackboard outlining works in progress.

On the sideboard sits the ‘Tutti Box’, a synth built

by Chris for Cosey, and fitted into the shell of a faux-vintage radio bought from historic tat shop Past Times. It’s here that, aside from a few days at Christmas where they go into total shutdown, Chris and Cosey have worked continuously for 20-odd years.

“One of the advantages of having the studio just off the kitchen is that I can come to make a cup of tea, and I hear sounds quite differently,” says Cosey.

“The speakers are underneath the upstairs toilet, and you can hear certain frequencies when you’re in the toilet,” adds Chris.

“You come down and say, ‘That bass sounds great.’”

Those who only know Chris and Cosey as members of TG might be surprised to take a journey through the vast back catalogue, much of which was created within these four walls. Their music moved away from austerity of their first group towards the glacial electronic pop heard on early records like Heartbeat or Exotica (both reissued on vinyl earlier this year). As Carter explains: “None of us went on to do anything remotely industrial. We’d burned ourselves out of it and we didn’t want it to sound like TG. We were going along with the flow, like we always do. It was exciting times for producing music electronically. We had no formal musical training, so it was an experiment, to see if we could come up with some

songs and make it sound like we knew what we were doing.”

Where Chris once emailed Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis to warn him against listening to/reviewing the 2003 24 Hours Of Throbbing Gristle boxset in a single sitting, the music of Chris and Cosey — especially in the ambient work of their later Carter Tutti albums — has an almost meditative quality, something reflected in Cosey’s vocals, which frequently resemble incantations or prayer.

Where does this neo-spiritual element stem from? “Our love of good pop, because it is a modern-day version of church songs, with harmonies that people can connect with,” says Cosey. “I imagine you’d have got that at an ABBA gig when they were around, or when people are really into the chanting at football matches. When you get into your own emotions you are getting within yourself and once you start externalising it, with a vocal, then you’re trying to recreate that feeling so the listener understands what you’re trying to say. It’s about something very deep inside, not just uttered words. Lyrics don’t have to be a dialogue between people, but can be an inner dialogue. People rarely come out of themselves, they’re very guarded.”

The late winter of 2011 finds Chris and Cosey at another crossroads. Just days after a Throbbing Gristle performance in London last October, Genesis P-Orridge walked out of the group for the final time. He has subsequently offered no explanation for his departure, though Chris says that last performance was similar to what happened the first time the group split in May 1981: “It was very physical.

The tension in the band affected the way we played, in a good way, funnily enough. And that’s what happened at Village Underground [London]. There was so much going on that night and it really came across. It was probably one of the best gigs we’ve done.”

Then, mere weeks later on November 24, fourth TG member Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson died in his

adopted home of Thailand.

The loss of their friend and collaborator clearly still affects both Chris and Cosey, and they frequently refer to him in the present tense. “He never changed over the years,” remembers Chris. “I realise how young he was compared to the rest of us. He started out as the baby of TG, and then he became like the daddy.”

“It’s funny, he always used to call me ‘mum’,” says Tutti, who gave the young Peter Christopherson the name Sleazy thanks to his non-musical ‘interests’.

With the difficult end of Throbbing Gristle and the loss of their “soulmate”, it’s no surprise that Chris and Cosey say that the end of 2010 was grim. But on February 4, 2011, there was the glimmer of something new when, as Carter Tutti, they played reworked versions of Chris & Cosey material to a packed, sweaty, dancing ICA — a far larger crowd, in fact, than was present at that infamous 1976 Prostitution event.

“There was one point where I was enjoying it so much I forgot I was supposed to be performing,” says Cosey. “I thought, ‘Oh fuck, it’s supposed to be me providing this!’ It was that euphoric for me, a lovely feeling, it really was.”

There are plans for further Carter Tutti live events, along with any number of projects, currently detailed in a pile of clear plastic folders on the kitchen table. “I want to get it down to four, that’d be nice,” says Cosey. “But there are just so many different strands going on at once, Chris & Cosey, Carter Tutti, my art.”

Future possibilities include a piece with artist Yann Marussich — who once had his body filled with dye so he’d exude the colour blue through his pores — sound installations, Throbbing Gristle reissues, and collaborations, including music with porn actress, writer and musician Sasha Grey and a one-off with Nik Void of Factory Floor at Mute Records’ Short Circuit festival in May. “I’ve never played with a woman before,” says Cosey. “Well, I have

played with a woman, but not in the same way as that — musically, you know.” This will, of course, require another folder.

Perhaps their phenomenal work rate and the exposure of Chris & Cosey to a new, younger audience will finally rid them of some of the misconceptions that have dogged them since the end of Throbbing Gristle, such as when one writer who dubbed them “Sonny & Cher of the suicide set”. “We’ve found there are post-TG camps; we find that people are either into Coil, or us, or Gen,” says Chris. “And some people don’t get Chris & Cosey, or they don’t want to.”

“Because when we were into magic we didn’t wear it on our sleeves and use it as a promotional tool, people assumed that we were less serious than the others,” says Cosey. “But we’re just more private, and have an approach to that side of life and spirituality that is very personal. It’s not to be shared in a way that lessens it or treats it as a commodity. We’re perceived as something different because of that.”

Even where they live has been taken the wrong way, says Chris: “We’re seen as not being edgy, we’ve chilled out, it’s the whole thing that goes with that ‘rock stars retiring to the countryside’ thing.”

An inspiring afternoon around the living room of Chris and Cosey dispels any such notion. From the way their conversation flows, their connection is tangible; their shared clear-mindedness over their music and art self-evident. Decades after they first collaborated and fell in love in Throbbing Gristle’s Hackney Death Factory, this old school will see many more years of creativity. As Cosey Fanni Tutti says, looking at those cardboard boxes of relics from another time, “It feels as if our past and present lives are collapsing in on us.” And then, writing on her Twitter just as The Stool Pigeon goes to press a few weeks later: “Been on that magic creative wave today when things just happen — all channels open and flowing freely.”

rdub label head KODE9 and his prime mate THE SPACEAPE have always sought to break the stasis quo.

Hype

moment of rage in which he set fire to a copy of white van Britain’s favourite tabloid during the height of their 2008 witch hunt for Burial, who is signed to Kode9’s Hyperdub label.

More recently, a sub-editor friend at The Sunday Times received an angry email from the producer after suggesting he invented dubstep.

Operational Word All Bass Phot Ther s by

Cyrus

Shahrad

ographs by Optigram

e’s an uneasy moment following my interview with Kode9 and The Spaceape when I realise I’ve left my dictaphone running on the mixing desk of the former’s south London studio. I return to his front door to find him standing there grinning, said apparatus in hand. “I think you might have a minute or so of us talking about what a twat you are,” he says as he passes it to me.

as I find myself transcribing the end of the recording the following afternoon — as the last couple of questions turn into a conversation about who embarrassed themselves at The Brits the previous evening, and I hear the three of us rise from our seats and wander downstairs, leaving behind an eerily empty room — a tightness clutches at my chest. What if I am forced to listen to a distant kitchen conversation about what a twat I am?

Yet

ifully, it was indeed a joke (Spaceape: “What are you up to this afternoon?” Kode9: “I need to get something to eat, I’m starving. Oh look, he’s left his…” CLICK). But my fears weren’t exactly unfounded.

Kode9, real name Steve Goodman, isn’t known for his tolerance of lazy journalists. The track ‘Black Sun’ was reputedly inspired by a

Merc

of which is understandable given Goodman’s own close relationship with the written word. A lecturer in music theory at the University of East London, he recently completed a book on aggressive applications of audio (Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, And The Ecology Of Fear); more pertinently, Hyperdub was itself once a blog documenting the scattered seeds of UK bass culture — from garage and the tail end of drum’n’bass and the first black flowerings of dubstep. erdub was initially focused on the reggae and dancehall side of garage: artists like El-B, Zed Bias, Horsepower Productions, Pay As U Go. Later we began featuring grime artists like Dizzee and Wiley, and people involved with proto-dubstep. We were posting unedited transcripts of long interviews, offering readers more detail than they’d ever find in magazines. I think that had a big impact in spreading stuff overseas as well as across this country.”

“Hyp

nd the same time, Goodman began sharing a Kennington flat with Steven Gordon, then a video artist making abstract, afro-futurist shorts that would later influence the visual and non-linear nature of his lyrics as The Spaceape.

Gordon would often tune into his flatmate’s shows on Rinse FM, or catch him DJing at venues across the capital, but their musical collaborations were limited

Arou

to lengthy conversations about classic albums in Steve’s bedroom studio.

Until one lazy Sunday in 2004, when the pair decided to record something for fun. re was no plan behind it,” says Goodman. “I told him to grab one of his favourite records and just read the lyrics off the sleeve, and he came back with Prince’s Sign O’ The Times. I manipulated his voice a bit, threw down a bassline with enough space to layer a few effects on top. It was one of the quickest and easiest tracks we ever made, but it was an experiment, and there was no intention to release it.

Not long after, I went to interview The Bug for XLR8R magazine and I gave him a CD with some bits and pieces I’d been working on. He really liked ‘Sine Of The Dub’, and suggested we start our own label and put it out ourselves. So all of this started with him, really.”

“The

sound the pair had hit upon was undeniably unique: a brutal futurism bolted together with minimal beats and sewn up with the sinister drawl of The Spaceape, a sort of patoisspitting Charon leading deceased souls across molten rivers of bass. Not that it was easy for Gordon to invoke this new persona in public during those early months, and never more so than at their first live pairing — a launch party at The End nightclub for the second Rephlex grime compilation in 2004.

The

as still very self-conscious at that point,” says Gordon, whose real voice is soft and affable, a million miles from the murmurings of The Spaceape. “There was already a scene happening, and there were MCs there that I knew of, and I felt uneasy stepping into that arena with my own thing, which was still only halfformed at that point. In the end, I did the show sitting under the decks where

“I w

nobody could see me, with my voice coming out through the system. It’s funny to look back on, but now I understand the route I was taking.” that it took long for The Spaceape to find his feet; soon, not even the DJ booth could contain him, and he was demanding a wireless mic so that he could wander into the crowd and unspool ever more twisted reels of imagery amid circles of fascinated ravers. As the pair’s live shows gathered momentum, so their Kennington studio experiments developed a narrative thread, and by the time their debut LP, Memories Of The Future, dropped in 2006 on the still embryonic Hyperdub, Kode9 & The Spaceape had cemented their status as one the UK’s most interesting acts.

Not

of their allure lay in a refusal to fit into any one musical pigeonhole: even in the steadily fragmenting world of UK bass culture, Kode9 & The Spaceape were sonic wanderers making music without genre. On one level this was a result of their drawing on so many musical influences: Goodman was himself influenced by everything from the psychedelic rock he listened to growing up in Glasgow (and to which he dropped his first pill in Edinburgh), to the Madchester movement, the late-nineties Metalheadz nights and the grime and dubstep he was DJing on Rinse. Gordon, for his part, was channelling everything from the soundsystem reggae he’d been exposed to by his older brother, to Parliament, Prince and the rare groove he and his friends would queue to hear Gilles Peterson drop at Dingwalls on Sundays (while Goodman, a short cab ride across town, was getting ready to brock out to Goldie and friends at the Blue Note in Hoxton).

Part

nother level, the pair’s statelessness seems a direct result of Goodman’s cynicism for the cyclical

On a

nature of specific dance music movements, and a desire to create something self-defining and unfettered by fashion. re old enough to have seen several of these scenes go through their hype cycles and get to the point where they’re just not making new sounds anymore. And you only have to go round that cycle a couple of times to realise that your infatuation with a certain sound drifts at a certain point. As much as new scenes appear to come through with original sounds, they tend to evolve in much the same way: part of the scene will get harder and darker; part will access the mainstream through appealing to a more indie audience. So I think we’ve become less invested in the idea of specific scenes as time has gone on.”

“We’

e speaking in Goodma n’s second-floor studio amid banks of analogue synths, shelves stacked with vinyl and teetering piles of Hyperdub test presses. In one corner a mic stand looms over a small chair clearly beloved of Kode9’s impossibly furry cat; through the window a group of Camberwell art students stand smoking and drinking away the bright February afternoon, their increasingly high pitched babble leading Goodman to half-jokingly suggest assembling an arsenal of water balloons.

Reverentially tacked to the wall above the monitor is a

We’r

poster for Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a sample from which opens the pair’s second LP, Black Sun, a more up-tempo affair than Memories Of The Future, although one still shot through with flashes of despair. of the things we wanted to do from the beginning was make it less bleak than the first album; make it more upbeat, more rhythmic, both in the vocal delivery and the tunes themselves. But I don’t think we can make music that your average person would find upbeat. Whatever we do has always got a ‘weight of the world’ feel to it.”

“One

while as stubbornly difficult to pigeonhole as its predecessor — from ethereal dub soliloquy ‘Promises’ to the sonic brutality of ‘Bullet Against Bone’ and the swimming head house of ‘Love Is The Drug’ — it

And

is, at least, a record that sits perfectly on Hyperdub. In the five years since its foundation the label has brought credibility and cohesion to the fringes of UK bass music, and currently stands as a bastion of hope for those disillusioned by dubstep’s decline into lobotomised jump-up and discredited chart fodder — a subject Goodman refuses to be drawn on, though he does note that one good thing dubstep has done for the world is “make people realise how shit their sound systems are”. ead, he chooses to focus on the positive things happening in UK electronic music, of which he says there are many. The sight of so many former grime artists tarted up and paraded like peacocks across the stage of the previous evening’s Brit Awards may not have been to everyone’s tastes, but Goodman recognises grime and dubstep breaking into the mainstream as a largely positive force, and one that could lead to a musical future that is anything but bleak.

Inst

y’ve ram-raided the music industry and now they’re changing it from the inside, and that’s got to be a good thing. I try not to pay too much attention to the negative stuff, as there’s a lot of interesting music out there. In a world where an artist as unusual as James Blake can become a major seller, anything is possible.”

“The

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Revelation Space Singer-songwriter BILL CALLAHAN says he’s having a good time thinking about apocalypse. But he could learn to Armageddon with it in interviews.

Words by Alex Denney Photograph by Erika Wall

here’s a great line from an old Smog song in which Bill Callahan recounts how he “met a woman in a bar / told her I was hard to get to know, and near impossible to forget”. It’s a lyric that stays with us when we strike out, slightly sweaty of palm, to meet with the 40-something Maryland native, because all signs point towards today’s encounter being an awkward one.

As Smog and (since 2007) plain old Bill Callahan, his lyrics have traced out the bones of a deadpan and more than slightly misanthropic view of the world. Self-absorbed like so many men of his generation who tote an acoustic and a notebook full of scrib-

T

bled lyrics, there was nonetheless a flinty, unsparing quality to the troubador’s work that marked him out as the Hemingway of lo-fi introspection.

In person, Callahan’s reputation has been no less difficult. For a spell, the enigmatic songwriter insisted on conducting interviews by fax, and The Stool Pigeon’s last encounter with the man was secured only after the newspaper’s editor chased him, dictaphone in hand, down Brighton promenade.

Conversation with Bill’s PR in the lobby of a hotel in Lancaster Gate, London turns to the alleged trickiness of our subject and, before reassurances can be made, Callahan glides in unnoticed behind us. Up

close, he has the slightly soured, unobtrusively handsome features of a depressed door-to-door salesman from the 1950s. Greeting us with a curt ‘hello’ and a handshake, Callahan proceeds to show us the same straight face he will wear throughout our interview, albeit one with the ghost of a laconic smile swimming somewhere just beneath the surface.

We’re here to talk about Callahan’s 14th album Apocalypse, a curious record tackling some big themes in an often quite surreal and tangential fashion. Musically it’s a sprawling, weirdly jaunty affair, with all but one of its seven tracks clocking in at the five minute-plus mark. The some-

times restful, sometimes sprightly tone sits oddly with the record’s twin themes of America and apocalypse and it is, in truth, less immediately palatable than his last couple, Woke On A Whaleheart and 2009’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, which featured some of his most colourful arrangements to date.

Apocalypse feels like a strange title for a new Callahan record, though, given that his last album ended with a track (‘Faith/Void’), which revolved around the refrain “it’s time to put god away”. That song sprang from a recognition on Callahan’s part that he wasn’t, as he’d once vaguely supposed, a spiritual man, and that framing our dis-

course in a spiritual way wasn’t necessarily helping humanity’s cause.

But as it turns out, ‘apocalypse’ has another meaning. “[The title was intended] more in the sense of a ‘lifting of the veil’,” says Callahan. “I mean, words change meaning over time but I think the original meaning was more like that. But it’s the same thing to me, ’cos the revelation is annihilation of an old assumption and the raising of a new one. So it’s kind of the same, even though I’m in a minority thinking like that.” Here he gives a pursed, ironic smile. “But it must be interesting, the end of the world.”

So you wouldn’t encourage that kind of a reading?

“Mmmm... I think that, sssss, I’m not really encouraging it. I feel like it would be easy to do that, though.

People love to think about apocalypse. It’s such a satisfying thing to think about.”

In conversation, Callahan is phlegmatic to an excruciating degree, serving up fitful responses filled with strange, effortful noises, as if he can’t really be bothered organising his self-evident articulacy into proper sentences. Of course, the musical landscape is littered with folk who, while perfectly capable of expressing themselves in the confines of a song, come over all shy in the context of an interview. But something tells us that Callahan enjoys watching us twist in the wind. After all, could the muttering fellow in front of us really

be the latter-day Cohen figure that charmed his way into the affections of indie sirens Cat Power and Joanna Newsom?

Apparently so, but here we are anyway. So then, apocalypse... do you think the idea of a ‘spiritual discourse’ has taken on fresh meaning in America, with the rise of the Tea Party and their incoherent ramblings about God and His thoughts on myriad policies at home and abroad?

“Yeah... It never makes sense to me,” says Callahan. “It’s like if you’re watching the president giving a speech and they mention God, I just think what does that have to do with... anything... that’s going on?

You’re not helping anything by saying that. But you’re all atheists here, right?”

Something like that. Callahan lived for a time in Knaresborough, Yorkshire as a child and with the day job of some 20-odd years whisking him across the globe it’s easy to see how those experiences might shape a person’s ideas about a place and what it means to belong there.

“I think America is what makes sense to me,” says Callahan. “So when I’m travelling to other countries and cultures it’s like, ‘I see what you’re doing but it doesn’t quite make sense; your way of life doesn’t quite make sense to me’. Like it’s really different here [in the UK], interaction between people here is very unique to... it’s a whole different way. The guardedness, eeehhhh...

Like sometimes I try to apologise to a British person and it’s not for a major thing and it almost feels like it’s an insult if you say you’re sorry, you can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s fine.’ It makes people uncomfortable.”

Despite the politicians’ best attempts to ‘take back’ St George’s flag there’s something of a taboo about patriotism in this country; a circumspect attitude you’d hardly expect to find among US citizens. Do you consider yourself a patriot?

“Uhhhm... depends how you define it. I think with America’s reaction to 9/11, that kind of put a black mark against us — not that we didn’t already have that, necessarily — but it was almost like America was finished as a country. It’s like it’s not gonna be the cultural leader anymore. I just felt like, I don’t know… I mean, that was like... even though we’re at war a lot, it’s one of the few non-civil war attacks on the country, which is... I dunno.”

Okay. In what way do you think 9/11 precipitated that sense of decline?

“Eeeeh... It was like standing up to a bully or something, making them look bad. The retaliation was just really ridiculous, everything went downhill from there. And it’s like even the people in America... ’cos it used to be that there was a love-hate relationship with America from the outside, but then that’s started to bleed into the mentality of the people that live there. It feels very defeated.”

So how does any of this relate to the record exactly? There’s a track in the middle of it called ‘America!’ (the exclamation mark is something of an homage to Walt Whitman, apparently) in which the narrator muses in his trademark rich baritone about never having served one’s country, reeling off a roll call of musical greats like Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury by their ranks in the armed forces before going on to list a number of the American military engagements.

Says Callahan: “Yerrrh, it’s partially, uhm, I was just musing on... In the song those are the ranks that those guys all rose to. Another [interviewer] thought it was my personal ranking of their skills as songwriters. But it’s interesting how everyone used to be... it was really common to start in the armed services, whereas now it’s like, name an American entertainer who served in the military. You can’t really.”

Were they conscripted?

“I don’t know. When I was of fighting age or whatever, it was called selective service and you had to sign up, so you could get called up for the draft. But obviously before that you were a lot more likely to get drafted.”

What are your thoughts on people that do serve? Your parents did.

“Well, I think it’s a really respectable thing to do, and someone has to do it. But I don’t know... I probably would have tried to get out of it somehow.”

Another song on the record, ‘Free’s’, ruminates on the meaning of freedom — always a highly charged word in the American political discourse — and about being praised and pilloried for the actions of your countrymen (“to belong to being derided for things I don’t believe, and lauded for things I did not do”). Is that something you get a lot when staying abroad?

“Yeah,” says Callahan. (We should point out at this stage that Callahan makes ‘yeah’ sound like the smallest word in the English language — you could fit roughly 17 of them on a single pinhead. In his mouth, ‘yeah’ is less a signifier of affirmation as it is one of studied non-acknowledge-

ment.) “Jssssss.... When you’re travelling people want to hold you responsible for things and it’s like, ‘I didn’t do that.’ But in a way it is what I belong to, so you have to take that, I guess... you have to take that...”

Christ. This is like watching a fat man limber up for an assault course.

Perhaps a prod will help. “...seriously?” we offer.

“Well you just have to take it, just because... because... [sentence dies and goes to heaven].

“It’s sort of just saying, like I said you have to take things that are... it’s hard to explain. But it’s also about belonging, you have to look after each other... just because you’re free it doesn’t mean you’re free to ignore

people in need. I don’t know, it made sense to me when I wrote it.”

Maybe Callahan feels — not unreasonably, given his laser-like incisions as a lyricist — that his songs need no further explanation. Turning to his interpretation of apocalypse as a personal revelation, we decide to ask him about the track ‘Riding For The Feel’, a beautiful number which along with ‘One Fine Morning’ is one of only two songs on the record to allude explicitly to the ‘A’ word.

“The apocalypse in that song is a lecturer who realises he hasn’t in all of his teaching mentioned the really important thing,” says Callahan, picking up a little. “I just wanted to write from the perspective of a col-

lege professor or something — some guy who goes around giving talks. I started thinking about the way we perceive things, how we don’t see things moving. We see snapshots, you know... There’s a space between each snapshot you see and your mind connects them all like a movie. It’s the way scientists say we perceive things. And it’s almost like each photograph is the death and the new one is rebirth.”

The words ring true. As much as it feels like we never really mentioned the important thing during our brief time spent with the musician: maybe Bill Callahan wants us to believe that he is precisely that — the spaces between the stills.

Cooking With Gas Raekwon The Chef’s dedication to always serving food for thought has secured the Wu-Tang MC a major bite-back Words by Cyrus Shahrad Illustration by Michael Parkin Among the countless online images of Raekwon hunched Scarface-like over mountains of cocaine (presumably fake), or spelling his name out with fist-sized buds of hydroponic weed (presumably real), there’s an enigmatic snap of the Wu-Tang heavyweight signing the guest wall at the Facebook offices in Palo Alto, California. Dig a little deeper and you’ll uncover a video of the gruff rapper being given a tour of the oppressively cheerful open-plan workspace and thanking bemused employees for making it all happen. “Communication,” he says sincerely. “That’s what it’s all about.”

It seems unusual behaviour from one of the less visible members of the world’s most famous rap family. While his peers were popping up in major and minor film and TV roles — an unconvincing turn from Method Man as drug baron Cheese in The Wire; a brilliant pairing of RZA and GZA with Bill Murray for one of the surreal vignettes comprising Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee And Cigarettes — Raekwon has largely avoided amalgamation into the mainstream, keeping his head down and his heart firmly in the hardcore hip hop camp. Yet the Facebook thing isn’t quite as anomalous as it might appear: Raekwon

has wholeheartedly embraced the social network revolution, and makes it his business to stay in direct contact with his 200,000-odd followers on Twitter.

“It’s a great marketing weapon,” he says. “It means that you don’t have to rely on labels to put your voice across.

And when you’re in closer touch with the fans, you’re closer to their reactions to things that you do, good and bad. I think criticism is important when you’re an artist, and I do pay attention. Not all of it I agree with, but sometimes you hear things that you know you should pay heed to, and you have to take that shit and apply it to yourself, or it’s all for nothing.”

Such measured sentiments seem fitting for a rapper who has ridden waves of fortune as fierce as those assailing the crime syndicate bosses on which he modelled his musical persona. Raekwon had already established himself as a central character on the Wu’s early releases when he dropped what many see as the most layered and intoxicating of the Clan’s solo albums, 1995’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. Produced by RZA and heavily indebted to the lyrical mastery of his cohort Ghostface Killah, …Cuban Linx confirmed the arrival of

Raekwon as a unique voice in hip hop, his abstract flow a blast of ice-cold poetry in an arena stymied by macho posturing and sweaty block politics.

Subsequent years were less kind to Raekwon. His follow up albums, Immobilarity (1999) and The Lex Diamond Story (2003), were met with widespread public indifference and occasional patches of disdain, something widely attributed to RZA’s absence from the mixing desk, though Raekwon himself claimed it was a lack of promotion by his label.

There then followed a public spat between Raekwon and RZA, the former suggesting in an interview that the Wu’s resident producer was sullying the Clan’s reputation with his work on 8 Diagrams (2007), their enormously popular but jarringly commercial fifth studio album — a record featuring John Frusciante and Dhani Harrison exchanging guitar riffs on ‘The Heart Gently Weeps’, a bloated reinvention of the mood standard by the latter’s father George.

The reason for Raekwon’s complaint was simple: he was about to drop what he knew was going to be his comeback record, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, and he didn’t want his core fans thinking he’d sold out in advance.

“We did 8 Diagrams out of respect for RZA being the chairman of our crew and a man who had helped our lives in so many ways, but it felt as though he was being a little selfish in what he wanted from us. I’d come into the studio and motherfuckers would be miserable, and I knew it had a lot to do with the production: the music wasn’t making us rock in the way we wanted to rock. The reason I ended up being the spokesperson for everybody was because I knew my project was coming next. I didn’t want people worrying that they were going to get the same sort of shit from my record that they did from 8 Diagrams, because I knew I was sitting on a classic.”

Raekwon had every reason to be excited. Four years in the making, …Cuban Linx II returned him to the hot seat with all the flourish of a rejuvenated movie mobster back on top of the world.

Comparisons with The Godfather: Part II abounded, appropriate given the number of mafia references on an album truly cinematic in scope and totally in keeping with the sound of the original thanks to plentiful appearances by Ghostface, and despite only limited production by RZA. The album also marked a long-

overdue return of artistry to the frontline of a genre too long dragged down by the hookbased hip hop of artists like Soulja Boy and Yung Joc: respected rap site HipHopDX awarded it album of the year and Raekwon MC of the year at its 2009 roundup, while MTV voted him the 10th hottest rapper in the world.

But for Raekwon, the true reward was renewed admiration from fans of real hip hop the world over, and it’s with them in mind that he returns this year with Shaolin Vs WuTang, an album that remains faithful to the tried-and-trusted fusion of martial arts samples and break-neck beats, and which confirms the return of lyrical swordplay as a genuine art form.

“There are a lot of divisions in hip hop these days, but the hip hop we grew up with was a universal language. As far back as ’92 we were educating people about using emotions and images and ideas in their lyrics. My records have always been about taking listeners on a visual journey, and this album is definitely cinematic in my eyes. I don’t think hip hop is just about being hardcore and coming off like a gangster in every track. Hip hop is about art, about opening your mind to different ways of expression.”

My Country N O N Y L D E D I C THE DE s D r A y E n U t D BIRD-BRAINE CHING FOR IS SEAR N W O R E H N I M FREEDO BACK GARDEN great solution and sider, come to some a way where sense of being an out find this sly hth lou eig acu the mir h, ls fres young cared incantation fee also this sense from a sense. The truth ays and kes alw ma ing has ryth s, eve ArD E-y te.” es all the fun se.” first time I tried to tUn impres- begins to gra - age that money tak is that nothing makes sen re about making an Merrill, that expressive ing.” ryth d. listen to w h o k i l l, mo eve like of tly out gh she was born a tan ins the ng it’s bei ed: n stag tha t t n visi isn’ sio s uld Enes wo tUn r on she radical, Merrill was the second album by is straight,” she work. way she knows how to as part of her morning “My music ica only the Afr on s from wa ne nding riots while pho Ds, atte to yAr n the settle in terrified of s really important for me tre of a explains dow in Montreal in case studies and eventually , where she ally commute. In the cen rnia the illeg lifo in g Ca lly livin nd, sica s kla phy wa Oa she engage ed with orted and lost Montreal because train in a hole cramm rned after SXSW. r’s per- she was dep atever that means — tered by has just retu arching for that outside she returned to ’t really music. Wh “se So don . ” y suits, my ears were bat ing ge, the sta ryth say on eve e ving of opl mo stories “Pe e”. An intense period hope rhythmically or I ctiv it. spe rise . sirens and yelling and ego sstes cat cro Sta to the the d splashed know how she explains. Often followed. about riots and murder ealised that it was a goo people the freedom so compli- depression were much. I that it gives rhythms she uses are mid-twenties ld a relame bui to For nity ys. wa ortu m nt with bright gloss. Too opp the ere ised, not to think in diff ed she has to remember which I one of the most needed to be anaesthet ing to say, ‘That’s cat ship with my country, trying to gs that it’s very satisfy her body rather than I’ve ever lived tion son in n of,” es by nio tim opi ake ed lish aw hel mix y ken sha a ver s. But while have them out. ong on a mine.’” s of her move to I through,” she say certainly is dis- write lain t sound like they bel nd exp tha sou life she ole sity wh ver elt my danced from uni Dubbed But it was also lly most kids fresh breakfast cereal advert, tinctive. mselves, Oakland. wanted to be physica CGI smile sic spans are worrying about the fell in love. mu she ’s e to by a man with a rrill aus Me , bec op’ to lyp ‘po s. his face. ’s problems seemed thms, free,” she add rrill rhy t now I’m in my Me n tha ica the three times bigger than Afr ind on and n bor hip hop ill was globe. enthe second time I tried to trying to really n trem I’m spa her ties with and thir out st m coa filling the east going to Africa I had a er ce voi listen to w h o k i l l with my own e ctly sam dire the her — age ing dur book, but dous voice time understanding eng moved several times d har the decisions to to ve ed lea gat er not rele was in my chair with a fath to be erican or as an life; ldhood as her architect w h o k i l l that won’t Am chi er. an eith feel pasas k not wor role n’t and my did t ple the tha “I think I other peo ed to find work during t lo-fi of background. artist,” she explains. ning and four struggl really engage,” she rk trai is a far cry from the sof wo but tre , His sive 0s.

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rocked city DETROIT, THE WASTELAND, IS A MODERN OBSESSION. BUT WHAT OF THE CITY IN IT’S ROCK’N’ROLL HEY-DAY? ZACHARY WEEDON OF THE DIRTBOMBS CONSULTS ALICE COOPER.

Detroit, by nature, is a transient city and ‘nature’ had a name: Henry Ford. With the invention of the automobile, the shutting down of the trolley system and the ploughing of freeways through the neighborhoods, the city was created to move between around in on four wheels. That’s why it should come as no surprise that when the first signs of trouble arose in 1967, people dropped ass behind a steering wheel and got the hell out of Dodge.

Now

after so much shit-talking there’s a sort of media kumbaya going on to lift up our downtrodden city. Various news outlets are here almost weekly, talking about redefining what Detroit ‘is’. What’s baffling, though, is that everyone is having collective jizz about the positive portrayal of Detroit but nobody is questioning who the people doing the talking or ‘speaking for us’ really are. Most don’t even live in the city, thus people who know nothing about Detroit are defining us. What does all this have to do with Alice Cooper?

Well, to me, Alice Cooper is the musical embodiment of Detroit. He’s transient,

playing in Phoenix under different names like The Spiders and The Nazz, his band moved to Los Angeles. It was in LA where they changed their name from The Nazz and Vince Furnier became Alice Cooper. They signed to Frank Zappa’s Straight Records and put out two psych-influenced albums that were met with little fanfare.

After playing at a festival with the MC5 and The Stooges in 1970, the group decided to return to Detroit.

eight hours or more on a factory line doing the same mind-numbing work day after day, you want to go to a concert and actually feel something. You want to hear them leave it all on the stage. You want to see someone else’s blood and sweat. You want to feel alive, not like you are part of the machine moving a car down an assembly line. You want your musicians to, as the MC5 would say, “either kick out the jams or get the fuck off the stage”.

“When

Alice

we saw the MC5 we were like, ‘Wow, these guys can play,’” explains Cooper. Then The Stooges went on after them that’s when we knew we were the lost finger in the glove. LA just didn’t get it — everyone was on acid, everyone was groovy and beautiful, but we didn’t mind a little blood and violence, which made us seem like we were cut from a different cloth.

Maybe that was the Detroit coming out of me.”

It

was no surprise that Detroit took to Alice Cooper. After spending

Cooper remembers the first time he played in front of a Detroit audience: “When we went on the crowd just got it; they loved the theatrics. I think what they loved was the attitude. We didn’t back down from what we were doing. We were loud and in their face.

Our rock’n’roll was Chuck Berry rock’n’roll, and that spoke to Detroit.”

When

Alice Cooper arrived rock’n’roll was everywhere. 1970 was a musical apex in Detroit rock’n’roll. The Stooges’ Funhouse, the MC5’s Back

hard to identify and full of controversy. Instead of trying to get the story from someone else, we have the story from the man himself: a real Detroiter talking about what Detroit rock’n’roll was to him. And what it still is. No car included.

Vincent

Furnier was born in Detroit in 1948. His family moved to Phoenix in 1958 in part due to his problems with asthma.

He remembers the city at that time as having grit that made it stand out from other cities. “It was always a blue-collar, tough place,” he says. After years of

in the USA and Bob Seger’s Mongrel were all released that year.

“On

any weekend at the Eastown Theatre or the Grande Ballroom there would be The Stooges, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent & The Amboy Dukes and a national act like Savoy Brown,” continues Cooper.

Seriously?

We’re talking about two Rock And Roll Hall of Famers and a guitar god opening up for Savoy Brown! A line-up like that is nearly unprecedented. And there were still bands like the Bob Seger System, The Up, SRC, Frigid Pink and the MC5 who would also be a part of the rotating opening line-ups all across the city. It was a musical breeding ground and the competition was fierce. “You had to be a great band, because the emphasis was always on the music,” says Cooper. “We would have a 10-hour rehearsal, and nine hours would be on the music.”

Alice

Cooper took it all in, especially one partic-

ular group: “I was fascinated by The Stooges. Iggy was like a spastic Mick Jagger — he never stops. He’s in the crowd. He’s a contortionist. They were three-chord rock and stone-cold serious about it. And lyrics like ‘No Fun?’ Totally basic. You didn’t want to go on after The Stooges. They would wear their audiences, so you had to go out and bring them up again.”

You

can hear the transformation in Alice Cooper’s music. The band was always trying to look at the darker elements, mixing teen angst with vaudevillian theatrics.

Bob Ezrin, the band’s producer, was “always telling us to dumb it down”, says Cooper, yet the similarities between ‘I’m Eighteen’ and Stooges songs like ‘No Fun’ or ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ are pretty apparent. Alice Cooper was trying, just like Iggy, to identify with the indifference and confusion of the mostly male, mostly white rebellious teenagers. Mixing that angst with a violent live show consisting of strait jackets and decapitations was a recipe for controversy.

Travel 50

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

Linocut by Jodi Burian

Cooper

says it came from a different place than other Detroit bands: “We were like Phantom of The Opera and creepy. We would have knife fights like West Side Story. Our violence was choreographed; The Stooges’ violence was actually in the crowd, which then moved onto the stage.”

Cooper:

“We had to cut the umbilical chord. When ‘…Eighteen’ became a hit through CKLW [a local radio station out of Windsor, Canada — the first to break it] we had to leave the nest.”

The

that with the MC5’s mix of sonic intensity and their political alliance with groups like the White Panther Party and you have a scene that would make any young mother cringe.

band had hit the ceiling in Detroit. It was probably a good time to make an exit. That year the Bob Seger System broke up, the MC5 would put out their last release and The Stooges were in disarray.

Though some of those bands would go onto new and greater heights it looked like the party was over.

It’s

But,

Couple

easy to write off a group like The Stooges when their music didn’t find mainstream acceptance, but Alice Cooper had 14 Top Forty hits. It becomes that much more uncomfortable when you’re projecting all this violence (staged or not) across a wider audience. And a wider audience they found. Soon Alice Cooper got too big, or Detroit got too small. Either way, by 1972 Alice Cooper was out of Detroit for good.

The Stool Pigeon May 2011

says Cooper, “every album Alice Cooper ever did was a Detroit album.”

Alice

Cooper doesn’t have a home. He may live in Phoenix, but a man who spends six or seven months a year on tour doesn’t live anywhere. It has always been that way. From Detroit to Phoenix to California to Detroit to New York to Connecticut and so on, he’s a transient

being. But if Alice Cooper became Alice Cooper anywhere it was in Detroit.

Just like anyone, you find your identity and you come into your own at home.

You get nurtured, and supported.

person that’s part of a family, his first priority is protecting his own. “The first thing I do is look on the list and think, ‘Where’s Ted Nugent? Where’s the MC5?’”

“We

were always a Detroit band,” he says. “When we would leave for tour the target dates would be London, LA, New York, Chicago and Detroit. Detroit was the target audience for the whole tour.

Our mission was to just blow them away.”

Alice

Cooper is protecting his family. And as he is hanging in Phoenix and working on his golf swing he tells us stories of what Detroit is. He tells us what our city has always been. He doesn’t tell us what we are now, nor does he try.

And I don’t want him to.

If

Someone

you could wow an audience in Detroit you could do it anywhere. Using Detroit to cut your teeth made you an electric band. You could withstand anything and it was because, no matter what, the music came first: “In 1968 during the riots, if you had long hair you could go downtown anywhere and be safe. The music was more important than politics.”

Alice

Cooper entered the Rock And Roll Hall Fame as a Detroiter, and just like any

is always trying to engage our emotions by displaying our perseverance. What they don’t realise is that the moment they commodify that very perseverance, it makes it less significant; it makes it less real, and less ours. Alice Cooper walks around as a Detroiter and wears it as a badge of honour.

He’s paid his dues. With that badge he can speak for us. We shouldn’t be handing those badges out. Not for any price.

51

SOUND TRACKS Shackleton and spoken-word artist Vengeance Tenfold’s train of thought ollowing the success of his Fabric 55 release, British producer Sam Shackleton has teamed up with his long-term musical partner, Canadian spoken-word artist Vengeance Tenfold (Earl Fontainelle), to create

F

two very special aural trips.

As part of Sound UK’s Sonic Journey series in partnership with Beaford Arts and The Dartington Hall Trust, the pairing have produced two pieces of music inspired by their

travels along two stretches of train line in the southwest — using part of the main line between Exeter and Totnes, and part of the Tarka line between Exeter and Barnstaple.

From April 8 to August 31, you will

be able to download these exclusive free tracks from sonicjourneys.co.uk then embark on the same train journeys and experience the music while moving through the landscape that inspired it. Thomas A. Ward

VENGEANCE TENFOLD: “SAM AND I TOOK THE JOURNEYS TOGETHER AND DID SOME RECORDINGS OF THE TRAINS TO USE IN THE SONGS. WE JUST DUG THE LANDSCAPE, HAD A CHAT, ATE SOME SNACKS AND HAD A DAY ON THE TRAINS BASICALLY. “The two journeys are really different. The north of Devon to Barnstaple [Tarka line] is what you might call a classic Devon landscape: really dense, crowded hills, dales, river valleys and hedges — that sort of pastoral ‘super’ scene we imagine when we think of Devon. And the south coast [Exeter and Totnes] is proper ocean-meets-giantcliffs, which is a very different scenario. There are lots of holiday homes — tacky British seaside culture. North Devon is much more farmers and an old-school way of life, with areas like Blackpool Sands interacting with grand, natural features. Each of them had their own charms.

“The only thing I’m trying to relate to the listener in the lyrics and work is that it’s just there. Whatever the poetry, whatever the lyrics say to people, is what I’m trying to get across. It is something that is very present and shouldn’t need an explanation from me.

The lyrics are, in themselves, explanations. The landscape, the words and the music all tell a story. I was just reacting in my own way to the landscape. You should react in your own way, so there is part of you in it and not just the landscape in its pure sense.

“Personally, I got a lot of things from the project, and a couple of nice pieces of music that I am happy with.

Sam [now based in Berlin] and I have worked together for 10 years now and we have never collaborated in this kind of long-distance, internet-based way before.

We had no idea if it would work, but it came out well.

Oh, and I got paid.”

Travel 52

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

Entomologically Incorrect

Arts 54

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

You’ll bug out to the installation that compliments Amon Tobin’s new album

Written

by John Doran A

t first glance Tessa Farmer’s installation Control Over Nature, on view in the crypt of St Pancras Church in London from late May, looks little more than some organic detritus: a swarm of insects hovering in the air, the badly decomposing body of a cat, three dead birds, and a pile of bones.

However, closer inspection reveals the diorama to be a pulsating world just out of view, as rich in disturbing detail as a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or a piece by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Farmer, a fine artist who is also currently on display at the Saatchi Gallery, has spent the last eight years creating 10mm tall “fairies” out of plant material, soil and flies wings. Here, her fairies battle hornets, construct airships out of sheep skulls and make home in the mummified cat. Inside the corpse, the humanoid figures wrestle with real ants and farm fly pupae and wasps.

T

he morbid but beautiful work was made as a direct response to Amon Tobin’s eighth album, ISAM. For four years, the Brazilian-born electronic composer has been devising ever more fiendish means of sound manipulation and, most notably, he has designed and built all of his samples into playable instruments. Speaking about the similarities between their projects, he says: “We are both using familiar materials and reorganising them into unfamiliar structures. Tessa will take the head of an animal and turn it into a vehicle for battling fairies; I’ll take the sound of my chair creaking and turn it into a playable instrument.”

Control Over Nature May 26 — June 5 cryptgallery.org.uk Original artwork by Tessa Farmer, courtesy of Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art Art direction by Oscar & Ewan Photography by Pelle Crépin

Horrorscopes

CAPRICORN DECEMBER 23 - JANUARY 20

Your Stars With Mental Marvin

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT ORDER THEY COME IN, I JUST FEEL THIS SHIT” PISCES FEBRUARY 20 - MARCH 20 For seven years Uranus has been blocking Neptune, or is it Saturn...?

Um, ah, fuck knows, but something has definitely been in front of your power planet, Neptune! And from mid-March finally it shifts, freeing the shackles from your dreams and spirits to fly unhindered in this freeflowing dimension we call reality!

possibly lead to murder, mayhem, a pleasant rendezvous and cup of tea at a later date, or an invite!

Possibly even marriage, or at the least an awkward three minutes, damn it, but at least it will lead to something!

Life can be most surprising when you start to become random, bottyfart-super-pumper-squat-knocker.

SAGITTARIUS NOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 22

LIBRA SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 23

Get up in the night, make a hot drink, switch on Radio 3 and let your mind wander unfettered by traffic noise, mobile phone pollution, etc. Less info frees up airwaves at night and we can almost experience the invisible quiet of the old times.

You’ll be amazed at the thoughts and conclusions that come to you after a brief paranoid episode when you wonder what you’re doing up at that hour.

Gosh, I need a poo, care to join me?

Roll me up and take me to the bog with you and read the next exciting star sign from The Stool Pigeon on the john, and have a nice shit.

GEMINI MAY 22 - JUNE 21 You are truly honoured my dear mystical bitch Gemini, for I’m going to give your star reading this month via a crystal ball I borrowed from Lord Swordcock’s estate, which in itself is on loan from Pit Rivers Museum, Oxford, and apparently used to belong to Margaret Thatcher.

Here goes: Gosh, I can’t see a thing… Hang on, uh, no, wait a minute… Wai…t, uh, uh, slurp, dribble… Fuck me, that’s… No, I can’t… I… ahh, AHH, AHHHHHHHHH!

LEO AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23 Slag.

ARIES MARCH 21 - APRIL 20 Slag.

TAURUS APRIL 21 - MAY 21 Talk to a random stranger on public transport. This intervention could

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The spring horn sounds! Flowers bloom, the air is cleansed with light and the Nature God’s horned shadow, if one has imagination, flutters in the corner of our eyes while we watch the blossoming trees release shards of pink snow.

Head out this weekend with a friend into a sun-dappled forest glade or flowery meadow and dance. (Take a ghettoblaster and some Debussy, I find ‘Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Faun’ works quite nicely!) Maybe get bucknaked, yelp and howl to the Gods.

You’ll feel invigorated and at one with your true Pagan nature. THIS IS A PAGAN ISLAND AND SO ARE YOU, REMEMBER!

SCORPIO OCTOBER 24 - NOVEMBER 22 Don’t eat the bloody sausages before a date. Fart like a muva otherwise. Stick to stuff that’s not going to make you parp.

I had a date and it went wrong.

Ended up at A&E, she had asthma and I had eaten a sausage stew beforehand, which triggered me off like a bugger. Then the whole waiting room got blasted out. I was nervous as hell, you see, which makes it worse. Someone threw up, then a doctor slipped on it and sent a syringe of lord-knows-what into the head of a huge mentally retarded chap, who then started doing backflips and flinging trays everywhere.

VIRGO AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23 I can’t stand it. Just because I’m not

1 See 23 across.

8 Punks charge for assault. (1.1.1.)

9 A manger, a porter and Chrissie Hynde. (9) 10 Oddly, to her Bill’s earned highest selling album. (7) 11 Instrument sound found in mellow Bowie. (4) 13 In here, Fugees met Shelter. (6)

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Number 2 ANSWERS Across 1: PICKET 4: see 13d 7: MAN-BAG 8: REDEEM 9: see 10a &14d LOVE WILL TEAR US APART 12: ON THE GROUND 17: OPERATIC19: ALLY20: INDIAN 21: DEADLY 22: LENIN 23: CLUTCH Down 1: PLACEBO 2: CABARET 3: ENGELBERT 4: see 16d 5: GRECIAN 6: TAMILS 11: VIRUCIDAL 13, 4a: NO END IN SIGHT 14: see 10a 15: DELILAH 16, 4d: SOCIAL SCENE 18: AGAIN

AQUARIUS JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 19 The fool laughs and spins Up goes ye maypole, up on the hill Forget your winter worry, and dance till your fill Then I’ll follow sweet Celine Dressed meadowmead in white I’ll follow the blossom That falls from her light And when night screams To creatures most pure Eyes black as seeds We’ll lie on my floor But come waking whistle of sparrow new day She is gone, sweet Celine Queen of the May The fool laughs and spins

CANCER JUNE 22 - JULY 23 A great adventure awaits. Visit the Chartres Cathedral, stand under the south portal underneath the carved green men and discover your destiny…

CRYPTIC CROSSWORD ACROSS

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a trained astrologer I have been thrown off the Astrologer’s Charter. Have I ever let you down, dear Virgo? Have I ever not given you an accurate-to-the-minisculedetail account of your astrological condition every month?

Nay, I thought not, and thank you for your support, dear friend Virgo.

Maybe with enough support and a bit of petitioning we’ll see whether we can’t put this diabolical wrong to right! Now back to the business at hand. I proudly announce with all my professional esteem that your star-sign reading for this month, dear Virgo, is… Slag.

15 In Kurt’s school, no... in Kris’s, e-certificate left in hole. (6) 17, 18a Bono had serfs convert Animal Collective? (4,2,6) 22 Light up and drop a Bob Marley album. (5,4) 23, 1a For articulate sugarloaf kids Georgia and Bristol, Animal Collective are going to... (3,8,5) 23, 7d... collect Oxford regent and manic, articulate saint to steer left into rapper’s garage. (3,7) 24 Cook and turn a vocal, tangled, sticky romance into Animal Collective. (6,7)

DOWN 1 Could Bosstones double quality? Why not? (5)

2 Yeah-sayer held by ‘Pusherman’. (5) 3 Separation of kinds, like special kind of fool to drop a sorry. (9) 4 Beverage of Cop Killer, 19-flavoured maybe. (3-3) 5 Chart saturators’ joy. (4) 6 Bail due! Mix sound quality on all tracks except 4,33. (7) 7 See 23 across.

12 Organ of the inner lord; Shannon’s outer fruit. (8) 13 Grizzly Bear take drug by sea, see Du Maurier character. (7) 14 Devotee’s cooler shirt missing from Alisha’s room. (7) 16 Reverse-riff in the morning, that’s what Yeasayer do. (6) 19 Composer ties a knot. (5) 20Post EPs, concealing H-band. (5) 21 Man, ridin’ dirty, in early for tea, sweet! (4)

Cryptic Crossword No.3 compiled by Samuel Kirwan

Horrorscopes 60

May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

QUICK CROSSWORD #31 Across

Down

1 Ian Brown, John Squire, Mani and Reni (3, 5, 5) 7 Johnson, Wyatt or Smith (6) 8 David Bowie had a Space one (6) 10 Bert Jansch’s was Black (9) 13 Karen O’s agreeable New York band (4, 4, 5) 15 B-side to Oasis’s 1995 single Some Might Say (9) 20 Van Morrisson had Weeks like this (6) 21 Label that has released records by 16 and 22 (6) 22 Many people have aped Alex Turner’s band’s

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Hall, Reid or Cox (5) Guy Garvey’s funny bone (5) Captain Beefheart’s kind of plane (5) Pro _____, measurement in Autechre’s circle (5) Brian Wilson’s unhappy happy album (5) Neon Neon’s was Stainless (5) The band formed by Duran Duran’s hiatus (7) Bark Psychosis’s 1994 masterpiece (3) Daltrey, Townshend, Entwistle and Moon (3) Moby Grape’s highest charting single (5) Roddy Woomble’s kind of Camera (5) Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss’s long running Portland band (5) 17 They fed you their Transference album last year (5) 18 The Rolling Stones had this on Main Street (5) 19 Darren Hayman had porn ones, Elvis Costello’s were red (5)

style (6, 7)

XXIX SOLUTION: ACROSS 1. JIMMY CAMPBELL, 6. NUGGETS, 8. DISCO, 9.

SHACK, 10. PASTELS, 15. ODDS, 16. SKY, 17. WARP, 20. BURMA, 22.

ARIEL, 23. ADMIRAL FELL DOWN 1. JONES, 2. MOGWAI, 3. AESOP ROCK, 4. EASTER, 5. LYONS, 7.

ESKIMO, 8. DESIRE, 11. CROSBY, 12. IMPALA, 13. ADORED, 14. DANIEL, 18.

MALI, 19. HALF, 21. MIA

Crossword No.XXXI compiled by Ed Mugford

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BOURBON Iver DIGESTEVE Malkmus Slow CLUB Bloc PARTY RINGS Marc ALMOND THINS GARIBALDI Lightbody The Miserable RICH Tea PENGWEN Stefani FIG ROLO Tomassi Neutral MALTED MILK Hotel

KIT KAT Power Custard CREAM Stiff Little CHOCOLATE FINGERS Danielson FAMILY SELECTION OREO Speedwagon Fleet FOX’S MELTS Moody BLUES RIBAND Stevie TWIX JAM Sandwich Creams Thom YORKIE

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Tea Break The Stool Pigeon May 2011

57

33 1/3: TUSK Rob Trucks Continuum Books

RETROMANIA: POP CULTURE’S ADDICTION TO ITS OWN PAST Simon Reynolds Faber and Faber

At the seventies’ end, the world’s most popular band made the first million-dollar record, named it after their drummer’s penis, and suffered the biggest-ever sales drop between consecutive albums. Nobody could fail to wring drama from the story of Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, right?

Wrong. Rob Trucks’s excruciating, supercilious ramble opens with the following: “There’s a good chance you won’t like this book.” And the scene is set.

Trucks’s intro warns the reader that a sixth or maybe fifth of the book focuses on him personally (it will feel like more), and explains that while he’s interviewed Lindsey Buckingham about solo records, the exclusively Tusk-focused chats he was promised never materialised.

In their absence, Trucks resorts to solipsistic musings, weakly arguing that this is appropriate given the self-indulgence infusing Tusk. The resultant mess typifies a malaise in music journalism: too many hacks deceive punters into reading their diaries.

This book has more to say about Trucks’s high-school dramas, personal relationships and insomnia than it does Tusk. Infuriatingly, navel-gazing anecdotes are rendered in the third person (“Hair grows in Rob’s ears…”). Space is even found for mention of the noisy sex enjoyed by Trucks’s upstairs neighbour — not, of course, a Fleetwood Mac member.

On the book’s supposed subject, Trucks offers little beyond the odd vaguely relevant quote from interviews with Buckingham. When these run out, he transcribes the answer he got when he rang a radio programme on which Buckingham was a guest. It illuminates little: Buckingham may have been the creative force behind Tusk, but he’s no master of pithy analysis. And since no other Mac member is quoted here, that’s a problem.

To fill space, Trucks obsesses over Rolling Stone critical lists and conducts armchair analysis of sales figures and tour itineraries. Whole chapters are devoted to top-of-thehead observations from Tusk-loving musicians: members of Animal Collective, Camper Can Beethoven and The New Pornographers, plus such luminaries as Walter Egan, Kaki King and, yes, a Fleetwood Mac tribute band. Only Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner manages an arresting Tusk appraisal: “It cost an insane amount of money and a lot of it sounds like it was recorded at home.”

Lacking his own insights, Trucks engages in pretentious repetitions. One recurring phrase runs this: “Music is personal. Tusk is a symbol.”

“Music is personal” is the default position of all bad music journalists. And if Tusk is a symbol, this book doesn’t explain why. Niall O’Keeffe

In the late 17th century, the Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer coined the term ‘nostalgie’ to refer to the extreme form of homesickness suffered by some of his countrymen on long tours of national service in the lowlands of France and Italy as they pined for the fjords. This longing to get home led in some extreme cases to anorexia or even suicide. When the British borrowed the term in the 1920s it became ‘nostalgia’ — the thing causing the sickness switched from being distance to time. The changing pace of life and technological innovation in the 20th century meant that society could now mutate out of all recognition in the space of a generation causing a greater rift between childhood and adulthood, forcing many to look backwards with idealised longing.

Simon Reynolds may be well known for his interest in new music (especially concerning rave culture) but, as he says himself, he’s also very complicit in ‘retro’ culture, having produced no less than two lauded books on the subject of post punk. In this immensely engaging new work, he looks at ‘retromania’ as it applies to music. He hits us with a wealth of statistics about reissue and reformation culture, which should be enough to give anyone an interest in progressive music a panic attack. In his usual breezy but academic style he ropes Jacques Derrida into his argument, saying that we collectively seem to be suffering from what could be called ‘archive fever’, or in his own words “a delirium of documentation”, recording every last facet of popular music on blogs, YouTube, MP3 collections, bootlegs and reissues, as if some kind of disastrous event is about to make all our brains burn out simultaneously. He gives voice to two worrying ideas that plenty of us have nowadays — that we’re not inculcating or even enjoying the music we listen to given the amount of choice we have, we’re merely “keeping up”; and how can music progress in any natural way while it is blocked by this monolithic and unavoidable cache of musical history.

Reynolds highlights how similar the words ‘museum’ and ‘mausoleum’ are, and how our obsession with cataloguing the past is killing new music. This said, he also recognises that some of the most exciting artists out there, such as Oneohtrix Point Never, are making new music out of the “ecstatic regression” offered by YouTube, and how it allows universal trips to “exotic pockets of cultural strangeness”.

In one amusing chapter the author outs himself as being haplessly addicted to record collecting — to the extent that he started to get wrapped up in weird fantasies of time travel that would allow him to get access to mint condition discs at reasonable prices. Musing on such disparate topics as hipster culture, tribute bands, the mash up, hauntology and MP3s, this is an essential read for anyone who realises that it is history, not piracy, that poses the greatest threat to the progress of popular music. John Doran

WIRE Frames Vacuum-cleaning Welsh menace Nicky Wire is bringing out a book featuring extensive Polaroids taken throughout the life of his band on the road. Death Of The Polaroid: A Manics Family Album comes with Wire witticisms for each colour snap. Sample: “Here’s me re-reading the Communist Manifesto for the 964th time!!”; “Here’s James reading a biography of Fredrich Adlophe Sorge!”; “Backstage in James’s dressing room. How many cakes can one person get on a rider, LOL!!!”

INKY Afro Indie disco’s favourite Womble Shaun Ryder is putting pen to paper and this time it’s not to sign his Giro.

The hapless Happy Mondays hedonist is in the process of writing his autobiography, which promises to be interesting at the very least.

“Plenty of other people have had their say on Happy Mondays and Black Grape, and now just felt like the right time to tell it like it really happened,” said Shaun.

Unmissable? Inadmissible more like.

JACKONORY Story Cat from Red Dwarf lookalike Jermaine Jackson has written a biography about his late, great brother Michael. Given that Jermaine responded to responsibility by christening his own child Jermajesty, it’s a wonder anybody leaves him alone to make a cup of tea, let alone entrust him to write a book (one pictures him daubing stick men, head tilted, tongue protruding). HarperCollins say the biography is written from a perspective that few other people could have of Michael. Presumably that’s not looming from above with some sweeties, then.

CARRYING Coals Beth Ditto seems a little young to be publishing her autobiography, but given that Wayne Rooney’s already had three out we’ll let her off. Coals To Diamonds promises to reveal plenty of intimate secrets about her private life, which is fine.

“I don’t get embarrassed easily,” she told NME. “I could show you my butt cheeks now and I’d be fine about it.” While Ditto is something of a curiosity in the UK, it’ll not take you long to seek out an obese American gobbing off if you fly to the US.

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May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

BRIAN ENO 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth Sexy Intellectual The music documentary makers Sexy Intellectual do a much better job than most others at making these unofficial films. Coming after a wellrealised film on Kraftwerk, they’ve turned to another shining outlier of the seventies, Brian Peter George St. John Le Baptiste de la Salle Eno. They may not have direct access to his nibs, but they have sourced some solid footage and roped in some great talking heads (Geeta Dayal, Simon Reynolds and Robert Christgau in particular). A story in three parts, the film does a good job of pointing out exactly how strange it was having a non-musician, avant garde artist as a full member of a glam rock band in the early 1970s. Indeed, his strongly alien/androgynous image and his skill in manipulating the band’s sound ensured that he quickly became the focal point of Roxy Music gigs with fans chanting his — not Bryan Ferry’s — name. The second act looks behind the myth of the non-musician kick-starting a solo career. Above and beyond having chums in the avant garde and such hoots as the Oblique Strategy Cards that randomised some of his studio procedures, we see Eno as more of a punk rock risk-taker. After a lukewarm reception to his first solo album, Here Come The Warm Jets, Eno hired a band he saw playing in his local pub, The Winkies, and went on tour with them before releasing the now-forgotten novelty yodel rock single called ‘The Seven Deadly Finns’. It was probably this impulsiveness as much as his intellectualism that made him such a visionary. Given that Eno had already released his post punk album (Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy) in 1974, he changed gear again for the second half of the seventies by popularising ambient music.

A satisfying and thorough introduction to a monumental figure in modern popular music. John Doran

STASCHA BADER (DIR.) Rocksteady: The Roots Of Reggae Blue Dolphin The opening shot of this amazing documentary shows an elderly Stranger Cole (who had the first of many hits in Jamaica in 1962 with ‘Rough & Tough’) sitting in front of an idyllic teal-coloured sea saying: “When I look back on my life I realise how lucky I have been, singing, dancing and creating music since I was a boy. But one thing made me sad — the music that I loved so much was going to be forgotten.” The narrative is based around Cole getting together with Hopeton Lewis, Dawn Penn, Marcia Griffiths, U-Roy, Leroy Sibbles and Sly Dunbar for one last gig and as they practise their hits, and the story of how ska became reggae is told. Beautiful stuff. John Doran

EFTERKLANG An Island Rumraket/4AD Efterklang’s album-length film gives you more of a sense of the band than any interview could manage. Filmed over four days, the eight-piece indie ensemble rope in 200 participants — from kids to the band’s own parents — into performances around the Danish island they grew up in. French director Vincent Moon, who was behind similarly unconventional documentaries on Arcade Fire, Mogwai and The National, shoots the band in unusual places (like the back of a truck ploughing through a dirt road) while interspersing subdued recollections of their childhood friendships. He excels at capturing the moment with intimate close-angles and improvised fluidity, revealing a side to Efterklang’s songs few would fail to be charmed by. Cian Traynor

QUENTIN DUPIEUX (DIR.) Rubber Optimum Most people will remember Quentin Dupieux as the man behind Mr Oizo’s ‘Flat Beat’, the smash-hit song that featured a yellow puppet of indeterminate species strutting his stuff to a grinding, electro groove.

Dupieux also directed the promo, and perhaps he should have stuck to the pop vids if this ’ed-bangingly tedious feature length is anything to go by. A meta-black comedy about a tyre that comes to life and embarks on a psychokinetic killing spree across the US badlands, the film is neither scary nor particularly funny beyond its goofy premise, and a laboured subtext about the passivity of consumer culture makes this one wheel that’s in dire need of clamping. Alex Denney

Winnebagos NINE-INCH Fail

Having won an Oscar recently for the soundtrack to The Social Network, Trent Reznor may now think he’s suddenly a big cheese in the movie business. Because there aren’t enough crap vampire flicks out there already, Reznor is said to be in advanced talks with 20th Century Fox to score and appear in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Note, Sir Elton John didn’t pimp his night-stalking ass when he was honoured for The Lion King. Have some fucking dignity, man.

SEE Willie

King Of Luck, a film about Willie Nelson, was recently premiered at SXSW. Though the celebrityobsessed media got a wigwam about the fact Billy Bob Thornton directed, it’s a film about Willie Nelson. That’s the American country hero Willie Nelson. Woody Harrelson and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson contribute some singing, but that’s irrelevant: it’s a movie about the legendary Willie Nelson. “This movie is not about who directed it,” said the bloke who directed it. He’s right, it’s a movie about motherfucking Willie Nelson, for Willie Nelson’s sake.

GWYN AND Bear It

What do you give the person who has everything? Gwyneth Paltrow has already won an Oscar, has a famous, multi-millionaire husband, a Learjet and two beautiful children, Apple and Google, and now it would appear she is about to be given a recording contract. After recently starring in Glee and new flick Country Strong — both singing parts — it has come to the attention of many that Gwynnie is not the only one in the family who likes to warble.

Atlantic are apparently the ones doing the sniffing.

THUMBS Down

Robert Zemeckis may want to get back to the future after Disney shelved his Yellow Submarine remake. Whether or not he’ll pitch his 3D-animation project to other studios is not yet known, but it doesn’t look good. It’s also rotten news for comedian Peter Serafinowicz who was to voice cheeky thumbsaloft mop-top Paul McCartney in the movie remake; a great shame as he does Macca effortlessly. The same can’t be said for his Twitter.

Moving Images The Stool Pigeon May 2011

59

AGENT RIBBONS

Albums Reviews by Jeremy Allen, Alex Denney, John Doran, Ben Graham, Lev Harris, Phil Hebblethwaite, Kev Kharas, Alex Marshall, Cian Traynor, Luke Turner, Thomas A. Ward.

WILD BEASTS Smother Domino

Wild Beasts’ new album is a smoothing of edges. Three years isn’t much to many bands, but ever since the riotous introductory knees-up and pants-down careering of debut album Limbo, Panto, the Cumbrian quartet have gradually planed down the harder edges of themselves. Smother is aptly named — it’s an album that would rather envelop you in clean sheets than drag you howling in a headlock toward an awkward, sticky dawn.

Which isn’t to say they’ve cleaned their brains. It’d be easy to spend these words talking final track ‘The End Came Too Soon’ alone. The seven-minute-plus song, with its methodical pace and at-ecstasy’s-edge vocal pants, is an ode to infinitely deterred ejaculation. In it, Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto swoons in now familiar flights, the titular lament the sound of an overgrown colt who, despite years of training, still wishes he had full control of his organ.

Smother’s philosophy seems caught up in this track. The fact that lust remains even as the temperature’s cooled suggests that Wild Beasts have realised life holds enough jarring moments of its own to keep a young man interested. “Oh, don’t you think,” sings Thorpe, on the furtive and balm-fraught ‘Loop The Loop’, “that people are the strangest things.

Design of desire, is all that the heart requires.” When later he admits, resigned, that he’s “made enough enemies”, it’s clear that these are the words of a man who’s lost all trust in his libido.

And thank fuck for that. A loyal libido makes for Marti Pellow, Mario Winans, middle-age and mediocrity. It makes for shitty albums. Smother is a marvel, made by men who seem to have realised that the tail they’ve been chasing all these years is their own.

On and on the pursuit goes, though. On ‘Plaything’ Thorpe wills a dropped chemise, while fellow lead vocalist Tom Fleming — who’s always seemed the more romantically reliable of the Beasts’ wailing pair — curses the breaking of a relationship that renders him see-through on ‘Invisible’. She saw right through you and your motives, Fleming, and that’s what comes from not keeping your cock in the right place.

Motives are a big part of what Wild Beasts do, and it’s a big part of what they are. There’s a playful psychology to their music that has always kept me rapt, and tracking the progression of their psyche across the span of three albums has been incredibly pleasurable. Anyone thinking that the shift in gear — from The Smiths and Orange Juice to The Field and, on ‘Burning’, Dan Lopatin’s Oneohtrix Point Never — results in less of that pleasure doesn’t understand what makes this band so special.

Theirs is a love of the underneath and their songs should be seen as windows into pits of soul and psyche as much as they shed light on stinkier zones underarm and by groin. If Limbo, Panto and 2009’s Two Dancers thrilled with their stolen glances, Smother is a record that seems to relish the panoramic view it has inside itself as much as it wants to look in your clothes. KK

Chateau Crone Acuarela

If Agent Ribbons hadn’t been turned away at customs in 2008 for not having work permits (d’oh!), their planned short tour of the UK would have made a splash. Now Austinbased, these three tattooed and robed-in-vintage-clothes Californian women have sass in abundance and, in Natalie Gordon, a very fine lyricist and singer. Great blues/jazz vocalists are a big influence, but the music reaches further. You hear ragtime, ballroom waltz, swing, cabaret, garage rock and punk coherently melded together in their clever and raw music. “I was born to sing sad songs that go on for more than three-minutes long,” coos Natalie. Decadent, perhaps, but lovely.

BIBIO Mind Bokeh Warp

Warp man Stephen Wilkinson impresses with Mind Bokeh, a record further exploring the sweetly decayed funk and soul sounds of 2009 opus Ambivalence Avenue while retaining the IDM wistfulness that was his early calling card. ‘Bokeh’ is the out-of-focus region of a photograph and certainly this eclectic set does its damnedest to strain your senses. ‘Excuses’ pops and squeaks like lobsters in the pot, ‘Pretentious’ sounds like Boards Of Canada riding a G-funk groove and ‘Anything New’ bottles Stevie Wonder’s brilliance into an instrumental hip hop jam. The DFA1979-ish ‘Take Off Your Shirt’ sits oddly in the mix, but in the main Wilkinson’s daring works wonders here.

COLD CAVE Cherish The Light Years Matador

While no-one could deny Cold Cave’s debut Love Comes Close occasionally scaled dizzying peaks of synth-noir perfection, its tackedtogether composition meant it was guilty of dipping into the odd trough. Happily Cherish The Light Years is more coherent. Wes Eisold uses the same frosty soundscape as a platform for his sermonising, conjuring images of apocalypse on ‘Confetti’ and ‘Underworld USA’. Yet for all the forbearers it’s compulsory to name-check when discussing Cold Cave — Cabaret Voltaire, Depeche Mode et al — it’s actually Suede and the Pet Shop Boys which Eisold mines best; finding beauty among the squalor, preaching defiantly from the pulpit despite the darkness that’s slowly enveloping him.

COLOURMUSIC My ______ Is Pink Memphis Industries

As the album title and tracks such as ‘The Beast With Two Backs’ and ‘Feels Good To Wear’ suggest, this is an album about fucking. Because Colourmusic are a psychedelic band from Oklahoma (and Yorkshire) they’ve been compared to The Flaming Lips, a band who were, in their first decade or so, overtly sexual. But the outfit’s woozy riffs and pounding beats make them sound more like the slightly less raunchy A Place To Bury Strangers or The Big Pink. Trouble is, this means it occasionally feels like a dry hump, with them only really getting down to the actual dirty business on the banging, Sabbathinspired ‘The Little Death (in Five Parts)’.

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May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

CAT’S EYES Cat’s Eyes Polydor

Looking back, Primary Colours was The Horrors’ ‘Take On Me’ moment — the sound of a band stepping out of the comicbook shadows and stealing themselves a third dimension as songwriters of proper skill and nuance.

Still buoyed by his triumph some two years previous, band frontman Faris Badwan and soprano Rachel Zeffira have plenty of fun with Cat’s Eyes, a Vatican-approved side project slashing straight to the core of sixties girl-pop heartbreak with great raggedy claws.

A love-hate dust-up for two with Badwan gamely pushing his paperthin tenor into crooner-ish territory and Zeffira’s voice scaled down to a sly, semi-whisper to compensate, the record fairly pulses along on the idea of pop music as religion, avoiding the drearily rote Spectorisms that plague many latter-day indie adherents to the sound.

Musically, the LP divides roughly into two types of song — the slinky, promiscuous pop of the title track and ‘Over You’’s cheery stomp on the grave of a relationship, and hallowed, string-laden balladry in numbers like ‘You’re The Best Person I Know’ and ‘I’m Not Stupid’. The latter sounds like a golden-era Hollywood take on Nancy & Lee’s poison loveletters, awash with horns and luminous string arrangements.

Badwan sprays stinking hot pheromones up in the joint on ‘Not The One’, coolly declaring: “You think that you’re the only one, how ‘bout you take a look around? I never had trouble getting girls I don’t need.” Then Zeffira sinks her teeth in — “You might think that your lies are kind but they just stink”— before her loverman comes crawling back as spectral choirs soar overhead: “I knew it was over before you told me so.”

Those looking to quibble might say the pair’s verbal sparring lacks a certain vindictive wit (Burton and Taylor they certainly ain’t), but Cat’s Eyes remains a dynamite, horizon-stretching excursion for The Horrors mainman. AD

GLASVEGAS EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ Columbia

As far as rock’n’roll hijinks go, the bizarre is usually preferable to the boorish — and lord knows that the landfill indie dullards currently doing the rounds would benefit from occasionally embracing their dafter sides. But as entertaining as James Allan’s recent litany of indulgences have been, they’ve somewhat eclipsed interest in Glasvegas’s return. Who wants to bother with tiresome ‘difficult second album’ claptrap when there are booze-filled nights spent serenading fish to discuss?

While the scurrilous gossip has also lent a comical slant to Allan’s darker antics (his overdose at Coachella, for example, granted a touch of surrealist humour by the presence of a startled Zane Lowe), any frivolity has been banished on EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\ in favour of cathartic soul-cleansing. Its themes of redemption are writ large on spoken-word opener ‘Pain, Pain Never Again’ as Allan dreams of “the bluest blue skies, and the most angelic of angels… A Casablanca-type ending”. And with Flood’s production adding a hefty dose of bombast to proceedings, the likes of ‘Shine Like Stars’ are resolute songs of triumph, with Allan declaring, “Once my happiness seemed so far away / Now it seems I’m here to stay,” over the pounding synths.

All the optimism could have been slightly ham-fisted if it weren’t for the creeping sense of uneasiness eating away at the bravado. The sky-scraping guitars and thwacking drums on ‘The World Is Yours’, for example, can’t disguise Allan’s paranoid fretting that, “You don’t need me as much as I need you,” and when the thunder does abate on the tender ‘I Feel Wrong’, it’s to make way for this crooned confession: “Once a day I think about killing myself.” For all that’s brash about EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK \\\, it’s those fleeting moments of vulnerability that ensure Glasvegas retain some of the magic that made their debut so reassuringly human. BH

EMA Past Life Martyred Saints Souterrain Transmissions

So few musicians know the value of a good coda. That philanderer Elgar was good at them; so was that anti-Semite Wagner. The debut by Erika M Anderson, formerly of Gowns, has nothing to do with classical music — she’s a guitarist who loves feedback — but she certainly knows a coda’s worth. Half the songs here are going along fine, then she’ll suddenly change everything about them for the last minute. It works every time — upping the tracks’ emotional impact, or turning them into singalongs. At its best, on a song like ‘Anteroom’ — a grunge number which she suddenly turns into an a cappella — it feels like getting two songs for the price of one.

JOHN FOXX AND THE MATHS Interplay Metamatic

What to do if you’re a Synth Knight buried under a marble slab, tight buttocks tickled by the groaned welcome of the nostalgic, purgatorial hordes: “Play Leicester with The Human League”? Interplay sees John Foxx commune with youthful sorcerer Benge to reanimate his still-warm body, creating one of the most enlightened synth records in years. This is in part due to the harnessing of the ancient machines that were Foxx’s playthings back in the late-seventies, and part down to Benge’s contemporary futurism. But even that would be naught without the voice of Foxx himself, all Ballardian incredulity at a still gambolling modern world. An electric twitch still flicks this Foxx’s tail.

GANG GANG DANCE Eye Contact 4AD

Quantifying the music of Gang Gang Dance is a little like being asked to count the sides of a circle, or tender a review of an amorphous blob — just when you’ve concluded it sounds like X, Y and Z reference points, the blasted thing transforms before your very ears. But fuck it, here goes anyway: Eye Contact is the New York City outfit’s fifth album and first for 4AD after a spell on Warp, and one that captures their jawdropping, chronoclastic flow in full effect. It’s all a bit hippy-drippy in parts, but give ’em their due: with nusto singer Liz Bougatsos at the reins, GGD channel the detritus of the electronic era into pristine, new age music for a new millennium.

GYRATORY SYSTEM New Harmony Angular

The UK’s oddest but most satisfying dance group return with a second album to equal their astonishing debut, The Soundboard Breathes. Formed around Dr Andrew Blick on treated trumpet, his septuagenarian father Robin on toy instruments and brass and James Weaver on bass and synths, they produce an utterly individual sound that makes you feel like you’re going ever-so-slightly unhinged. Toy town techno meets neo classical gets slowed right down for the moody ‘Lost On The King’s Road’, before going drum’n’bass bananas on ‘Seven Dials’. ‘Industrial Action’ sounds like a brass band with a drum machine and synth covering Throbbing Gristle.

Reviews The Stool Pigeon May 2011

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HOLY GHOST!

KID CONGO AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS

Holy Ghost!

Gorilla Rose

DFA/Coop

In The Red

A new addition to the DFA roster, Holy Ghost! are a band who are certainly not lacking in influences. And that’s not meant in a good way. Their self-titled debut plays like a rehash of everything that has previously been released on the New York label, plus Cut Copy. Despite some basslines that will inevitably get heads nodding, the lyrics and hooks are too lacking in inspiration to prove memorable. To call the songs utterly dull and unadventurous would be paying them too much of a compliment; this is an album that falls into the same vacuous bracket as Delphic and The Presets. A shame, considering the label’s track record.

“Cherries... bananas... lemons... grape...

PEACCHH!” Only a man of Kid ‘Congo’ Powers’ netherworldly aura and mystique could get away with listing the contents of a Sainsbury’s aisle and make it sound like an invite to put your fingers where the sun don’t shine. But then again, the former Cramp and Gun Club memeber brings diabolical humour to everything he touches on Gorilla Rose, his third album with backing band The Pink Monkey Birds. Safe to say no new ground’s being covered here, but like the man who’s felt the full weight of Satan’s hairy gonads and still come back with tomcat grin intact, no one grooves as filthy as the Kid nowadays.

KATY B

LITTLE SCREAM

On A Mission

The Golden Record

Rinse

Secretly Canadian

If the chart-smashing recent successes of London’s Katy B and Jessie J from Essex (which is more London than London) created a natural rivalry, know that poor Jessie never stood a chance — not with British audiences. Every time, we’ll take a young woman singing of nightclubbing and boys with coyness above a brassy bird who could seem more concerned with breaking America. More pertinently, Katy’s record makes better sense. It takes strands of London club music from the last 20 years and combines them with simple, back-of-the-bus singing charm.

Doomsayers think this is Rinse selling out. The rest of us just hear a very real, very English pop record.

You see the name — Little Scream — and the first song title — ‘The Lamb’ — and, of course, you think tweecore. But this debut album by Montreal-based American singer-songwriter Laurel Sprengelmeyer is neither as ‘Yay! Let’s bake cupcakes!’ nor as mild as her moniker suggests. It’s pretty and very hazy, but it concerns scenarios where truckers and strippers suddenly turn up, though never as villains. There’s dirt mixed with innocence and, in fact, it’s about a hard life and feeling stranded within it. Big themes for a little scream, and all delivered by an assured woman who is both worldweary and otherworldly. An almost-golden effort.

METRONOMY

RAYOGRAPHS

The English Riviera

Rayographs

Because Music

Desire

With second album Nights Out, Joseph Mount announced himself as a peculiarly English kind of talent. A man after the heart of whey-faced progressives like Hot Chip and Field Music, the Metronomy mainman made colloquial music that was quirky, cohesive and pop to its cheap battery-powered core.

Back after a three-year absence with some new bandmates in tow, The English Riviera is a more vocal-led affair; altogether less like a midnight rave in an Asda carpark than its predecessor. Instead, Metronomy’s third LP takes the dated seaside glamour of Mount’s home county as its sonic touchstone, replete with Wurlitzer synth flourishes, music-hall nods and new recruit Gbenga Adelekan’s bass so louche-sounding it should come clad in a snakeskin wind-cheater and Hall & Oates ’tache. The strange funk geometries of ‘We Broke Free’ recall the brothers Brewis and their recent Field Music output — minus the starchy collars — and even finds time to wheel out a muscular guitar solo; precisely the kind of semi-incongruous touch Mount seems to thrive on. ‘Everything Goes My Way’’s male-female vocals and neat chord changes bring to mind Peter, Bjorn and John doing ‘Dreams’ (that’d be Fleetwood Mac, not Gabrielle) and dodgy synth-laced, disco-pop hybrid ‘The Bay’ comes with a lip-smacking falsetto chorus.

Sadly nothing here mainlines sheer pop thrills quite the way ‘Heartbreaker’ did off the last one (though Japan-esque single ‘She Wants’ has fun sucking in its cheeks anyway), but it’s ‘Some Written’’s wonderfully wonky six minutes that underlines so much of what’s great about Mount as a pop arranger. A kitschy, tropicália-tinged number that segues halfway through into a skittish Rhodes melody — echoed on kazoo, no less — it’s a savvy flip of the finger at good taste that confirms Metronomy as one of the more unassumingly brilliant homegrown acts doing business right now. AD

Where your Vivian Girls have taken the teeth out of female-led no-wave by turning it into a tattoo-tick lifestyle statement, Londoners Rayographs still deal in unsettling confrontation. Their debut LP will infuriate some with its dislocation and mumbling, and they have a determined refusal to yield to the temptation of effete fuzz pedal comfort beloved of their peers. Instead, awkwardness needles: pacy drums, odd bits of guitar noise and murmured vocals.

It’s especially successful on ‘My Critical Mind’ or the hesitant groove of ‘Space Of The Halls’, while elsewhere ‘November’ is a slow drive down the A303 to PJ Harvey’s Dorset church, and ‘Three Times’ remembers Fall-inspired San Franciscans Erase Errata.

SINGING ADAMS Everybody Friends Now Records Records Records

Having recently said goodbye to The Broken Family Band, Steven Adams finds himself moving on like George Michael. If Singing Adams’ debut album was the (underwhelming) ‘A Different Corner’ moment, then ‘Everybody Friends Now’ is ‘Freedom ’90’, full of exploding guitars, attitude, Faustian-hot supermodels and a big fat defiant finger to the past. Well, there are more backing vocals and a trumpet to distinguish it from former glories anyway. Most importantly, the songwriting remains puckish, perceptive and purposeful, and with cottaging, jail and a garden full of wrecked BMWs in his future, thankfully Adams will have plenty to get his teeth into.

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SNOOP DOGG

SARABETH TUCEK

Doggumentary

Get Well Soon

Parlophone

Sonic Cathedral

Despite being a megasleb, Snoop remains dedicated to music, as the frequency with which he releases albums and his hardcore, no-frills set at Glastonbury last year both prove. Being prolific unavoidably leads to patchy albums and the fact that this was emailed out for nearly anyone to share/steal also suggests they don’t sell much anymore. No matter, Mr Dogg still pulls in the big guns for his records (Kanye, R Kelly, Young Jeezy, T Pain, Gorillaz and even Willie Nelson here), and he’s always on-spot with his choice of producers.

Don’t be put off by the hideous David Guetta-remixed lead single, ‘Wet’; there are plenty of juicy bones on here.

Stepping out of the shadows of early sponsors The Brian Jonestown Massacre (that’s her singing at the end of Dig!), Sarabeth Tucek’s second album is a stark, cathartic collection dealing with the sudden death of her father. Influenced by grimly introspective masterpieces like Big Star’s Sister Lovers and Neil Young’s ‘Ditch Trilogy’ (hear the gnarly Crazy Horse guitars in second song, ‘Broken’) this almost-too-personal record draws too on Mazzy Star’s dark magic, while the balance of intimacy and objective distance on ‘The Fireman’ is worthy of Dory Previn — another female songwriter who ruthlessly analysed the father-daughter relationship. A small-hours classic.

TIMES NEW VIKING

ALEXANDER TUCKER

Dancer Equired

Dorwytch

Wichita

Thrill Jockey

Word on Ohioan trio Times New Viking’s third LP suggests they’ve done away with the ’lug-bashing distortion that marked them out as the ne plus ultra of the lo-fi noisenik boom back in 2008. Which should make Dancer Equired the aural equivalent of a freshly-shorn sheep, right? Trembling, awkward, suddenly uncertain of itself... this record is none of the above. Thing is, the band still sounds like a psych ward in a fun house hall of mirrors even with the dials turned down — ‘It’s A Culture’ rocks like a way-stroppy Dinosaur Jr, and ‘No Room To Live’ sounds like Love at their garage-psych best.

A choicely-phrased ‘fuck you’ to the naysayers.

Multi-instrumentalist Tucker has finally hit paydirt with his fifth album Dorwytch. In some senses this is his most conventional album to date, fitting into a proud lineage of English folk, but its metaphysical concerns call to mind such diverse figures as Alan Moore and Andrew Marvell, while buzzing analogue synths, mellow cello drones and improvised percussion from Paul May mark it out as ‘new music’. Perhaps the most significant factor in making this such a satisfying listen, however, is how much his gift for songwriting has come on. Tracks such as ‘His Arm Has Grown Long’ and ‘Sill’ are hits while the rest of the album will carry on burrowing into your consciousness long after you first play it.

PANDA BEAR

VIVIAN GIRLS

Tomboy

Share The Joy

Paw Tracks

Polyvinyl

Panda Bear didn’t need to make another album. It was always going to be difficult to top 2007’s Person Pitch, a masterpiece of avant-pop and arguably one of the finest records of the decade. With joyous melodies buoying loops and snippets of cleverly recycled tunes, the album outdid anything that Animal Collective and its combined members — Panda Bear, Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist — had created.

When follow-up Tomboy was announced it quickly became apparent that Panda Bear, aka Noah Lennox, was determined to defy expectations — even if it meant shrugging off his newly ballooned following.

Those attending his solo shows last year were in for a surprise: rather than rolling out the crowd-pleasers, Lennox unveiled a murky meditation of warbling synths and guitar. If there was any pop genius in there, it was buried deep.

At shows in London and Barcelona, scores of people walked out in frustration and soon Tomboy’s release was beset by delays. Six tracks trickled out on a series of singles before it emerged that producer Pete ‘Sonic Boom’ Kember had been called in to remix the entire album. An anticlimax seemed certain. Yet Tomboy kicks off with reassuring familiarity: ‘You Can Count On Me’ is catchy, soothing and warm, while ‘Surfers Hymn’ and ‘Alsatian Darn’ offer disarming segues through the album’s darker material.

But to consider it as a downbeat counterpart to Person Pitch would be oversimplifying things, as Tomboy maintains the elegiac singularity of Lennox’s first solo albums. It pulsates, stutters, and can be a demanding listen in places, as on ‘Drone’ and ‘Friendship Bracelet’, where the syllable stretching risks sounding repetitive and overblown.

But given time, the cohesion becomes more apparent, the colour more distinguishable, making Tomboy a welcome chapter in what is certain to remain an unpredictable career. CT

The Stool Pigeon May 2011

For all the line-up changes and side-projects that surround the band, the Vivian Girls continue to turn out music at an extraordinary rate. With three albums in four years, the trio’s love for lo-fi pop, lacklustre hooks and joyless harmonies continues into Share The Joy. Seemingly more conscious of their somewhat niche sound, the Brooklyn girl group have gone all upmarket and creative on their latest effort. Book-ended by two six-minute tracks, ‘The Other Girls’ and ‘Light In Your Eyes’, the record meanders like a drunk bouncing from pillar to post, with all the maudlin vocals made louder and clearer by their digital cleansing.

JAMIE WOON Mirrorwriting Polydor

It’s likely that Portishead’s Geoff Barrow was referring to James Blake when he amusingly tweeted: “Will this decade be remembered as the dubstep meets pub singer years?” With that comment he instantly created the genre of pubstep, of which, judging by this wimpy, po-faced and bland record, Jamie Woon is a leading practitioner. The point is clear: dance music with singing only sounds good if the vocalist is (a) a diva with lungs the size of Africa, or (b) a crackhead, like Shaun Ryder. And, really, who on earth would ever want to listen to music that makes indie boys feel sexy? Taste the sick in your mouth, now swallow.

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Chapter XXXI

Reviews

by Kev Kharas

Let’s get this over and done with, then I feel a bit sorry for NICHOLAS BUKOWSKI. He seems like an alright guy, and the chorus of his best song, ‘Hereward Street’, is quite good at being the sort of rock music that decent, hardworking white men sing when they’re not working but they can’t stop being decent (or white). Unfortunately, the video he made for said song is depressing. Why you fling yourself around your tiny practice room like that, Nick Bukowski? Watching his herking, jerking rock’n’roll carry-on is like watching a dog play dead for treats; it has no idea why it acts as it does, but it’s learnt, after years of training, that this is the easiest way for it to get biscuits in its mouth. And by biscuits, I mean pert teenage tits. myspace.com/nicholasbukowski When my shit punk band used to play against other shit punk bands in intercounty ‘battle of the bands’ competitions, the guys from Surrey always had prettier girls and more expensive gear than us. What does that mean?

It means THE GRIZZLEY ENDS deserve all the provincial glory they can get their biro anarchy sign-ed hands on. Fuck Berkshire. myspace.com/thegrizzleyends Influences: Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Dylan. When it gets to the ‘sending demos to the music papers’ stage, it’s not about ‘just getting the lads together and having fun’ any more. Retreat back into the shadows, THE REACTORS, your lives are boring and your tunes are shit. myspace.com/thereactorsuk One day they needed a rocket to go to the moon, so a man called Robert built a rocket. They went to the moon and came back. When they came back, Robert was surrounded by

rockets. They said, “Why did you keep building rockets, Robert?”

Robert looked at them. “I built a rocket and you went to the moon,” he said. “So I kept building rockets.” “But we got to the moon and then we came back,” they said. “We are not planning to return to the moon ever again.” Robert did nothing. “Tomorrow I will build another rocket,” he said. myspace.com/vetsinhongkong Imagine Mark E Smith if he’d been born into the family band The Ting Tings are forced to start after too many desperate fucks and you’re somewhere close to the horror that is SNAILHEAD. snailhead.co.uk These guys again!? I told you what I thought of your shit two months ago. guys. Remember? “DIRTEE DOGGZ believe that there is “a current lack of ‘hard rock’ music that is energetic, passionate, and is being played by a young band.” I said: “I can only think that they’d write me a letter telling me this if they believed that the accompanying CD contained an antidote to this perceived paucity,” before concluding: “If Dirtee Doggz are old men they are also total fucking liars.” I guess the only thing that could possibly have changed is that you’re all two months older. myspace.com/dirteedogz Oh what a surprise: Scottish men with acoustic guitars and a lot of emotional problems to pour through it. Women who work long hours in coffee shops work hard, but they make shit girlfriends because they’re hopped up on beans all the time. Get out of the pub, Scotland, and then maybe you and I can tango. myspace.com/jamesmckayofficial

BEAU AND THE ARROWS are after that lo-fi money, they’re after that a-womanwho-sings-in-her-real-voice money, and they’re after whatever’s left of that Bloc Party money. And you know what? They’re very, very likely to get all of it. myspace.com/beauandthearrowsofficial In a time when civil revolt is doing the democracy conga across the globe and our nation’s youth can’t tell their cocks from their compasses, it’s nice to know there are still men knocking around in Cambridge wearing cowboy boots and listening to Feeder records in their headphones. myspace.com/survivingsunday It’s hard to conceive of worse music than that made by THE SLYTONES. myspace.com/slytones Brighton. Brighton, Brighton, Brighton, Brighton, Brighton. The day you give the world something worth caring about is the day I come to your silly little town and redecorate your fire-ravaged peer with my own, beautiful blood. myspace.com/weareangles What’s more amazing, the internet, or that people are still impressed by its ability to allow them to communicate over long distances? It’s called technology, THESE CURIOUS THOUGHTS. It happened while you were still pawing at your acoustic guitars trying to figure out what sound is. myspace.com/thesecuriousthoughts

TOUGH TROUBLES are pretty great, but we’ve known that for a while. If you’re a DIY band, are you allowed to haunt the deadlands of the demo review page until you sell out? Is that how it

works? I feel like there should be a cut-off point. Don’t tell them that though — they get so angry! It must be strange being Australian and angry. I’m gonna give them the fat advance this week in the hope it’ll give them some kind of conversational anchor next time a bubbly out-of-work barmaid tries to strike up a conversation with them in Walkabout. Get at her, boys. myspace.com/toughtroubles One guy, no name, no ‘web presence’, three CDs. CD 1: a blank CD-R case, and a black inner sleeve with a yellow smiley rave face on it. The words ‘BADMAN SOUNDS’ are emblazoned above it in a blue and red Word Art font. The music consists of a man ‘freestyling’ shit raps over barely audible 1990s house music. The whole thing sounds recorded beneath a duvet so as not to awake mother.

CD 2: again, a blank CD-R case, and another yellow rave smiley, but this time it has the letters ‘Z’ and ‘A’ for eyes, and the words ‘hijacking house’ for eyebrows. The musical content is very similar to that of CD 1, but this time the midnight freestyler is clumsily rapping over rave.

CD 3: a de-sleeved, de-CDed copy of The Doors’ Stoned Immaculate: The Music Of The Doors, with a Clip Art picture of a dove on the front diving into the sun. This one appears to be called ‘the 8 dove like boy’, and though the first couple of tracks are more of the same, the third is him rapping badly over the Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’.

And this is the shit you subject me to.

Send your work of genius in through one ear of The Stool Pigeon and straight out the other. Address at front. Please mark the envelope ‘Demo’.

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May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

RICHARD

GRIP HIPSTER TIPSTER He’s always on the hunt for a steamer Radio’s for squares and losers.

But back in the day I did a stint presenting college radio, and I did the best shows wot you never heard, at least till I got sacked for freestylin’ over the tunage. “I’m Richard Grip, I’m the hipster tipster / Spitting all my rhymes over ‘Careless Whisper’ / I’m deadly with the mike and steady with the Rizlas / My beard is fierce, like Dr Harold Shipster / You down with OAP, yeah, you know me...”

I’ve no face for radio, which is why my mission in life is to reach people with my highly coveted and impressive column, you get me?

Despite my Aunt Tipathy, it’s a quiet month where awards season is concerned, meaning our attention is drawn to the Sony Awards, the radio industry’s big night!

Radio 4 is up for 22 nods and a lot more chin-stroking, and while people on the tables around them will be getting wired, those taramasalata-munching freaks will be wireless, you know what I’m saying? If I hear another urban play about poor black kids by some Stokey-stalking, Bugaboo-pushing, farmer’s market-frequenting Quentin again I’m gonna hit the fucking Archers — the orchard traditional hard cider, I mean.

So here are the tips.

If Radio 4’s John Humphreys doesn’t win best interview with Julian Assange then I sense a conspiracy. Jarvis Cocker’s up for best specialist music programme for his Sunday Service on 6Music, and I reckon he’s got that award sealed down, otherwise they’ll have to seal him down to stop him showing everyone his arse again.

Best entertainment programme is hotly contested by some of Britain’s biggest villains: Frank Skinner is up against Chris ‘I Do A Lot For Charity Even Though I’m Fat’ Moyles, but my money is on Westwood. Braaaaaap!!!! And, finally, best breaking news coverage is for the stories of Derrick Bird, Peter Robinson and his ho, and the coalition (all villains), but put your house and moat on the legendary Moaty. With your winnings from Manhunt — the Raoul Moat story on Metro Radio — you can treat yourself to some chicken, a can of lager, a dressing gown and a fishing rod. Howay the lads.

Jazz solos Jaar interviews, fêted 21-year-old producer Nicolas Jaar comes over as precocious, slightly arrogant and self-consciously preoccupied with NICOLAS JAAR displaying his intellectual credentials, Fabric and guess what? His live show is also London precocious, slightly arrogant and selfconsciously preoccupied with displaying its intellectual credentials.

The New York-via-Chile wunderkind has kicked up a storm in dance music circles since the release of his debut EP, aged just 17, and more recently an excellent full-length, Space Is Only Noise, has seen him go on to wider acclaim.

Words

Alex Denney Rob Low

Photograph by

In

Hailed by an auspicious few as the best thing to happen to electronic music since Ricardo Villalobos (of whom Jaar is enamoured) or Aphex Twin, the atmosphere at

tonight’s rammed show is giddy with expectation, with one fan holding aloft an ‘I Love Nico’ poster hastily scribbled in biro.

On record Jaar is pleasingly hard to categorise, mixing slow-crawl trip hop and techno with deep house shades and a wonderfully porous, melancholy smattering of live and sampled instrumentation. To that end he’s assembled a three-piece band including a guitarist, saxophonist/keyboardist and drummer, the latter of whom opens the show with — of all things — a drum solo, while a dessicated funk line plays out over the top. The rather crude signifiers of lofty intent don’t end there, either, with the next track dominated by a sax solo that speaks to Jaar’s love of Mulatu Astatke and Ethiopian jazz.

Jaar himself rides out the waves over a laptop, scattering slow beats from in-between sips of water. He’s an aloof presence, but when he’s on his game his talent shines like a light bulb filament, burning fiercely and along clearly defined lines. ‘I Got A Woman’ is a great, sleepy-eyed lament, and the spectral Morricone creep of ‘Too Many Kids Finding Rain In The Dust’ is another highlight, Jaar providing a whispered vocal that’s the icing on the cake. But at other moments the music feels just a mite too pleased with itself.

You’ve said in past interviews that you don’t really come from a clubbing background. Do you think that gives you a different perspective with the music you’re making?

Yeah, totally. I enjoy a dinner party that turns into a dance party with my closest 10-15 friends. That’s what’s special to me. But going to a corporate club where you pay $35 to get in... it’s fun, but only if you want to forget the world and get away from it all. And that’s necessary sometimes, for sure. But I’m not making music for that — there are enough people doing that right now.

Those kinds of club nights can be a pretty alienating experience...

I know. And that’s sad when some of the music that’s being made in that world is really special, so when you mix this weird phenomenon of that sad, corporate part of it with good music it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Is the live aspect of your music important?

For sure.

Q&A

It just gives more chaos to the mix, more problems — a bigger aura. I’ve played live for the last two years, alone. But there are four of us

a glass to rising Small Brighton crowd gathers to enjoy rootsy, lumbering show

by Arbouretum Words Ben Graham Photograph

Greg Neate ARBOURETUM Jam Brighton

Arbouretum

are appr opriately named. Tall and fulsome of facial foliage, the four-piece sway gently upon the low stage like a grove of ancient oaks stirred by a powerful north wind. Bowed low over their instruments, they don’t move around much, and they certainly aren’t chatty.

But beneath their shady bower, guitar lines twine together like roots burrowing deep into loamy soil, extending and

sub-dividing endlessly towards some mythic, primal core.

Playing before a disappointing turnout of about 30 curious souls, Arbouretum draw exclusively upon their most recent album, The Gathering, for tonight’s set. Though the odd older number wouldn’t have gone amiss (the band have three previous LPs to pick from), the line-up changes the band have undergone since 2009’s Song Of The Pearl probably decided

the set for them, most obviously as former second guitarist Steve Strohmeier has been replaced by Matthew Pierce on keyboards. So the guitar duels of yore are replaced by a more spacious sound, with Pierce mostly providing a low-key, atmospheric bed for singerguitarist Dave Heumann’s semi-improvisatory workouts on ‘The White Bird’, or the elegiac, apocalyptic ‘Destroying To Save’ with its ominous refrain, “Let’s go inside before it starts to rain.”

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May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

but Fabric still raises now; myself, a drummer, a guitar player and a guy who plays saxophone and keyboard. He’s a good friend of mine, and the rest are his band. So I took on his band, essentially.

What are the best experiences you’ve had performing your music?

Well, this is my third time with the band. Alone

I’ve had amazing experiences in Berlin.

I felt a very strong connection with the people. I felt that they were listening, and it’s very important that people are listening.

I read recently that you wanted to play super-slow techno because you found it interesting to see how it confused people in the venue.

They don’t have a clue what to do, yeah. ’Cos it’s mechanical, you know — it’s like [pumps his fist] for fucking 10 hours, and you can’t do that when it’s slowed down. It’s funny, even in the world of electronic music there are still conventions — there are still ideologies you can go against. Everyone’s losing themselves in the same way, when it should be a personal process.

superstar of techno Elusive drone The reshuffle works, trading the fiery dynamics of two lead guitars for a more focussed, hypnotic performance, following a single musical thread exhaustively through all possible permutations. Simple minor-key melodies take on the resonances of pagan hymns, as on the churning, cement mixer groove of ‘Waxed Crescents’ carried by Brian Carey’s rumbling drum patterns and Corey Allender’s fat fuzz bass more than compensating for the team being a guitar down. Heumann cuts through the swamp like a backwoods Richard Thompson, fusing folk, droning psychedelic rock and even a touch of Tinariwen’s Tuareg desert blues in his snaking, modal solos.

The encore is their version of Jimmy Webb’s ‘The Highwayman’, its lyrical theme of reincarnation appropriate to a band so rooted in folk rock tradition and Greil Marcus’s “old, weird America”, yet who are more concerned with reinvention and furthering the lineage than purveying a perfect simulacrum of times past. Along with semi-kindred spirits like Wooden Shjips, Citay and the UK’s Wolf People, Arbouretum are not so much revivalists as carriers of some essential spirit; links in a chain.

No one would deny that their roots run deep, but their branches follow their own route to the sky.

and bass pair Hype Williams rise up in dark London club Words Rory Gibb

HYPE WILLIAMS Plastic People London ooking Hype Williams to play in the heart of Shoreditch slings a neatly dismissive ‘fuck you’ at those who’ve so far been nervous of their deadpan appearance, fearful of bearing the brunt of some perverse hipster injoke. If their takeover of Plastic People this evening serves to prove anything, it’s that despite their elusive presence and off-kilter humour they maintain the capacity to be deadly serious. Since last year’s supposed license ‘issues’, much of the club’s gritty appeal has

B

been lost in the law’s crusade to homogenise our communal spaces for wipe-clean ease of use. But its darkened corners remain, tonight serving to amplify the curious sense of suspended time created by Hype Williams’s enigmatic drone and bass.

Simply by virtue of appearing in person, the duo’s performance proves far more revealing than their recorded output so far.

As the audience arrives over the course of the first hour, there’s little activity around the makeshift stage, only a single looped synth motif, broadcast from equipment hidden behind a backlit portrait of Haile Selassie I. Illuminated by the room’s single light source, it appears to float in mid-air and its mere presence seems another of their referential tricks. Press coverage of the duo has often compared their music to the lo-fi psych of the US underground, citing their magpie-like tendencies to gather shiny pop cultural references into a semi-formless stew.

They certainly share James Ferraro’s sardonic sense of humour and vaguely mocking tone, and Selassie’s presence acknowledges dub’s huge influence on their sound with similarly dry wit.

But even before the recent news that they’ve signed to Hyperdub, there could scarcely have been a more appropriate

venue for Hype Williams than Plastic People. Aesthetic similarities to US synth revivalists aside, playing in the dubstep scene’s heart grounds them in a distinctly London sound, something that becomes abundantly obvious when their main set begins and the room pulses with sub-bass. Tracks from their latest album One Nation — the R&B refixing, Wiley referencing ‘Your Girl Smells Chung When She Wears Dior’, to the elastic slo-mo house of ‘MITSUBISHI’ — appear as peaks, but the entire performance blurs into a wall of toxic synth, punctuated by the odd vocal or gunshot sample. ‘The Throning’, their take on Sade’s ‘The Sweetest Taboo’, is a highlight, replacing high-end definition with low-end rumble.

Taken out of context, the set’s overall effect could seem contradictory: Hype Williams thrive on aligning ostensibly unrelated sounds — one reason they attract as much suspicion as they do admiration. It takes a certain sort of mind to mute the ballsy aggression of grime under a blanket of new age-y yoga synth, as they do more than once this evening. But live, bound together by a constant undercurrent of dubbed-out bass, their music makes far more sense. Revisiting their albums afterward, it’s as though they’ve been brought into focus.

News The Stool Pigeon May 2011

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Off night for lady-killing Cee-Lo but Manchester goes crazy and is not, like, fuck you Words Tom George

CEE-LO GREEN Manchester Academy, Manchester if his current album The Even Lady Killer had sunk without trace, Cee-Lo Green would already have earned himself immortality as the tonsils behind Gnarls Barkley’s curveball smash ‘Crazy’.

Since he moved on from that project with Danger Mouse, Cee-Lo has become ubiquitous, pumping out chartfriendly tunes in rapid succession.

He kicks off proceedings tonight with ‘Bright Lights Bigger City’, a strutting paean to clubland, and ‘It’s OK’ (songwriting students at fame academies across the land will have noted the nifty ‘pre-chorus’ in this CHEWNE!!).

On the stage behind him, four foxy chicks in red catsuits slink their way through the hits, presumably on a night off from the harem.

With careful nods to the obese loverman template, Cee-Lo conjures up memories of seventies soul legends like Barry White and Teddy Pendergrass. But in contrast with those deep, black voices, Cee-Lo is hap-

Carlos Slazenge

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pier in the upper register. Indeed, if a baby’s squeaky toy could sing soul, it would sound a bit like CeeLo Green. And for tonight’s 99 per cent white audience, this unthreatening quality could be the key to the singer’s appeal.

He sits within the genre of easily digested retro soul pop made fashionable by Mark Ronson, but also blends in a sensibility reminiscent of Lily Allen.

He even nicks a title off her, ‘Fuck You’ being the post-watershed version of ‘Forget You’.

In another crossover move, covers of ‘Rock The Casbah’ and ‘Perfect Day’ reinforce the sense that he’s covering all bases, and nod to his punkloving past.

There is no doubt, however, that the most affection is reserved for that Gnarls Barkley hit. When the stage is plunged into darkness for a soul-noir version of ‘Crazy’, it elicits the loudest crowd singalong of the night.

Despite some perky onstage banter, Cee-Lo seems to be suffering a little tonight. He’s switched the trademark suit for a t-shirt, and a lack of pep in his vocal chords is attributed to a cold.

He even complains about having sore feet (no shit!) but if standing up gets too much, he could always invest in a throne like recently-departed soul giant Solomon Burke.

ollo, London mmersmith Ap KATY PERRY Ha

PE Y T A K , N O Y R R A C NEVER MIND THE GOES OFF LIKE A FIR EWORK Alex Denney Anna Weber

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Words Photography

PEA / COCK ”).

“I kissed a gi But whateve rl... AND di r the implic ddled her Perry’s la ations, skittle.” So ru st record Te ns the taglin enage Dream e on Katy saw Brand Perry’s Twitt Katy really er account, an kicking into d while the gear with ornate phrasi singles as re ng smacks of soundingly hubby and good as ‘F lifelong geni irework’, ‘Tee tal euphemis nage Dream’ t Russell and ‘Califo Brand’s influ rn ia Gurls’, an ence, it sum d tonight’s marises show — taki much of what’s ng place amon likable — and g the disfa co troubling — intly ncerting smel about this 26 l of candy flo -year-old kiddie guff ss and product of past — represents oral stock, in the icing on town for the cake. the first of th ree shows at London’s Perry is a Hammersmith surprisingly Apollo tonigh t. forceful vocalist and Likable, beca witty hostes use the Califo s for the rnian evening’s is eminently shenanigans, skilled at no t taking through a ha rattling herself too se lf-dozen costum riously, pedd e changes (o lin ne of which ta g a picture-postca kes place in th rd sauciness e blink of that an eyelid amid feels like so a whirl of conf much fresh ai etti) and r fli af rt ter the tedious se ing shamelessl y with the au lf-aggrandise dience ment about her love of Lady Gag of The Only a and her ilk Way Is . And Essex and Mor troubling, be rissey. cause that sa uciness At its best, th occasionally re e music comes sults in entend on like a res candy-striped he as dreadful ir to the late as ‘Peacock H John ughes’s soun ’ (a refrain from dtrack legacy which can be ; at its found worst, a conten emblazoned on t-lite stream of children’s tees lowbrow in titillation and play the venue lobb ground slap-d y tonight read owns ing (‘Ur So Gay’ is “I WANNA a low-point on / SEE / YO UR / front). But Pe that rry’s cheeky charisma makes even th e flimsiest m aterial fly, and provides ample reminde r that pop needn’t be pa instakingly ed gy to provide that soug ht-after sugar rush.

EVERYONE BUT THE AMBASSADOR SPOILED BY ARNAUD FLEURENT-DIDIER Words Alex Marshall

ARNAUD FLEURENT-DIDIER Institut Francais, London show is a celebraTonight’s tion of Frenchlanguage singers, which goes some way to explaining why I’m sitting next to Hubert Wurth, Luxembourg’s ambassador to the UK. He doesn’t like music, he says — prefers painting — but he has to be here because the first act are Luxembourgers.

Poor bloke. That act — Claudine Muno & the Luna Boots — are a pleasant enough folk band. But they’re really not what you’d want after a day promoting a country that most people think is a joke.

Wurth buys three CDs and rushes off — a shame, because if anyone had a shot of turning him onto music it’s tonight’s main event, Arnaud Fleurent-Didier. Arnaud is one of France’s most talked-about artists right now thanks to his album, La Reproduction: a funny, political and emotional record.

Tonight it’s obvious that he and his band — a keyboardist and drummer — are used to bigger stages. They turn the record’s songs into driving, dramatic rock numbers, Arnaud acting out lines as he sings, all of it accompanied by specially-made videos.

Some bits are close to ludicrous. At one point, he stands on top of a piano playing a guitar solo while the rings of Saturn turn on the screen behind him.

But humour and style ensure he never strays to the wrong side of the line.

Arnaud’s back in the UK in May. Mr Wurth should put it in his diary.

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May 2011 The Stool Pigeon

NOT EXACTLY CLEAR WHAT GOES ON INSIDE THE HEAD OF PSYCHOLOGIST Words Alex Denney

PSYCHOLOGIST St. Matthias Church London not what you might call your typical Wednesday evening. We’re stood inside a draughty church in Stoke Newington, and the packed faithful sits before an empty stage decked out with candles, in a scene resembling the lair of a highly meticulous serial killer.

Into this peculiar set-up strides one Iain Woods, 20-something brainchild of Psychologist, and things start getting weirder still. Launching without a word of introduction into an unaccompanied bout of Arabic wailing, Woods sets the tone for a performance of slightly eyebrow-raising, reverent minimalism.

Woods’ stock-in-trade seems to be the kind of secular hymnal that recalls the wounded likes of Perfume Genius, as evidenced by debut EP ‘Waves Of OK’, a disc that makes even James Blake’s po-faced recent noodlings sound like Banana-fecking-rama.

It takes nerve to give such fullblooded commitment to arrangements as unadorned as this, of course, and Woods’s cracked tenor can gargle notes with the best of ’em. But not all leaps of faith are worth taking, and for all his talents it sounds like he could do with curbing the loftier excesses of his craft.

After the a capella intro Woods is joined onstage by a small choir clad in monk gowns, one of whom later reveals herself to be a beatboxer of some distinction. At best, the music suggests a kind of solemn inversion of Spiritualized’s maximalist gospel template, but much of the material disguises MOR tunesmanship in edgy, pared-down clothing.

Take ‘Comes In Waves’ — a portentous, piano-led number that has Woods mournfully intoning “I have had this baby in my womb / false contractions for a long-time now / and I fear unless it happens soon / that their children will have no mother”. I mean, what the fuck, fella? Calm down, watch a little X Factor or something.

We leave the show before a second encore yields an unexpected cover of ‘Like A Prayer’, but if tonight’s baptism in the rivers of smug is anything to go by, we got out just in time.

Truly, the mind boggles.

It’s

Ban it all, Eavis

I’m banning Chinese lanterns, fire jugglers and jester hats

Uh huh huh, I like the way you work it

and beardy didgeridoos yeah, didgeridon’t

no didgeri uh huh huh

News The Stool Pigeon May 2011

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