The Stool Pigeon Music Newspaper Issue 027

The Stool Pigeon No. 027

Summer 2010

FREE

AT LAST WE INTERVIEW ALAN MOORE. DOESN'T HE LOOK PLEASED?

3

The Stool Pigeon

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Home news

INSIDE ISSUE 027 03 09 17 18 20 22 24 25 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 41 50 55 59 61 62 64 65 66 72 74 84

HOME NEWS INTERNATIONAL NEWS CHROME HOOF ROKY ERICKSON ROBYN MIKE PATTON HOLY FUCK AUTOLUX NAS MARC ALMOND THE MELVINS TRAVEL PRINT MOVIES ARTS COMICS THE STOOL PIGEON INTERVIEW COMMENT & ANALYSIS COURT CIRCULAR CERTIFICATES FUNNIES SUBSCRIPTION OFFER HORRORSCOPES THE STOOL PIGEON REVIEW BUSINESS NEWS CLASSIFIEDS SPORTS

Editor: Phil Hebblethwaite (editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk) Creative Director: Mickey Gibbons (artdept@thestoolpigeon.co.uk)

Thanks to: Cian Traynor, Anaïs Brémond, Thomas A. Ward, Alex Denney, John Doran, Luke Turner, Jeremy Allen, and Kev Kharas Published by: Junko Partners Publishing Address: The Stool Pigeon, 21a Maury Road, London, N16 7BP www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk www.myspace.com/thestoolpigeon

Noise duo Gum Takes Tooth biting the bullet

by Ben Hewitt

“Actually, I think Stevie Wonder will be supporting us at Glastonbury,” deadpans Thomas Fuglesang, one-half of noise merchants Gum Takes Tooth, as he rolls a cigarette in the cluttered front room of my flat. “Based on the time slot, anyway. I think we got offered the gig after U2 dropped out.”

We’ve relocated to my humble abode to discuss ‘Young Mustard/Lofty Thatch’, their debut 7” release — a blast of sheer whitenoise splayed with flashes of twistedmetal synthesisers — while, outside, hordes of boozed-up England fans roam the streets.

“A lot of what we do is improvised on the spot,” says Thomas. “I have no idea what any of the titles mean.

Usually lyrics and titles are the last

thing to get done. I came up with ‘Young Mustard’, but I have no idea why. You have to record a song as something, and you assume it’s going to get changed, but it never does…”

Thomas first met Jussi Brightmore (who couldn’t be with us today as he’s currently trekking across Germany on a company drinking trip) when he joined his band Infants. From there, they formed Gum Takes Tooth and quickly began to rub shoulders with the behemoths of the London noise scene: Part Chimp, Dethscalator, and the mighty Shit And Shine. Despite the fine company they keep, though, it was a more unusual influence that first provided them with inspiration.

“My friend gave me a drum synth that used to belong to the drummer from Adam and The Ants,” he says, grinning. “From the beginning, that synthesiser just played us — like it

was possessed with the spirit of Adam Ant.” With this month’s Glastonbury slot still to come and their debut LP already in the can, you’d be forgiven for thinking Gum Takes Tooth may have bitten off more than they can chew. But Thomas is confident they can handle anything that’s thrown at them, and especially since Valentina Magaletti, a core part of Shit And Shine, became a semi-regular fixture in their line-up.

“She plays with us whenever she can,” says Thomas, “but she’s also the drummer with Bat For Lashes, so she was on tour with Coldplay. She said they were really nice guys, but not really into music. She’d try and start conversations about it with them, and they just wouldn’t go anywhere.”

Really? Actually, that’s not particularly surprising.

Contrary Belfast band Girls Names a bit of a misnomer

Girls Names are

Belfast’sdifficult to talk to.

There’s that characteristic Northern Irish sense of humour (dry, cutting) and their broad accents (dual-tone, nasally), which often bludgeon conversational nuances until things grind to an awkward halt. They also have a penchant for self-contradiction that’s summed up by guitarist Cathal Cully’s approach to threeminute pop: “It’s hard but sort of easy at the time.” Today they are bored but bemused, argumentative yet disinterested, eyeing the recorder suspiciously. Even their debut single, the bittersweet ‘Don’t Let Me In’, urges you to do the very thing it forbids.

The band was borne out of such paradoxes. When a promoter friend was looking for someone to support a Wavves gig, Cathal volunteered… without having anything to perform.

He roped in Neil, who owned

Words by CIAN TRAYNOR Photograph by JODI BURIAN drums… but couldn’t play them.

When forced to come up with a name, Cathal texted in ‘Girls Names’ on an old phone that had no apostrophe on the keypad. Of course they don’t like the name now, but they’re happy to keep it. They hate when people stick an apostrophe in there but, then again, they don’t care. “It’s irritating,” says drummer Neil Brogan.

“Because it’s not that. But, yeah, it doesn’t mean anything, either. It’s just two words.”

Though the band’s C86-inspired indie pop sticks out in their hometown, their well-received 12”s on Captured Tracks and Tough Love have been largely ignored there. The pair describe Belfast as a cliquey culde-sac only interested in its own ambitionless, bullshit indie scene.

“Everything about Northern Ireland is insular and inward-looking,” says Neil. Cathal adds: “Belfast is a Saturday night town only. If you play

more than once a month, you’ll alienate yourself.” Not that they’d want to leave. “Don’t see why,” balks Cathal. “Belfast is alright, actually.

It’s a great place.”

It could be the accent, or even the humour, but the uneasy silence between answers suggests there’s no sarcasm here. Neil gives his age before asking for it not to be published; Cathal blatantly lies instead.

Perhaps it’s the speed of forming a band in just two weeks that has confused them. Perhaps being fasttracked from non-musician to recording artist leaves you with no time to decide whether you even want to be in a band.

“I’m up for it,” says Neil. “But at the same time I’m wary of those bands who get hyped up and then fizzle out immediately. There’s no reason why that wouldn’t happen to us.”

One. Two. Three. “But at the same time, you can’t really resist it.”

4

Home news

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

BIG DOG SEROCEE PACKING A PUNCH

By JIM OTTEWILL

“I’M

Sports fan Scotch Egg is second from right in this group of mad hatters.

Photograph by Laura Kriefman

Far-sighted Drum Eyes beating down barriers

By L U K E T U R N E R

“M

usic is like a sport — you can let your aggression out,” says Drum Eyes’ Shige, fresh from a gruelling session on the squash court. “But music is better.”

Drum Eyes are an intense, manyhued group from Brighton, but you might know the Tokyo-born Shige better as snide, earworm electroexperimenter DJ Scotch Egg. Drum Eyes, by contrast, is an evergrowing beast with Shige pulling in members of various other bands (a former Boredom here, a Sloath there) to help realise his vision.

“The chemistry between musicians can make for better dynamics in the music and I couldn’t do that alone,” he says of how his new troupe differs from Scotch Egg. “We aren’t trying to be like any one band or any one thing.”

Bling Bling You can hear that in the six righteous tracks that make up Drum Eyes’ debut album, Gira Gira — not, in fact, a tribute to Swans’ main man, but Japanese for ‘Bling Bling’. The record has elements of prog, psychedelia, strung-out metal and squelching, ancient synths, and such diversity clearly derives from Shige’s own sprawling taste in music.

Obsessed by British culture from a young age, he says he was as fascinated by drum’n’bass, happy hardcore and King Crimson as he was

by My Bloody Valentine. He learned to play guitar in his early teens and did a spot of DJing before heading to the UK to experience a different culture.

“In Japan, underground music is completely separate, maybe because we didn’t have John Peel,” he

explains. “He was reaching out from the underground to the overground, and we had no one like that.”

What Drum Eyes share with contemporaries like Teeth Of The Sea and Chrome Hoof is a refusal to accept boundaries and a recognition that making ambitious, almost luridly grandiose music is nothing to be ashamed of in an age where quiet craft reigns supreme. Gira Gira’s rings-of-Saturn guitar, dragonspewed synthesisers and collapsing staircase heroics can be taken as a tribute to Takeshi Kitano on ‘Hana B’, while ‘Future Police’ and ‘Future Yakuza’ imagine how those two entities will become the same. ‘13 Magician’, on the other hand, was created by Shige’s version of a Drum Eyes Orchestra, which featured 13 musicians playing “three saxophones, three drums and two guitars” …along with other instruments he can’t seem to remember. Perhaps the hazy recollection is understandable, so lost were Drum Eyes in all the

hocus pocus of creating a track that sounds like a fleet of alien spacecraft coming to steal your garden shed and take it to the nth dimension.

Sound & Prism But this is only the beginning, as Shige claims a second album is well on the way. “Now everyone else in Drum Eyes is contributing to making songs,” he explains, and who knows what magic they have yet to weave.

With that, it’s time to leave Shige down in Brighton, playing hard on the squash court, and cleansing the third eye of the new wave of noholds-barred British psychedelia. But are Drum Eyes refracting the sounds of so many musical forms through a crystalline prism that they could, in fact, be considered ‘bling bling’?

“Drum Eyes are the complete opposite of bling,” Shige says. “For us, it is a psychedelic panorama — a journey.”

Time to get on board.

NOT answering that question until you say it in a Westwood voice,” deadpans Serocee, rent-a-gob MC for the likes of Toddla T and Mad Decent’s South Rakkas Crew. This is what happens when you innocently refer to the man as the “big dog” of conscious vocal stylings.

But it’s difficult to dub Birmingham’s Serocee, aka Jerome Thompson, as anything else when he’s ridden riddims for so many big hitters. Weaned on soundsystem business from the cot, he’s lent his energetic tonsils to releases from Zed Bias, MJ Cole and latest cut ‘War Dance’, with bashment lynchpin Gabriel Heatwave on the dials.

“Each person I collaborate with makes everything a bit easy,” he explains. “Initially it’s, ‘Who the fuck is this Serocee?’ Then they’re like, ‘Ah, he’s done this and this.’ Then they’ll reach out to you…”

Serocee has been on the rise since hooking up with Toddla on the Ghettoblaster mixtape as well as on ‘Manabadman’ from the Sheffield producer’s debut. But his creative energies have been flowing for years through his own work as a DJ, MC and host of the freestyle Whose Rhyme Is It Anyway? sessions. His approach to the mic in the studio is as fast and furious as it is on stage…

“If I get a track in when my plate is clean and my whiteboard is absolutely pure, I’ll write and record that day. The problem with this is when I have to perform the track — I have to learn it. I find my producers know the vocals more than me, especially when they’ve been DJing with it.”

Despite memory lapses, Serocee’s summer diary is packed with live dates and releases. Hook-ups with the likes of GreenMoney and Lady Chann, plus a full-length album, are fast approaching.

“A lot of artists release a single, then an album and that’s it,” he says.

“They ain’t got no name for themselves. They wonder why it just sits on the shelf and it don’t do nuthin’. I’m trying to build a solid platform before releasing my record.”

Serocee’s music is intertwined with the other elements of his WindRushPickney brand, which not only includes a label but a charity and car rental business. “Call me Sero-Sugar,” he laughs, doffing his cap to the business acumen of Sir Alan. Apart from his releases, Glastonbury, Carnival and his own brew of punch are pressing concerns.

“You can ask Diplo or Toddla — Serocee’s rum punch is a serious drink. We’ll be on a float and spraying it out in big Super Soakers.

You’ll need to open your mouth, then enjoy yourself,” he concludes.

This big dog’s bark is getting louder...

It’s ride or die with Ill Blu, a funky pair hoping to paint London town red

Home news

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

By Kev Kharas

I

ll Blu make their music for the club, but that’s not where it really exists. If you head out of London on a Sunday night, when all the other traffic’s filing glumly back in, you’ll find clues of the dying weekend littered in the city’s peripheries — luminous rave fliers bound to traffic lights, pirate radio chatter invading licensed frequencies, twenty-somethings trying to kick comedowns in gastro pubs. Even the lead-stained houses that line the A-roads seem suggestive of door-deadened house party bass throb, and if a man’s life were as infinite as the militant snare loops of ‘Bellion’, he’d eventually be invited to pre- and after-parties at every den on Western Avenue.

‘Bellion’ is the A-side of Def1 and Jreel’s new 12” and it’s pure Ill Blu: sinuous, driven rhythmic knits lit up by the sparest of melodies. Its B-side, ‘Dragon Pop’, initially recalls Karizma’s gauntlet-hurling ‘Drumz Nightmare’ before working itself into a groove resolutely its own. The duo hail from the transient North West London zones I pass through most Sunday nights, starting beneath the century-old Archway bridge whose span promises Finchley, then onto the North Circular through Golders Green, Brent Cross; navigating the

Hanger Lane gyratory system for passage into Ealing and Hanwell.

Ill Blu is driving music and they are beyond driven. The first funky track the pair made together (they met initially via a mutual friend recording hip hop) is called ‘Frontline’ and it features the vocal talents of London’s Princess Nyah.

Her lyrics suit the sense of mission the track’s sturdy, propulsive charge gives off. “Got me moving ’way from

the morning to night / I’m holding the stash but I know it ain’t right / I’m in love with this boy / I’ma ride all night,” she promises, loyally and sultry, before repeating the phrase “ride or die” ad infinitum.

Vocals like Nyah’s and Shanique’s, who sings on the seductive, panpipeand-piano-dappled ‘Say Yes’, are vital to Jreel and Def1.

“It’s important to have a strong, catchy vocal whether it be female or

male,” they explain. “Vocals bring more scope. With them, you can attract the attentions of national daytime radio and music television.”

In a bass scene haunted by anonymous producers, Ill Blu are refreshingly open. The space in their tracks is there because “making dance music too complicated can confuse the club goers.”

“Funky has gotten faster and darker,” they add. “We need to bring the sun back in! Sometimes we do go into experimental mode. You try new things and people are like, ‘What the hell is this!?’ Then — BANG — it hits them and they’re on the dancefloor, pulsating.”

Ill Blu will be hoping that pulsating dancefloors aren’t the final destination for their music. They want it to chart; go televisual; invade daytime radio. I simply want to be able to find ‘Bellion’ while scrolling through the frequencies on dark nights in Ealing.

You sense, though, that arrival’s not important. It’s in their movements, destined and determined, where Ill Blu come into their own.

Good boy, Pickles

5

6

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Home news

SONGBIRDS BROKEN RECORD SOHO, London. It seems sales of the recent Broken Bells album haven’t been too hot, compelling the label that released it, Columbia, to send reps out onto the street to try and drum up interest. A Stool Pigeon contributor who also makes coffee in Soho was recently handed a free copy and asked to play it in his café, presumably in the hope that a customer might ask what it is.

“The record was taken,” our writer tells us, “...directly across the street to the Music and Video Exchange.”

ROCK LOBSTERS PARK LANE, London. Ever wondered what thrash metal legends Slayer do of an evening in London after ripping apart the Forum (see page 86)? They go back to the über-posh Metropolitan hotel on Park Lane and ask for the music to be turned down. So reveals a pal of this newspaper who DJs there. It gets stranger. “They asked for the B52s,” our man tells us. “But they were slamming tequilas like motherfuckers, to be fair. They later requested Flock Of Seagulls, too!”

COCONUT PRY BARBICAN, London. It’s always been a dream of Melissa, Stool Pigeon staffer, to be one of Kid Creole’s dancers, the Coconuts, for a night. That dream came true in April during his performance at London’s Barbican. She accepted the Kid’s invitation for audience members to hit the stage and boogie, only to then become the focus of the guitar player’s pervy ambitions. “Good legs, sweet dancing,” he muttered creepily, forcing Melissa to make a speedy retreat back to the comfort of her seat.

COLUMN INCHES WAPPING, London. The Sunday Times recruiting Ozzy Osbourne to be some kind of agony-unclecum-health-advisor has turned out to be an inspired idea. In a recent ‘Ask Dr. Ozzy’ column, a reader asked whether antidepressants had any side-effects. Dr. Ozzy’s reply?

“Antidepressants are fabulous things, David, but they’ll play havoc with your meat and two veg. I’ve been taking them for years and what I’ve found is, I can do everything except the aftershow fireworks. So I just end up pumping away on top of Sharon like a road drill all night.”

OFF RADAR IPC TOWERS, London. Much guffawing on the NME site on June 6 by new music editor Jaimie Hodgson about how down he is with hotly-tipped Florida rapper Dominique Young Unique. “I’m so aware of all this [her, the hype] I gave her a pride of place slot as our lead Radar feature in next week’s mag,” he scoffed. “Have a gander at that for the Tampa lass’ [sic] first UK interview.” First UK interview? Other than the one that was in The Stool Pigeon nine months ago, we presume. NME — so late on ery’thang!

Zodiac man bears soul with Rupert paintings

K

LF’s Bill Drummond reckons these paintings have more soul than you’ll find “in a hundred other galleries in London put together”, and we can sort of see what he means. They’re the handiwork of Zodiac Mindwarp alias Mark Manning and part of an exhibition entitled Z & The Bear. Quite what inspired the transition from eighties roadie-rock peddler to an illustrator of childhood heroes is beyond us, but you can see the intriguing images for real at the L-13 Gallery until July 4.

Hot-headed Cold Pumas will get their claws out if you dare call them lo-fi (Words by Stephen Pietrzykowski , of London.)

W

hen consuming music, it’s impossible to escape the constraints of time.

Chronology, duration, rhythm; music can’t work outside of these things. Timing is, in essence, everything.

And time doesn’t necessarily signal progress either, often repeating itself, as with dance music or the way fashions run in cycles. But where Hot Chip might have once demonstrated joy in repetition, Brighton-based three-piece Cold Pumas show there’s also sickness and anxiety, even if unintentional.

Like an endlessly skipping CD that suddenly rights itself, Cold Pumas appear to live in a Groundhog Day moment where metallic riffs circle to the point of nausea, before veering off wildly into something more gratifying. It’s this spontaneous mutability, like Boethius’ ‘wheel’, that is both their tragedy and their hope, as guitarist Patrick explains: “In practice, we constantly play a lot of ‘stock’ bits that sound like worse versions of things we’ve made up already. The repetitive bit itself definitely has to be exciting in the

first place. In terms of pushing the audience, I am not conscious of it, but it’s great to know that sometimes we can turn people into wig-out wizards.”

This reliance on tension and release reflects what drummer Oliver describes as the “unresolved” issues between him and brother, Patrick.

“We really know how to cause mental pain to each other. Even our subconscious mannerisms have been finely honed to antagonise the other.”

It’s not only each other they’re rallying against. The mere mention of the term lo-fi raises Oliver’s hackles.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say my pet hate made-up, bullshit genre.

I don’t really think that any of the bands we play with sound much like each other. It’s more about shared attitudes and similar approaches.”

Despite these protests, being based in Brighton is integral to their approach. The city has long displayed an ability to produce the more outré elements of UK guitar music, and it’s these roots that also beget close-knit relations with the in-the-red fetishists at Sex Is Disgusting.

Nevertheless, Patrick holds little sentiment for their hometown.

“Brighton is not some musical Mecca.

The Great Escape is not that great.

Scratcha DVA’s always itching for a greater variety of food Alex Turner, Sheffield, Monday, June 21, 2010

LEON ‘SCRATCHA DVA’ SMART has got his priorities firmly nailed down.

First time up in Sheffield, and the wisecracking presenter of Rinse FM’s Grimey Breakfast Show is eyeing the potential fruits of success.

“Lately I’ve been out and about, going places I never thought I would DJ, but really I just want to eat different food in different countries.

I’m sick of the same Spitalfields market shops and Brick Lane bagels.

I just want more out of food!”

There is no (vomit) scene. But realistically there are more people who might like what we’re doing here.” In terms of sound, at least, such distancing seems logical.

Far removed from the pizza-andBud knucklehead aesthetics of the now-quite-tedious ‘Dude’ culture they’re affiliated with, Cold Pumas challenge in a way that straightahead scuzzy choruses no longer have the power to. Musically, their kindred spirits lie across the water instead, with a sound not dissimilar to that of HEALTH and the associated Smell cognoscenti in LA; an association that befits their tie-in with London-based underground champions Upset The Rhythm.

Pushing aside their tendency towards antagonism and disassociation, Oliver’s description of the band’s motivations is both endearing and universal in scope. “We just like playing things over and over again and then changing suddenly in an attempt to produce excitement and joy.” Wig-out wizards observed, it’s that spontaneous creation of energy that maintains Cold Pumas’ momentum, and keeps that wheel of tragedy and hope constantly turning in their favour.

It seems likely his wish will be granted. After years spent quietly gaining respect for his consistently raw and forward-thinking grime productions (as DVA), Scratcha’s profile has soared over the past 12 months.

This has been due in no small part to his flamboyant radio persona and hilarious Twitter feed, as well as a steady stream of on-point mixtapes and 12”s. February saw his ‘Natty / Ganja’ hook-up with Kode9’s Hyperdub label snowballing into one of the year’s biggest dancefloor smashes, sharpening appetites for the ‘New World Order’ EP released this month on his own DVA imprint.

These days he’s often aligned with the UK funky sound, but DVA releases stand out a mile from the reams of soca-fied house bangers currently doing the rounds. “I notice melodies go out the window,” he says.

“They get more technical rather than musical. Right now I feel dubstep DJs, drum’n’bass grime and some funky people are all sharing tunes and styles. It’s nuts.”

Indeed, listening to the dissonant synths, off-kilter rhythms and distinctive wooden drum sounds on ‘Natty’ or ‘God Made Me Funky’, you’re certainly a long way from any cosy, scene-oriented comfort zone.

But with massive waves being made by similarly restless souls like Cooly G, the Hessle Audio crew and Bok Bok & L-Vis 1990’s Night Slugs axis, it appears that’s exactly where the wider public want to be right now. “My favourite so far this year has been playing the Sibin festival in Dublin,” says Scratcha. “The line-up was drum’n’bass with dubstep. The flyer didn’t even have funky listed on it so I thought I was gonna clear the place. But they loved it. They were getting down, mate. Guinness flying all over the place and everything!”

Six in the morning and the aftershow drinks are winding down following a similarly white-hot Steel City debut. One of the hotel staff unwisely casts doubt on the likelihood of Scratcha making it down for their much-hyped breakfast, and suddenly he turns deadly serious: “I’ll be there.”

Have your larders ready, please.

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

SIX BES T

Home news

of the

Welcome back to the Pigeon’s own Richard Grip, Hipster Tipster, who recently spent a week recovering his sanity in a secure psychiatric institution.

NAPOLEON XIV ‘They’re Coming To Take Me Away, HaHaaa!’ (1966) Napoleon XIV wasn’t actually a fruity, myopic, French naval hero from the 19th Century but an American comedian called Jerry Samuels. The chanted vocals are sped up and down to portray the poor man’s mental confusion, which is further cemented by the B-side ‘!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT’ — the same song played backwards. This US number three hit from the mid-sixties is a document of simpler times. You wouldn’t be allowed to release this song now, and that’s a case of political correctness not going mad for once.

F UN BOY THREE ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over The Asylum)’ (1981) This was the first single that Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Neville Staple released as Fun Boy Three after leaving The Specials.

The lunatics in Richard Grip’s ward were not capable of taking over their own hygiene routines, let alone the institution. Especially not the good-looking hermaphrodite who claimed there was heroin in the water supply.

G ARY NUMAN ‘Asylum’ (1979) The B-side to ‘Cars’, which featured a

spectral, haunted house piano line over booming, minor-key synth work was rumoured by school children the whole country over to be so scary that if you listened to it on your own you would have a heart attack and die. Which of course is utter nonsense. What’s this?

Tightness in chest… Numbness in left arm… Pins and needles travelling up past shoulder and down into chest…

Aiiieeeeeeeeeeeeee!

LOU REED ‘Kill Your Sons’ (1974) This track is taken from the otherwise lacklustre Sally Can’t Dance album and is a glam stomper that concerns Reed’s incarcer ation in an asylum at his parents insistence while he was a teenager. Reed stayed there for an entire year having ECT shocks until someone read his notes and realised that he wasn’t supposed to be in a ward for bipolar bisexuals and transferred him to one for humourless, pock-marked, boring cunts who look like an Easter Island statue wearing a comedy Elvis wig.

D AVID BOWIE ‘Breaking Glass’ (1977) Penned in the dark period when Dame Dave was struggling out of cocaine-induced psychosis, this song contains one of the funniest lines about madness ever: “Don’t look at the carpet / I drew something awful on it.” Being in the nuthouse isn’t all doom and gloom, as we found when visiting Richard Grip and ‘Bonkers’ by Dizzee Rascal came on the plexiglass-shielded TV. I laughed so much a nurse offered to sedate me.

CYPRESS HILL ‘Insane In The Brain’ (1993) Cypress Hill aren’t insane. They’re too fucking stupid.

as if my ink hates the paper they say i have haunted eyes that im bitter that i eat snakes and vomit cookt eggs they say there is a list of those who hate me and that i add to it daily the riters say i cant rite go paint the painters say i cant paint go rite my huge interlect is mistaken for a brasil nut or salty ignorance

my humourious calfs are mistaken for anger YES ANGER! the fact that i breath wild irisesis is out weighed by the nessity that am taunted by the serpents that lurk benieth their stems they say i am grim mouthed that i grew a mustash to hide my desitfull teeth that kittens that dare come near me by course are doomed to weave like eels they speak of me as if they know me as if they are expert on my motives that my poems are a tangled net as if my ink hates the paper

7

8

Home news

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Perfect Perfect Strangers Strangers P e r f e c

Stubbornly working in the shadows ensures Edinburgh’s indie folksters MEURSAULT make merry Words by Thomas A. Ward Photograph by Heather McCalden “I’m really wary of signing to big record labels,” explains Meursault’s Neil Pennycook. “There has been interest, but we have everything we need to sustain us on an independent like Song, By Toad Records. We can afford to keep making records with the music that we want to write as opposed to keeping to other people’s standards.”

Independence has been a buzz topic north of the border for some time now, politically and musically, and Pennycook is sceptical about the industry with reason. Very little enters Edinburgh in the way of external influence. Big tours bypass the city in the hope of reaching bigger audiences in the more commercially-driven scenes of Glasgow. And as a result, the Scottish capital misses out on everything that the industry drags along with it: media coverage, money, crowds and A&R. “I think Edinburgh has a history of losing out on publicity,” Pennycook explains. “Your expectation levels when you start out aren’t as high, and you don’t really know what you are aiming for.”

True to his word, Pennycook didn’t really know what he was aiming for when Meursault came to fruition as a solo outlet back in 2005: “It was just me playing with an acoustic guitar, a drum machine and not much else — probably for the best part of a year.”

It was something of an abortive start until he drew the attention and aid of local musicians Fraser Calder, Chris Bryant and Calum MacLeod when

t

first attempting to record. “A lot of the band’s forming came down to the fact that I had written the album and had no idea how to play it live or record it,” he explains. “So I had to get a band together to back me up.”

The EP they released around this time captures a band struggling to get a feel for what they wanted to sound like or where they were going with their music. “I think this happens with lots of Edinburgh bands,” Pennycook explains. “It’s the idea of pacing yourself — getting a good idea of what pace you work at and what you are comfortable with, and not forcing things at the expense of the music.”

But by the time they released their critically (but not commercially) acclaimed debut Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues, first as a self-release in April 2008, then on Song, By Toad Records in December of the same year, they had developed a distinctive character based around a shifting interplay of electronics and traditional folk instruments.

“I don’t really know where the electronic elements came from,” he says with a laugh. “A lot of the instrumentation we used is just down to what was there and what was available to us — and not knowing anyone who played drums.”

Meursault’s seven-strong troupe is deeply rooted in the city’s live music scene. There is locality in its folkinflected sound — something of a foundation for the bands to build from in terms of support — but there is also the attitude of the musicians themselves that helps to keep the scene alive.

“Our ethic is all very similar: we are all stubborn as fuck!” Pennycook offers as a collective disposition.

“With the industry as it is, we’re all

S t r an

just looking to keep our heads above water. It’s really important in that way to be stubborn and sure of yourself, but also to be realistic and not sell yourself short by any means… It breeds a certain mentality of ‘Ah, fuck ’em [the A&R], we don’t need ’em’.”

Fuck ’em, indeed. Their DIY approach to creating music and sustaining a career thus far lends itself to this warm and fighting posture. New album All Creatures Will Make Merry acts as a bulwark to the collective’s perspective on the situation at hand, evolving their pastoral elements of folk with lo-fi electronics to create something new and enthused.

“When I talk to people about folk music, I kind of dread it,” he explains of the band’s progressive sound.

“For a lot of people it’s acoustic guitars with buckets and buckets of twee, but for me folk music is just story-telling.”

So what’s your story? “I don’t really like going into that kind of stuff,” comes a coy reply. “Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing with Tongues was a break-up album — not in the romantic kind of sense, but kind of going through a period in life where everything was changing and I was pitching certain ideals that I had.

This record was sort of moving on from that and getting on with things and doing things that would make me happy.”

It’s clear what makes Neil Pennycook happy: his music, which is his music on every level — from the control he has over writing, recording and direction, to the comfort he finds in his results.

Insular and awkward perhaps, but there’s a sound and sentiment with Meursault that reaches far further than the borders set against them.

g e r s

9

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

International news CHRONIC YOUTH Bethany Cosentino of garage popsters BEST COAST is completely at sea when she doesn’t have weed.

Words by Cian Traynor Photo by Nicolas Bourbaki Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino needs weed. Badly. She’s been pleading between songs at every show on her debut European tour, putting the call out on Twitter for someone — anyone — to hook her up. Presenting her with some at an interview only seems logical.

“Put the shit down over there,” she barks.

Okay.

“Bong.”

What?

“Where’s the fucking bong?

Don’t tell me you rolled up here without any paraphernalia.”

Only none of this happens. For once, The Stool Pigeon’s connection is having an off day.

Cosentino — garage pop superhero, eccentric cat lady, hopeless pot-head — looks gutted.

“Thanks for trying,” she says, after a hug. “It’s the thought that counts.”

She’s been to the doctor with anxiety, headaches and insomnia — real issues, she insists, that have warranted her one saving grace: a Californian medicinal marijuana card. “I’m way too much of a stress case if I don’t smoke enough weed. Ask them!” she says, gesturing at her bandmates.

“When I smoke, I’m 100 per cent a different person. I’m easier to be around, I make funnier jokes. I think everything is funny, therefore I’m entertaining. When Bobb [Bruno, guitarist] doesn’t get his whiskey, he’s a fuckin’ cry baby.

But that’s easier to get. So I

complain a lot and it’s annoying to have to ask people so much. They think I’m being a child. [In kiddy voice] ‘I need weed!’ They’re like, ‘No, you don’t.’”

Given that she credits “the void of a brain” for her infectious hooks, there may be a link between the dope and the dumb genius of the 23-year-old’s songs. If you thought all the catchiest melodies had been done, Cosentino makes revitalising the two-chord pop tune look easy. Free of the clinical artifices that steer manufactured pop, her songs express sentiments too blunt to be considered pretentious or hokey.

“When girls write songs about boys or love, they try to mask it in metaphor and a bunch of weird shit whereas I’m just straight up telling you: ‘You’re bothering me, you’re hurting my feelings,’” she says. “I’m a straightforward person and I write straightforward songs.

Some of them are about nothing. I used to lie by saying they weren’t about anybody but I’m over that now. I’m admitting that most of the songs are about one person and he knows they’re about him so he doesn’t really care. It’s embarrassing.”

So far that muse has inspired two EPs, a string of singles and the forthcoming album, Crazy For You. But despite the resulting fervour, Cosentino can’t promise there’ll be more.

“Honestly I could say, ‘Pack it up, we’re leaving,’ at any point,” she says. “It would suck for a lot of people but no one’s going to tell me I can’t. I just want to live in the moment… or some cheesy hippy shit. If it isn’t fun anymore, you don’t do it.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. As a show baby, Cosentino was placed in talent shows and TV commercials by her parents, warping her upbringing. “I was weird. I was a problem child… a pretty fucked-up kid in high school, but I got over it.” By 16, major labels began expressing interest in the sappy love songs she was recording as Bethany Sharayah. When her parents urged caution, Cosentino formed Pocahaunted with Amanda Brown instead, becoming the self-proclaimed “Olsen twins of blissed-out drone”. Yet what began as a bedroom noise project attracted an unexpected following and she bailed once again. “It just was not enjoyable anymore. I moved away, I changed. I never listened to the kind of music I played in Pocahaunted. It was just something to do and became more than I thought it ever would. I’ve never really followed through with anything I didn’t feel passionate about.”

Cosentino gave up music and became a recluse while studying in New York, watching Seinfeld marathons in bed and getting stoned to combat chronic homesickness. It was listening to the Beach Boys while moping through the snow that inspired her to move back to California and, with the help of Bruno, she began recording fuzzy ditties about sunshine and boys. Though homesick again and further from home than she’s ever been, the lack of drugs at least allows for a lucid account of her ups and downs.

“I did ’shrooms on our last tour and I saw a ghost in our hotel room. It was there, bitch! I’m tellin’ you,” she says. “But ’shrooms’ll do that to ya. My mom is a middle-aged hippy who claims she can speak to ghosts. She’d look at a wall and say, ‘Leave the room, there’s a ghost in here.’ Totally freaked me out… If you smoke as much weed as I do, that’s fuckin’ scary.

Then when we were recording our album, our producer played these EVPs from, like, the 1700s… Oh wait, there were no recordings in the 1700s. Well, like 1970, and there was a ghost on it. I had to leave the room, covering my ears.”

With her bandmates in hysterics, teasing Cosentino as they debunk her anecdotes, it’s hard to believe she’s really that eager to get home. “Well, if I wasn’t doing this I’d be sitting on my ass in my house doing nothing. I love that but you can only do it for a certain amount of time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to keep doing this,” she says with a giggle, “at least until I smoke so much weed that I forget how to speak a language.”

International news

10

No muting the brutal gravitas of Pan Sonic’s final words Words Luke Turner

Gravitoni, Pan Sonic’s final album, the Finnish duo offer few clues as to how we’re to take their farewell. The sleeve is matt black with minimal texturing. Inside are photographs of a forest at night, falling snow, tall chimneys and the Easter Island statues. The title surely refers to the graviton, defined by physicists as a “a theoretical particle having no mass and no charge that carries the gravitational force”. Are Pan Sonic implying that their years of carrying the elemental music of noise are disappearing, untethered, into the nothingness? No, says Mika Vainio.

“We wanted to make it sound like Finnish dark rye bread.”

Emerging from Finland’s techno scene in the early nineties, Vainio and fellow Pan Sonic member Ilpo Väisänen linked the world of minimal electronica with the raw aggression of industrial, dispensing with the clinical inhumanity of the former, and the occasionally mindless nihilist bluster of the latter. Indeed, as Vainio says himself: “Industrial music has always been a part of what we absorb”. After having to evade the legal team of Japanese telly merchants Panasonic and fighting on through an era that has seen experimentation increasingly marginalised, why end it now?

“We felt that 17 years of Pan Sonic is enough,” says Vainio, before adding, cryptically: “Like oysters, it is sometimes better to close the shell.”

Apparently the pair decided to “freeze” Pan Sonic three years ago, and while they say this decision pushed the writing of Gravitoni “to an important position in our minds”, only those images in the sleeve offer a clue as to what shaped the record. “We wanted to compile pictures from the last 17 years to match the mood of the music.” But Pan Sonic have always been so intense that such questions are, perhaps, irrelevant in the face of such grinding (though curiously never antagonistic) musicality. You have said that you enjoyed the physicality of Pan Sonic’s music; did that change over time? “Sounds have always been an integral source of vitality for us and it has not changed,” says Vainio.

“When we play live, it should be physical too. Life is often brutal and so is our music.”

Vainio says that of all Pan Sonic’s work, he is most proud of the collaborations with other artists such as Alan Vega and one-time Einstürzende Neubauten member, F.M. Einheit.

The final Pan Sonic collaboration sees them team up with Sunn O))) to record a cover of Suicide’s ‘Che’ that adds ossium-heavy bass to the doomy,

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

descending chords of the original.

“The impact of Suicide and Alan Vega has been massive,” says Vaino. “He is The Man of Spirit.”

Aside from their hobbies of “biking, cooking, well constructed aquariums and the spell of endless roads and suburbs”, Vainio says that rather than a parting statement, Gravitoni is “an opening for a new period,” so he and Väisänen plan to continue making music and have not ruled out working together again in the future. “What is most important for me in terms of sounds at the moment,” says Vainio, “are the ethnic music of Africa and Asia, 19th century composers and heavy metal.” Pan Sonic may be no more, but Vainio and Väisänen still have plenty of baking to do.

On

Photo Ed Houghton

BORDEAUX IS AN IVORY TOWER FOR THE PRINCES OF PARISHATING POP THREESOME ALBA LUA Words Alex Denney Durantez is the Prince of Aquitaine, and he is royally bored. But understand, he’s in love with his boredom. He’s as smitten with it as he is with his principality in France’s magnificent southwest, which he surveys from his castle in Bordeaux. His band, Alba Lua, have been known to join him there.

“It’s true, I’m stuck here in my tower, but I’m happy so it’s all great,” says Durantez. “I love Bordeaux, but for other reasons than the music.

There are great bands here, and I think it’s because you get the ocean and the wine and it makes for an Epicurean atmosphere. But with this you also have the boredom, and I think that makes people want to write songs.”

Not that he’d consider going any place else: “When you play rock music in France nobody cares, but the problem is bands love to go to Paris.

It’s pretentious. They say it’s the best cultural place, but if you go there it’s museums not art — it’s death. I want to live near the ocean, I’m a country boy. I don’t understand why people want to live in these modern-day Babylons.”

Alba Lua are certainly adept at conveying a kind of rustic, solar-

Pepo

p o w e r e d melancholy in their music.

Their delicate songs have shades of The Ruby Suns’ gauzy pastel pop about them, along with an appealing, Pooh sticks Ennio Morriconeg o n e - l o - f i ambience which puts them right at home with many of today’s (mainly American) chillwave acts.

Durantez’s princely alias is derived from a melancholy figure in a poem, ‘El Desdichado’ (‘The Unfortunate’),

by French romantic poet Gérard de Anerval, a writer he professes to admire greatly. Indeed, the singer and guitarist claims he is no great lover of music, and that his interests nowadays lie chiefly with other artistic fields.

“We supported Real Estate recently, and I love that band,” he says. “Very simple, very tender. But I’m not a big fan of music anymore.

The thing is I was very curious when I was 16 or 17, but then I discovered other arts. I mean I still listen but it’s more of a nostalgic thing for me now.

“I’m working on haikus at the moment and I’m going to send them to an editor in Paris. What I like about that stuff… there’s a word in French: ‘indigeste’. I’ve read many poems and I’ve found them like this, but when you read a haiku the simplicity is awesome.”

Pray this beguiling three-piece linger awhile yet — Japanese verse’s gain would surely be Aquitainian pop’s loss.

Too many cooks not spoiling Twin Sister’s carnal broth Words Cian Traynor If no other band sounds quite like Twin Sister, perhaps it’s because no one else would make music the way they do. You’d think they were asking for trouble: a group of songwriters writing their own parts in widely varying styles, then mashing them

S D R I B G N SO CEREBRAL CAUSTIC together by huddling around a computer or emailing songs back and forth until reaching consensus.

Yet these New Yorkers turn bubbling dream pop, jarring funk rhythms and ambient instrumentals into an unpredictable flow just as compelling as Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk.

That similarity doesn’t end with the music, however. Singer Andrea Estrella and guitarist Eric Cardona were a musical duo of high-school lovers before joining the backbone of another band, despite having ended their relationship. “If Eric and I are split on something,” says a softspoken Andrea, “I’ll pair up with the bass player and he’ll usually team up with the drummer. Dev (Gupta, keyboardist) is in the middle; he’s just neutral.”

Where Twin Sister differ, though, is that they enjoy twee-like levels of co-operation. They’ve just had a dinner party where each band member contributed two oddly distinctive dishes as a thank you to all involved in making their new minialbum, Color Your Life.

“We’ve been friends for so long that, even when we get mad at each other, we know we’re just going to make up,” says Andrea, giggling nervously. “It’s like a family. We don’t shoot down each other’s ideas. When someone comes up with a part that’s completely different to what the rest of us are into, we always try to work with it and melt it in.”

This process is so transparent that the band have shared group emails on their website, illuminating the conflicts involved in deciding on a band name. That was back in 2008, shortly before self-releasing their first EP, ‘Vampires With Dreaming Children’. While no one took much notice at the time, Color Your Life went viral, netting them a record deal within weeks. In true team spirit, the band have quit their jobs together and scored a shared credit card.

“It’s been a big shock,” says Andrea. “In school, I was never afraid of going up in front of everyone. But now the crowds are bigger, it’s like, ‘Are they really enjoying it?’ When I feel like no one’s listening, I get all… clammed up. I need a drink or two. I prefer when everyone’s pumped and dancing. I hope we get more comfortable.”

She adds a final nervous giggle.

“I’m sure we will.”

BARCELONA, Spain. In a classic example of a confused Brit on holiday, Mark E. Smith did a hilarious double-take when he spied long-time All Tomorrow’s Parties’ worker Shaun Kendrick at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona. The man from The Fall, stopped, considered for a second where he might recognise Shaun from, then blurted out, “I know you! You work at Butlin’s, right?”

PISS ARTIST BARCELONA, Spain. Pigeon writer Kev Kharas likes giving out a bit of stick on his demo page each issue, so it only seems fair that he takes some back.

Particularly amusing were some of the comments left under his review of Primavera for our pals downstairs, The Quietus. “Clunking, look-at-me sentences, pissy preconceptions and student-newspaper overcooked bullshit,” offered an enraged reader. “One of the best young music writers working today? I’d hate to read the shitty ones.” Big ups, Kev!

BLACK ARTS NEW YORK, New York. We’ve been loving all of P. Diddy’s crackpot proclamations about how incredible his new group, Diddy Dirty Money, is — not least when he recently spoke to The Sunday Times. “Look, I ain’t gonna lie to you, my shit’s pretty fly,” he offered them before coming up with this genius analysis of the band: “This is black soul music, and when I say ‘black’, I don’t mean the colour of someone’s skin, I’m talkin’ about the colour of the music. It’s not black music, it’s black music.”

MASSIVE $HIT LOS ANGELES, California.

There are many annoying things about pop strumpet Ke$ha, like having a dollar sign in the middle of her name. I mean, Lee Scratch Perry sometimes goes by £ee $cratch Perry, but he’s as mad as a bag of frogs. Ke$ha might be too, judging by this curious recent comment: “You know what?

Sometimes I’ll walk my dogs and fill bags full of massive dog shits.

Then I’ll wrap them as Christmas presents and give them to people.”

Wrong. In every way.

HAND OF MOD CAPE TOWN, South Africa.

Footy ace Lionel Messi believes he could reunite Oasis if Argentina win the World Cup. The Barcelona player has been receiving a masterclass in Oasis from his teammate, Carlos Tevez. “Carlitos made me listen to their first two albums.

I wasn’t expecting much, but it is some of the best material I have ever heard. I showed the rest of the boys in the squad their stuff and, I promise you, everybody absolutely loves it. If we win, we want to fly them over to Argentina for our celebration party. We just need them to name their price.”

Double the trouble. Twin Sister by Barry Hott

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Business-minded Californian soul singer Aloe Blacc all about making the green stuff Word s DADD Y BONE S Photo graph DAN MON ICK may realistically prove to be, are ess from this song and succ to get and genuine. He dom free tive “I have crea ) album informed and utterly ng hopefully the (also brilliant telli wn in this he’s Bro t,” es wan Jam I of r me teve inds wha do tember, is already rem Sep in w follo to , ract cont a me, “but when you sign eme. respect.

I earmarked for his Grand Sch “Well, I hope so,” he retorts, there’s business behind that. If it. r afte d He’s even named his ban then ness busi the in make enough money be to t elec ’t didn make money from “and if I can na gon I’m “If this e chos I to sit at tables of power through I could do it my way, but then I’ve gotta do something ic, mus ic mus what I’m the of e gam and I like the lains. pop music, then that’s or good with the money,” he exp es shame. I gam o any vide en’t play t hav I don’ I . do! ness na busi sages in the music gon mes al soci got “I t.” t spor can’t be precious abou my art, sports; this is kinda my but there are positive things lf, itse to en st and spok ever I’ve k I don’t thin I ultimately. I hope every arti I wanna do with the money that ally have actu can to er s own claim s ines that bus st ry arti an the visibility and eve and it from e mak ’s need that ’t but , don mentality. We enjoy the music business osure that I have as a public that exp the e is sam III s the win e Dak hav iel what Nathan le to everybody to be ht. speaker. Of course I want peop can mig y he bod l wel Any ey.

As . mon of here unt ng sayi e amo hear my music but, at the sam as rich as they want but, at the Under his nom de plume of Aloe ludisil ely plet com not I’m , time ersing ld starve. soul eles Ang Blacc, the Los the very least, nobody shou understand I of sioned. ts frui a one-hit the be to ying py enjo hap is er be writ song contributing So I’d of - importance make a to nice be ld wou It der. won what’s fast becoming the best ng to society as well, and if ethi som t be gian and e indi gh, the thou on ey, tonne of mon selling single I’m not able to contribute through a — is t tive Tha posi yet. l ng labe ethi ow som Thr of Stones find part ar’ music then, for sure, I’ll than in ds han my in er bett feat in itself, but ‘I Need A Doll g and y another way to make a livin to someone else’s for what I plan — one of the most instantl by.” hob my as this inue cont th nt you rece in get gs to rdin like reco I’d it. soul e do with effectiv A business school graduate and back on their feet…” memory — is so strong that HBO th heal US the in nt ulta cons to former He pauses and smiles. “Well, I’m have taken it on as the theme fair e’s or, 31-year-old Alo sect e Mak make it To How , show TV their new tive just talking. Until I is conscience and plans for posi .” pen hap It In America. However, if this that d social change, however slow how Aloe is to make it, the fate

International news

11

The MINAH Bird.

Singer-songwriter MICAH P HINSON on President Obama “I don’t think he particularly knows what he’s doing. I know that he was given a shit sandwich. I know we’ve gone downhill since the Reagan administration, and maybe we were going down before then with the Clintons and the Bushes and stuff, which is fine, but I think he kinda — and maybe it’s not him, but the people that surround him — but I really don’t agree with what he’s doing. I really don’t agree with the healthcare stuff, and I really don’t agree with the buying out of the banks and the buying out of the car companies, because that is fucking socialist. If a country wants to be socialist, then more power to them, but that’s not what America is.

America is not supposed to be about fucking the poor and all about the rich, but it’s about a place that you can go and you can make some amazing things happen, or you can make some terrible shit go down. I find a massive beauty in that.”

As told to Laura Snapes

12

International news

Sensitive Swedes Korallreven riding the wave of nostalgia

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Ain’t nobody’s business if I do

by Kev Kharas KORALLREVEN wouldn’t exist if Marcus Joons’ mother had been able to afford a wave machine in the 1980s.

“Korallreven started when I was six years old,” explains Marcus, who grew up in the countryside outside Stockholm. “It was 1988, and I was struggling a lot with nightmares, so when I went to sleep I had to have nice thoughts in my little head.

“I’ve always had this picture of white, sandy beaches and waves to calm me down, but unfortunately my mum couldn’t afford a wave machine.

So I used to imagine them.

“Every time I’ve felt scared since then — whenever I’ve felt like the world outside is collapsing — I’ve laid down in the foetal position and dreamed of Samoa.”

Would you rather have ears or an imagination? Korallreven’s music is grand, sweeping, blissful, filmic. In many ways it’s perfect — ‘The Truest Faith’ finds Marcus’s voice lurking low in the mix, not wanting to disturb the sanctity of that glimpsed idyll, prominence ceded to sultry Balearic guitars, tides of tropical percussion and chorus strings that sound unerringly like tears of joy dying in warm breeze. Their other finished track is called ‘Loved Up’ because, Marcus says, that’s the ideal emotional state to listen to Korallreven in.

“Loved up - in every possible sense of the word.”

You will fall in love to these songs.

That much is inevitable. But as ecstatic and romantic as these songs are, until a new single arrives — a duet with Victoria Bergsman — they only have two. The group existed solely in Marcus’s mind until he told The Radio Dept.’s Daniel Tjäder about Korallreven during a football match last summer.

Seems an odd thing to discuss in the cut and thrust of sporting tussle: white beaches, lapping waves, but the pair have been close ever since Tjäder saved Joons from an unhappy, itinerant existence five years back.

“I was miserable — I had no apartment, so I slept on sofas. Daniel

PSYCH POP LADS TAME IMPALA NOT WILD AT HEART

by ANAÏS BRÉMOND

Incorrigible no wave sax player James Chance has been back in the UK recently, playing shows in London and at ATP. With a definitive collection due out in August, a number of stunning neverseen-before photos have come to light, all taken by his girlfriend at the time, Anya Philips, a cofounder of New York’s Mudd Club. Check this moment-in-time shot of James and a few of his pals. was one of those friendly enough to take me, until I decided I wanted to live in the funnest, sunniest city in the world.”

Daniel remains in Stockholm, though Marcus now sleeps on the other side of the Gulf Stream in New York.

Sunniest? New York?

“It’s been 25 degrees since February.”

Fair point. How many street corner kids have you seen dancing in burst water main spray?

“Thousands. At least.”

Given the distance, how do songs arrive?

“They’re gifts from God.” But how does Korallreven function, in the most mundane way?

Do you fire bliss shells at each other over the internet? Who’s responsible for what we’re hearing?“It’s not really interesting, is it? I don’t like taking things apart. We’re such good friends we just go on feeling.

“We’re true to ourselves. If you do that, your life will be like surfing

on endorphins.”

Answers like these are typical of Marcus, and typical of Korallreven (‘Coral Reef’ in Swedish). The pair seem to be in the business of finding and preserving perfect moments — Marcus talks of trying to “always live like I’m in Samoa”, the South Pacific island where Korallreven’s songs first “came to him” and where he spent a month last summer playing football with locals and attending Catholic mass. He talks, too, of wanting to keep his “bubble intact”, and the music itself is breathlessly idyllic: conjuring images so vivid you’d swear they were fragments of ecstasy-splashed mind’s eye.

So many hark back these days.

Outside of a few loyal to its cause, futurism’s absence is blinding — amid the web slagging and constant critique, it seems many making music today have realised childhood’s both universal and unimpeachable.

Glo-fi street gangs build go-karts they’re too big for, and doorstep east London ironically offering to wash its cars for pocket change.

Marcus’s vision, though, is so vivid that it completely vanquishes the present - Korallreven’s ‘now’ bursts with beauty, and everyone in it has their own wave machine.

A lot of ink has been spilled over Tame Impala since the release of their first EP and its groovy, lustful single ‘Half Full Glass of Wine’ in 2008. Singer Kevin Parker’s voice has been consistently compared to John Lennon’s and the Australian four-piece are regarded as the best group of the current neopsychedelic scene. Their first album Innerspeaker, out on Modular, is arguably the trippiest and most summery record of the year so far. As they come to the end of their first US tour, drummer Jay Watson took a break from swimming at his hotel in Columbus, Ohio to reflect on life on the road with MGMT. “Last night we hitched a ride on their tour bus and watched shitty movies. No one’s really slept, so I feel a bit slow,” he explains. “The tour is quite nerdy. It’s not very rock’n’roll cliché; it’s more about tacos and bongs. But it’s going well considering that not many people know us here.”

Speaking of clichés, the band’s appeal seems to rely on their overtly psychedelic image. Videos depict them playing barefoot in forests with headbands around their long hair, or jamming in spacious houses with bay-windows overlooking the sea.

“With marketing people and the media, [that look] can quickly become cheesy,” admits Watson. “People expect us to be in tie-dye, smoking pot. We are like we are portrayed, but it is not as caricatural as it’s made out to be.”

On stage, Tame Impala do their best to recreate the hazy vibe of their recordings but they’re not concerned about reproducing the exact same sound. “Our album has a lot of compression, panning and recording techniques on it; you can’t really do that live. We just have to make do,” says Watson.

Considering that Parker produced the record, you get the sense that Innerspeaker was mostly formed from his vision rather than resulting from a collaborative effort. “Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT) mixed it, and Tim Holmes from Death in Vegas helped Kevin recording, but yeah – it was pretty much him,” says Watson.

Despite their age (Watson is 20, Parker 24), the maturity and selfconfidence of the band is evident.

“Modular trust us… most record labels make you record with some super producer in L.A. But we know about our band more than any producer would. We don’t want to have any one tell us what to do.”

International news

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Words by LOUISE BRAILEY

13

Photograph by MICHAEL MANN

Peculiar utopie of Berlin inspiring the extraterrestrial sounds of Ellen Allien, a DJ fiend who always feels strange living in this world

Sepultura’s

Churrasco in Soy Sauce Serves 1

INGREDIENTS.---1 big, fat steak, 3-4cm thick 250ml soy sauce 2 tbsp butter Coarse rock salt, to taste Large frying pan BBQ grill

who’s dodged the drunks on Wa r s c h a u e r Strasse or watched the hours slip into the ether at Bar25 knows that Berlin presents a scarred physiognomy that’s at once arty and fucked-up. Ellen Allien, the art school drop-out with seven albums to her name, one record label (the pan-genre BPitch Control) and a fashion line, captures that essence of modern Berlin — a city where everyone seems to be a creative. But the relationship Ellen Fraatz has with the city goes back further than EasyJet weekenders and Berlin Wasted Youth tees.

“I grew up next to the Wall and, on the other side, I could hear shooting — practising,” says Allien, jetlagged from her global DJ schedule. “When I

Anyone

started making music, I did it to switch out of society — to find my own way and to build up an island, a bubble. I’m still based in Berlin and everything there is part of the history of how I became Ellen Allien.”

Yet for someone who eats clubs, breathes Berlin and sleeps very little, it should be noted that on her first trip to E-Werk, one of the first techno clubs in Germany, she was drawn less to the music and more to the fact that people weren’t dicks. “The music was too fast for me, but I liked the crowd because no man came up to me and touched my ass!” she says. From then on she found kinship with the “arty, modern people” and her transformation to Allien was underway. But the seeds had been sewn long before, back when she first heard the austere sound of

Kraftwerk’s ‘The Model’ as a teenager: “I felt like a cold shower over my skin.

It transports emotion so strongly — that feeling we have when we feel strange living in this world, because not everything’s beautiful.”

That sensibility is apparent in her records. While melodic and poised, they’re often underpinned by raw, experimental impulses, from the stylised IDM of 2003 album Berlinette to the brutal minimalism of Sool from 2008. New album Dust is one of her most straightforward releases, where each track is as concerned with abstracted narrative as it is with groove and texture. On ‘Flashy’ (about meeting her boyfriend in Panorama Bar — really), glassy, slurred chords swim around Allien’s pitch-shifted duet with herself, the simplistic lyrics

and arrangement capturing precisely that dichotomy of childlike abandonment and the paradoxical sense of debauchery that comes from having a belly full of MDMA at stupid hours. “It’s like those pictures I keep in my mind after clubbing — just bodies around you dancing,” she explains.

“The music is an echo, but the bass line is rolling, like… whoosh!”

Talking to Allien is to be swept up in a world — her “utopie” — where clubs and city spaces resonate with history, and are captured within the whirrs and clicks of techno’s dialect; ugliness and beauty meshed together. Does she ever want to escape?

“Not really. I am addicted to DJing.

I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it.

For me, it’s dope — my addiction, my rock’n’roll.”

PREPARATION.---1. Choose the meat you like the most: Tbone steak, rump steak, filet mignon, etc.

2. In a small bowl, mix butter and soy sauce with a fork, then add rock salt as you like.

Mix them well, and then spread the paste around in a pan. Melt on medium heat.

3. Take the steak and throw in the pan with the sauce just before putting on the grill.

Don’t let the meat sit too long in the sauce; otherwise the steak will be too salty.

4. Grill the steak on a BBQ grill as you like — I prefer medium rare — and enjoy with a green salad, some potatoes and a cold beer. Cooking it first in the sauce adds a different spice to your meat with a touch of an oriental taste. Hope you all enjoy!

Taken from Hellbent For Cooking, Bazillion Points Press

14

International news

Krautrocking the U-Boat

K-X-P Printed and Sold by J. Partners 21a Maury Road, London, N16

-X-P is the offspring of Timo KKaukolampi, a 39-year-old guy from Helsinki who spends his days producing pop records and playing in Krautrock bands. He is also an ex-lush.

“I used to be a heavy drinker,” he admits. “But in 2006, when I was touring with Annie, I thought I needed a change. I had too much to do, and if you play when you’re sober you feel like you’re on a different level.”

The Annie that Timo is referring to is not the American ginger that makes you want to pop off live rounds into your local orphanage, but Norway’s one-time biggest pop export who Timo wrote and produced for. She made the top 40 or something. Elsewhere Timo’s other exploits include Krautrock project Op:l Bastards and getting kicked out of a cock rock band at the age of 16 for having no musical talent.

“I just wasn’t very good!” he says.

“Afterwards I formed a hardcore band, and here I am now playing… this music. For me, the term Krautrock is slack. All those bands wanted to do was create something that never existed before, which is what I want to do, too. It was all very DIY, proto-punk, really.”

The connection between the German Krautrock scene and 20th century modernity is obvious, but one that keeps on getting fucked up. So let’s set the record straight: true — around the same time that these bands were butchering jazz with synths, a bunch of West German communists were kidnapping old Nazi banking executives. But the aesthetic influence of Soviet Constructivism (via the German Bauhaus academy) was stronger.

Constructivism was also obsessed with creating “new” art, as part of their mope toward an apparently inevitable workers’ utopia. This, however, wasn’t the case with DIY rebel Krautrockers, because they were proclaiming art for art’s sake.

And K-X-P’s debut is no different. In it, you can hear the driving percussion of motorik beats, a touch of rockabilly and the swagger of glam. What it does is transform these elements into something that kicks cultural reference points to the curb, and then hands you a ticket to the void.

“The whole thing started in 2006 when myself and another two friends recorded some tunes but didn’t know what to do with them,” Timo explains. “Then the label heard us and made us form properly. All we’ve ever wanted is this alternative reality where there’s not really time like this. If you listen to this record in your car, you’ll feel like you’re in a submarine.” Huw Nesbitt

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

CALL OF THE WILD WITH TWEAK BIRD words alex denney photograph brett haley at the e a r l y shows of Caleb and Ashton Bird would famously stand rooted to the spot, arms aloft in swaying approval. Then again, that’s trees for you: fucking great listeners. The sibling duo comprising Tweak Bird cut their musical teeth in 20 acres of woodland outside their parents’ Carbondale, Illinois home. It’s one theory as to how they arrived at a peculiar sound that’s two parts blistering, stoner-rock sneer and one part Aquarian optimism — with a disquieting jazz undertow thrown in for good measure.

Says younger brother and drummer/vocalist Ashton: “I don’t think we realised other people existed. We were just hanging out playing music and not thinking much of anything. It was fun, but when we started playing in bands that played out at clubs we began to realise we weren’t the same.”

You felt out of sync?

“Totally. And now it’s been 10 years straight of feeling out of sync.”

It wasn’t just trees and isolation that shaped the Bird brothers’ singular musical vision, though.

Home schooling allowed the pair to

Crowds

explore ideas away from the idiot tastes of prattling schoolmates, a fact singer and guitarist Caleb says helped forge a close musical bond and makes collaborating with outsiders a tricky business.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily mean guys, but we’re definitely complicated to communicate with. We kinda don’t talk to each other, so there’d always be this third man we weren’t discussing things with and assuming he’s on the same wavelength, only he never was.”

“We had nine drummers in six years,” says Ashton. “They weren’t quitting — we just weren’t getting along with them. Anyway, we moved out to LA and our friend came out and he was playing drums with us and a few months in we were like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna head in a different direction.’ I started playing drums just to soften the blow of kicking him out.”

Along with John McCowan’s snaking, contrary sax contributions to the band’s excellent self-titled debut, it’s Caleb’s voice that stands

out most: he sounds like a heliumvoiced superhero dosed up on ’shrooms.

Ashton: “He just never went through puberty.”

Caleb: “Yeah, that was tough. The thing is we’ve been singing together so long, it was never a case of wanting to sing high or aggressive — it’s just whatever sounded good. For me, it’s about the energy coming from the band. In a two-piece you’re really naked musically and you have to give more. You just have to.”

The San Franciscan Amphetamine Abuse Association presents...

THEE OH SEES’ A MAN W HO TA K E S THE BIT BE T W EEN FUCK ED T EE T H The godfather of garage revivalism has a souvenir of England permanently stuck in his leg. Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer has burned through a dozen bands in as many years, quickly becoming the most prolific figure in San Francisco’s underground scene. But it was a joke side-project that almost cost him a limb. After smuggling cocaine into the UK while touring faux German techno outfit Zeigenbock Kopf, who were charting unexpectedly in Europe, Dwyer smashed up a bar in his underwear and awoke days later in a London hospital.

Glass had become lodged in his leg and the prognosis was amputation. “Every day they would trace the infection on my leg and it was getting closer and closer to my cock,” he says, pulling up a trouser. “I was just getting sicker. The doctor was under-staffed and irritated; wouldn’t give me any medication. Then these two Jamaican night nurses wheelchaired me to a phone and helped get me on a plane. My Chinese herbalist back home flushed out my blood; fixed me in days.

Basically when your body can’t eject something infected, it gets encased.” He points at the bubble under his knee, inviting a touch. “So one day a piece of glass may come out and if it does, I’m going to have it polished and turned into an earring.”

At first Dwyer feared that mellowing his amphetamine intake might mean slowing down. But since

starting Thee Oh Sees, another side-project-turnedfull-time-band, he has been steadily gaining disciples one seven-inch at a time. While playing the Matt Groening-curated ATP festival recently, Dwyer even found two fans who’d each drawn one of his record covers on their chests. “It was an older gay couple, completely out of their minds. One had The Master’s Bedroom…, the other had Help on his chest. They were hilarious. We got a great snapshot and I was like, ‘That’s the next fucking record cover right there.’”

It’s easy to understand such enthusiasm. Thee Oh Sees are the pinnacle of garage pop: urgent but uplifting, infectious but intense. Within the space of nine albums, the breadth of their sound has coasted from gentle psychedelia to full-on hard rock, proving that garage can be well-produced and still sound edgy.

The grittiness is partly due to Dwyer’s vocal style, a soft falsetto developed by singing through an old phone mouthpiece but perfected by regularly biting microphones.

“My teeth are fucked,” he says, wiping his fringe into his eyes. “I can’t bite my nails anymore; can’t even open a packet of crisps. I’ve done a lot of drugs in my life — not so much anymore, but where once I thought, ‘My teeth are fuckin’ fine!’, now they’re like, ‘Nooooo, we were actually cracked the whole time.’”

Wearing a sweat-stained wife-beater over black jeans

and brogues, Dwyer blasts through a one-song soundcheck before shouting, “That’s essentially that. How do you feel?” across the venue. “Um,” stutters a dazed sound engineer. “That’s twice as loud as the last band to check the lines. As in, A LOT louder.” Dwyer just smiles.

“Wait till there’s a room full of English flesh soaking it in. Then we’re goin’ to get drunk and turn it up.”

Dwyer doesn’t mess about. His rent is low enough that he can spend any downtime gleaming ideas, manufacturing inspiration for his rallying cries with brute force. A week is the longest the four-piece has spent recording an album (2007’s Sucks Blood), while the newly released Warm Slime was captured live in eight hours. Occasionally label reps come knocking, but Dwyer is happy to plough on independently, even if it means getting criticised for his prolific work rate.

“I get grief about that all the time,” he says. “I don’t give a fuck. I’m 35 — I stopped caring about what people think 10 years ago. I mean, we have to keep up with ourselves, frankly. Believe it or not, I edit out a lot of dog shit. So if people think I’m putting out shit now they can’t imagine how terrible it would be if I wasn’t laying down the law. The live set changes so much that to slow down to work on a masterpiece would mean playing songs that were three or four years old. And I don’t really have anything else to do! But if it starts to suck, tell me and we’ll talk about it.”

A story penned by Cian Traynor

ARCHIE BRONSON OUTFIT COCONUT LP / CD / Download

HOOLA 2 x 12” Singles / Download 12” # 1 features remixes by M.C.D.E. & 6th Borough Project 12” # 2 features remixes by House of David & Moscow Released 28th June

BONNIE ‘PRINCE’ BILLY & THE CAIRO GANG THE WONDER SHOW OF THE WORLD LP / CD / Download

CHIEF BREAKING WALLS 7” single / Download

MODERN RITUALS LP / CD / Download Coming soon

JOHN HOPKINS REMIXES 12” single / Download featuring remixes by Four Tet & Nathan Fake Released 9th August

THE COUNT & SINDEN AFTER DARK 7” single / Download Released 16th August

MEGA MEGA MEGA

MALACHAI UGLY SIDE OF LOVE LP / CD / Download

LP / CD / Download Released 23rd August

FOUR TET THERE IS LOVE IN YOU 2 x LP / CD / Download

STEVE MASON

ANGEL ECHOES

BOYS OUTSIDE

12” single / Download featuring remixes

by Caribou & Jon Hopkins Released 19th July

LP / CD / Download

DIRTY PROJECTORS STILLNESS IS THE MOVE 7” single / Download Released 19th July

VILLAGERS BECOMING A JACKAL Etched 2 x LP / CD / Download

SHIP OF PROMISES 7” single / Download Released 2nd August

www.dominorecordco.com

SHE & HIM VOLUME TWO LP / CD / Download

KDUG OLTXRU FRFNWDLOV NLOOHU -XNHER[ WD[LGHUP\ DYDLODEOH IRU KLUH ‡ELUWKGD\ SDUW\‡DIWHUVKRZ SDUW\‡ ZHGGLQJ‡ZDNH‡ZKDWHYHU‡ 2SHQ SP XQWLO ODWH GD\V D ZHHN .LOEXUQ +LJK 5RDG /RQGRQ 1: -5 GLUHFWO\ EHORZ WKH OXPLQDLUH ZZZ WKHNLQJVKHDGEDU FRP LQIR#WKHNLQJVKHDGEDU FRP

Features

17

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

ALLOYED FORCES

‘KNOBBLY AND WEIRD’ 34-LEGGED MEGAGROUP CHROME HOOF WOULD LOVE TO CUE UP A COLLABORATION WITH SNOOKER ACE STEVE DAVIS Catch London’s Southbank on a good (sunny) day and it’s like fighting your way through an army of ants congregating around pure liquid sugar. But just for a moment today, those ants have stopped dead in their tracks as a group of 17 people resembling prophets of doom visiting from a hostile future pose in front of the River Thames for our photographer. “It’s as good a hobby as any,” one tourist says with a smirk. Other onlookers are simply baffled into gaping silence as the group strut their stuff in front of the camera without any hint of amusement or ironic intent.

Our tourist friend’s comment may be barbed, but there is a smidgen of truth to it. Essentially the pastime of London-based brothers Milo and Leo Smee, Chrome Hoof started 10 years ago as a bastardised bedroom project intended to fuse doom metal — courtesy of Leo, also Cathedral’s bassist — with the synth experiments of producer and remixer ‘Kruton’, aka Milo. However, it has since evolved into the sprawling pool of collaborators being ogled

by Southbank amblers today. From the convergence of musically diverse tribes comes a sound as refreshing as it is unique — even if it has been imitated shamelessly (more of which later).

In the run-up to the release of new album, Crush Depth, the unorthodox collective has decided to play a night at the more orthodox Queen Elizabeth Hall. It’s a venue long favoured by classical musicians thanks to acoustics that can cope with an orchestra in full swing. Fortunately, it proves equally well suited to a group that includes a funk-soul diva (Lola Olafisoye), a trumpeter who doubles as a doomy screecher (Emma Sullivan), a bassoonist (Chloe Herington), two keyboard and synth operatives (Emmett Elvin and Milo), a percussionist also at home on violin and viola (Sarah Anderson), a bassist (Leo), two guitarists (Andy Gustard and Kavus Torabi) and a choir of singers — or make that groaners.

You wonder how, given that the ranks contain such a smorgasbord of musicians, Chrome Hoof avoid sounding like sonic diarrhoea.

“That’s actually a very good question,” says Leo. “The messier, the badder, the better. I think subconsciously me and Milo had our own vision of how we wanted things to turn out, but after 12

other musicians add their bits, you can’t really envision that.

You’ve just got to make it work and not have everyone play at the same time.”

“You have to be quite strict for it to not sound messy,” adds Milo. “You have to have people drop out for a certain amount of time, especially live when you have sound bouncing around and it’s all mashed up. If we had 10 people playing all the time I would hate it. It would just be a boring listen.”

“You do have to be quite ruthless,” continues Leo, “because obviously everyone wants to play all the time. But if you can get that balance and strip the semi-ego away from everyone, you end up with…”

Milo: “…a unique marine corps.”

Are there a lot of egos in this band?

“Well, everyone’s got an ego and everyone loves to play their instruments,” says Leo. Who throws their toys out the pram?

“Just Milo.”

The subtle, playful sibling rivalry between the two isn’t just apparent in their banter. Their differing musical tastes can be heard jostling for space throughout their new record. Milo, the raver, gains the upper hand on the synth-driven likes of ‘Crystalline’, which buzzes with schizoid, frenetic energy, and ‘Sea Hornet’, a sci-fi movie soundtrack in waiting. Leo takes charge during ‘Third Sun Descendant’, with its metal nuances, and ‘Mental Peptides’, a surge of disco doom. Yet the sound of Chrome Hoof remains a distinctive one — so distinctive, in fact, that their imitators are easy to spot.

How do the pair feel about being copied recently, to lesser effect, by bands like, say, Invasion?

“I’ve heard this a few times but I don’t really get it,” says Milo.

“I think they’re influenced by what we’re into, but I can’t really comment — I know them,” adds Leo, with such steely caution that it almost becomes uncomfortable to look him in the eye. “If they said they were influenced by Chrome Hoof, I would take it as a compliment.”

“They’re a good band,” adds Milo.

WORDS BY ASH DOSANJH PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIKA WALL

“And Chan[tal Brown] is a great singer. She’s sung with Chrome Hoof.”

“There’s a track on the vinyl that isn’t on the CD where Chan is the lead vocalist. She’s helped us out a lot.”

But what about the robes that they wear? That’s just like you.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” admits Milo.

Still, there remain some striking differences between the two bands. One lies in their respective personnel numbers. Where Invasion is a mere trio, The Hoof are as ever-expanding as the universe. If you want in, the criterion is simple: you must be “someone who likes to hang out and not get any money at all”.

They’re also a band unafraid of taking risks. From bringing strippers on stage at their early gigs (“just to see the reaction on people’s faces”) to somewhat inappropriate support slots with every trendy wanker’s favourite band, Klaxons, Chrome Hoof are intent on breaking the rules, albeit sometimes with a touch of humour — this is, after all, a band that once said that they would like to collaborate with Mr Crocodile Shoes himself, Jimmy Nail.

“He’s the master,” protests Milo. “On a serious note, we’d love to get Steve Davis [yes: the snooker player] on a record, too.

Some sort of spoken word thing. He has so much weight behind his words.”

On the surface this would seem an obvious wind-up, but when you discover Davis is a massive fan of Magma (a progressive rock band from France who Chrome Hoof once supported) and even funded that band to play a trio of shows at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in the late eighties, it suddenly seems a less far-fetched idea.

In the meantime, Chrome Hoof can continue to feed off the aforementioned sibling rivalry.

“That’s the beauty of music,” says Leo. “I come out with what I do and Milo comes out with what he does… and it sorta seems to just about work.”

There’s time for one more question. How would Milo describe Chrome Hoof’s music to a deaf person?

“Knobbly and weird.”

It’s as good a hobby as any.

Round Trip

Former 13th Floor Elevator ROKY ERICKSON went from psych rock to the psych ward. Now he’s ready for lift off again with his first new album in 15 years.

Words by Ben Graham Illustration by Alex Woodhead

“Hello, this is Roky Erickson!”

The squeaky Texan voice bursts irrepressibly from the ether, like something out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Hello, Roky. How are you today?

“I’m doin’ real good, just taking it easy, you know, trying to stay out of this… you know, just trying to stay kinda cold, y’know?”

“Yeah, it’s a little hot outside today,” Will Sheff explains. “Hi Roky, I’m on the phone, too.”

You join us five minutes into a transatlantic conference call between The Stool Pigeon, Roky Erickson and Will Sheff of Okkervil River, Roky’s backing band for his remarkable new album, True Love Cast Out All Evil. Produced and arranged by Sheff, the album is far better and more cohesive than anyone had any right to expect, given that it’s Roky’s first new release for 15 years and that, until recently, Roky was considered terminally missing in action — a Syd Barrett-like casualty of the sixties’ psychic wars. Indeed, most of the songs on the new album were written by Roky in the early seventies, and deal with his enforced stay in the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was sent after being busted for possession of a single joint in Texas in 1969.

Given electroshock therapy and doped up with heavy duty tranquilisers that rendered him a virtual zombie, he spent the next three years mopping floors and working in the fields alongside murderers, rapists and serial killers.

“Roky’s obviously a legendary rock’n’roller. That’s very welldocumented and everybody knows that; it’s very clear,” Will says. “I think that occasionally what gets lost in that is how wonderful and emotionally stirring and poetic and beautiful these songs are, from a songwriting perspective. And I wanted to make that clear also. I wanted to show the breadth and depth of Roky’s abilities.”

Roky, did you have any input about songs that you wanted to record, or were you happy for Will to just choose the ones that he liked?

“They did some songs that I really liked a lot, but I needed guidance and help to see what a good song it was, you know?”

Roky’s management have “found it works best” if Will and Roky are interviewed together. This makes sense, to a degree; if Sheff makes Roky feel more at ease, and can clarify some of his comments, then so much the better. However, although he’s professional and courteous throughout our brief time, he also seems to be there to keep both Roky and me on message, making sure that the conversation doesn’t stray too far from the path into the dark forests beyond. Again, in a way, this is fair enough — Roky is still obviously somewhat fragile and, as well as being a musical hero, he comes over as a lovely guy. The last thing I want to do is traumatise him. But his apparent comfort zone is so narrow I also

feel duty-bound as a writer to try and push him at least slightly outside of it.

Do you mind talking about the time that you were in the Rusk State Hospital? Is that something you’re comfortable with?

“No, I don’t mind that at all, you know,” Roky says. “I’ve got a bunch of material here that speaks about that thing, you know.”

It must have been a very difficult time. How did you get through it?

“Well, I just did it; I don’t remember what it was like. I guess it was like being on some kind of a… no telling what… some kind of a guided, ah, being able to take some kind of a leisurely walk or something like that, you know?”

“Did you want to take a leisurely walk out of there?”

Will asks.

“Yeah, I did, that’s for sure, you know what I mean?” Roky says and laughs.

Will: “Do you feel, Roky, that you’ve said everything that you needed to say about that experience in those songs?”

Roky: “Ah, lemme see, ah… I think so, yeah.”

Roky, of course, sang for the 13th Floor Elevators, the band that roared out of mid-sixties Texas with ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’, penned by Roky as a teenager and one of the pivotal garage rock cuts of the era. Far more than just another garage band, on their 1966 debut album they were the first group to describe their sound as ‘psychedelic’, their beat-driven rock’n’roll topped by the discombobulating electric jug playing of Tommy Hall and Stacy Sutherland’s spiralling, hallucinatory guitar lines. Roky’s own unearthly howl is said to have inspired fellow Texan Janis Joplin, still a wispy folk singer before she heard Roky scream.

The Elevators were way ahead of San Franciscan bands like The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane when they played with them on the California ballroom circuit, and they remained ahead — their aggressive, uncompromising and unpretentious performances anticipated punk and post punk rather than the mellow mush the West Coast psych scene eventually deteriorated into. Years later, after the band had broken up and Roky was struggling to overcome his personal demons, a whole new generation of artists drew inspiration from their old records, including The Cramps, The Fall, Julian Cope, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Spacemen 3, The Butthole Surfers, Henry Rollins (who in 2001 paid for essential dental treatment for Roky) and Primal Scream, whose version of ‘Slip Inside This House’ on Screamadelica is probably the most high-profile cover of one of Roky’s tunes.

How aware were you, Roky, that a new generation of fans were discovering the old 13th Floor Elevators albums, and that new bands were doing your songs?

“Right, yeah. No, I didn’t know about that!” Roky laughs. “I just knew I liked the songs on the album that we made, or something like that, you know.”

Did you think, back in the sixties, that the records you made then would stand the test of time and be seen as classics nearly 50 years later?

“I’m trying to think, I can’t remember that,” Roky answers, after a long pause. “It sounds good though, yeah!”

It’s obvious that a lot of the songs on the new album are very personal, and that they deal with that time when you were in the secure hospital. I think the thing that comes through is that some of them would be unbearably sad if it wasn’t for the fact that you’ve obviously come out the other side, just by recording them, and that gives them a kind of optimism.

“Thank You! Yeah! Selective, yeah!”

But then you’ve got a song like ‘John Lawman’, which seems a very angry song about the police. Do you still feel angry about the way that the authorities treated you?

“Well, I usually have to get guidance and help on that, you know. I enjoy just relaxing a lot, you know — just relaxing, you know, and staying cold and everything, you know.”

“Yeah, just try to stay calm and safe and relaxed, right?”

Will interjects.

One of the main reasons the Elevators, and Roky in particular, were persecuted by the Texan authorities was their overt promotion and celebration of the psychedelic experience.

The band’s lyrics, largely penned by beatnik Svengali Tommy Hall, were directly inspired by, and about, LSD as a catalyst for profound mystical revelations. An acid evangelist, Hall was said to have insisted that the band turn on before every gig and “play” the drug, giving their audience a wild contact high, but eventually damaging the band members as much as it occasionally inspired them to moments of free-flying, groupmind genius. Hall, who recently suffered a heart attack, has spent the past few decades as an autodidactic mystic-philosopherbum on welfare in a residential hotel in San Francisco.

Are you still in contact with Tommy Hall, Roky? Have you heard from him recently?

“I haven’t talked to him in a long time, you know?” Roky answers. “They told me he lived in San Francisco, but I thought he lived… I thought he made it in Houston, you know what I mean?”

What are your feelings about him now? Are they friendly feelings, or do you feel he manipulated you back then?

“No, he, ah… we just kind of tried to make everything just kind of, you know, not do too much, and so whenever a show is kind of intricately miniatured and you had to really be careful and he dived in the centre of it, you know what I mean?”

Roky says this quickly, almost mumbling; I don’t think either me or Will caught it at the time and it’s comical, listening back to the tape, to hear us both agreeing that yeah, we know exactly what you mean. And I’m still not sure if Roky said that Tommy dived or died. But for

someone who supposedly doesn’t remember much about the sixties at all, the answer still comes over as a pretty insightful analysis of what went wrong with Hall and the Elevators’ doomed psychedelic crusade.

Obviously Tommy’s thing was the taking of LSD; is it true that he insisted that the Elevators all take LSD at every show you played?

“Ah, I can’t remember too much about that. I don’t think I did, you know. I know that they’d have shows about that, where somebody’ll come on and tell you about it, you know. It looks like… there’s no telling what, maybe some kind of a teacher, you know, that comes on, explains about it while the news is going on or something, you know?”

And how do you feel about all that now?

“About LSD?” Roky asks, slightly nervously.

Yes, and having lyrics that were about LSD, and promoting it.

“Yeah, I feel alright about it.”

There was an interview with you in a British paper a couple of years ago where you were saying that there was no such thing as mental illness. Do you still believe that mental illness doesn’t exist?

“I tried to find out about it, you know. They won’t explain what it is, you know; they just say it’s just mentally into a place where you need guidance or something to figure out what they’re talking about, you know what I mean?”

Do you still have to take medicine?

“Not really. I’ve been doing real good, not having to deal with them, you know what I mean?”

And then Will changes the subject again, asking Roky what his favourite song was in the set they played the night before. I get a couple more innocuous questions in, but soon my time is up.

Earlier, knowing Roky’s famous passion for horror movies, and trying to get him talking, I’d asked him if he had any particular favourites.

“Well, ah, let me see, ah, I enjoy Creature With The Atom Brain, you know,” he says, mentioning the 1955 film that inspired one of his own songs.

“It’s a movie that is about a creature. It says he walks by night, you know. And there’s no telling what, but it’s possible, you know. He can’t be befriended, you know what I mean?”

Yeah. So he’s quite a lonely figure.

“Uh-huh.”

A bit like Frankenstein, or…

“Yeah, Frankenstein, too, yeah.”

Of course, the thing about Frankenstein is that the monster is quite badly treated. I mean, really he just wants to be friends with the people, doesn’t he?

“Yes, I did like Frankenstein, yeah. Frankenstein’s a very good one. I don’t think I’ve read it. I’ve read Dracula, but I don’t think I’ve read Frankenstein, you know. I’ll have to get it, read it, you know.”

ONE STRANGE DAY IN STOCKHOLM WITH SWEDEN’S QUEEN OF POP, ROBYN. Words by Jim Delirious Photograph by Erika Wall

Robyn is the best European popstar of our age, and that only became clear after she released her fourth album in 2005, Robyn, although no one in the UK knew much about it (or her) until a year or more later. She put the record out on her own imprint, Konichiwa Records, after wrestling herself out of existing deals she had with labels in Sweden and America. Of course, going it alone meant she had to hook up distribution arrangements in wider Europe and, eventually, the States, resulting in an album that had an unusual, DIY longevity.

Robyn was a feisty, self-empowering and staggeringly good R&B-influenced record that gave its creator a number 1 hit in Britain in 2007 with the Kleerup-produced ‘With Every Heartbeat’. It was the best pop song of that year by a thousand miles. Now she has a new album out. Crazy as it sounds, she claims it’s one of three she intends to release in 2010, although it’s unlikely she’ll actually do that, because she’s clever and she must know that no one wants Robyn overkill (but she’ll definitely do two albums). The first of this supposed trilogy is called Body Talk Pt. 1 and it begins with her singing/saying “my drinking is killing me” 15 times over. The song is called ‘Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do’ — an absolutely excellent title for the opening song on a record that, more than any of her others, she knows will be scrutinised worldwide (and it’s a booming track to boot).

One of the best things about the success of the Robyn album was that it allowed non-Swedish people to learn about her exotic past — first as the daughter of two actors who toured in a travelling theatre, with her onboard, and then as the teenage popstar who sold a whole shit-load of records across Scandinavia and the States. Most of us Brits had no idea she was an old hand in the pop biz, and it gave her the freedom to launch herself here like she was brand new. She was, after all, only 25 when Robyn was first released.

We meet her today in her native Stockholm in, of all places, an amusement park. She’s part of some crack-pot TV show, filmed live, featuring the winner of Sweden’s pop idol equivalent, herself, some brassy girl group called Cookies n Beans who made a name for themselves doing Dolly Parton covers, and even a rap group. Towards the end of the broadcast, a fembot presenter reads out the lottery numbers to the nation. Hands down, it’s the most Europop thing this English journalist has ever experienced. I did two backstage interviews — one before the show, one after.

Part 1. Before the show.

Hi Robyn, what the hell’s going on outside?

“I was in England a couple of weeks ago and I did this music show that was on the set of Hollyoaks.

This is kind of like that — super commercial but very, very ironic at the same time. This is our… this is Stockholm’s amusement park — the one and only — but it’s run down and trashy and just like, you know, a classic Stockholm feature. I think that’s why we’re here and they [the TV producers] are making a thing out of it being that way. This show has a very broad target — the kind of thing that people of all ages watch, like the Prince’s wedding that’s going to happen this summer [laughs hysterically]. It’s hard to find TV shows that you can actually perform on, so I’m doing this so I can actually perform.”

When you come into Stockholm airport, there are loads of photographic portraits of famous local people done good — people like Björn Borg, Greta Garbo and, er, rock band Europe who did ‘The Final Countdwn’. How come you don’t have your picture there?

“I said no. I think it’s just… I don’t want to be there. It’s super, um… It’s just a commercial… very very commercial thing about Stockholm. I’m proud of my city, but I tell people in a different way.”

You must be proud of the pop music that’s going on here at the moment — Lykke Li, Fever Ray, etc. It seems like it’s a very good time for pop music in Stockholm…

“Yes, it is.”

Predictable question, but is it a supportive kind of set-up? Are there rivalries?

“There is no rivalry, but there’s definitely not this ‘one big happy family’ thing going on that everyone thinks. Everyone is very friendly and easy to work with, but we don’t see each other as often as everyone imagines. But we do hook up and when we do it’s awesome. I mean, me and Lykke — we’ve got to know each other well and we’re friends. We’re at the same places sometimes and it’s the same thing with Karin [Fever Ray] and [singer-songwriter and Robyn/The Knife

collaborator] Jenny Wilson… But it’s not like I hang out with them often. I mostly hang with songwriters and producers that I work with, although I think it would be great if it was a little bit more like that.”

How would people out there riding the rollercoaster think of you, and how would they think of, say, Fever Ray? “I’m not sure if I’m the right person to ask — maybe I don’t have that perspective — but I think a lot of people out here wouldn’t even know who Fever Ray is. Everyone knows who I am in Sweden… Ha! Not everyone, but that’s connected to me being a popstar when I was 15 and having this history. A lot of people are tied into my story.”

Was there a sense when you put the Robyn album out that you had to separate yourself from the teeny-bopper image you had?

“I’ve never felt like I had to separate myself from what I did before, but I totally felt like it was important to me to be very clear to people here about what it was that I was doing. I didn’t want to talk about anything other than the music and I wanted to be very focused on the album. Even though people are really cool here in Sweden, maybe beforehand it became more about my private life, or the feeling that I had to talk about that more than my music.”

Did you find it hard to get back into the swing of writing after the Robyn LP was over?

“Totally. Because it’s a completely different energy. You come off tour, come home and then you have to calm yourself down in order to be able to say or do anything that makes sense. It was frustrating. I was, like [adopts weepy voice], ‘Oh my god, I’m never going to write another song in my life!’ I was worried, but that’s always how it is.

Every time you come off of a record, that’s the thing you go through. Once I got back into my normal ways — back into the studio with Klas [Åhlund — long-time producer and co-writer] and had that routine of trying to write something every day, even if you don’t do something good… that’s when things happened. The whole album got written in a couple of months, in fact. That was July last year.”

Is the second album finished already?

“It’s not done, but it’s almost there. Most of the songs were written at the same time as this album, but we didn’t have time to record them all.

The eight songs that are on the first album are basically the songs that were done when we had to send the record off to the factory. There’s no concept behind the three albums. There probably will be, because they’re made at different times and I’m starting to see almost like a natural story happening, but it’s nothing I’ve planned. The plan was simply to find a solution to the problem of not being able to write as much as I would like to. But then that also created these interesting ideas about how to work, practically — how to release a record and how to communicate what it is in the artwork. The CD looks like a CD-R — like a burned CD — that I’ve just written on myself.

Those kind of ideas came out of the process being so much like that, where you record it, mix it, then you just drop it.”

Was there also some sense of acknowledging the ways that people consume music these days?

“That was a part of it, too, but that came after. It was like, ‘This is actually quite nice.’ I started thinking about how albums 10 years ago were always between eight and 10 songs, like this album is. It’s nothing new, but because I have my own record company I had the possibility to question the structure of the record industry and adapt my job into something that benefits me and those who listen to my music, instead of it being the other way round.”

So you celebrate the change in the music industry and think of it as a new challenge, rather than moan about it?

“I guess. I think it’s interesting what’s going on and I’m curious to see where it’s going to end. I think that’s more interesting than being sad about it.”

Is the third record going to be a combination of the two with some extra songs?

“Nobody knows! Not even me. I don’t have all the songs for the last record, but maybe when I get there, there will be eight more songs and I’ll release a totally new album instead. We’ll see.”

Peter from the very brilliant Popjustice website made a good point about the new record when

he interviewed you recently; that this is quite a teeny record. Is that because that’s how you are, or because you were aiming to do songs for a certain age of person?

“I think I’m making music for grown-ups who remember what it’s like to be a teenager. The state of mind you’re in when you’re a teenager is something, I feel, that affects you for the rest of your life, even if you’re not an outsider anymore, or even if you’re happy and married, or happily still rebelling. If you’re where you want to be, what got you there is still a big part of you, and that’s that feeling of not fitting in. The feeling of wanting to be understood and wanting to find a connection with other people is a big driving force.

That idea is always interesting to me.”

You also said in that interview that you feel like the perpetual outsider, which seems surprising.

“I can totally see how that might sound weird, because I’m white and I’m from a rich country and I’m [sarcastically] a popstar. But for me that perspective is from before — from not feeling like I fitted in and growing up in a different way with my parents, touring all over the place, and coming back home and having different kinds of experiences. But I don’t think I experienced anything different from other people — I think all people feel like that when they’re young. They feel like they’re not understood.”

And I guess that’s the language of pop music, in all its forms.

“Absolutely. I have to go on stage in 10 minutes, so I have to go and get ready. Or rather, we’re supposed to be ready in 10 minutes.”

Shit, okay.

“But you can hang out. Actually, if you could just leave, I’m going to change…”

Yes, of course.

Part 2. After the show.

Jesus, Robyn! That was bonkers. Do you actually enjoy days like these?

“I like doing the performances…”

But that’s just five minutes, isn’t it? What about all the rest of it? I mean, what time did you get here?

“About midday.”

It’s 9.30pm now, so that’s the whole of today gone and tomorrow (Sunday) you have an allday shoot for a fashion mag…

“Last weekend, I had at least one day off. I do get time off, but when I have an album out, it does get hectic — for a couple of years sometimes. And I think that’s the reason I decided to release this album in three parts. I wanted to break that cycle up a bit — do the promotional stuff in bits, but also make sure I have studio time to record new songs.”

But is it still fun? To me all this looks like hell.

What’s the motive? To make money? To entertain people?

“I really like what I do. I think that when I go up on stage, I can hopefully bring some emotion to people’s lives and that’s awesome to me. It’s my job and that’s what I like to do. The situation I’m in now, compared to how it used to be… it’s better.

I can pick and choose. I decided to come here and do this show, and I decided to talk to you. I also get to play the clubs I want to play, for the audiences I want to play to.”

It’s strange: you’re taken very seriously by the hardcore music press, and then there’s the other side, like when you get shoved up on a balcony during a live TV broadcast and get shown footage of yourself as a teenager, like you just did…

“That’s how it is here. That’s how people know me here and they always connect back to that.

Outside of Sweden, it’s like people are catching up.

They know me from the last record and because of that they discovered my past. And I don’t have to respond to my past, which is nice.”

How come you didn’t join the ensemble of all the artists at the end of the broadcast?

“I just didn’t feel comfortable doing that.”

You’re above it! You can opt out, because you’re a superstar, and they’re not! “[laughs] Maybe they’re just not critical in the way I am.”

I bet they’d love to have their picture in the airport…

“These are unfair questions, maaaaaaybe [laughs].”

But,

sure,

This is relatively serious: you’re 30 now. Is there a point coming when you think you won’t be able to do this anymore?

“There probably will be a point. I don’t know when it’s going to come, but I’ve definitely been thinking about that lately — not that I fear it or think it’s going to be a painful process; more that I think it’s interesting to think about how that’s going to be.

People should be able to do what they want. If you want to be Tina Turner and be on stage till you’re 60, that’s cool. And if you want to stop your ageing and drop out early, that’s cool too. All I know is that I want to grow into something that feels like me. I don’t have a plan for how that will happen, but I’m thinking about it a lot. I want to change and I know something is going to have to give.”

There are lots of interviews on YouTube of you when you’re as young as 15. Do you ever watch them?

“Sometimes.”

The girl in those clips is an extraordinarily focused, articulate and intelligent person who knows exactly what she wants. Do you think you were born like that or did the ambition grow within you?

“I grew up with parents who really liked what they did and that was inspiring to me. They always made me feel like I was in the right place.

I wasn’t sure back then what it was I wanted to do, but I was figuring it out. That was the drive. It still is, and I think you can spend your whole life trying to figure that out. But for me, it was never about the fame, and it was never about the money; it was about really loving pop music. Because it’s a commercial music, people always associate it with money and success, but what I felt when I first heard Neneh Cherry, or Michael Jackson, or Madonna, and even Kate Bush and Prince… those were big moments for me and that’s what I want to communicate back. That’s why I did this show today. It’s not like I think I’m blessing people with my music, but I love trying to make a connection.

It’s my tradition. It’s what I grew up in and it’s what I know.”

Cry When You Get Older

Mike Patton recently swung back into the consciousness of a whole bunch of peop le who still yearn for the collective teachings of The Face and Sky Magazine, lust for the unconsum mated sexual frisson of Mulder and Scully and get wistful at the heady whiff of CK One and hot knives. The reformation of Faith No Mor e for touring purposes following more than a decade’s hiatus prompted a predictable surge for ticke ts as Tarquin and Miranda dreamily recalled pogoing around the student union to ‘Epi c’ in paratrooper boots and Alice In Chains t-shirts.

For others, he never went away . His apparatchiks are numerous and they hang on every word projected pleasingly from his roomy and majestic diaphragm.

Patton clearly doesn’t believe in reincarna tion, given his relentless pursuit to create in this life.

Having accomplished rock icon status, he could have chosen to milk it for all it was wor th and become some alternative Jon Bon Jovi.

But all they share in common is an early penc hant for disastrous hair as tenderfoot rock fledgeling s and the fact that Patton will undoubtedly sleep when he’s dead. Indeed, to say the 21st cent ury has been a productive period for Mike Patton is tantamount to saying Jeremy Kyle is a bit of a prick.

The Faith No More frontman’s musical projects are too abundant to list in full, but Fantômas, Tomahawk and Peeping Tom instantly trip off the tongue. He’s colla borated with Björk, Rahzel, Kool Keith, The Dill inger Escape Plan, Melt-Banana and Sepultura , and that’s just scratching the surface. He has his own record label, Ipecac, whose roster has inclu ded The Melvins, The Locust, Dälek, Kid6 06 and Ennio Morricone, to name but a few. He made an independent movie, Firecracker, whe re he played not one lead role but two. He’s in great demand as a voiceover artist, having adde d his talented larynx to various computer gam es, the film I Am Legend and the Adult Swim cartoon Metalocalypse. And in December 200 8, he curated All Tomorrow’s Parties with the help of The Melvins, assembling one of the mos t leftfield and hip-hop-heavy line-ups the festi val has ever enjoyed.

In among all this frenzied activity Patt on found time to move to Italy, get married and Faith No More have become fluent in the language. While no longer reformed, but it’s for his enjoying conjugal felicity, he can still spea k— extensive solo work that and, more pertinently, sing — in Italian.

Which MIKE PATTON really brings us to his new release, Mondo Cane , a wilddeserves props. ly ambitious collection that incorporates a 40piece orchestra and that voice re-imagining some of his best loved songs in the Italian lang uage, including the mighty and aforementione d Ennio Morricone and his classic ‘Deep Down’, as well as Gina Paoli’s ‘Senza Fine’ (famously covered

by Connie Francis). He has uncharacteris tically stamped his own name on this project (he usually deals in pseudonyms), and you get the sense this was a very personal and cathartic mission that perhaps brings closure to a chapter in his SP: Hi Mike Patton, how are you? life. Amateur psychology aside, it is a joyo all the time... us and MP: I’m alrig ht. I’m at hom records we do a year. We’ve had to cut back e in-b etwe en MP: Well, yeah, usua life-affirming experience belying the our lly. I try to vary the release schedule title, tours, recharging and writing som quite a bit to ensure we’re not e new music. answers and then I reach which roughly translates as ‘life has gone a point and then I give going to lose mon to the ey. It’s unfortunate and horridogs’ and, like Peeping Tom, it comes up! Basically you want to try and paint from a SP:You’re always writing new the best ble to say, but sometimes just music. classic film — one that would be imm the manufacturing pictu re you can of the record — in words, which ediately MP: Well, that’s what I do. costs of doing something are more than recognisable to many an Italian. is really a losing battle. you get back in return, and you have to look at each Patton, we are informed, is keen not to situtalk SP: That’s your job. ation in a different way. about Faith No More today. In fact, the SP: The old ‘dancing to architecture’ subject MP: That’s my job! thing. I is off the record, which, given his propensit can’t remember who said it first. Maybe y for it was SP: Not like the days when majo spikiness, is observed. One can understan r labels were Elvis Costello... d why SP: It’s a good job, too. all hubris and cocaine and insanity. he doesn’t want to be asked for the 3,00 MP : [Fir mly ] Fran k Zappa. [The quote has MP: It was ridic 0th MP: It’s not bad. Ah, you know ulous. Even if you’re resource, some days I famously been attributed time about when Faith No More mig to both.] ht step feel really lucky; other days I feel ful, it doesn’t mean you’re going to surv cursed. back into the studio. As the Pixies have ive! It’s proved, really gotten to that point. Ever yone has reforming for nostalgia is very lucrative, SP : So to be why the hell are we here? and who SP: Like when you have to talk smart. If you don’t have your head scre to journalists... MP: You do it for a livin should really care whether or not Fait wed on g! I gotta put myself in tight, things are h No MP: Well, I don’t have to do gonna happen. There’ve been that, and that’s your hands, you know More ever record again when the filth ... y lucre something that I’m learning situations where we’ve been approach to get a little bit earned from touring can afford a man as ed by creative better at. artis ts who we’ve worked with in the past and unhinged as Mike Patton a 40-piece SP : Spea and king of doing things for a living, how that’s orchesreally difficult. You can’t just say, ‘No tra? Mondo Cane will never sell a fraction do you cope , in mod ern times when you own an we can’t put of what SP: It probably helps to sell reco out your record, sorry. We already rds.

Angel Dust managed, and nor have any independent label? Are you surviving? of his MP: Since I own a label it does put one out! Obviously we love you to n’t hurt, you MP: It’s still funky. Whe other records, from the funky scratch pop deat h n the rest of the indus- and wan na supp mas- know. I’m not gonna be stupid abou ort you. ..’ But you real ly just terpiece General Patton vs the X-Ecutioners, t it. I put a try was whining and com plaining and wanting have to pick to the record out, and I’m proud of and choose. The thing that it, but there are to slit their wrists, bizarre sound effect laden Fantômas we were doing okay. But SUCKS is offering only a few things you can say it has nothing to do with the musiabout a record. gradually it sort of mad Delìrium Còrdia, which sounds like an e its way down the ladder cal quality early You do so many interviews and then — it has more to do with the all of a sud- to labels like us and we’v Doctor Who sound-effects montage with e become much more AMOUNT of out the den you feel a little bit, ah... a releases we do. ‘Maybe we can little bit stupid. I careful about what guiding hand of Delia Derbyshire. But we do — not necessarily pass on that does still do my best. unti l next year.’ It’s the worst thing Patton care about shifting units? Clea musical-content-wise, because we’re not rly the putting you can tell an artist and that’s man don’t give a fuck. a horrible position out top 40 records, nor were we EVER SP: Because you get asked the same ques — but to be in, and not one that I envi tions what we have to be careful abou sioned myself in t is how many when starting a label.

PATTON THE

Jay Blakesberg

BACK

WORDS BY JEREMY ALLEN

SP: So, Mondo Cane. Unfortunately I’ve only nice edge to this music. I wanted an Italian title SP: Was curating All Tom had the chance to listen to it twice... orrow’s Parties fun?

— to me, that seemed like a very good fit.

MP: That’s enough!

At least MP: It was amazing, yeah — one of the better one that would make people’s eyebrows go up. festival experiences I’ve had in my life — not SP: I might play it some more time just because they gave me some creative s. Or SP: Ennio Morricone is on ther cont rol, e.

And Connie but because of the way it maybe quite a few more. When Delìrium was organised and the Còrdia Francis, too. came out it was great, but I probably way they dealt with the artists. It was only lis- MP: Ha ha. You see I don’ pure t even know [the pleasure. But Butlins tened to it twice. was a drag.

Con nie Fran cis] versi on.

I mean, I know it a litMP: That’s twice more than I listened to it. tle bit. Even though I’m an American kid and I SP: As an American, do you get Butlins? should have known that version, I knew SP: You put records out under various the MP: Oh no, it’s weird for us. I mea guises, Italian version first. There are n, I underweird anomalies stand it now because but not with Mike Patton stamped on them it’s been explained to me ... like that that mak e you won der, ‘Where did I 1,000 times. There MP: It’s a personal record. And I thou are these vacation homes, ght I grow up in my past life? Or wha t did I do?’ where we go... Yeah, yeah could easily call it Mondo Cane and , it’s bizarre, we don’t nobody Yeah, that Connie Francis thin g — I’ve heard have that. would know what the hell it was. I felt like it it, like, twice. Didn’t make an imp ression on me was a significant enough part of me that I could AT ALL . When I listened in Italy and I heard SP: It is weird, I’ll put my name on it. It’s something I conc give you that. eived the original, I FLIPPED OUT ! Absolutely, MP: It’s an English thin and executed pretty much from the begi nning to completely spun my head arou g and that’s fine, you nd. So there you know. I mean, I GET the end. It is MY record and I don’t IT, but I don’t get it. Ha feel any go — it’s really hard to defi ne what started ha ha. shame in it. where or who made what famous. It’s really more about ‘What’s the soul of this mus SP: I didn’t mean it negatively. Peep ic and SP: It’s what makes us British, ing Tom, how can I execute it the best way like sodomy I can?’ for instance, is a collaborative record with and bad teeth. artists like Kool Keith and Kid Koala and othe MP: The concept is just a little bizarre to r people SP: On the new record, you me, like have a 40-piece people should all go to with the letter K alliterated in their nam vacation in the same place. e... orch estra acco rdin g to the pres s relea se...

MP: The Peeping Tom record was as muc h mine MP: That’s true. Does it soun d like it? I mean, SP: We don’t unde as the Monde Cane record is mine. I just CHO rstand why you all go to a SE you’ve heard it... to use a moniker instead of my name. The mall. difference with this record is that it’s pers MP: See? There you go. It’s a social conc onal to SP: Yes. It sounds big ern, me, and it’s something I felt I had to do wha t we’re talking about here. Different socia to sort MP: Then why are you asking l me? of take a snapshot of a certain point in behaviours. And it usually involves the cong my life rega and move on. tion of many people in one spot. Yeah, for SP: Because I don’t trust press releases. us it’s mall s. They scare the crap out of me as well.

MP : The n why do you read them ?

SP: Your Italian sounds fabio to a man who doesn’t speak Italian. You’re a bit of a mul SP: We’re getting more of them. It’s ti-lin- SP: Er, I don’t usually. the disguist, right? semi nation of American culture. It’s unstoppa MP : Yeah ble. , yeah , I’ll lay off now.

MP: I speak Spanish, but not as great as MP: Really? I would have thought you I used guys to. Spanish, Italian and English. That’s would have put up a better fight. it.

SP: What I’m wondering is, is playing with an orchestra the greatest fun in the whole worl SP: I tried learning French because I wan d ever? SP: It’s not my fault. ted to MP: It is fun. It’s trying, thou gh. It’s weird. MP: No, no, I just thou know all the dirty things Serge Gainsbou ght Britain in general rg was It’s different. From someone that’s come up would resist that type saying... of cultu re. I dunno... play ing in four -piece rock bands, it’s very exotMP: Ha ha, exactly. ic. But, at the end of the day, the pers onal SP: I’m always a bit disappoi nted we’re not dynamics are not much different. [Put SP: But it’s difficult learning a new lang s on more European, really. uage.

‘Lan d of Suns hine ’ voic e] ‘Eve rybo MP: Look, certain people are attracted dy needs to MP: It’s funny, living in Euro to that be happy / Ever ybody needs thei pe. If I had a flight r space’. In a or something, or a gig, I’d kind of thing. I think you have to have be like ‘I’m getting an ears, to sense, it feels more like a film production, as inter-European flight,’ be honest with you. And the fact that people would be like, ‘Oh, I’m a opposed to a concert, and it can be pretty where are you going?’ ‘Lon musician gives me an unfair advantage. don.’ And they’re like, I don’t stressful. ‘Hey, that first violi nist is a pain in ‘THAT AIN’T have to sit down with a bunch of workbook FUCKEN’ EUROPE!’ s or the ass. What can we do to mak e him happy? Everyone in Italy wou DVDs. I’m not being cocky here, but to ld say, ‘Waddaya talkin’ me the What can we do to make him play better?’ You about?’ I guess I see what best way to learn a language is to go som you mean. ewhere, end up thinking a little more like a politician. stay there for a long time and listen. You know, Or, I dunno, a masseuse. Ha ha. You wanna SP: That said, I thin LISTEN! k London is fine. It’s best make sure everyone’s happy and playing at their not to go anywhere else in the UK if you can best .

SP: I have ears. But people can’t affor help it, though… d to just up and leave and go somewhere...

MP: I would, ahhh, I guess I’d agree with SP: And you’re going to take ever yone you.

MP: I can’t afford it either. What I’m with I mean, there’s some cool places, but you’ saying you when you tour? ve gotis, if you’re interested in something, you ta have time and you’ve gotta have the patie just go MP: No. I HAVE to scale it dow nce. n and the way I’ve never really been there. And you tell all of your friends, able to put those two ‘Don’t I’m doing that is to scale the band back a little things together. London or speak to me in English.’ And you sink or nothing, ha ha ha. swim, bit and the orchestra is basically cut down to you know what I’m saying? The reas on I half. With my arranger, I’m re-w riting all the SP: You voiced a char learned Italian is not because I’M A acter in Metalocalypse.

RICH arrangements for the smaller ense mble. It was an Was that a one-off or are ROCK STAR and was staying on you in it? some absolute must if I wanted to tour this thing. It’s MP: No, no, I just did YACHT somewhere. No, it was beca a voiceover for one, use I a crazy endeavour. decided to live there a while and I lived maybe two or three episodes. But that’s in an it. I’m apartment — you know, shitty, hot apar not a part of it. tment SP: Half an orchestra is still quit e a lot. with no A/C — and loved ever y minute of it. MP: Oh, it’ll be great. It’ll still have the effect, it’s SP: And you’ve been When you dive into something like that doing other voiceover head just certain tunes and certain mom ents will be dif- work here and there. first, it’s always exciting and exhilarat I guess that must be fun, ing in ferent than how they are on the recor d. It’s actually right? some weird way, but you have to take som ething kind of exciting — one more versi on of this music. MP: It is fun! It’s chal away from it, and what I took away was lenging and weird and it’s the language and also maybe this record. kind of more akin to improv, as opposed SP: You tend to conduct with bands you’ to showre in. ing up with a script and being like a unio Will n musiyou be wavi ng the proverbial baton at these cian with SP: Italian is beautiful, but nobody else his coffee break every 15 minutes. really shows? speaks it, do they?

That’s what I thought it would be more MP: A little bit. Even if I’m not the cond like. It’s MP: Well, there’s a few colonies in Afri ucto r, mor e like an improv gig. They’ll say, ‘Hey, we’v ca that I sort of end up doing it beca e use it’s a natural got this idea, whaddya might beg to differ... think? Here’s the script but instinct. The instinct turns itself into a bodily if you wanna go off it, fine,’ and it always ends up movement. When I’m on stage, I know SP: I don’t want to dismiss huge swathes what has being a little bit edgy and a little of the to happen at a certain point, and bit unpredictable I want to make and you don’t know wha world, but you know, apart from them... t’s goin g to happen from sure every one knows. I’m in a fortunate position in MP: Ha ha ha. Other than that, no. It’s one moment to the next. For instance, I did basi- that I’m in front and everyone can voices see me. More on that movie I Am Legend cally only spoken in Italy. and basically we talked than being close to the crowd, it’s more impo rtant about it and we talked about it, I got this, I got for me to be a signpost for the band.

SP: So you took the album title from that, but the way it really ended up work a film ing was title. I’ve not seen Mondo Cane or subs they put a giant film screen in the studio equent SP: The first time I saw you and just do it, you looked played me the movie. movies. Was the film a direct influence I was just sitting there with a on the like you might kill someone if they got some- microphone trying to record or did you just like the name? imitate what the monsters thing wrong, in a similar way to how Don MP: The name is great. It’s an old sayin Van were doing. As crazy as that sounds, g. And Vliet of Captain Beefheart used that was the to hold a cross- most effective way we coul the film was taken from that saying. But d get it to work. also, bow to his musicians’ heads whe n they were I’m not gonna lie, I really love the conn otation practising. or the provocation of the film title SP: You’ve got a great job. as well MP: Ha ha. That was probably Fantômas. In MP: It’s alright, man! I’m because it’s very well known. I thought it gave a Fantômas, I’m really, you know not feeling bad about , the conductor. it. Not today.

LEAP OF FAITH voted to the free s HOLY FUCK are de Canadian electro punk rse bands who cu ised music, and they spirit of uncomprom need to be liked Words by Cian Traynor Hopson Photograph by Richie sic club gasps as the mu ess. A packed Berlin is Th g. irin ckf Lights out. Total darkn ba ng and g and squealing, glitchi l nta me tru ins keeps pounding: roarin not is s. This . There are no sample rdo en is is is not electronic music Th . tes pla crescendo-building tem post rock. There are no nk that has the band ssel bursting electro pu -ve phin plundering, blood energy into instruments uggling to pump their pouring with sweat, str audience begins to onds ago. Gradually the that were there only sec posure. But this is nd’s unwavering com ba the by sed mu be laugh, of control and to stuma chance to be robbed nt: wa y the at wh ctly exa . ble blindly into inspiration erdt, the next day. the band’s Brian Borch alls rec !” fun “It was ’re going up on We it is. a metaphor for how “Things like that are this thrilling, dardo to ng without safety nets, tryi ht nig ry g eve pes tro tigh through it by embracin s hard to play but we get you ng, flyi r ing, weird music. It wa tcases afte en you unpack your sui those moments. Like wh acid will have spilled ry tte ba or ken to be bro know things are going

dd fellow keyboard-an Though Borcherdt an d thir ir the e, Austrian mountains. cor ’s group Walsh comprise the rorep live its effects geek Graham g kin ma s, driven by drums and bas . album, Latin, is mainly the other two members manding process for de ly cal ysi on ph a ing n go e ctio du hours befor won’t even eat for two d Drummer Matt Schulz he’s a very fit, buff an ly cki “Lu f. sel soiling him d an alin ren stage so as not to risk ad the find erdt. “Personally I rch Bo s say n,” . ma e ling handsom whatever I’m fee songs snaps me out of the of ce pa tic exe ne and fre e the at the right tim rt to hit all the buttons en wh tar gui y You have to be very ale sing and pla gs. I’d find it harder to cute all these little thin t eaten a big kebab and jus ’ve you en wh it, like .I you’re not feeling up for while burping up onions gs into a microphone son sad g tic sin an ta rom got you be this overly about it: not having to guess that’s what’s fun of my retreat to Berlin’ e enc ess the ng to capture figure, like, ‘Oh I’m tryi or something.” the equation. It’s not t necessarily factor into sn’ doe n, the ng, ani Me otive spirit that pulsates lling sense, but an em ryte sto any in g ritin gw son violence to it, but you commit random acts of with ambiguity. You can ld’s playhouse to it but You can assemble a chi cannot sleep with it on. many musicians act gery to it. Yet whereas you cannot perform sur ile listening to their wh gs” people doing “other thin of a ide the at d nde offe k everyday activities. fectly happy to soundtrac music, Holy Fuck are per ly putting our music ened if people were on “I’d be a little disheart

going to work right. So will be ruined or isn’t to everywhere; something ving us, you still have y something serious dri while there’s obviousl h a smile.” go up there and do it wit vocoders, guns, h-tech band. There are t Holy Fuck are no a hig ents bought in a pawn rs and various implem 35mm film synchronize Since forming in 2004, e of it is programmed. ord shop for a dollar, but non rovising and then rec up with songs by imp they’ve er ine the Canadians come eng ry eve of . Much to the chagrin them live the same day ir mess of sounds as as little control over the for k loo in worked with, they ng in layers or adding tracks in pieces, stacki possible: no building after-effects. with compromised do something different .

“The concept was to options,” says Brian n’t have too many it let t Jus ys. equipment, so we did certain wa r our desire to will it in “Therefore we surrende d hope it’s something an it t ou ab s apologie be what it is, make no ople like it. These days don’t think a lot of pe I , gh ou en re Su e. uniqu do because of this blo everyone like what you ke ma to ire s. nd des a ba re’s the the le battle of ne’s trapped in a horrib gosphere where everyo rky and weird; a bit mu be it let to y think it’s oka It’s really annoying. I k whether people fuc a e free of that and not giv distorted. It’s nice to be like it or not.” uncover, submitin what the moment can They are only interested out for 10 hours aftern if it requires crashing ting to the energy eve r bus winds through the ay while the band’s tou wards — as it does tod

listening to it,” says then you’re not really on at parties because when it’s in my headI like music the most Borcherdt. “Personally . People tell me they ething and feel moody som do can I en y felt wh , phones h our music on and the g around the house wit rkin wo or g engin list jog ’re re we really means you That’s cool because it so e, tim the like it was driving them. all ting worse eration and probably get it.” to n ing. We’re an ADD gen ntio atte ing n knowing people are pay and there’s nothing better tha s, patterned textures thm rhy ling ott thr ir the , res Though glad that the tine tasks and cho etrate the world of rou n tha en list g cyclonic beats can pen a challengin be considered more of r you at ck ba band would prefer to k loo you ise. Sometimes when to at wh e sur mere background no ’t ren we s you realise they’re the one n jarfavourite records, you stuck out as odd or eve t tha ails det or min the t Ye t. ing firs at igu of intr k or thin nding fresh en what keep them sou es. elv ring at the time are oft ms sees the cisely where Holy Fuck years later. This is pre iding to start a band like dec ind beh ce for ng “That was a big, inspiri ple bank to choose sam “If we had an endless t. erd rch a Bo s say ,” this would we know when n on a computer, how as or t ee sw from or a digital plug-i as to be d it’s probably not going song is done? In the en ther’s hands or with ano in n bee e hav ld as it cou melodic or as perfect n. It’s not really atio pir maybe that’s the ins t bu … nts me It’s tru ins other sios make us special. ying; I don’t think Ca we en wh re about what we’re pla s been the ult. So far the spark ha more about the end res need it.”

Stuck Stuck In In Transit Transit S t u c k

I n

T r a n s i t

California’s AUTOLUX had to destroy their past to make their future perfect there a malevolent pixie-god of creativity?

If there is, he might briefly have taken human form as a Sony A&R four years back, just as the members of LA trio Autolux were due to start writing their second album. “You need to make the right record,” he leant in and whispered. The right record. Well, you’d just start panicking, wouldn’t you?

“It’s subjective. I mean, the right record for who? David Lynch?” says drummer and singer Carla Azar, repressing a shiver at the thought of her brush with a mischievous deity. “What was happening was the label was doing its A&R, which we just weren’t used to. It was very strange for us having these overseers putting pressure on us to make this invisible ‘right record’. We never catered to the wishes of anybody and we wouldn’t know how to do that if you paid us... and we were getting paid, ha ha!

No one knows what a hit record is, otherwise everyone would be rich in two days’ time.”

With the A&R daemon’s words ringing painfully in their ears, relationships between band and label further deteriorated as sessions progressed: “We were recording and writing and the guy was asking us to send demos, which we did, and we would get absolutely no response. I remember the last batch of songs we sent across… I ended up putting this 14minute track on there by accident — just this beyond-noise jam. When our manager heard it he sent us this message saying, ‘Oh, what’s this insane track?’ He loved it, and I told him I’d sent it to the label and he just started laughing.”

Azar and cohorts Greg Edwards (guitar, vocals) and Eugene Goreshter (bass, vocals) found themselves at the mercy of the suits after DMZ records — a subsidiary of Sony cofounded by T-Bone Burnett and the Coen Brothers — parted ways with the corporation in 2005 and failed to renew their contract with the band, who were eventually re-housed with Epic. It was a painful business for a group who promised much with their acclaimed 2004 debut, Future Perfect — a record that raised the spectres of pre-grunge alt-rock heavyweights like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and channelled them into a forwardfacing pop whole.

“We were left on a label that didn’t know why we were there or understand what we were doing musically,” Azar says. “They also wouldn’t give us money to record, so we were being held hostage. They finally dropped us [in August 2007], which we were excited about ’cos it meant they had to give us money, which we used to buy back the rights to our first album, plus our own studio and a bunch of equipment.”

What followed, however, was a further period of frustration as the band struggled to come up with a record they felt could compete with the sonic gold standard set by Grammy-winning DMZ honcho Burnett, producer on their first album.

Is

Words by Alex Denney Photograph by Drew Reynolds

“When we started work we were completely drained emotionally from all the touring,” Azar continues. “We should have taken some time, but we went in anyway and some things came out, some things didn’t. When we left the label things started happening more naturally, but it was a difficult process because we’d been produced by T-Bone Burnett and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make the new record sound just as great.”

Fans tempted out of wedlock with the band by the six-year itch will be relieved to hear Transit Transit (out on ATP in the UK this August) doesn’t disappoint. It’s a record that offers crystal articulations of the Autolux aesthetic of art-damaged guitar pop underscored by Can-style, questing rhythms (‘Audience No. 2’), while subtly pushing at the edges of their sound to take in IDM-influenced glitch rock à la Radiohead circa Kid A (‘Highchair’) and gilded, Lennon-esque introspection (‘Spots’).

“We didn’t give ourselves any boundaries this time around,” Azar says. “I feel as though, with the first record, we felt we had to be in control of everything, but here we learnt to relinquish control — to trust ourselves in what we do a bit more. When you give that up, you’re actually more in control somehow. But it’s hard because you’re trying to reach this individual goal. You’re pushing yourself into that danger zone where you don’t know what’s going to happen. If you don’t do that, it can feel very stagnant.”

If the ‘right’ record — from the band’s point of view, at least — had proved prodigiously difficult to come by, then the last piece of the puzzle slotted into place with heartbreaking simplicity: “‘Transit Transit’ was the last song we put together for the album. I found a recording of us playing in our rehearsal space — just this melody with Greg playing around on guitar and spouting off words. I went back to it when the record was almost finished, and I thought it was really good. It had just been forgotten about. Greg was in Denmark at the time. I called him and said he needed to listen to this.

But the way I envisioned, it was on piano with some sort of bizarre mechanical loop. He told me he had this old coffin-style freezer where he was staying and we ended up using that. It sounds great.”

And for all the setbacks, you get the impression Azar is pleased with the end result. “It’s definitely us, but it’s also a progression,” she says. “It’s music we had to get out of us. With this record, we didn’t feel like we had a home. We were all over the place really, because we had nowhere to belong...

It won’t happen again.”

Is that a promise?

You can hear the beaming smile down the phone: “It isn’t just a promise. It’s a virtual reality we want everyone to live in!”

New York State Of Mind Legendary Queensbridge rapper NAS always needs to prove he’s stillmatic Words by Cian Traynor Illustration by Justine Moss

Nas could have quit music after his first album. Some wish he had. He started too early, he says. Dropped out of school in the eighth grade, deciding to educate himself at home in the high rise blocks of the world’s largest housing project: Queensbridge, New York. He pored over the Bible and Qur’an, studied Africa profusely, never imagining that he’d release an album about it one day. Back then Nas was desperate to record a demo, so he bought recording time from a “heavy metal dude” with a studio and rounded up every beat-maker he could fit into the car. Large Professor was one of them, though at first he wouldn’t speak to Nas — he just wanted his tunes in circulation by whatever means necessary, even if he didn’t get paid, even if it was via some kid he’d never heard of. But he was impressed by Nas’s hunger and lyrical deftness.

When Large said he was producing beats for some big names, Nas didn’t believe him. But then he’d sneak Nas into studios on the recording budgets for Kool G Rap and Rakim whenever they didn’t show up. He’d teach Nas how to get on the mic, how to hold himself, and eventually found Nas a spot on Main Source’s ‘Live at the Barbeque’ in 1991. Nas was out of his mind with excitement, bum-rushing through the backdoor of clubs so that when it got to his verse he could take in the room, sipping ginger ale from a champagne glass. If only they knew that was him, he thought. But it didn’t take long for the buzz to sweep through New York. MC Serch offered to be his manager, netting him a record deal with Columbia, and soon the best DJs in the business were queuing up with the beats of their career. It would have been easy to choke under the pressure. Instead, Nas delivered one of the greatest hip hop records of all time. Arriving in 1994, Illmatic was a cohesive blend of sharp rhymes and crisp production — a peerless guide through life on the street that still sounds fresh today. The reception was unanimous: hip hop’s teenage saviour had arrived and already the world was his.

“When I did Illmatic,” he says, “I took a trip to Europe for the first time to promote the record and the label overworked me to the point where I got sick. It was just press after press and I’d never experienced anything like that. What I did realise was how big the record companies were and how they had Europe on lockdown, and I saw where my music was startin’ to reach people. But when I created it, all I thought about was my ’hood and my city, basically. I figured that anywhere people loved hip hop, they would like it. I had no idea how big it would get, though — no idea I’d be talkin’ about it over 15 years later. No way.”

Illmatic’s impact went to Nas’s head, but it didn’t sell well.

With It Was Written he returned with a cocksure crossover album that rocketed up the pop charts, kicking hip hop into the mainstream. “It was a young music; it still is,” he continues. “And it’d been held back from the mainstream for so long that by the time it reached there, everyone got excited about this new phenomenon. [Hip hop] is what it says; what it talks about. I’m an MC to the truest form. I like to think of myself as carrying on the traditions of MCs before me. So I talk about everything I feel. One day I want money, so it’s life in the fast lane — materialism, violence, sex. The next day I... I hate money! I’ve learned a powerful lesson about money. It’s like, ‘Woah!’ So if an artist can express all those different experiences, that’s what I call the real shit, you know? I appreciate the guys who tell all the experiences, not just fake it with one, like it’s all bad every day. Ha ha! I try to be as real as I can be.”

The purists didn’t see it that way. Those who celebrated Nas’s initial success were offended by his assault on the charts.

But Nas had studied others’ careers, saw the ceiling they hit and convinced himself that he wasn’t going to get caught doing the same thing. He saw it as his responsibility to do something

different — to fill the void of whatever people were leaving out. So he cooked up a new persona inspired by Scarface, calling himself Nas Escobar. The analogy — the determined street urchin who hustled his way to the top only to grow complacent in a fog of excess and egotism — proved more fitting than he’d admit. Rather than continue to examine the world around him with intelligent ghetto narratives, he churned out simplistic gangster tales that celebrated the trappings of his flashy new lifestyle. People kept saying that he couldn’t top Illmatic, so he kept reproducing the same style of album cover and kept assigning a hot producer to every track, trying in vain to reproduce that initial burst of magic. “I got greedy,” he admits.

“I’m a fan of several different producers and I wanted all of that. Nah mean? I wanted all a’ that. And that’s what I needed to do.”

Each release would be preceded by a teaser track that seemed to herald the return of Nas, only for fans to discover it was one of few album highlights. The sales kept coming and the anticipation never dimmed, but after a series of flops and nonevents, Nas couldn’t recover his standing in the minds of those who mattered — not with albums like The Firm (1997), a slick but unimaginative outing in corporate rap, or Nastradamus (1999), which featured uncharacteristically emotional numbers such as ‘Some of Us Have Angels’ or ‘God Love Us’; not with his own line of Fila sneakers; and certainly not with a music video where he was crucified alongside P Diddy. Yet Nas revelled in it, claiming he was a lone soldier waiting for the game to catch up, believing that whatever damage he caused would inspire the next crop – even if his own reputation suffered.

Then in 2001 he took exception to Jay-Z assuming the mantle of king of New York, launching a full-on attack with mixtape track ‘Stillmatic (freestyle)’ – a foolish move, perhaps, when Nas was the only one who believed he was still on top.

Jay-Z struck back by dropping ‘Takeover’, dissing him for going soft and falling off since Illmatic [“Went from Nasty Nas to Esco’s trash / Had a spark when you started but now you’re just garbage / Fell from top 10 to not mentioned at all”]. It was the catalyst Nas needed to raise his game, inspiring a return to form with Stillmatic and, in particular, the retaliation track ‘Ether’ [“How much of Biggie’s rhymes is gonna come out your fat lips? / Wanted to be on every last one of my classics”].

“We naturally get wiser and softer,” says Nas. “I mean that comes with life. But with rap music there’s no chance to get soft! You have to fight for your moment to be different because it’s so street. You kinda get soft on ’em just as bait. You bait them in and once they start talkin’ shit, you trap ’em and you finish ’em off. So the competitive spirit of hip hop never goes away. You may get wiser, you may become more mature, your understanding of music may get better, you may get smarter and it may give you a more poised, patient way of recording, but at the end of the day, once you step into the ring, it’s on. It’s so competitive, you can’t get soft even if you wanted to.”

Given the break-up of Nas’s first marriage and the death of his mother, the timing of the feud couldn’t have been worse.

But it also provided an opportunity to step out of the game and reflect. He went through old notebooks, cringing at the arrogance but reassured by the potential. It was time to end his ‘fur coat era’; time to rediscover the introspection he made a name for himself with. God’s Son (2002) acted as a harbinger of maturity, ushering in a new phase where he began exploring emerging aspects of his personality. Then 50 Cent blew up, taking a pot shot at Nas and his soon-to-be wife on ‘Piggy Bank’ [“Kelis said her milkshake brings all the boys to the yard / Then Nas went and tattooed the bitch on his arm”]. But by now Nas had grown tired of petty feuds, believing they were eclipsed by a far more pressing issue: the increasing enslavement of rappers to the record business.

To the fans who believed that confrontation is hip hop, Nas’s public make-up with Jay-Z upon signing to Def Jam was considered a convenient cop out. But Nas argued that the gesture was bigger than the battle; that it was meant as an antidote to the industry’s politics and power struggles. So he declared that Hip Hop Is Dead in 2006, just to shake things up again. These controversies always bought Nas more time on the mic and, two years later, Nigger (later renamed Untitled) was another chance to impress those who hadn’t lost faith. But he knew he couldn’t go on like this. Even after five number one albums, a new tact was necessary, if just to make it interesting for himself.

“I have to prove myself every day, man. Every day.

Probably the only one of my generation who has been out there as long or longer is Snoop or Wu-Tang. Outside of that, I’m the one ahead. Pow! If you look at the lifespans of the ones who came before me, a lot of them were short-lived. No matter what people say about the art form of hip hop as a fad or a gimmick… I’m still here. I’m here and I’m kickin’ ass! I got more ass to kick.”

Enter Damian Marley — son of the man whose status in music Nas has always dreamed of achieving. Marley grew up listening to tapes of Biz Markie and Slick Rick that his cousin would supply him with and developed a thorough understanding of hip hop as a consequence. He saw something of his own style in Nas’s and became convinced that they’d make a formidable cross-genre partnership. “Something I respect a lot about Nas is that he’s always been an artist with a sense of responsibility,” he says in a near-undecipherable Jamaican accent. “He’s always risen above the money and bitches level, never been afraid to say something different, and can appreciate the impact that can have. Because it’s not all about money and bitches. That’s still there, and you need to have it, because where they’re comin’ from, they don’t have money and they want girls to look at them. There’s a lot of that in reggae and dancehall, too. It’s all about competition — rhyming about who’s the better MC. They’re just followin’ their dreams and nothing’s wrong with that. It’s a part of the culture. Nas has been through all that and he’s still hoppin’ up dem stairs. It doesn’t leave you once you find success.”

The invitation to collaborate on a reggae-rap fusion album about Africa represented a chance for Nas to switch his style up, to infiltrate the mainstream from a new angle and to finally work with one just production unit. It was also a welcome distraction from his public and costly break-up with Kelis… and her lawyers. “Lawyers will be lawyers, man,” he says.

“Everyone’s gettin’ their money. Working on this record got me through that. But let me not speak too soon.”

As a best-of-both-worlds collaboration, Distant Relatives is an accomplished if uneven release, but it’s the undeniably fresh tracks like ‘As We Enter’ that may be enough to finally win back those who had written Nas off. Still, it’s no Illmatic and, with a hearty chuckle, Nas himself admits that that weight of expectation is likely to linger. “I have no control over it. My real fear is if people were to turn around and say, ‘You know what? Illmatic was bullshit.’ Because there are so many fans of that album, including myself, that if it turned out the album wasn’t what people thought it was… that would be my biggest fear. It’s like people showin’ me a photo album. Anytime someone mentions Illmatic it puts a smile on my face. They hear it as an album, I see it as my life — a part of my life I never thought I would outlive because of the conditions that were around me at that time and how ignorant I was to the world. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. I didn’t know I was still going to be here today. Certainly not. So when people mention Illmatic, I just have to smile. It almost brings a tear to my eye. I’m still here. I can’t believe it. But I’ve still got a lot of growin’ to do.”

th e t rial s of ey eliner There he is sat in a private members club in Soho. A sprightly little chap who, at 52, looks remarkably unchanged since he first appeared on the scene 30-odd years ago.

Despite the chemical craziness of the big time, the attendant wild lifestyle and that terrible accident when he was badly injured as a pillion passenger in a bike crash in 2004, the fresh-faced Marc Almond looks like he has just stepped out of one of those Top Of The Pops appearances in the early eighties where, along with keyboard player David Ball, he was one half of Soft Cell.

They found international fame with ‘Tainted Love’, their 1981 worldwide number

Cell stood out. Clad in black and looking like they had escaped from the underground to fondle the crutch of the expectant mainstream, the duo had several hit singles and cut some fine albums that further explored their eerily sexy obsessions.

Since they split in 1984, Almond has pursued several musical avenues — each one melodramatic and melancholic. He went off the rails in a haze of drugs and lived the fastforward lifestyle of pop before the bike crash put his life into some sort of perspective.

His new solo album, Varieté, is a great collection of songs that resonates decades past, both musically and lyrically. Working in

one cover of the northern soul classic originally recorded by Marc Bolan’s future wife Gloria Jones in 1964.

Soft Cell’s reinvention of ‘Tainted Love’ as a dark, erotic peep show was a classic pop moment. Somehow they shoehorned the pulsating darkness of Suicide, a modern electronic feel and the amphetamine buzz of northern soul into a song that introduced the faintly pervy (in the best possible way) looking duo into a pop landscape that is barely recognisable all these years later.

This was the time of new romantics and chubby young men in frilly shirts and their sister’s make up — it wasn’t pretty and Soft

the same kind of twilight zone that his true contemporaries like Nick Cave have made their own, the album draws on a whole gamut of styles that resound like fairground rides as they assess a dramatic life. There is a patchwork of esoteric east European folk, chansons, torch ballads, driving neo-Doors blues, soul and analogue fizz in what is perhaps his best solo record in a highly diverse career.

Instinctive and against the grain as ever, it sounds like an album that Almond has been working towards all his life, and is perhaps part of a process that started in the later days of stardom in Soft Cell when Almond was

thought it was important for us to move on and, although Dave might not have agreed, to commit commercial suicide. We could have ended up being stuck with that gang of bands from the eighties; always being known as one of those. We had to move out of that.

That’s why I did the Mambas and worked with Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch.”

Indeed, Almond’s post-Soft Cell career has been a story of collaborating with artists like Siouxsie Sioux, Antony and The Johnsons, Jimmy Somerville, Nico, Psychic TV, the New York Dolls’ David Johansen, as well as Cave and Lunch. He’s also worked with many icons of Russian music including Lyudmila Zykina,

quite content to strike out on his own direction, following his intuition like a true artist and not like a desperate pop tart.

“It was a shock to us when we had the hits,” he says. “It was a strange, weird, surreal thing, which we rode along with in a drugged-out kind of way. But then we got resentful of it all and didn’t want to be in a pop band anymore. The label wanted more ‘Tainted Love’s, but we had this art college background from five years of performance art and films at college in Leeds where I met David Ball, which was what Soft Cell grew out of. We felt that we had lost our way. It was great to have that massive hit, but I

Alla Bayanova, Boris Grebenshchikov and Ilia Lagutenko of Mumiy Troll.

“I lived in Moscow in 2003 and recorded collaborations of Russian folk songs with folk artists, which I financed myself,” he explains.

“It was an amazing time. The Russian soul is dark and melancholic… everything has a drama and everything is very tortured, which appeals to me. I like very gloomy, depressing, ‘oh my God, we are going to die’ music [laughs].

“The road to Saint Petersburg is built on the bones of dead soldiers, Russian legend has it… and they love legends. It’s said they mixed the cement with the bones of the dead

SURVIVING A SAVAGE MOTORBIKE ACCIDENT FORCED POP ICON

wor ds by joh n robb photog ra ph by mi ke owe n

to strengthen the tarmac. Stalin killed so many millions of people and before that Saint Petersburg was built on the shoulders of slaves working in marshes. There’s death everywhere: cenotaphs, skulls, bones… I took a lot from that. It was an important period for me and it fits into my world like it did on previous albums such as Torment And Toreros. I learnt a lot working with the Russian musicians and I took a lot of that into Varieté as well.”

Though Almond’s solo work is a fascinating canon of velvet melodrama, he has rarely penned his own material.

Interpreting songs from several different

The album travels back to Almond’s childhood in Southport — the genteel seaside town wedged in-between Liverpool and Blackpool. Southport was always a very different beast from Blackpool. For a start it didn’t have a proper beach — just miles of sand, jokingly nicknamed ‘the desert’. For Almond, though, there was a special magic in growing up there.

“There is a song on the album called ‘Sandboy’. My happiest times were on Southport beach. The sea never comes in. It’s a really desolate place but I loved it. It’s completely overgrown. It’s now a habitat for frogs and newts, like a nature reserve. I was

disciplines means that Almond has not always spent enough time honing his own creativity — a creativity he still doesn’t feel that confident about despite the quality of Varieté.

“I don’t always have a lot of confidence in my own songs,” he says. “There are a lot of rhinestones and only a few gems among them. I’m not the greatest songwriter in the world, and the world doesn’t need a lot of my songs, but I’ve got a voice that people listen to. I’m a good interpreter of other people’s songs. It gives me a lot more freedom, so I’m not suffocated by my own baggage. I’m a bit of a songster troubadour in that way. I like to pick

lucky to grow up there, even if you’d feel like a stranger in your own town in the summer. I didn’t realise till later that working as a stagehand in Southport theatre and getting to meet all these northern pantomime impresarios and strange theatrical characters would be so influential. It was the real tail-end of that variety world and it became a real part of my psyche. The first Soft Cell album resonates with that culture. I loved northern soul as well, which was a staple of that part of the country. I always loved that expression, ‘sandboy’. I would lose who I was on the beach and I find, as I get older, I’m always drawn back to those places. I find a

ideas. It might be a mistake but it had to be done. Those days of making expensive videos are long gone. Now I’d make something for YouTube or a clip for my MySpace. I’m very adaptable like that. I will probably not do TV any more, though. I get offered loads of money but I don’t want the indignity of reality shows and I won’t do talk shows unless I get to do a song. It’s important to me that I’m known as a singer and not a celebrity.”

His obvious discomfort with the desperate merry-go-round of celebrity culture is a relief.

Far too many eighties pop stars have taken the easy option of reality TV and sat there on

remember any lyrics. Even now I still have lyrics laid out on the stage because I have temporary bouts of amnesia. But it was, ‘here I am, that’s me — get used to it’. My memory seems to have come back now. I use the crib sheets less and less. I worked at it really hard and set myself tasks to try and exercise my mind. I’m a better singer and performer. I worked at it. I realised I was a lazy fucker before and should have concentrated on being a better performer and singer.”

The accident hampered the creative process initially but soon the dam burst.

“I couldn’t write a song at first. Then I suddenly sat down one day and it all came

reassuring comfort retracing old steps.”

Once Almond left the beach, pop music entered his life. After hearing Marc Bolan on John Peel’s show in 1970, the wam-bamthank-you-mam of glam rock felt like home.

The sequinned glitz and esoteric outer-space imagery seemed oddly familiar to someone who had grown up in the showbiz-stained world of a seaside town, and even now there are traces of that era reflected in his music.

“Musically there’s a lot of seventies references on the album,” he explains. “I wanted that feeling of someone like Jobriath — that sense of musical theatre that I loved.

The seventies were my time. Look at all the

songs from different times, make them my own and then mix them with my own songs in the hope that nobody will notice [laughs]. This is the first time that I’ve made the effort to write. After the accident I couldn’t write any songs for a while, then suddenly it just came back to me and I became very prolific.”

Varieté is Almond looking back on a complex life. The lyrics are shards and snippets from the pop culture coal mine.

There are hints of his upbringing, nods at seventies glam rock, descriptions of eighties excess and of that terrible accident.

“I put a lot of myself in the songs but I prefer to write about characters and put a bit

amazing musical changes then: rock at the beginning, then progressive, then glam.

Bowie and Bolan came along and changed your world. Bowie told you about Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Jean Genet. After that it was punk and post punk, then disco and then the electronic disco of Giorgio Moroder and the post punk disco thing. In Soft Cell we had all those seventies references. New romantic, for me, was punk and glam rock reinvented with an electronic, futuristic slant. I’m really a child of late sixties to late seventies. I don’t know how to categorise my albums. People say ‘cabaret pop’ but I never know what to call it.”

A near-death experience has a way of

of myself into those characters,” he continues. “I like that kind of storytelling. I liked Jacques Brel songs or French chansons where you listened to songs about life but you put your own experiences in there as well. This album is very much about how, as we get older, nostalgia is very comforting.

We are so fearful of life at the moment — there is uncertainty in the world so we tend to go into the warm comfort of what we know and that’s the comfort of nostalgia. The older I get the more I wonder what my place is in this world that moves so fast. Have I got a place in it? Or do I just say goodbye and let it go and come to terms with my past?”

putting a life into order. It also tears a life apart and, for a long time, Marc Almond was really struggling.

“I became very depressed. I had brain damage. I had various things happen to me.

I was in a coma for two weeks. I had tubing down my throat. My ribs and lungs were broken, which for a singer is a nightmare.

The minute I came round, though, I had to get back on stage and into the studio. It was part of my recovery. I had scars on my head, a bruised shoulder… but I couldn’t become a victim. I got back before I was ready. I didn’t know where it was going to go. It could have been me for the rest of my life. I couldn’t

set, waiting for the cheque. Few have been very good at it apart from the likes of Pete Burns who grew up near Almond in Liverpool.

Burns was already a face on the city’s music scene years before Soft Cell hit the charts.

He was the scary, sharp-tongued work of art that used to stand behind the counter in Probe Records dressed in clothes so far out that they didn’t look real. He would sneer at the customers and take no shit from anyone as he wandered around a city that likes to give the freakily dressed a hard time only for him to give it back even harder.

“Pete has always been a creation. I knew him vaguely and knew people who knew him.

out. I had ideas for melodies and worked with different musicians fleshing them out. I think some of the best lyrics I’ve ever written are on this album. After this, I can’t foresee myself writing an album of original songs again. I’m not sure if I can make another album after this one. For an artist like me, the music business has really changed. I could get a big record deal tomorrow doing cover versions and get A&R’d to death but I wanted to put myself into this record. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be open to being A&R’d to death! I would listen to other people’s advice.

I’m not always right about things. But I wanted this to be my record with my musical

I remember him being around in the early eighties. I would play the first Dead Or Alive record back when I DJed at the Warehouse in Leeds. He’s good at the reality shows but I can’t exist like that. I can’t sit on the toilet in front of people! I’m quite private!”

Perhaps at this stage of the game Marc Almond has found that rarest of qualities in a pop star — maturity, contentment and even a certain amount of wisdom.

“Wisdom is perhaps going too far,” he says with a laugh. “But I’ve found contentment in a life that was very chaotic. I enjoy my life and enjoy being me and I haven’t always enjoyed being me!”

MARC ALMOND TO LOOK BACK ON HIS DRAMATIC AND COMPLEX LIFE

Hostile Ambient Takeover After 26 years of solid work, sludge rock survivors THE MELVINS have finally smashed the Billboard Top 200. At number 200.

Words by Cian Traynor Photograph by Mackie

Not getting due recognition can destroy a band. Still going after 26 years and 20 albums, The Melvins remain one of the most misunderstood groups in rock history, known to most only for being Kurt Cobain’s favourite band. Yet from post punk to surrealist rock, their versatile career arc has proved so unpredictable that both Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover, the band’s mainstays, can’t resist reading whatever is written about them online.

“It’s like watching a bad car wreck,” says an exasperatedsounding Dale. “I always think people are wrong anyway… but I can’t help it.” Buzz even remembers their very first review.

“It was by [Sub Pop founder] Bruce Pavitt. He hated it.

Thought it was absolute crap. I remember thinking, ‘Man, when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.’” Ever since, the snarky frontman has consistently blasted popular consensus, insisting that if you get it, no explanation is necessary. If you don’t, no explanation will do.

“We’ve managed to completely piss people off to the point where, without trying, it makes you wonder what the hell is going on.” He sounds agitated, his voice steadily rising. “People tend to say, ‘This is the worst song I’ve ever heard.’ I mean… wow! I’m not doing this to be perverse. I’ve worked VERY HARD to get to the point where I can do whatever I want and make records the way I wish other bands would. My fans understand that. If they don’t, then they’re not going to remain fans for very long. So be it. But I’ve thought about this A LOT. The reason why we’ve lasted so long is solely based on the attention to detail. I think if people started at the beginning of our catalogue and went through it, it’d be an amazing journey.

All kinds of music! If we were a shitty live band or made terrible records, it would have been over a long time ago. The one thing that’s been completely constant and predictable is that we’re going to do things that are good. Sales don’t mean shit. I apologise for none of it. I’ve never been wrong about anything. I can’t think of the last thing I was surprised about.”

No insecurities there, then. But perhaps any lingering frustration with the industry is understandable given the band’s backstory. Luck has never quite gone The Melvins’ way.

They recorded their first album, Gluey Porch Treatments, in 1986 when burgeoning San Francisco label, Alchemy Records, gave them enough gas money to drive down from Aberdeen, Washington. “The record came out to a resounding thud,” recalls Buzz. “We did a tour in ’86 and vowed never to do it again because it was such a disaster. We got a lot of trouble at shows. There was a heavy skinhead influence everywhere we went and they certainly weren’t interested in our long-haired antics. We lost money we didn’t have. You come home $900 in the hole individually and it might as well be nine million.”

When Alchemy founder Victor Hayden disappeared with whatever little money the label had, the band spent years searching for another record label. “We didn’t put out another album till ’89 because no one cared,” says Buzz. “Then when we moved to San Francisco, the guy from Boner saw us play at the request of some girl who OD’d not too long after. He put Ozma out and for some reason, things changed. I don’t know exactly why. It was almost like the musical environment caught up to what we were doing. There was enough interest in that record that a booking agent said we could do a tour where we wouldn’t lose money. Quickly after that we decided to do it full time and haven’t had jobs since.”

After Nirvana’s breakthrough success, The Melvins were quick to benefit from the ripple that grunge sent through the record industry. Cobain had once auditioned to join the band, but was apparently too nervous to remember the parts. As a committed fan, he’d often volunteer to be their roadie and later even recruited Dale to play drums on Bleach. Atlantic were curious enough to take a punt on the band, signing them to a three-album deal. Yet even the Cobain-produced Houdini (1993) failed to endear them to a wider fan base. Opening for Nirvana’s final show was their last glimpse of mainstream audiences, but by then such experiences had soured any ambition to make it big.

“Nirvana did everything that you’d think they would be against,” says Dale. “They ran their band no different than how Bon Jovi would: having a big-time manager, big productions, tour buses — all that stuff. Which is too bad. We always

thought that if we were in a position where we had money and became successful, we wouldn’t go down that route. It’s certainly about ego. What else could it be?”

The Melvins remain content with their cult following — a dedicated throng who understand that the only consistency to be expected from album to album is a fresh twist, even if it means losing as many followers as the last outing would have gained. “If you look at the grand scheme of everything we’ve done,” says Buzz, “the hard part comes in figuring out what to do next — if you want to do something that’s at all challenging.

But you pay the price for that. People get upset. I’ve never understood why anyone should expect me to be predicable. Me of all people! I’m an eccentric weirdo — probably a lot weirder than you would imagine.” He cackles madly. “There’s no way around that. I’m not the easiest person in the world to get along with.”

Yet for once, The Melvins appear to have found stability.

Having gone through a multitude of bass players over the years, they’ve expanded into a powerhouse quartet by adding Big Business’s Jared Warren and Coady Willis on bass and additional drums. There’s no pressure or expectation from their label, Ipecac, as it’s run by friend and collaborator Mike Patton. In fact, their accessible but still abstract new album, The Bride Screamed Murder, has earned The Melvins a spot on the Billboard Top 200 — at number 200 — for the first time in their career, by selling just 2,809 copies in its first week. Even if the stability should prove short-lived, and the band suspect it will, what continues to keep the them together is an unwavering self-belief — one that Buzz believes is questioned at every turn.

“I ran into Slim [Moon] from [indie label] Kill Rock Stars years ago and he said, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of playing loud rock music? Don’t you wanna do something else?’ I just stared at him. ‘Like what? What are you talking about?’ This is it for me! I don’t have anything else. I have to make this work. If I make stuff nobody believes in, I’m out of business. That is it!

The difference between me and people like him is that the light is gone out of his eye. It’s gone. I haven’t lost that magic.”

32

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Gaudi As A Butterfly

Inma Varandela

Travel

Living colour at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound

By Cian Traynor here’s a guy throwing up on himself, mumbling incoherently; his trousers are ripped and soiled, and there’s a bloody gash across his face. “Schoolboy error,” someone mutters with a sigh, nonchalantly stepping over him, relieved of his nuisance. The locals see this every year when hordes of British and Irish punters invade Primavera Sound.

They’re drawn to the consistently high quality of its line-ups (an indie wet dream), the low ticket prices and a genteel atmosphere free of tents, mud and crime.

T

et what makes Primavera an anomaly among European festivals is its late-night programming.

The locals typically won’t begin a night out until 2am, meaning big name bands are still on stage at six in the morning. Those arriving in the late afternoon tend to be overeager first-timers, many of whom have no idea how to pace themselves in such circumstances.

Instead they overshoot, collapse, get left behind, and remember little.

Y

eturn visitors, however, tend to have a point to prove. You’ll find countless people who have come back not because the line-up has topped the previous year, but because they let the experience pass them by the first time around. They found themselves heading back for the airport with little impression of Barcelona outside of spending the daytime nursing a hangover in bed, trying to summon the stamina and lucidity for another all-night endurance test. But adapting to a nation’s perverse body clock is in fact an invitation to soak up the heart of one of Europe’s cultural giants.

R

ot that this city doesn’t have insecurities or inferiority complexes. When the Atlantic trade route was first established, Barcelona lost its status as a powerful port. By 1675, it was the most unsanitary and congested city in Europe and spent the next few centuries trying to keep up with Paris, even launching its own Great Exhibition to outdo the city of lights’ architectural fingerprint. This is a city that felt emasculated when it lost Cuba — a significant colony and a Catalan preserve — in 1898 and was held in a Fascist stranglehold by its

N

dictator until 1975. It’s a city whose four central cultural figures — Gaudi, Picasso, Miró and Dali — all experienced love/hate relationships with it, being at one point either ignored, frustrated or disowned. It’s a city that has seen a vast history of bloodshed, where, even today, many Catalans still feel so under siege that it’s like living in an occupied country, while others find the increasing use of the Catalan language and rise in nationalist feeling makes them feel like they inhabit an occupied country, too. It’s a city where whole newspapers are dedicated to the politics of its football club — the only one of its size owned by its supporters — yet it descends into chaos whenever they win or lose the big games, as it did the night before Primavera 2009 when festival-goers became caught up in crowds that were being shot at with rubber bullets. he festival site, Parc del Forum, is a sprawling mass of asphalt situated by the waterside on the city’s outskirts. Due to its remoteness, almost all bands stay in the adjacent Hotel Barcelona Princess, where paying customers suddenly find themselves sharing a

T

lift with members of Pavement, The Fall, Mission Of Burma and Wire. If there’s even a vague sense of camaraderie between the bands, you’ll feel it at Primavera. When you have a festival whose demographic is drawn from a singular taste in music, the artists find a way to spend a day or so mingling as fans themselves.

There’s Romy from The xx awkwardly queuing to use the portaloos; King Khan and Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer catching The Clean together; the Black Lips’ Ian St. Pe bumming a smoke at the Dum Dum Girls; Harlem’s Michael Coomers acting shy, camp and paranoid while dancing to the Smith Westerns; one half of A Sunny Day In Glasgow getting high on the grassy knoll; Bradford Cox sitting cross-legged, front and centre at Real Estate; Titus Andronicus’ bassist seriously considering a concept EP about volcanic ash clouds; Owen Pallett looking lost; and various drummers congregating at the free beer supply in the VIP section. here are six main stages, most of which are situated far enough apart from each other to avoid sound spills, so darting from one band to the next can be inconvenient

T

— inevitable given the number of timetable clashes. As soon as Mark E. Smith’s belligerent wail tears open the first night, attempting to zigzag through everything becomes difficult.

The xx are sounding tight, tired and emotionless; the Smith Westerns’ cacophonous racket is muffled by the poor sound of the Pitchfork stage; Tortoise noodle through classics from TNT; Broken Social Scene strut Status Quo-style in front of the size of crowd they’ve longed after for years; The Books take everyone by surprise in their bumped-up slot; Pavement produce an in-form, best-of set; and then Chrome Hoof and Fuck Buttons build the night to a climax. That’s just one possible itinerary. By four in the morning, everything has zipped by and it begins to feel like covering miles of ground to catch just three or four songs before dashing off to the next act is no way to see your favourite bands. Tomorrow will have to be different. f your hostel is like most in Barcelona, there’ll be a maid intent on dragging you kicking and screaming from your bed by 11am.

You may as well use the time to traipse blindly through the city, getting hopelessly lost, spending

I

Travel

33

Eric Pamies

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

hours earning blisters through sidewinding streets and courtyards of quiet, away from the smell of cigar smoke, the haze of exhaust fumes and the hum of animated conversation. The Gothic quarter is filled with shards of confetti and broken clothes pegs from the balconies above, with red ticker tape and rose petals left behind like remnants of a celebration just gone. These moments exist only during the siesta hours which, contrary to popular belief, are not utilised by locals to squeeze in a nap, but instead a three-hour, alcoholfuelled feast that constitutes “resting”. The routine turns Barcelona into a ghost town every afternoon, its tiny streets crammed with closed shops and dust-covered cars that look like they haven’t been moved in a month. hen it comes time to queue up for the festival, it won’t be long before someone offers to sell you a can of beer for a euro. Where Parisian street sellers peddle roses to couples, Barcelona just flogs booze.

This happens at almost every venue and club with a line outside it, allegedly part of a network orchestrated by the mob through crooked

W

wholesale deals with beer suppliers outside the city. Everywhere you go, the alcohol servings seem overlygenerous. Even inside the festival, you’ll see a full bottle of spirits emptied after just three drinks have been poured. In the same way, to enquire about dope is to be handed some — no money accepted, your thanks shrugged off casually. To ask for a light is to be invited to an afterhours nightclub where entry is gained by three knocks on an unmarked door — only a good idea if you can still hack it at that hour of the night and you’re willing to sacrifice seeing plenty of bands the next day, if needs be. riday’s action starts early. Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett is playing the festival’s sole indoor stage — the fully seated Auditori — and has drawn a queue of 3,000. So forget that, today is all about catching sets in full. That means seeing Harlem slurring and spitting out messy garage pop; Low performing their classic album The Great Destroyer from start to finish; Beach House making their stage seem inappropriately small for the turnout they pull; Panda Bear sending disappointed fans away in their

F

droves; the Pixies pimping your inebriated nostalgia; and Yeasayer rousing some much needed hyperactivity at 4am. Tonight it’s not so easy just to hop on a random bus outside the entrance and hope to be somewhere central by the time everyone else gets off. Without a free cab in sight, the only option is to trek up Avinguda Diagonal, slipping by darkened figures eyeing you as prey and prostitutes trying to take you by the hand, until you’ve made it halfway across Barcelona, cutting through the end of the night. s Saturday unfolds, it becomes clear that energy reserves need to be replenished. Fortunately Barcelona is a city run on carbohydrates — bocadillos, patatas bravas, empanadas and croquettes — best enjoyed at a cafeteria’s zinc countertop alongside an old man sipping brandy. But the bustle and colour of the Boqueria Marcado off the Rambla makes for an ideal pit stop. With its own rules and customs, the market is such an integral part of the Barcelona’s self-image that it’s considered exempt from petty snobbery. Though most people only come for the spectacle, a trip here is more than enough to fuel up for

A

Primavera’s last, scattershot evening. here are less timetable clashes now; more tired heads; the sound feels thinner; the festival’s car park-like spaces seem emptier.

There’s a touch of finality everywhere: it’s in Grizzly Bear’s softly grandiose set; in the way the Dum Dum Girls’ eerie cover of the Stones’ ‘Play With Fire’ echoes out across the complex; in the way Gary Numan begins with ‘Cars’ so anyone there just to see the hit can leave; in the camp opulence of the Pet Shop Boys’ stage show — unlike anything else at the festival; and in the final chance to get mad-out-of-it in a way that only Orbital could soundtrack.

But the real closure comes the next day in Parc Joan Miro — a central park filled with palm trees and blazing sunshine where bands have been playing afternoon concerts.

Seeing a sweaty King Khan, bulging out of a sequinned cocktail dress that matches his purple wig, lose his temper at a soundman would not have been the right note to finish on.

Thankfully Real Estate’s uplifting surf pop makes for the perfect sendoff, playing to a green of music nerds, stretched out and dozing off.

The final flicker of Primavera’s

T

tranquillity is extinguished just as the sun sets, allowing the heartbeat of Barca’s nightlife to resume, impervious to the interruption. or a city whose Metros are filled with artists hauling canvases and musicians carting guitar amps, Barcelona seems largely indifferent to Primavera. There are 10 major cultural festivals during the summer and despite celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, Primavera is still viewed with a distant scepticism. The following day, an op-ed piece in conservative newspaper La Vanguardia muses about how Primavera Sound has become a trade name, referring to its indie credentials as a “monumental deceit” and suggesting that both its sponsorship and formula are “questionable but transparent”. Only in the context of Barcelona’s cultural wealth could these rebukes seem understandable. It’s the same reason Primavera’s 70-odd thousand attendees are disproportionately made up of outsiders, at first enticed by the music but returning in the knowledge that, just like a book feels different in your hands once you’ve read it, so too will this city once you give yourself over to it.

F

34

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Print straightened records At last a book on Factory that’s factually correct he story of Manchester’s F a c t o r y R e c o r d s hardly lacks for drama, humour or relevance.

What it has lacked for decades is a reliable narrator.

Various insiders have offered their takes. A potted history penned by maverick co-founder Anthony Wilson favoured entertaining lies over mundane truths, as did the witty caricatures of Michael Winterbottom’s film 24 Hour Party People. In his recent book about the Haçienda club, erstwhile New Order bassist Peter Hook recounted a string of amusing war stories, without ever pretending to have kept his wits about him during countless lost weekends. An even thicker chemical fog clouded memories committed to print by Happy Mondays survivors Shaun Ryder and Bez. James Nice’s obsessively detailed chronicle is therefore a welcome attempt to set the record straight.

He’s not fully detached, having

T

worked for a Brussels-based Factory offshoot, but his general approach is a cool-headed one that’s rooted in journalistic rigour. His writing is clear and readable, and the deep research evident in every sentence ensures his credibility. He’s also careful to entertain as well as inform, furnishing the mythologies adhered to by quixotic protagonists as well as the details of what actually transpired.

Inevitably, Wilson comes off as a melodramatic, hilarious and impractical visionary who enriched popular culture as much as he infuriated its movers and shakers.

Yet it’s made abundantly clear that the suave impresario had tin ears — we learn, for example, that he considered The Railway Children to have better prospects than Happy Mondays (see excerpt). The lowerprofile likes of Rob Gretton and Mike Pickering gain much of the credit for Factory’s A&R successes, even if Wilson gave the label its personality and its endearingly doomed ‘Why not?’ attitude.

In retelling the well-worn stories of Joy Division, New Order and the Haçienda, Nice manages a measure of

dispassion. However, it’s in its treatment of Factory’s lesser-known failures and also-rans that the book carves an identity. In the tales of Section 25, A Certain Ratio, Stockholm Monsters et al, there is much to learn about Factory’s idiosyncrasies, insanities and inspirations. This was a label that for years refused to engage in any promotion whatsoever, that ignored the acid house boom taking place in its own club, and that stuck always to a philosophy of ‘praxis’, whereby you do what you want and rationalise it later. Contempt for logic explains not just Factory’s duds but that daunting array of classic records wrapped in beautiful, expensive sleeves.

Nice does himself no favours by continually quoting from contemporary reviews of Factory releases, proving only that in its commercial heyday the music press employed very bad writers. Ultimately, however, the exacting detail in Nice’s own writing wins out. It may border on pedantic at times, but after a slew of ‘impressionistic’ histories, it’s a tonic.

Factory finally has its reliable narrator. Nice work. Niall O’Keeffe

From Shadowplayers: This move by Factory towards what [journalist] Paul Mathur termed “big guitary business” advanced further with the release of the first Railway Children single, shimmering pop nugget ‘A Gentle Sound’. Issued in September, the single soared to #6 on the indie chart, selling 12,000 copies and delighting Dave Haslam in NME. “Wigan-born lads, young-looking and desperately eager to do well. With a sweeping acoustic guitar strum driving a tender beat, this gets just about as far from northern dourness as you can imagine; it springs like a grasshopper through wind-blown grass... This is the catchiest Factory single ever.”

This verdict pleased Wilson no end. “Despite what Tony would tell you now,” [press officer] Dave Harper asserts, “he was convinced that The Railway Children were the great white hope... No-one bar Tony was particularly interested in their type of music at the time, whereas it was obvious that Happy Mondays had something special. Anyway, Tony kept banging on to me about getting press for The Railway Children... I don’t think he ever asked how I was doing with the Mondays. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t take them seriously at all.”

Be that as it may, the Mondays had failed to make much of an impression either in Manchester or further afield. Their first gig in London, promoted by moonlighting Creation staffer Jeff Barrett at the Hammersmith Clarendon on 26 July, saw the band placed bottom of the bill below The Weather Prophets, The Servants and Pop Will Eat Itself. “I looked around the hall,” says Barrett, “and there was this big bunch of blokes sitting slumped against the wall, with dozens of tins of beer and bottles of cider. Most of them had hoods up over their heads. I thought they were bums who had come in to hear the music. I went over and asked them to move outside. They just stared up at me and said, ‘But we’re Happy Mondays.’”

MULHOLLAND’S Drive In addition to selling copies of his new book Popcorn, which we featured on this page in the last issue, our very own scribe Garry Mulholland will be taking to the stage at this year’s Latitude festival. Garry and fellow writer and columnist Julie Burchill have been, er, booked to talk about their long and illustrious careers, and also to share opinions on anything and everything to do with popular culture. Catch them in the Literary Arena on the Saturday. Latitude takes place in Henham, Suffolk July16-18.

HOVE Truth Jay-Z has put the kibosh on an autobiography he penned with journalist Dream Hampton, deeming it too revealing about his troubled relationship with his dad. The rapper told Rolling Stone: “It was still wrong… that [my father left], but he did stick around at a time when it wasn’t cool or popular. So [writing the book] made me ease up a little bit in how I felt about him.”

STICKING Point What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? A drummer.

Original Oasis sticksman Tony McCarroll, obviously not content with the half a million pay out he received from the Gallagher’s after his sacking in 1995, has announced he is writing an account of his time in the band at the beginning of their career.

Throughout those four years, he put up with Noel’s constant jokes about drummers and rumours still persist of a punch-up that he had with Liam which caused his dismissal. The book, called Oasis: The Truth, The Noel Truth, Is Nothing Like The Truth, which has taken McCarroll 10 years to write, comes out in October.

PAPERBACK Rider Iranian-born groupie Roxana Shirazi has been enticing danger with her memoirs, The Last Living Slut: Born in Iran, Bred Backstage. Rumour has it that several editors passed on her manuscript for fear of a fatwa, until Shirazi finally sealed a deal with HarperCollins to publish it under its new Igniter imprint. And those that she has bedded? Members of Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe, Velvet Revolver, Papa Roach and Skid Row, to name but a few. No one of note, then.

NEW RELEASES FROM DEAD OCEANS

CD/LP

ALSO AVAILABLE:

WHITE HINTERLAND KAIROS CD/LP

THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH THE WILD HUNT CD/LP

FROG EYES

PAUL’S TOMB: A TRIUMPH CD/2xLP

COMING SOON: MT. ST. HELENS VIETNAM BAND WHERE THE MESSENGERS MEET CD/LP PO BOX 61315 LONDON N19 9AB UK | WWW.DEADOCEANS.COM DISTRIBUTED IN THE UK BY PIAS UK AND IN THE US BY SC DISTRIBUTION/ADA

36

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Moving Images BLOATED BIOPIC OF JOAN JETT’S FIRST BAND THE RUNAWAYS NOT ABLE TO ESCAPE Winnebagos ROCK’S CLICHÉS WESTSIDE Story G-funk legend Ice Cube will step the fuck up to the cameras for his directorial take on the NWA backstory. The rapper and Friday screenwriter/actor is to direct a biopic about the infamous Compton, CA crew, who annoyed filth worldwide with their notorious ‘Fuck Tha Police’ track in 1988. Said Cube: “I think (a movie is) the ultimate... tribute (to) the group and what the group meant to the world.” Dr Dre is set to produce the project.

MANSON Killings Alleged God of Fucking About Marilyn Manson is to team up with missus Evan Rachel Wood for some next-level horror shit in a forthcoming retro-slasher flick.

Manson will play a serial killer in Splatter Sisters, which will be directed by Pineapple Express helmsman David Gordon Green and is planned as the first instalment of a franchise. Green said: “This is a role Marilyn Manson was born to play.”

DRAMATIC Licence She’s already promised us no more drama, and for a time it seemed her tedious R&B stylings would hold good to that promise. But now it seems Mary J. Blige is going back on her word to play Nina Simone in a new biopic. The film has been scripted by Will & Grace writer Cynthia Mort and will focus on the jazz singer’s relationship with assistant Clifton Henderson, with Last King Of Scotland’s David Oyelowo also slated to star.

BOARDED Up MGMT totty Ben Goldwasser, Norah Jones and Yeasayer’s Ira Wolf Tuton all appear in a new film about a recently dumped skateboarder who travels to Jamaica. That must have been a hell of a pitch, eh? Think Cool Runnings with indie credentials.

Wah Do Dem is directed by Sam Fleischner and Ben Chace, and features a soundtrack with contributions from Yeasayer and MGMT, along with Santigold and Bones And Suckers.

by Ross McKeon THE story of an all-girl group of jailbait rockers was destined to be coopted for an exploitative Hollywood movie and this September, The Runaways finally get the reductive box-office treatment. The band were carefully packaged and groomed for success by industry mogul Kim Fowley in 1975, finding success as a snarling gang of feather-brained Lolitas flaunting their charms in corsets and leather. With photographer Floria Sigismondi directing, the outline of lead singer Cherie Currie’s 1989 memoir Neon Angel is used as an opportunity to regurgitate every rock’n’roll biopic cliché imaginable. Everything you expect to happen happens; there is nothing here you haven’t seen before — a struggling rock band whose fleeting stardom evaporates because of intragroup feuds, commercial exploitation and drug abuse.

With a weak script that fails do anything more than skim the surface of the band’s brief time together, The Runaways’s predictable set pieces and groan-inducing dialogue (“Girls don’t play electric guitars,” a music teacher tells Joan Jett) make for an inexcusably routine outing that asks few questions and answers even less.

Aged only 15 when she joined the band, Currie (played by Dakota Fanning) was the striking frontwoman whose raunchy stage persona was cooked up by the band’s Svengali-like mastermind, Fowley.

Her descent into drug-induced instability is portrayed through a scenes sexed-up of series soundtracked by The Stooges and Sex Pistols. The Runaway’s music, in fact, is entirely secondary – so too is accuracy. Kari Krome, who cofounded the group with Fowley, has been written out, while the fact that the band went through several bassists before Currie quit in 1978 isn’t mentioned, nor is it acknowledged that they went on to record another two albums without her. The penultimate scene of Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) conceiving her Love ‘I smash international Rock’n’Roll’ in her underpants even sidesteps the fact that the song is actually a cover version.

What we’re left with is a superficial treatment that does nothing to distinguish The Runaways from any previous depiction of rock’n’roll excess.

Compared to the 2005 Runaways documentary Edgeplay, directed by former bassist Victory Tischler-Blue, this amounts to little more than a thirdrate Almost Famous.

Loosely-structured movie The Builder brings indie boys out of the woodwork Words CIAN TRAYNOR music of Bon Iver, Gregor Samsa, Pan American and Spokane make for a fitting accompaniment to Rick Alverson’s first feature film as a director — and not just for its reflective qualities. As the tale of a brooding, bearded figure who retreats to the woods of upstate New York to construct a cabin, there’s something of the Bon Iver back story

The

to The Builder. But where Justin Vernon’s sojourn in solitude produced a period of recuperation, as well as a critically acclaimed album, the builder (played by co-writer Colm O’Leary) only finds his existential crisis accelerated.

As debt, expectation and fatigue hamper his attempt at escape, the idea of crafting his own small utopia in the countryside is no match for the actuality of it.

The film was developed over the

course of a year by Alverson who, before recording as Spokane, was the chief songwriter in late-nineties altpop outfit, Drunk. Having studied film at NYU, Alverson turned to music simply because it was an easier and cheaper creative outlet.

“It was a different world back then,” he says. “Films were a huge financial gamble for investors and they took so much longer to come to fruition. I realised that making music was rewarding on a short-term basis.

You could write and turn around a record and move on to the next thing. But I got tied up in that for a decade! In fact, I became so used to the process that I think I’m bringing a lot of that, probably recklessly, into filmmaking. I finished The Builder and within months was shooting the next feature, New Jerusalem [with Will Oldham]. You get a little restless.”

The Builder is threaded with that frenetic spirit. The scope of the protagonist’s weariness is elaborated on slowly, with as little detail as possible, through loosely shot scenes that cut abruptly, skipping over time lapses in a way that leaves plenty of room for interpretation.

“I wasn’t too concerned about explaining things to the audience,” says Alverson. “They understand that there’s so much dumbing down in film. Obviously if someone’s in a car, they’ll eventually get out — we don’t need to see it. The more information we’re given in movies, the less interesting they become. It’s completely asinine. A lot of filmmakers set out to have something to say and they use the medium as a pulpit. The thing is so crowded with their intention and will that I don’t see what kind of a contribution it is to perception. Even if people are annoyed by minor bits of confusion or a state of speculation, it heightens the viewer’s awareness.

We’re taught to look at media in a certain way that turns it into this constant deciphering of meaning as opposed to just looking — ultimately that’s totally divorced from the way we interact with the day.”

As a companion to the film, Jagjaguwar are releasing a collection of songs, Music for The Builder, online. This “foundtrack” features new songs from the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Califone, Luke Temple and Sam Amidon. The latter recorded a traditional Irish folk song with Colm O’Leary’s brother Eamon, who also plays his brother in the film.

This, too, was part of Alverson’s quest for realism. “Nobody is a professional actor. We all know each other. If you understand how someone behaves socially, you can utilise it. I don’t see any reason to fabricate it. That way the performances remain natural.”

WICHITA RECORDINGS 10TH ANNIVERSARY SHOWS AT THE RELENTLESS GARAGE, HIGHBURY CORNER, LONDON. WEDNESDAY 14TH JULY

//

TUESDAY 13TH JULY

THURSDAY 15TH JULY

//

SO LD

O UT

//

SO LD

O UT

MONDAY 12TH JULY

DJS ACROSS THE NIGHTS TO INCLUDE: SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, GRUFF RHYS, HUW STEPHENS, GOLD PANDA, LISA MILBERG, VERONICA FALLS, MARIS PIPER & OTHERS. TICKETS AVAILABLE FROM WWW.TICKETWEB.CO.UK, WWW.MUSICGLUE.COM AND 0844 847 1678.

TEN YEARS OF MUSIC WE LOVE!

WWW.WICHITA-RECORDINGS.COM WWW.TWITTER.COM/WICHITARECS

KELE

PEGGY SUE

SKY LARKIN

THE BOXER CD / LP / DOWNLOAD 21.06.2010

YO MAMA DOWNLOAD ONLY 02.07.2010

KALEIDE CD / LP / DOWNLOAD 09.08.2010

ALSO COMING SOON: SKY LARKIN “STILL WINDMILLS” 7" & DOWNLOAD - FIRST AID KIT “SAILOR SONG” DOWNLOAD - LES SAVY FAV “ROOT FOR RUIN” ALBUM

WWW.WICHITA-RECORDINGS.COM

WWW.TWITTER.COM/WICHITARECS

38

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Arts

Nazi Piece of Work The artwork for Ramesses’s new album is truly sensational

Arts

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Interview by John Doran Photographs by Hugo Glendinning

Ramesses are a psychedelic doom trio from darkest Dorset. The artwork for their new album Take The Curse is a series of shocking images from Turner Prize-winning psychopath artists Jake and Dinos Chapman. Adam Richardson of the band explains: “Damien Hirst does very little for me, but Jake and Dinos Chapman blow my mind every single time. They either amuse me or they actually shock me. Every time I go to one of their shows, I expect to be smashed in the face and I always am. I saw their 2005 exhibition Explaining Christians to Dinosaurs that had all the McDonald’s characters turned into dark-looking African totems, so the Hamburgler and Ronald McDonald were like these very sinister religiouslooking statues. That was mind-blowing.

“The art that they let us use for the cover of our new album is from a piece called Fucking Hell.

They did a similar piece just called Hell which was, ironically, destroyed in the Saatchi warehouse fire. You can imagine what that must have looked like!

“Fucking Hell is nine large perspex cabinets with a scene in each and these cabinets are arranged in a large room in the shape of a swastika. Basically, it is hell. It is the Nazis trapped in their own hell or a hell of their own making, if it needs to be spelled out for you. In this, the figures are a lot rougher... and sicker.

They look more medieval.

“When they built Fucking Hell, they decided to reduce the scale of the figures by half. It’s almost like the first one was a working sketch for the second one. But it’s interesting because even people I know who don’t blaspheme, when they see the artwork… even if it’s just muttered under their breath, people always say: ‘Fucking hell!’

And then they might say it again without realising it. So it’s a piece of art where you might end up saying the title without even realising you’re doing it...”

39

Summer 2010

41

The Stool Pigeon

42

Comics

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Comics

43

44

Comics

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Comics

45

46

Comics

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon Serial Killer

Bergman

Comics

47

48

Comics

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

ALLO DARLIN’ / ALLO DARLIN’ Out Now on CD / Vinyl LP / Digital Indisputable bittersweet funny girl-pop masterpieces for fans of Camera Obscura, The Magnetic Fields and Jens Lekman. The indiepop album of the summer.

“Terrific, witty and heartfelt, like a less moody Belle & Sebastian.” The New York Times

Live 21 July at The Luminaire, London

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART / SAY NO TO LOVE Out 5 July on Limited Sea Foam Green 7” Vinyl / Digital The indiepop band of 2009 return with the perfect summertime single, full of fuzz and feelings.

“Like The Smiths on a shimmery summer’s day...everything you want from your sun drenched alt-pop” UK Music Review

Live 29 July at Heaven, London

THE PIPETTES / CALL ME Out 12 July on Limited Blue 7” Vinyl / Digital The new single from their eagerly awaited second album, this is The Pipettes in full-on disco-tastic power pop overdrive with another superbly catchy slice of utterly infectious pop perfection.

Live 19 July at The Lexington, London

TENDER TRAP / DANSETTE DANSETTE Out 12 July on CD / Vinyl LP / Digital Led by influential indiepop legend Amelia Fletcher (Talulah Gosh, Heavenly), Tender Trap combine the harmonies of classic girl-pop with the stripped down beats and dirty guitars of The Vivian Girls and The Vaselines. Also available – “Do You Want A Boyfriend?”

Limited Edition White Vinyl 7”

www.fortunapop.com Tickets for all shows available from www.wegottickets.com

The Stool Pigeon are always on the hunt for M O R E P L AC E S to stock the paper

DO YOU RUN

A SHOP, BAR, VENUE, LAUNDRETTE or BROTHEL ANY WHERE in the UK? Allow us to deliver you a bundle each issue. Then sit back and admire your swelling customer base.

We deliver to Berlin too.

Please email info@thestoolpigeon.co.uk to find out more.

introducing a discourse on perceptions of reality and free will into the ‘low’ form of the superhero comic (Watchmen) while maintaining a fiercely unpretentious and by turns disturbing, warm, profound and, at times, hilarious tone, he has booted down numerous doors… some of which others are yet to follow him through.

As he carries on the anecdote, laying mercilessly into another figure, recognisable by his long mane of hair, distinctive beard and black goth/punk/metal clothing, you get the sense that he’s not much interested in fashion but is keenly interested in how people present themselves to the world. “A few days

later we had that Russell Brand here doing stand up at the same theatre and he started doing a routine about the local rapes,” he says. “Wouldn’t stop, even though it was fresh in everyone’s mind.

Very daring of him.”

Whatever he talks about, it isn’t long before he returns to the subject of Northampton. This town where Moore (also a poet, illustrator, magazine publisher, magician, spoken word artist, smoker, toker, mid-afternoon joker) was born in 1953, may be directly in the middle of the country, but it is not Middle England. Anyone who lives in Leith or St Helens will instinctively know this place.

Anyone from Gillingham or Swansea will

novel Watchmen, which indelibly changed the face of its industry and produced a leap forward in process and potential equivalent to those realised by Citizen Kane. That’s not bad work for a lad who was kicked out of school while a teenager for dealing acid. He was turned-on by the hip psychedelic counterculture of the late-sixties and became a performance poet in a local multi-media collective, the Arts Lab. He was also an autodidact who pursued his love for imported American comics (which at the time were so worthless they were used as ballast in trans-Atlantic ships) into writing strips for Sounds,

Doctor Who Weekly and then 2000 AD. Since his big break writing Swamp Thing in 1983, he has remained at the top of his field (completely in critical terms and mainly in commercial terms; some of his most ambitious work stalled before completion with the astounding Big Numbers frustratingly only reaching two issues), and he has done so by consistently kicking against the pricks.

From insisting on having strong female protagonists (The Ballad Of Halo Jones), to writing about anarchy and insurrection (V For Vendetta), exposing the illusory nature of modern histories (From Hell), making pornography (Lost Girls), to

also taken in ritual magic, the worship of a Roman sock puppet deity called Glycon and a subversive underground magazine called Dodgem Logic, has recently come full circle. He has returned to the spirit of the Arts Lab by releasing the spoken word piece Unearthing on LP and CD along with music by Mike Patton, Justin Broadrick, Stuart Braithwaite, Zach Hill and Crook & Flail, accompanied by a book of photographs

by Mitch Jenkins. The piece was originally commissioned by pyschogeographer/writer Iain Sinclair’s for his anthology London: City Of Disappearances (2006) and concerns his friend, fellow comics writer and

cultist, Steve Moore. Thirty-five years ago, Steve (no relation) bought an ornamental sword for use in a magic ritual, which triggered off an obsession with the Greek moon goddess Selene and the arcane history of his life-long home, Shooter’s Hill in southeast London.

Portrait by David Ma

dark block of Moroccan hashish resin the size of a cigarette packet, not some discombobulating new strain of super skunk.

He only darkens during a brief but measured aside about sexual assaults in the area and the way in which a visiting comedian dealt with the theme during a recent stand-up routine. Then he reveals a steeliness more in keeping with his status as the only comic book writer in the world who is regularly talked of in the same terms as some of the great novelists of the late 20th Century and beyond. Part of this reputation is built on the 1986 comic series turned graphic

Interview by John Doran

Unearthing the magical world of comic book genius, Alan Moore.

psychogeographers, psychedelic bon vivants and occultists, and he doesn’t usually have much time for interviews.

This said, he is extremely good company and you can tell he enjoys playing the expansive raconteur all the more because he gets little opportunity to indulge himself.

And while he is reassuringly genial, he is much bigger, more leonine and prestidigitatoresque than photos make out. He looks more like a Brian Bolland drawing of himself than himself. Even the permanently smouldering joints on which he tokes are much fatter and longer than you’d credit — although filled from a soft,

Hipster Preist

The Stool Pigeon Interview

“There had been a series of rapes in the underpass on the way to the station. Josie Lawrence — who is a lovely woman — was playing The New Theatre. She said to me after the show: ‘So I have to walk past the abandoned shops, past the old factory with the broken windows, go through the underpass and then past the burnt-out pub to get to the train station? This area’s a little rapey, isn’t it?’ We said we’d walk back to the station with her.”

Alan Moore is holding court. He has a terrifying work ethic that belies the myth of laziness often lazily ascribed to his sub-cultural fringe of writers, anarchists,

recognise its pedestrianised town centre; streets pock-marked with boarded-up units, vacant in the face of competition from rapacious out of town retail parks, their core industries long since gone and replaced with an insubstantial service industry varnish. Places like Harlow, where the streets have no names, just numbers.

“So next time Brand comes down here, I’m going to rape him. And then phone his grandad up live on air to tell him about it.”

He gamely signals that, of course, he’s joking, just in case we are the sort to judge him unfairly on this and not on his body of work. And this work, which has

THE STOOL PIGEON: It’s almost a luxury to be able to smoke indoors these days.

ALAN MOORE: It’s very civilised. I’m not keen on having to go to places where you have to stand outside to have a smoke. People complain about passive smoking but they don’t realise that my

passive smoke has a measurable retail value. I’m thinking about charging people to stand next to me. I smoke indoors.

Although since I got married to Melinda [Gebbie, co-creator of Lost Girls], and she’s moved in with me, I have relented and will open a window now.

SP: Do you think, on the quiet, you’re a lot more of a traditional Englishman than people might presume?

AM: That depends on which English tradition you’re going for. I like to think of myself as a traditional Englishman, at least in so far as the traditions of Northampton go. But we have been on

here. We’ve got ones that talk. They say things like, ‘Pick that cigarette butt up.

Yes, you, the one in the anorak.’ It’s this kind of sub-Orwellian theatrics that just make people more annoyed than anything else. They don’t alter crime, just people’s happiness.

SP: It’s been noted before that you successfully predicted the pervasive intrusion of CCTV cameras into all aspects of urban living as far back as 1982, when you started V For Vendetta.

I guess you only have to look at the graffiti of figures such as Banksy and other loosely anti-capitalist aligned

somebody’s shit list since about 1263 and we only made matters worse by supporting Cromwell during the Civil War and making the boots for the New Model Army — for which I don’t think we were even paid! And then, of course, Cromwell turned out to be even worse than Charles I and he only lasted for 15 years before we had Charles II back on the throne. He didn’t look favourably on us and he pulled down our castle. I guess he took it to heart that ‘we’ had chopped his dad’s head off.

SP: Does this ‘traditionalism’ tie in with your mistrust of the internet? I find it

artists, and then onto late-adopters such as bands like Hard-Fi, to see that two decades later it has practically become a great pop culture icon of the times.

AM: There are an interesting number of people turning up at protests these days dressed as V [Guy Fawkes maskwearing protagonist of V For Vendetta]. I know there is the Anonymous Group down the bottom of Tottenham Court Road barracking the scientologists [who sometimes adopt his disguise]... a good bunch of lads and lasses! But I’ve also seen some pictures recently from the Climate Change Summits and the antiglobalisation demos and there appears to

slightly odd that someone who is renowned for working in speculative fiction and near-future writing isn’t interested in a tool with such potential.

AM: I’m practically Amish when it comes down to it. I practically mistrust any technology that came after the buggy. What I tend to think is that the internet is fine for everyone else in the world. I can see that it may have some disadvantages. In fact, I can see a few problems arising from it, but, by and large... everybody in the entire world apart from me uses the internet and seems to get on quite well with it. For my part, I don’t want to be connected to that

all-pervasive kind of cyber culture any more than I want to be connected to the physical world that is around me, more than I can help it [laughs]. I’m largely a solitary creature, just by nature and by my work. That said, I venture out into town, but I very seldom leave Northampton.

be a growing phalanx of people wearing Guy Fawkes masks and wigs.

and we’re still sat at home watching pornography and buying scratch cards.

We’re rubbish, even though we are as gods. I think the idea that we can all be superheroes if we want might still be contagious, like in V For Vendetta. I’ve heard of urban superheroes springing up across the world. I think there’s one in London called Angle-grinder Man...

SP: It’s handy, I guess, that not only does it tie in morally, philosophically and politically, but it also looks pretty fucking cool as well, right?

AM: It’s a pretty good look, isn’t it?

And of course it preserves your identity.

Everybody is becoming [a superhero]. In the past I’ve tried to say, ‘Look, we are all crappy superheroes,’ because personal computers and mobile phone devices are things that only Bat Man and Mr Fantastic would have owned back in the sixties. We’ve all got this immense power

SP: Is it important that not only is Northampton close to the physical centre of the UK but, as it has gone through the last two or three decades, it now looks like a lot of other places in Britain with its pedestrianised shopping centre, chain stores moving in, and local family-run

SP: Ha ha ha!

AM: I think he removes clamps from cars and things like that. They have them in America as well, apparently. And like in the same way serial killers would be caught with The Bible on them or a copy

businesses closing down?

AM: That’s it. You could even be forgiven for thinking that some of these councils are actually trying to divert the life and activity away from town centres to the more profitable retail parks which are surrounding most of our conurbations nowadays. That certainly seems to be the case in Northampton. We’re all practically living in the same place. There has been a great levelling. We have the same brand names reiterated in all of our shop fronts; the same chain stores in every town. All of them have the surveillance cameras, although probably not to the same degree to which we have them

of John Fowles’s The Collector, there is a common link between vigilante heroes: all these little urban superheroes have copies of Watchmen!

SP: Have you turned your back on superheroes now?

AM: I’m interested in the superhero in real life, but not the comic book version. I’ve had some distancing thoughts about them recently. I’ve come to the conclusion that what superheroes might be — in their current incarnation, at least — is a symbol of American reluctance to involve themselves in any kind of conflict without massive tactical

SP: Your latest project Unearthing has gone through a number of different stages, starting off as a piece for an anthology put together by the pyschogeographer Iain Sinclair to how it stands now with these amazing photos and music by great musicians, along with yourself doing spoken word which is like performance poetry. I was wondering how much you’ve come full circle and returned to your days back in the Arts Lab in the late-sixties.

AM: Very much so. I suppose it could be argued that I’d never really gotten away from the Arts Lab, but certainly over this last year I have very much returned to my roots. The multimedia explosion of Unearthing rather took me by surprise, because it was such a strange project to begin with. It all really commenced with Steve Moore himself — the subject of the writing. Back in 1976 he bought a Chinese coin sword made of 108 coins all tied together and used it in this very simple magical ritual which he came up with on the spot. He used it to ask for guidance and perhaps a confirming dream. The next day, he woke up with a voice in his ear saying the word ‘Endymion’, which he later found out was the title of a John Keats poem. This started the bizarre course that Steve’s life would take in many respects. It began his unusual relationship with Selene, the Greek Moon Goddess. So, in 2004, when Iain Sinclair asked if I wanted to contribute something to his London City Of Disappearances book, I had something to write about. I’m always a sucker for anything that Iain suggests, really.

SP: Is Unearthing a work of psychogeography?

AM: It’s more of a human excavation than the excavation of a place, but because Steve Moore has lived his entire life in one house on top of Shooter’s Hill and he currently sleeps no more than four paces from the spot where he was born, it does become a work of psychogeography as well. So we do go very thoroughly into what Shooter’s Hill is.

SP: The etymology of the place name?

AM: Absolutely. Well, right back to the basic geology of how it formed.

Apparently it was just because of a chalk fault that collapsed on the north side of the hill and that’s what created the Thames Valley. So without that, no river Thames, no London. And yet it’s this fairly isolated little hill, and there are lots of strange little places on it. We look into the place, but it’s more an excavation of Steve’s peculiar life which crosses into all sorts of different areas and crosses over with my life to a certain degree. It was certainly an odd little story that was self-referential. I’ve often found that if you write self-referential stories that feedback into your actual life then all sorts of weird things start to happen, or at least appear to start happening. Then Mitch Jenkins called round. I hadn’t seen Mitch for years, but he told me he’d got to a point in his photography career where he was pretty much at the top of his field. He was bored of getting all these commissions to re-touch the irises of the latest American

Unearthing the comic book ge

Hi Pr superiority. I think this is the same whether you have the advantage of carpet bombing from altitude or if you come from the planet Krypton as a baby and have increased powers in Earth’s lower gravity. That’s not what superheroes meant to me when I was a kid. To me, they represented a wellspring of the imagination. Superman had a dog in a cape! He had a city in a bottle! It was wonderful stuff for a seven-year-old boy to think about. But I suspect that a lot of superheroes now are basically about the unfair fight. You know: people wouldn’t bully me if I could turn into the Hulk.

TV star, so he asked if I had any pieces of text that he might be able to turn into a series of photos. The only thing I had lying round was Unearthing. I said, ‘Look, this is a bit big and unwieldy but there might be something in there.’ Mitch came back in a state of excitement, saying that he wanted to realise it as this huge book of photographs. I said, ‘Sounds good to me.’

SP: How did it expand from that into music?

AM: Mitch said he’d been talking to the people at Lex records and they suggested all these wonderful musicians, which sounded fantastic. I came to this studio and recorded the various passages which the music was then composed around.

SP: The piece has this ending where you describe sending the first draft of the piece to Steve and the instructions that he had to follow on opening the envelope. You read it, or listen to it, for the first time with him...

AM: He first read it exactly as it’s described in Unearthing itself. I sent it to him in an envelope with the ending already written that was actually telling him to go out for a walk around this neighbourhood, and he did. He went all the way round to the burial ground and stood with his back to it, as I’d already described in my creepy self-referential story. He said he felt very weird.

SP: Well, you would, wouldn’t you!?

AM: He did actually feel a shudder run through him when he was standing with his back to the burial ground and since then his life has changed drastically. Unearthing itself was a big part of that in that there were people Steve had known for decades, and lived with in the case of his brother, who did not know how very, very strange he is.

The thwarted love interest in the story read it and she was quite upset by it at first, but their relationship and their friendship recovered and became a lot stronger and healthier because of it.

Steve has a new love interest. His brother contracted motor neurone disease just after Unearthing had come out and a couple of weeks ago Steve finally buried his ashes in the back garden. I was there with a number of the characters from the story. And, yes, this will eventually lead to a sequel. I have told Steve that I want to write a story called Earthing...

SP: Would it be right to say that he’s your best friend and he’s been crucial to your career in a lot of ways? How did you first meet him?

AM: Oh yeah. Well, this was a different world, a long time ago. It would have been around 1967, so I would have been 13 and I was a comic fan. Every Saturday I’d go out and buy all of the Marvel or DC comics that had been shipped over from the States as ballast.

And I would also buy the very few interesting British comics that were around then, which were mainly published by Odhams. They used to reprint black and white versions of the American Marvel titles. And there was an announcement in one of the issues of Fantastic that their new tea boy, Sunny Steve Moore, had got together with some friends and had put on the first UK comic convention. Now, I was probably too young to attend that, but I became an associate member, which meant that I paid some money and got all the literature. And in one of the fanzines that came in my introductory package there was an actual address for Steve Moore.

I basically began stalking him and wrote him a couple of letters and we began a correspondence that has lasted for years. When I was starting out he was an invaluable help. When I decided to move

from being a cartoonist to being a writer, it was Steve who read through my early scripts and told me to lose half the words and gave me a lot of pointers on how to do it. And then later it was him who inspired me to become a practising magician. In many ways, he’s completely ruined my life!

SP: This isn’t the first musical project you’ve done. In the past, you’ve been associated with David J of Bauhaus and have even released records yourself.

Is there any sense in which you are a frustrated rock star?

AM: Well, yeah. I mean, back in the Arts Lab days all I wanted to do was to be able to support myself through being creative. There was a time when I thought I might be a superstar poet, then I realised that was an oxymoron and that would never happen. Then I thought ‘rock star’, until I realised that I couldn’t play an instrument, so I tended to gravitate towards writing and drawing.

That just seemed to be the easy way in although, yes, I have been involved with various musical projects — The Sinister Ducks, then with [cult Northampton psych musician] Mr Liquorice of The Mystery Guests and then The Emperors of Ice Cream.

SP: All of these names have a very psych rock feel to them.

AM: Yeah. I am a huge exponent of psychedelic culture. I don’t care whether it’s fashionable or not but the ethos that was around [in the late-sixties] was an incredibly productive and benign one. I suppose that a lot of my work since then has been soldiering on with the same basic agenda.

SP: As much as this could either be a cliché or a truism, to what extent do you feel that taking LSD as a teenager acted as a catalyst or a key as it were?

AM: Of course you can never say what would have happened if it had gone otherwise. I would say that it had a tremendous impact on my life. When I first took acid, I saw a quality of hallucination that was only like that for a few years. Very much like a Martin Sharp [of Oz magazine] illustration. It was very liquid and drifting. But then, a few years later — I’m sure that the acid was exactly the same — it was the landscape that had changed. The experience had become more crystalline and hardedged. A bit more paranoid. But, yes, it made me realise that actually reality was a state of mind and that, as your mind could change, so could your reality. This was something that would have a big influence on my later thinking, and I also think I realised that my perceptions about art and writing and music when I was in those sort of states were wonderful. But it didn’t mean that I liked everything — far from it. I became quite critically acute, but I would enjoy the piece of art, whatever it was, on a much more profound and glowing level. So I think I probably resolved to try and write or draw or create for people in the same kind of condition as I probably was when I’d created those words. It’s a bit like Jason Spaceman and Sonic Boom from Spacemen 3 back in the day when they wrote ‘Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To’. I thought, ‘Yeah, that’s an elegant formula and I’m sure that an awful lot of art in the history of the world has been created in this way.’ I’m sure that’s what Wilkie Collins was doing and I’m sure that’s what Samuel Taylor Coleridge was doing.

SP: Did you ever see the really bad side of acid? I don’t just mean feeling a bit weird or paranoid, but having the fullblown simulacra of paranoid schizophrenia?

AM: Not quite that bad, but I did have plenty of bad trips. I laid off the acid

around the time that I got expelled from school. I’d already done 50 or 60 trips in a year up to that point and I was probably starting to have some strange ideas. But this was only ever recreational. In the West, it’s always going to be in the context of getting out of your head. Say in the case of eighties’ rave culture… you would get kids going to raves and having a blissful experience — an experience of satori [Buddhist term for enlightenment].

But after the weekend was over, they would have to go back to the council estates that they were trying to escape from. They were still there. And for some of them a chasm opened up between their desire and their circumstances that they fell into and didn’t get back out of.

SP: Do you still take acid?

AM: I take magic mushrooms. The first time I combined them with a rudimentary magical ritual... well, that was the eye-opener. I suddenly realised that the combination made the magic work and made the drug much, much stronger and more profound. And since then I’ve only taken mushrooms in ritual circumstances. There just doesn’t seem to be any point in doing it otherwise.

SP: You’re proud of your status as a hipster. Do you regret the way it’s become a disparaging, pejorative term now?

AM: Has it? Yeah, that’s probably true. It used to be a fashion statement, but it was information as a fashion statement which is probably going to do you more good than the clothing you wear. I got an incredible education starting from the point at which I was thrown out of school. Now, I could probably hold my own intellectually with most people who have had university or college educations. And indeed some of them will have done courses on my books. So, despite the fact my ‘education’ ended at 16, I had hipsterism, which was wanting to be hip, and that led me to read this incredibly diverse array of books on science, mysticism, science fiction, literature, art... I would find out about these movements that I had heard about, and it’s given me a pretty comprehensive education. Now I am an autodidact, which is a great word... I learned it myself.

SP: I guess if there’s one thing that pushed your career forward more than any other thing then it was the 12 Watchmen comics. It was a watershed in how people looked at comics in general and shifted them into becoming acceptable for adults to read them (as long as they were referred to as graphic novels, of course). But if Watchmen kicked these particular doors off their hinges, why haven’t people flooded into the room?

AM: Er, well, I don’t know. Initially Watchmen gained a lot of its readership because it was taking an unusual look at superheroes, but actually it was more about redefining comics than it was about redefining one particular genre. I think both me and Dave Gibbons [artist] had a lot of knowledge about that scene and we were able to take it and change it around to our advantage. And, as you say, there hasn’t been a more sophisticated comic released in the 25 years since, which I find profoundly depressing, because it was intended to be something that expanded the possibilities of comics rather than what it has apparently become — a massive psychological stumbling block that the rest of the industry has yet to find a way round.

SP: It did codify a lot of things.

AM: Well, yeah. It wasn’t necessarily planned at the time. We just intended to do a really good superhero book and then when we got to issue three, we

suddenly realised that we potentially had something much bigger on our hands.

Things like From Hell or Lost Girls are in some ways as complex and as subtle as Watchmen; it’s just that they’re not in as mainstream a genre as superheroes. You know, I would have thought that sex would have been a more mainstream preoccupation than superheroes but... apparently not! But, you know, at least the superhero thing is accessible to a wide variety of people. Whereas the brutality of From Hell or the sexuality of Lost Girls might be taking people into areas which they’re not comfortable with.

SP: When originally reading Watchmen in comic form, I got the impression that the plot was being written as it went along.

AM: Yeah, absolutely. I think we got to issue three and, on the first page, there were all these things coming together; there was a new way of telling a story. We got the captions from the pirate comic [within the comic]. We got the balloon from the news vendor. The radiation sign was being screwed onto the wall on the other side of the street and they were all in this dance together.

And then we thought, ‘This is new. This is good. We can take this further.’ And so with the next issue, we did that complicated thing with Dr Manhattan where we were slicing up time and rearranging it to achieve a kind of specific effect. And then we made the issue that was entirely symmetrical.

Making all the scenes mirror each other from front to back. In every issue, we were trying to push it a bit further. We were thinking, ‘Are we doing something new with the storytelling? Are we doing something that hasn’t been seen before?’

SP: You talked about the link between drugs and environment and culture before. In the mid-eighties, was it serendipity that you chose to use the smiley badge on the front cover of the comics just before it was adopted wholesale by acid house fans?

AM: That was just one of the many strange little coincidences that seemed to happen. When Watchmen came out, Tim Simenon from Bomb The Bass put a splash of jelly across one of the eyes in homage. But I can remember walking through town wearing an old Watchmen T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and somebody shouting ‘Aciiieeeeeeed!’ at me from the other side of the street!

Which was a pleasant and engaging experience! Working as a writer, one of the reasons I got into magic was because you start to notice this feedback between the writing and real life. It might be entirely in my head, but it seems significant. I mean, there was a conference last weekend in Northampton called Magus. It was academics coming from all over the world to talk about me and my work. So I went down with Melinda. They were nice people. One of the academics at this conference was saying that he was working on a book which was about Watchmen as a post9/11 text. I can see what he means to a degree. One of my friends over there, Bob Morales, said he’d been talking to some people on Ground Zero on September 12, 2001 and he was asking them if they were alright and what it had been like. Two of them, independently of each other, said that they were just waiting for the authorities to find a giant alien sticking half way out of a wall.

SP: Ha ha ha... fucking hell!

AM: There was that atmosphere of a cataclysmic event happening in New York, which I don’t think had been depicted previously... even in science fiction terms it was perhaps unimaginable! Yes, you do find that a lot of odd, little coincidences like that haunt your life.

DVD out on July 26th.

Pre-order the DVD at www.oddsac.com and receive a free exclusive poster

55

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Comment & Analysis Spotify that stain out, add an irritant and use a Hilfiger bassline

SON OF DAVE I’ve begun to wonder lately if all my problems might be overcome with more advertising. There must be a less gruelling way to make a buck than by slugging it out in the bars. I imagine you, my corporate friends, slathering your big banner all over my art.

The new app-phone will not come with Spotify, streaming capabilities, or a bottle opener. It’s official. The money is where the ads are, and there aren’t enough ads with streaming music to impress the big companies. Money for songs won’t come from the listeners, we know that. Most people won’t bother buying tunes anymore unless they actually witness the miracle and smell the sweat of the bluesman up close.

Then they’ll beg to have their bodies signed and buy almost anything.

But short of that, they’ll just listen to or share for free what they don’t really respect.

I have a limited experience of stealing. Once as a young man, a long

time ago, at a Hotel Bar in a Midwest town, my blues band decided we’d been ripped off somehow from the gig that night, so we stole the patio speakers. ‘Bose’ it read on each speaker in big letters. (“Well branded!” she cries. Sssss.)

We took them home to the flophouse where we lived with cat piss, broken amplifiers, industrial vacuums and piles of records. Modern dancers came and went from humid, smelly rooms and the landlady was away for years. I hadn’t a clue how to get the dancers into my room.

‘Bose’ was all I stared at for hours on end as I listened to Chick Corea, King Sunny Adé and Albert King.

Much later, I gained enlightenment, a girl, and bought a pair of tailored speakers with no markings on them at all. Oh, the sound… you could hear the miracle of music, delivered with good strong wood. (“GFAW.” She slaps the table.)

No, it’s only ads that generate money. And we’re running out of places to put them. It’s a challenge.

There are ads on everything that moves and everywhere you look.

The music world is full of ’em. But there’s one place where nobody has put the ad yet and that’s right in the song! I predict that soon the regular slob will have to hear an ad right in the middle of all the latest tunes.

Maybe it’s a little jingle, woven into the melody, just like you heard it on the Coca-Cola commercial, right before the second chorus, all bought and paid for by the cola company.

Voice-over would cost more, but isn’t out of the question. Record companies

and high-end fashion houses will be making hideous mash-up babies together. Perhaps this publication would like to step up and throw a couple thousand towards my next modern blues single! (“MMPH!” she snorts.)

The stolen Bose speakers were cursed. Wherever they went ended in debauchery, debt and breakdown.

The landlady had come back early and found the dancers gone soft and the house in ruins. We fled to an apartment in the dreaded core area.

That winter, snow flew for two days straight and rose in drifts above the windows and doors. We were trapped with white trash and weak black hash. We had nothing to dig our way out with except our hands. I craved a better life.

A given problem can usually be solved by finding a previously unseen solution. Those that argue to turn up the heat say, “We are cold and we don’t deserve this treatment.” Those warm people who argue to turn the heat down tell us to put on an ugly woolly sweater.

But the third angle is what I’m seeing now. It is to let very poor people work in the basement and the human heat generated will warm the whole house upstairs, so I can wear my loose-fitting leisure suits.

An argument is often a dichotomy — two points of view born to conflict. “Put more bass in the mix,” says the young man in his Camberwell bedroom studio. “Too much bass,” say the neighbours. The overlooked solution that will end the argument is to add a little irritant to

the situation. Add a little irritant.

Let a clothing company decide how much bass there will be and, in fact, let them play the bass! Use a genuine Tommy Hilfiger bassline and the tune is sure to have bags of money surround it, and be blared out of the biggest set of Bose speakers there are. The neighbours will flee and be replaced by Spanish squatters, or the young man can afford to move to a warehouse in Shoreditch.

My backyard these days is a cacophony of dogs, arguing, modern R&B, airplanes and catfights. It’s hot out and the windows need to be open. I remember back then being shut in the lovely silence, buried under the snow. Cleaning products from the guitar player’s night-job were everywhere, all in unmarked bottles. (They contained the stuff that really got the stain out, not the Mr Muscle for sale at the corner store.) We sat in the fumes of the leaky solvents and got nowhere.

The burden of the poor is to be forced to live with advertising. It’s what makes the whole capitalist economy go. In the land of pop they sell all sorts of shit with a banner here, a logo there, and only the privileged are able to afford life without all the clamour and irritation. I think now of offering a two-tier service. Music with ads in the middle for the regular people, but for the executive class customer, I offer this: you come out to a show, pay a little extra on the ticket price and sit up front. I’ll let you smell the miracle. You can put your head close up to my bespoke speakers

and get it all without ads. And then I’ll sell you an ad-free VSCD (Very Special Compact Disc) that only you can play. There’s only one. It won’t even work in anyone else’s aPhone — just yours. It’ll spread viruses in the computers of others. This oneof-a-kind original work of art is yours exclusively for the price of 12,000 euros. And this is the best part — it has your name on it, encoded into every tune. Like a secret message on a strand of DNA, you can look very closely and the notes all repeat your name. (“WANKRRRR!” she interrupts.)

The fumes fumed. The snow snowed. Someone lit a Bic lighter and FOOM, a ball of fire tore through the dry, dead air and we all smelled hair burning. Our guitar player’s head smoked. I ran to the door with an Ironic Butterfly album and dug my way up and out.

Eventually I dug my way to this warm garden in the suburbs.

But it’s too noisy here today. I need to find an overlooked option to fix the problem. Maybe I’ll get a rooster. Add a little irritant. They might re-evaluate their dog barking, baby howling and domestic bitching when there’s a rooster constantly advertising his prowess from my yard. However, if you control your dogs and babies, people, we could eat that rooster and shut it up for good.

I’ll bite the little cock’s head off. (“HYUCK!” the farm girl says, laughing.) We can pour the blood all over ourselves, and dance in the carnal summer night, the nameless speakers thumping on the patio.

Help me! Mystery Jets Dad is trying to drink from my nipples!

MISS PRUDENCE TROG May 1 I’m certainly glad the home secretary Daniel Johnston has banned mephedrone. I thought I had a handle on it, but after four days of lying in my bed without sleeping, darkened sockets like a battered panda wanking over pictures of Robert Kilroy-Silk while my ears bled, it’s good to finally say goodbye. I was in a crazy way for a few weeks back there and, I have to say, it’s the most evil drug I’ve ever taken. This is coming from a person who once put mescaline up their own arsehole before conducting the Hokey Cokey at a school for the handicapped. I used to be a very benevolent person in the old days, but now I’ve become something more profoundly selfish and drugs from the internet haven’t helped. I could drone on about this particular subject for ages. Ha ha, did you see what I did there? It’s called drone in some parts of the country, you see, especially up north where they don’t have much media,

apart from Sky Sports. It’s important that people realise this is a drug not to be messed with, especially as some people have even cut off their own scrotums. I don’t have a scrotum, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be the first person to wake up without a clit because of a night hoofing up bubbles.

Besides, now narcotic peddlers are going to charge much more for it and cut it with Bold 2-in-1, so kids are going to be more resourceful in sourcing their Persians. All the boffins in Thailand have to do is change one chromosome in the DNA of this powder and it comes alive as a different beast — maybe more deadly. But can the government stamp out that sort of activity? I was starting to worry what would happen to my local speed dealer, Enya, who was looking gaunt the last time I saw him. Now meow meow is banned, it’s going to be a whole lot better for the economy. Why should the evil scientist in the East get all the money when I happen to know people like Enya spend their cash locally, usually in pubs in Shoreditch.

I did buy some substitute versions of plant food from the internet. One was called Tony Meo Fury and it turned out to be like acid and ketamine combined. Imagine, the two most terrifying substances you can think of working together, like Harold Shipman and Fred West sharing a house-cum-surgery.

Another came in liquid form, causing me to hang upside down from a tree in Clissold Park shouting “mugwump” at passers-by. I bought a lucky-dip bag costing under 30 quid,

which is probably what most kids get in pocket money these days. It makes you think. I suppose there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, and that’s that you really have to put your hand in your pocket when it comes to buying drugs, so splash out you tight fuckstick. At least when you buy it from a reputable dealer you’re 99 per cent certain you’ll be waking up in the morning with your vulva intact.

May 9 I’m glad Chelsea won the Premiership despite my aversion to that dirty bastard John Terry. They certainly proved their class this season, which is why I support them now. I used to be a Manchester United fan, but I changed sides when Wayne Rooney got injured.

May 15 It seems I still have a real soft spot for Wayne, and so it proved when last night I had the strangest yet filthiest dream. I know he’s not much to look at but Wayne has the most beautiful eyes. He limped into the Negative Press office completely naked but for a crutch and a massive cast on his leg and just glared at me in an overtly sexual way. He looked like a pig in plaster and I should have been frightened when I noticed his stiffy like Billy Idol’s fist, though it soon became clear he was about to score the goal of the season.

Apparently there are no prizes these days on Match Of The Day, but I got more than just a hot-dog up the Craven Cottage away end.

It was definitely a dream as Ryan

Giggs had drawn a giant whippet on his cast and signed it, but those casts now come in different colours, so you can’t draw on them with indelible pen (another reminder of the nanny state under New Labour). Anyway, he flung my promos and laptop onto the floor with brute force, then he hitched up my skirt and started taking me tenderly from behind as he rubbed his stubble up my back, taking my top off, braying and saying ‘eerrrrrrrrmmmm’ in his little Scouse accent. just like he does in interviews. Then he got more ferocious, and I looked around to see his temples throbbing and his pronounced jut-jaw. I was loving every second. Well, at least I was until Emile Husky and the dad from Mystery Jets suddenly appeared out of nowhere trying to drink from my nipples. I began to lactate, then torrents of milk sprayed both of them, trapping them in corners. Then I turned and tried to grab Wayne by the ear but missed and accidentally pulled out his ginger island from the top of his head and he retreated out of the office weeping, his muscular buttocks disappearing forever.

Mystery Jets Dad had also disappeared, though Emile stood in the corner drinking from a bison’s udder. Strangely, he’d turned into Jake Shillingford from My Life Story. What can it all mean? Maybe it’s a sign we’re going to win the World Cup. June 7 Oh my Christ, Alanis Morissette has got married! I used to drink G&Ts with Demelza before we went out on

the town with Jagged Little Pill as our soundtrack back in the nineties.

It sold 68m albums and then nobody liked anything else. We all suddenly woke up with a hangover and realised she sounded like a demented fucking witch. Let’s hope her husband doesn’t wake up and come to a similar conclusion.

June 8 OMG, that James Corden and Dizzee Rascal song is amazing! ‘Shout shout, let it all out, these are the things I can do without!’ I have no idea what it means but I’m sure the boys in South Africa will be inspired.

They only have to see James’s chubby little face and sneaky, sleepy sex eyes and they’ll play out of their fucking skins! Come on England!

June 9 Apparently Danny Dyer’s new film has taken £205 at the box office. Well, that’s what happens when you say awful things about cutting women in low-rent magazines. I mean, I fucked up my last boyfriend good and proper but he deserved it. Actually, I fucked up the last three.

June 11 So the World Cup is finally here!

We’ve waited six years for this, so I hope we can win it or England will have to wait another six. Maybe they should do it every year instead, and then we can share the glory around a bit more. ITV is a bit full of adverts, isn’t it? I guess it’s preferable to Adrian Chiles’ face, which looks like it’s just been wiped and the nappy thrown in the bin.

56

Comment & Analysis

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

INDIE DAVE

My special relationship

OH WE DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE...

Bauer put a contract out on their freelancers’ heads

PHIL SUTCLIFFE the poor freelance music Nah, doesn’t work, does it? Why would you? We swan about the world interviewing rock stars, stealing their pints, blagging their drugs, blah blah. Or we sit at home listening to music and getting paid to jot down a few smartarse remarks, aka ‘reviewing’.

So, given the degree of truth within the stereotype — for me, for 35 years, it’s been fun, it’s been fulfilling — this story about the recent Freelance War fought by writers and photographers at Kerrang!, Mojo and Q is no plea for sympathy, just a realistic snapshot of a world that hordes of young aspirants long to enter.

The background, as with the music industry’s own uproar, is the combined effect of recession and the “internet revolution” on media businesses.

Our battle was about contracts and how they can be used to undermine people’s rights and livelihoods.

Here comes the science. Under UK law, self-employed (freelance) creative workers — sculptors, musicians, even journos — own copyright in their work. Staffers don’t. So freelances’ work is our “intellectual property” and we can make further income from selling it onto other outlets, print or

Pityjournalist…

digital. But that law offers freelances no protection at all against corporations bearing contracts designed to snaffle our copyright and all that potential income. Which is what these music mags’ newish German owners, Bauer, did in February this year.

They sent freelance writers and photographers one of the nastiest contracts ever devised by a publisher.

Aside from certain insanities too technical to go into here, it demanded rights not only in our published work but our interview transcripts, notes and all the pix arising from a job.

Alarmingly, it dumped sole liability for any legal action onto the freelance — London being the world’s premier libel court destination, this threatened roof-over-head, shirt-off-back ruination.

With the contract came a letter promising that, after March 1, there would be no further work for anyone who hadn’t signed. Which got our backs up. We sent a petition, signed by 170 freelances, rejecting the contract and requesting negotiations. Bauer responded by postponing enforcement, but refused to negotiate. An awkward silence followed.

Eventually, come mid-April, they produced two new contracts and a fresh ultimatum — sign what you’ve been offered by April 16 or else. Both contracts eliminated the ownership of transcripts, etc., sub-clauses, and the part of the liability horror where the freelance would be responsible even if whatever provoked, say, a libel suit had been inserted by a staff editor/sub.

Modest progress. However, fundamentally, this was a neat divide-andrule ploy. Bauer offered the Tier 1 contract, as we called it, to maybe two dozen major contributors, words and pix — it didn’t grab their copyright and restored a percentage on

syndication (sales of work to other publications), but still snatched free reuse for the company’s own outlets, print or digital. Tier 2 retained all-rights — bye-bye to copyright ownership.

We sent another petition, now with 200 signatories, rejecting the contract and requesting negotiations.

Again, Bauer postponed enforcement and refused to negotiate… but they did start sending us letters which, they averred, would serve as legally binding addenda to the contracts. These helped somewhat because (a) they narrowed liability down to cases where the freelance had been “negligent” or even “malicious”, whereas, before, we’d have to pay the cost of any crackpot action “under any law” and (b) they opened up grey areas where the contracts would not apply at all.

The company augmented these rather weevilly carrots with a stick: imposing their “no contract/no work” ultimatum. Fatigued by the conflict, some worries eased, livelihoods under threat, and no further concessions seeming likely, some freelances started signing — especially Tier 1, naturally — and the freelance committee who’d been organising the campaign called a halt.

Dozens of people on our email network gave their reactions and, remarkably, everyone said the collective effort had been worthwhile.

Clearly, we’d lost ground, we’d been ruled up to a point, but we didn’t seem at all divided — not bad for a bunch of self-employed “rivals”.

That’s the warm-glow side. The cold reality aspect is that many of us won’t sign either contract (including me, for the record) and have lost that work/outlet/pleasure/income for the foreseeable. And the mags have lost us. Plus the two-tier strategy includ-

ed the assertion that, in the future, only Tier 2s will be offered — a grim prospect for new freelance writers and photographers wanting to work for Kerrang!, Mojo and Q. Big Picture? It’s an extreme example of industry trends.

Magazine publishers have increased their dependency on freelances because we’re cheap: no office space or equipment to provide, no holiday/sick/mat-paternity pay, no pension contributions. So then they try to take our rights and land us with sole responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Workers vs. corporation conflicts may be capitalist nature’s way, but the recession-cum-internetcrisis make for extra harsh times.

Still, while other publishers often bandy all-rights/heavy-liability contracts, they are rarely enforced with such rigour — individual freelances can often reject them and retain their ownership of their work, their professional stock-in-trade. Retaining copyright is important. It’s a bastion of the independent voice in journalism.

It helps us bastions to keep on eating (photographers often make 30 per cent or more of their earnings from catalogue sales, writers usually less) but, speaking personally, my soul and bank account are both pleased I’ve mostly retained copyright in my work and, for example, recently resold pieces written as far back as 1976. Every little helps.

Like musicians, freelance journalists have to understand contracts, and stand up for themselves, individually and collectively, while remaining adaptable to new media and open to new kinds of (non-ripoff) deals. We’re kind of rivals but totally in this together. No surprise that workers understand that better than the owners of multinational corporations.

I had this horrendous dream last night and I’m sure it has some meaning. Sam Cam and I were on The Jeremy Kyle Show and we were subject to much bawdy jeering from the proletariat, many of them reeling off profanities — in front of their children, too — as well as throwing iced buns. In fact, some of the children were swearing and throwing iced buns, which shows the class of people we were subjected to.

Samantha was on stage with Jeremy as he cross-examined her. We were there because “Samantha says Dave is having an affair with another man”.

Preposterous, of course, and while I sat in the booth behind the stage I was filled with a mixture of anger and confusion.

How could my beautiful, fragrant, adorable Samantha ever believe I could be unfaithful, especially after I managed to pull her from The Wire dish Dominic West, who was sniffing around before I picked up the whiff.

Just then Jeremy called me out in front of the audience and I was greeted with a fusillade of hectoring and someone even threw an egg on my rather expensive distressed jeans. They were very distressed, I can tell you, and for once in my life I understood how John Prescott felt.

Jeremy interrogated, his grimace fixed, his face jerking back and forth as if suspended upon a turkey’s neck, and he attempted to adopt hip speak to be down with the kids.

“You Dave, have been putting it away with another fella, ain’t cha?”

“No, no, Jeremy,” I squealed, looking upon a hurt and betrayed Samantha. I reached out to comfort her but she pulled away coldly.

“I’ve never had no one else ever,” I blurted.

“I can prove you’ve been getting it on with another man,” he cried, “because he is here tonight!”

Some fat ladies in the crowd fainted, and someone screamed, “Burn him!”

Fear gripped me in that moment, though I knew I was innocent. Why should I feel such shame and guilt when I knew I had been wholly devoted to my good lady wife?

“I tell you, Indie Dave Cameron, that you have been sleeping with THIS MAN.” Just then Kyle pulled his mask off, to reveal the same face.... the face of Nick Clegg. I done a little sick.

I jolted awake. I was covered in sweat and the sheets were damp. I rolled over and told my special friend about the terrible nightmare.

He told me not to worry; that while there is a striking resemblance between him and Kyle he is in fact no snake-oil salesman.

Comment & Analysis

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

The Stool Pigeon AGENT ORANGE He has a face like a DFS sofa that’s been left on wasteland and pissed on by foxes.

A good friend once asked me why people were going so crazy for the Johnny Cash reworking of ‘Hurt’, the Nine Inch Nails statement of self-loathing and pity reconfigured as a dying man’s plea for redemption. I said I wouldn’t be able to give him a straight answer as it had come out the same month my dad was diagnosed with cancer. The pioneering rockabilly rebel was the same age as my father and he was probably the only thing we’d agreed on when I was a teenager, giving the song a deep personal edge for me that I wasn’t able to unpick. After my old man made a much prayed-for recovery I found it easier to articulate what I loved about Cash’s five American Recordings long players.

They represented the seemingly unthinkable in this age of late capitalism, an act of dignity and respect. Stars as big as Bono and Nick Cave temporarily setting aside matters of ego to gracefully let this hulking, creaking true American idol bow out at the top of his game.

Of course this being late capitalism, it couldn’t be left there.

Mad props to Rubin but he shouldn’t have offered the same revivifying hand to Neil Diamond. A great entertainer no doubt but not in the same league.

But at least Rubin isn’t responsible for opening up this end of a lifetime opportunity to Tom Jones. The 70year-old bellowing, priapic, Welsh, thunder cunt has had his own

getting his house in order, reconnecting with the blues album released this month, Praise And Blame. It only goes to reinforce my opinion that this orange faced penis missed his real calling in life. He was not born to make old, stupid, alcoholic sluts take their underwear off in public but should have played a terrifying, interspecies paedorapist on Teletubbies because of the primary luminescence of his face which also missed its true calling as a shop-soiled fucking leather sofa in a DFS warehouse fire. Another useless twat pisses on the memory of Johnny Cash. Who next? John McCririck singing ‘All Along The Watchtower’? Idi Amin belting out ‘Come As You Are’? Cunts.

DISSING IN ACTION So what if she’s crazy and thinks the FBI is spying on her?

I witnessed a crucifixion once and it was not a pleasant sight. I was sitting at a breakfast counter with a girl who was telling me about how her boyfriend was nice yet so boring she couldn’t endure the mind-numbing yet guilt-inducing experience of finishing with him. The doorbell went and was answered by a flatmate and a male voice started travelling down the hall. Realising it was him and mentally unprepared for enduring his company, she yelped and shot under the counter as he strode into the room. Instead of asking where she was, however, he just walked over and sat down next to me, whilst reaching for paper and pen. He must have got a full three sentences into his note before he saw

her on the floor at the foot of his stool. The next few minutes were the longest of my life.

The full squirming horror of that afternoon was brought back in technicolour recently while reading Lynn Hirschberg’s masterful, yet ultimately senseless public humiliation of M.I.A. in the New York Times. Of course, on paper Maya was in the wrong but the treatment meted out to her was so violently cruel and unusual that my sympathy lay with the interviewee entirely. (As a gesture of solidarity, I should point out at this point that up until the age of 17 I thought the Tamil Tigers were a Greek football team.)

While there’s an obvious flaw in getting an outspoken member of the

Sri Lankan diaspora (Ahilan Kadirgamar) to criticise M.I.A. for being an outspoken member of the Sri Lankan diaspora, as he claims they have a tendency towards militancy, this is not the real problem. Instead I just thought that I’d point out that I don’t go to pop stars for incisive political comment and love the best ones in spite of their sometimes crass, loudmouthed and messianic pronouncements. If we were prevented from listening to pop stars at their most Zoolander-esque, we would have been denied Bowie, Prince, Michael Jackson, Kevin Rowlands, Gary Numan, Lou Reed and more in their prime. Or perhaps you’re happy with Chumbawamba, I have no idea.

SHADOW PLAY Nothing like a new crop of artists to make you feel redundant.

So many of this era’s crop of musicians seem scared of their own shadows, or, at the very least, they hide in them. You wouldn’t believe the kind of trouble we’ve had trying to get (amazing) new artists — particularly producers in the low-end of the dance music world and the kind of lo-fi dudes who get their props on blogs — to agree to an interview. Most they come back with is, “Yeah, it might be cool to send over some email questions.” No dice, pal — email interviews are rubbish and, besides, we also like taking pictures. Yes, it’s true the history of rock writing has affected the way new bands view newspapers like this, and maybe that’s a good thing.

When did this start? Possibly as these artists, when teens themselves, glanced out in horror at the superstar DJ twats of a few years back, and those dandy-like rock retards like Doherty and Borrell. The dance music nerds have a champion in Burial, who only revealed his identity so everyone would leave him the fuck alone, and, believe me, seeing these glo-fi chaps trying to perform shows recently has been something of a fistin-mouth experience. For years, they were cautious about leaving the sanctity of their bedrooms; now they’ve got swathes of hungry, young fans in clubs STARING at the them.

They look horrified and, in some cases, disturbed.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I think I’m trying to find excuses for this issue being rammed full of old bastards like Alan Moore, Roky Erickson, The Melvins, Marc Almond and Nas, who at 36 ain’t that old but seems to have been around for a thousand years already. It was never our intention to do a duffer’s issue and, besides, all those buggers proved they’ve still got plenty to say (except poor rocks-in-his-head Roky, bless). For the most part, the nippers keep quiet and we end up wondering where the story is. But props to Robyn, props to Best Coast.

It seems the girls aren’t afraid to waggle their balls.

57

letters to the editor The Stool Pigeon, 21a Maury Road, London, N16 7BP editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk

SIR, I’m not working today. Lying in the couch. Watching my f latmates painting and dancing.

Listening to Fever Ray. Thinking about my fake relationship with Nathan Howdeshell. I’m kind of busy, actually. Anyway, I live in a warehouse and it’s pretty messy here. There was a paper on the floor.

I took it to write an email address on and then I saw a Casiokids advert for the Barfly on the 25th (this is an old issue). They are my friends, so I read all the paper. Why did I not know The Stool Pigeon? This paper is awesome. Your art director is brilliant. Your writers are quite good. The old side of the paper is what I prefer. I just don’t really like the font of the title in the front page.

I can’t read The Stool Pigeon. I think it’s a little bit too big.

OPHELIE, London SIR, According to Drowned In Sound, Pens are splitting up and playing their last ever show tomorrow at the Macbeth. I know you’ll find this news personally devastating, and I hope you’re able to overcome the trauma in time to finish the issue. How will music ever recover from such a loss?

JASON CURTIS, Via email SIR, I work in a small record shop in a coastal town which reluctantly stocks your newspaper. At least that’s what I used to think until recently. My punters love it, but it takes up a lot of valuable space.

Luckily, that large pile of papers came in very useful after an unusually high Neap Spring tide in March. May I say that the paper you’re using is really absorbent, so much so that it saved almost all of my ragtime jazz section with the exception of a few Blind Boy Fuller’s rarities. So I’d just like to say thank you and ask if I could double my usual order.

STEWART, Hull SIR, Back in April, I was at the launch party for the Stool Pigeon books and met a charming girl who works in PR. At the end of the night, we decided to leave together, strolling through Islington with, I assume, mutual intentions of the naughty kind. But then I had to go ahead and ruin things by taking a slash. I regret this decision, as perhaps things would have ended up differently. At first I was delighted she didn’t seem disgusted by my call of nature but then... she did

something so to make my sex drive drop from 10 to a 2 in a matter of seconds. She danced around in my piss. That’s right: splashing around, mid-stream, like it was a water fountain. I like freaky women as much as the next man but this was too much to handle at 2am on a Thursday night. So I recoiled. I didn’t know what else to do. Getting the necessary blood required to bone her was now definitely out of the question. So here I am, a month later, thinking... you know what?

I’m down with pee. I’m down with the crazy pee dancing ways. So if you’re out there, and you remember me, get in touch. Give me a wee shout. We can recreate the moment and I promise not to get all pissy about it.

ALEX, Farringdon SIR, I’m not going to lie and say I’m a long-time reader, but I’ve been keeping an eye on the sort of people who pick up a copy of The Stool Pigeon for a while now, as I work in a shop where you leave a bundle every issue. I can tell when it’s someone from a band, presumably anxious to see their first write up, as they always stop right outside the door to read it, peering anxiously until, head lowered, they slink off. Always in disappointment.

But I must say, you have a loyal hobo following. Props for that. They never pretend to look around the shop before slyly grabbing a copy on the way out, but instead just take several at a time and go on their way. I have a fair idea what they do with them since one time a guy nodded over at me and said: “The Stool Pigeon — keeping the homeless warm since 2005.”

GRAHAM Via email SIR, when did moustaches on women become the new hipster trend? Granted, it gets your attention – I understand the shock value and everything. But for Christ’s sake… am I to imagine a day when I’m completely accustomed to the female handlebar? If you’re as troubled by this as I am, let’s make a stand!

NAR NAR, THE NORDIE, Belfast SIR, I am Ali Can Servi. I am very soory because I found issue of 24 at my work. Please don’t send to me issue of 24. Please send to me issue of 26.

Regards, ALI CAN SERVI Turkey

59

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Up Before The Beak

Court Circular NOTICE. The public are informed that

there is hereby a claim of...

CHRONIC Case WIDEawake Entertainment Groupowned Death Row Records, thankfully not in the hands of the Rimmaster Timmy ‘Wacaday’ Mallet, had a royalties lawsuit brought against it by Dr Dre, which was kicked out of court. Dre was seeking back pay from 2006 for the re-release of his album The Chronic, originally out in 1992. Though Dre could not stop the re-issue, he claimed Death Row had implied some form of endorsement on his part. The judge figured that couldn’t be proved, as they’d not used an updated picture of the Fat controller.

BJORN Free If you’ve been tucked away in a studio somewhere working on your brilliant new Abba tribute act LabiaAddia, then you’d best think on.

Bjorn Again, who once cowered in fear after receiving death threats from Pigeon scribe Luke Turner (true story), can rest easy, however, because they’re not affected. Polar Music, part of Universal Music, is taking to task 15 other tribute groups that have corralled the Swedish supergroup’s four letter moniker within their name. The word on legal street is Abbadabbadon’t.

METAL Scrap A ban on industrial metal scamps Rammstein’s Liebe Ist Für Alle Da LP has been lifted following legal action taken by Universal. The album had been barred from public display in German record shops after the word count-bothering Federal Office For The Examination Of Media Harmful To Young People watchdog took issue with its depictions of sadomasochism in November last year. A Cologne court has now overturned the decision, meaning the record can be re-racked with immediate effect.

QUEER Theory Charges against an American man accused of making threats against Elton John’s life have been dismissed by a judge in Georgia. Neal Horsley, 65, picketed the Atlanta home of the British icon holding a sign saying “Elton John must die”, before toddling off home to elaborate on his intriguing theory via YouTube.

Horsley had been offended by the notion of a gay Christ, tentatively put forward by Sir Elton in the February edition of Parade magazine. The Word Made Flesh was unavailable for comment.

Abuse

You’ve heard of SuBo, now get a load of Sue-Cow — Britain’s Got Talent contestant Emma Amelia Pearl Czikai who has launched an employment tribunal claim against Simon Cowell for making a “fool” of her on the ITV talent show. zikai made her disastrous appearance on the programme in 2009, then submitted a discrimination claim against Cowell, his production company Syco and the Britain’s Got Talent co-producers Freemantle Media in January this year.

The beef? Czikai suffers from a condition called cervical spine neuritis, which causes back and neck pain, and which she claims the show’s production team exploited to make her look really bad at singing.

“They put me on at 10 o’clock at night,” said Czikai of her appearance on the show in May last year. “They had me standing outside in that cold snap immediately before I went on stage. That traps the nerves, so immediately that aggravates the condition. It’s almost as if they wanted me to fail.”

Our tone-deaf complainant also claimed sound levels were too high for her audition — a sadly cut-short rendition of rancid talent show staple ‘You Raise Me Up’. “I’m very particular about the bass,” she said. “I feel it in my neck and, if I get that vibration, it aggravates the condition.”

Czikai said that under normal conditions her singing is “probably better than anyone else they’ve ever had on the programme”, but that she was unable to fulfil her potential because of the way she was treated.

Requests to producers not to show footage of the audition were met firmly in the negative. However, Czikai was offered a slot on ITV2 spin-off show Britain’s Got More Talent, which was to make clear she had a medical complaint that had led to her performance being below par.

But an agreement was not met, and Czikai claims her contract with the show’s makers was void because they were in breach of the law. A pre-hearing review will take place in July.

C

ALEX DENNEY

} Investigator

Crashing out of tour lands Aerosmith a hefty lawsuit

By Jeremy Allen

T

here have been a lot of massive ups and downs with Aerosmith recently, and that doesn’t include Steve Tyler’s masticating. Our head-banded heroes — Tyler and his seedy accomplice Joe Perry, once dubbed the Toxic Twins due to their indomitable drug taking — seemed all set to go the distance, till death (or heroin) drove them apart. Long since cleaned up, drugs may have insidiously crept back onto the tour bus, however, given some rumblings from within the camp, or maybe they all just had a freak ding dong over the ingredients of a ‘holy’ guava squishy. Suddenly, Tyler left in an all mighty huff and went into rehab, and our horrified minds flashed backed to rock’s worst replacements: Mick Hucknall for the Faces, Ian Astbury in the Doors, Paul Rodgers and Queen...

Would Aerosmith suddenly announce to the world that the band would return with the baleful Beelzebub Biff Byford of Saxon or,

worse still, that shaggy little titmonger from the Little Angels (dude looks more like a lady)? Luckily, somebody had the wherewithal to phone California’s 24-hour Guru callout service and a disaster was averted.

Before this fall-off and fall-out came another sort of fall-off, of the stage variety. Tyler plunged off stage last August and was forced to pull out of a string of Canadian shows. Soulsearching ensued and Tyler went into rehab to clean himself up. In February, the band kissed and made up and they rescheduled a whole string of North American and European dates, though it appears Mounties don’t always get their men. The ’Smith will play one date in Toronto, but have neglected to reschedule the other five they set up last summer, giving Keystone Entertainment Group no option but to cook up a $6m lawsuit.

Keystone recently filed their claim, but has yet to receive a response or acceptance from camp Aerosmith.

EAGLE-EARED MUSOS IN RUSH TO STOP SONGS BEING BYRNED Furore over light-fingered politicans copping votes off stolen tracks

By ALEX DENNEY itigious noises abound on the US music scene, where scores of artists are getting mightily sore about politicians making off with their music and using it for campaigning purposes.

First up there’s David Byrne, who is suing Florida governor Charlie Crist for $1m after the one-time Republican used Talking Heads track ‘Road To Nowhere’ in an online video, as part of his campaign for a seat in the US senate.

“It’s not about politics, it’s about copyright,” said Byrne. “Though [Crist using the track] does imply that I would have licensed it and endorsed him and whatever he stands for.” Byrne’s lawyer is Lawrence Iser, who successfully sued John McCain for improper use of a song by Jackson Browne in July last year.

Elsewhere and it’s Eagle versus Hawk as country rocker Don Henley scored an early win in a legal tussle with Republican politician Chuck DeVore, who rewrote the lyrics to

L

two of his hits ‘All She Wants To Do Is Dance’ and ‘The Boys Of Summer’.

The former was re-titled ‘All She Wants To Do Is Tax’ in reference to DeVore’s Democrat rival Barbara Boxer, while a rendition of the latter track spoofed the Eagles man’s

support of Barack Obama.

DeVore countered Henley’s legal complaint by arguing his songs were intended as parody, which would allow him to use the tracks without permission under ‘fair use’ legislation in US copyright law.

However, Judge James Selina has said that, while the ‘Boys Of Summer’ rewrite could be argued as parody, the second song constituted a ‘satire’ and would not be entitled to protection. Anyone care to enlighten us on the difference between satire and parody? Thought not. Anyway the judge’s ruling on DeVore’s Swiftean broadsides is not final, so Henley might want to keep the champagne on ice for the time being.

Finally Canadian rockers Rush have issued a cease and desist letter to yet another Republican incumbent, Rand Paul, after the US senatorial candidate allegedly used the band’s music at campaign events and in adverts on his website.

The band’s lawyer Robert Farmer told Kentucky’s Courier Journal: “This is not a political issue — this is a copyright issue. We would do this no matter who it is.”

While Rush may have a winnable case against Paul for his campaign ads, the event-based usage may prove an altogether stickier point, since candidates using music at political rallies are protected by blanket performance licences.

61

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

Certificates

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

Forthcoming Engagements

MR BOBBY BROWN & MS ALICIA ETHERIDGE. The engagement is announced between Bobby, R&B singer, and Alicia Etheridge, Mr Brown’s manager.

MR SWIZZ BEATZ & MS ALICIA KEYS. The engagement is announced between Swizz, music producer, and Alicia, R&B singer.

Marriages TREADWAY — MORISSETTE. The marriage took place between Mario ‘Souleye’ Treadway, rapper, and Alanis Morissette, singer, on Saturday May 22 in a small ceremony at their Los Angeles home.

Births

FRIEDA HEBBLETHWAITE. On April 21, in London, to Tim and Ina, a second daughter, Frieda Hermine Aurelia.

HENRY HOPSON. On April 23, in London, to Richie and Anna, a son, Henry Ongley.

Divorces KEATING. The divorce is announced between Ronan, Boyzone singer, and Yvonne.

Deaths Lisa Hodapp, Florida punk legend, b. 1961, d. 12.04.2010 Noah Crase, banjo player, b. 10.12.1934, d. 13.04.2010 Steve Reid, jazz drummer, b. 29.01.1944, d. 13.04.2010 Peter Steele, Type O Negative singer, b. 04.01.1962, d. 14.04.2010 Joe Markowski, Twisted Sister drummer, b. 1953, d. 14.04.2010 George Melvin, jazz keyboardist,

b. 24.05.1947, d. 15.04.2010 Hank Jones, jazz pianist, b. 31.07.1918, d. 16.04.2010 Delores ‘Dee’ Holmes, Bruce Springsteen back-up singer, b. 18.07.1946, d. 16.04.2010 Devon Clifford, You Say Party, We Say Die! drummer, b. 1979, d. 18.04.2010 Gene Lees, jazz historian and lyricist, b. 08.02.1928, d. 22.04.2010 Alan Rich, music critic, b. 17.06.1924, d. 23.04.2010 DJ Hideo, Los Angeles DJ, b. 1967, d. 24.04.2010 Susan Reed, folk musician, b. 11.01.1926, d. 25.04.2010 Will Owsley, country singer-songwriter, b. 06.03.1966, d. 30.04.2010 Rob McConnell, Canadian jazz great, b. 14.07.1935, d. 01.05.2010 Gerry Ryan, Irish broadcaster, b. 04.06.1956, d. 05.05.2010 Bob Mercer, music industry veteran, b. 17.10.1944, d. 05.05.2010 Willie Pooch, Ohio blues singer, b. 1937, d. 05.05.2010 Dave Fisher, Highwaymen singer, b. 1941, d. 07.05.2010 Francisco Aguabella, percussionist, b. 10.10.1925, d. 08.05.2010 Lena Horne, jazz singer, b. 30.06. 1917, d. 09.05.2010 Hank Jones, jazz pianist, b. 31.07.1918, d. 16.05.2010 Ronnie James Dio, metal singer, b. 10.07.1942, d. 16.05.2010 Larry Dale, blues singer/guitarist, b. 07.05.1923, d. 19.05.2010 Stella Nova, Rich Kids guitarist/singer, b. 16.05.1960, d. 24.05.2010 Anthony ‘Little Benny’ Harley, trumpeter, b. 26.09.1963, d. 30.05.2010 Denis Wielemans, Girls In Hawaii drummer, b. 1982, d. 30.05.2010 Ali-Ollie Woodson, Temptation, b. 12.10.1951, d. 30.05.2010 Brian Duffy, music photographer, b. 16.06.1933, d. 31.05.2010 Benjamin Lees, classical composer, b. 08.01.1924, d. 31.05.2010 Tony Peluso, Carpenters guitarist, b. 1950, d. 05.06.2010 Marvin Isley, Isley Brother, b. 18.08.1953, d. 06.06.2010 Stuart Cable, Stereophonics drummer, b. 19.05.1970, d. 07.06.2010 Crispian St. Peters, singer-songwriter, b. 05.04.1939, d. 08.06.2010 Walt Woodward III, Scream drummer, b. 10.02.1959, d. 08.06.2010 Jimmy Dean, country singer, b. 10.08.1928, d. 13.06.2010 Bill Dixon, Jazz trumpeter, b. 05.10.1925, d. 16.06.2010 Garry Shider, Parliament/Funkadelic, b. 24.07.1953, d. 16.06.2010

PAUL GRAY Paul Gray, the pig-mask-wearing bass player of neo-metal band Slipknot has died at the age of 38. He was found unconscious in a hotel room in Urbandale, Iowa. The cause of his death remains unknown, but a drug overdose is thought to be the most plausible hypothesis. Pills and a hypodermic

needle were found next to him.

Gray, who was also known as ‘Number 2’, was born in Los Angles in 1972 and later moved to Des Moines, Slipknot’s home city. Originally a guitarist, he claimed he shifted to bass because he had no friends in Iowa and wanted to join a band that needed a bassist. Gray described his style as “laid-back and subdued”; his technique was inspired by Metallica and Black Sabbath as well as by funk and jazz players.

Slipknot achieved worldwide recognition with their first self-titled album, released in 1999. Iowa, from 2001, with its angry teenager anthems ‘People = Shit’ and ‘My Plague’ quickly became a landmark record of the early 2000s. Outside of Slipknot, Gray was involved in other projects including Unida, Drop Dead Gorgeous and Roadrunner United.

Slipknot percussionist Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan described Gray as “the essence of the band Slipknot”.

He was one of three remaining members from the original formation.

His wife Brenna is expecting their first child in September. Anaïs Brémond

PAUL GRAY, Slipknot bassist, b. 08.04.1972, d. 24.05.2010

WALTER SEAR Walter Sear, synthesizer pioneer and owner of the Sear Sound recording studios in New York, has died at the age of 80. His clients at the studio, which opened in 1964, included Patti Smith, David Bowie, Sonic Youth and Lou Reed, and he was also Robert Moog’s business partner and sales agent in the early days of the Moog synthesizer.

Furthermore, Sear worked as a composer and working musician, playing on the Grammy Award-winning Midnight Cowboy soundtrack from 1969.

Born in New Orleans in 1930, he began his career as a tuba player in the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the late 1950s, he became interested in designing tubas and imported 2,000 of them to Belgium.

A stubborn analogue advocate, Sear refused for years to shift to digital recording or allow digital gear in his studios. “When he finally did bring it in, he still kind of kept it in a corner,” said Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo.

The oldest independent recording studio in New York, Sear Sounds has an impressive collection of vintage microphones and compressors, as well as tape machines from Abbey Road which were used by The Beatles.

Sear died of complications from a subdural hematoma after falling in the street on his way back from work. He is survived by his wife Edith and his daughters Julia and Shana. Anaïs Brémond

WALTER SEAR, Synthesizer pioneer, b. 27.04.1930, d. 29.04.2010

star Guru, Keith Elam, has died of heart failure aged just 48. Though never the greatest ‘golden era’ MC, his authoritative deadpan burr became familiar and well-loved enough that in 2002 he even featured as a voice artist in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise.

Guru’s lifelong musical association was with New York, but he began his recording career in 1987 while still in his native Boston. The Gang Starr crew which served his fame was initially a roughshod unit with no fixed producer. They signed to Wild Pitch Records and Elam’s style matured quickly. His first singles were salvos of machine stutter and youthful exuberance, but once paired with DJ Premier, a solidified ‘New York’ Gang Starr became prime early exponents of jazz-rap. A hot track, ‘Jazz Thing’, featured on the score of Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues movie, and their debut album, No More Mr Nice Guy, won great critical acclaim, if not commercial success.

If their first opus only caused middling ripples, their true major label debut planted them firmly at the head of the game. Step Into The Arena — a tough, evergreen masterpiece of east coast hip hop — began a series of epoch-defining albums that came to typify the two-man style of the 1990s.

HIP HOP

With four top-quality long-players to their credit in the decade, Gang Starr deservedly outlived, and outsold, many of their rap peers, and enjoyed particular success in Europe.

Strains between Guru and Premier had begun to show by the new millennium and, after 2003’s comparatively dull The Ownerz LP, they split and seldom spoke again. Both had begun concurrent solo careers and Guru already had three volumes of his lauded Jazzmatazz album series in play. Indeed it was these fruitful collaborative ventures — pitching his vocals up with the talents of musical legends such as Donald Byrd, Roy Ayers, Isaac Hayes and Herbie Hancock — that made Guru a globally recognised figure in music, offering all-comers a palatable route into the oft-misunderstood world of jazz.

In latter years, Guru worked almost exclusively with New York producer Solar on more standard material. Their relationship was so close that it was, bizarrely, only Solar — and not Elam’s family — that had access to the man (and his alleged dying wishes) during his illness this year. Upset, bitterness and confusion reigned around Guru’s death; a disquieting note of finality for one who had lived a life remarkably free of controversy. Daddy Bones GURU, jazz rap veteran. b. 17.07.1961, d. 19.04.2010

RAP LEGEND GURU STEPS OUT OF THE ARENA

62

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Funnies Web

Images Groups News

more >>

little boots

THE QUARTER MAN DICK HILBURN, A MAN WHO BECAME MUCH GREATER THAN THE SUM OF HIS PARTS

B

orn on January 15, 1918 Dick Hilburn had no left arm or legs. Hilburn got around by using a primitive skateboard utilising his one good arm to propel and steer him. Hilburn worked hard as a youngster and developed into a talented artist becoming well known for his skills as a tattoo artist, he was also sought after as a commercial painter of signs, banners and trucks, a useful skill in the sideshow business. He eventually started his own successful sideshow, teaming up with a famous dwarf called Carl ‘Frogboy’ Norwood, which they toured around the north American circuits. His natural business acumen led him into running a diner close to his home, which kept the money rolling in during seanreynard.com the side shows off seasons.

He found love and was happily married to a woman without disability until his death in 1971 at the age of 53.

Rocky’s classic hip hop covers CELEBRITY B A R B E R No.14.

PA U L S M I T H

DIZZEE RASCAL BOY IN DA CORNER (XL) DIZZIE’S FIRST SOLO ALBUM

“Might I suggest that you keep the hat on sir?”

THE GAZZA STRIP

Funnies

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

63

WHICH ONE’S PINK? WORDSEARCH AS EVERYONE’S FLYING FLAGS OF DIFFERENT COLOURS FROM CARS, LEDGES AND CASTLES, WE THOUGHT WE’D JOIN IN. FIND THE CAPITAL LETTERS ONLY. GREEN Day PINK Floyd The BLUE Aeroplanes Barry WHITE RED Hot Chili Peppers King CRIMSON Deep PURPLE AQUA BLACK Mountain The Big PINK

Jackson BROWNE David GRAY INDIGO Girls Moody BLUES The BLACK Keys PINK Simply RED BLACK Sabbath VV BROWN The WHITE Stripes

N

H

N

G

K

B

P

M H

O

E

E

D

A

U

I

K

E

R

T

N

L

U

I

K

E

R

A

B W N

E

T

S

A

E

F

I

U

N

K

N

N

P

U

L

E

I

O

T

Y

D

R

R

P

E

O

U

C

K W O

A

T

E

L

M

E

B

E

T

G

S

S

G

E

A

F

E

C

H

O W A

T

N

B

E

H

P

M N

O

R

L

W K

B

S

S

I

P

Q

U

E

U

T

I

B

V

P

H

B

N

L

A

Y

T

U

R

D

R

N

N

R

E

L

I

I

W K

A

R

T

E

E

R

P

O

S

W C

C

T

U

O

N

N

C

B

D

E

I

L

R

G

T

A

O

E

A

R

E

Q

K

K

U

K

H

E

E

D

I

H W O

R

B

A

P W N

S

K

E

N

N

R

N

D

B W M

S

B

R

Q

N

K

O

S

N

A

I

L

N

A

S

I

M

S

R

T

U W G O C

I

P

S

U

I

E

T

I

H W E

A

T

A

I

R

R

R

V

D

A

O

E

O

N

R

K

D

T

O

D

H

E

D

E

R

I

U

F

E

E

D

R

Y

L

R

E

U

D

S

K

D

B

I

R

Q

L

E

D

S

M G

R

S

N

I

U

Y

A

L

I

Web

2010 WORLD CUP SPECIAL Tracksuits, hands on headphones, boozy choruses... it can only mean one thing. No, not another famine song, it’s the World Cup.

Images Groups News

owl city youtube.com/ watch?v=oTsG5qZyNp0

youtube.com/ ?v=aH9mBB7G7vo

PWEI - Touched By The Hand of Cicciolina Put your Joe Bloggs on and enjoy this baggy classic from Italia 1990.

Re-Sepp-Ten - Dodo and The Dodos Is this Dalston 2010? No, it’s Denmark’s synthtastic tune for Mexico 1986.

youtube.com/ watch?v=-mMvuQXzp0A Tkzee - Shibobo feat. Benni McCarthy

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/6826740/Vill age_People_Far_Away_In_America Village People and the German team Far Away In America

This is the original from France 1998. They’ve re-released it this year, but poor Benni’s been dropped.

Village People in a men’s locker room with the German team singing a song for USA 1994.

more >>

Horrorscope s Your Stars With Mental Marvin

LIBRA SEPTEMBER 24 - OCTOBER 23

I had a rather unusual dream after a dodgy Chinese out with the local knight’s templar in Bridgend. Tarquin suggested I take up to Lord Swordcock’s place, whose mansion house lies a few miles out of town.

An expert at oriental mysticism and ancient culture, he might be able to shed some light on my vision. Well, next day with a stinking cider sting in my third eye, I made my way on the Badger Line bus up to Swordcock’s place. I rang the old iron bell and to my unsettled nerves, a familiar gaunt face answered the door.

“This way, sir. His lordship is expecting you.”

“MENTAL MARVIN, dear chap! Come in, make yourself at ’ome, lad!” I heard the colossal voice even before I got to the front parlour. Well, I had a shock, for on a huge chaise longue, as naked as a fox cub apart from a monocle, was the massive bulk of Swordcock, stretched out like a monstrous dandy hippo, gazing transfixed into a Wiccan ball.

“Pour yourself a sherry and come and take a look at this, lad. A meeting of two great forces!”

I couldn’t actually see anything but in a short time my head began to swim and I found myself drifting off: “CONCENTRATE, MARVIN! YOU CALL YOURSELF A MYSTIC!” Then blackness. I was suddenly aware of a crowd appearing around me — very well-dressed people, velvet-clad ladies and gentlemen in top hats. A glorious hall of golden pillows and red carpet topped the scene. A beautiful woman gripped my arm and whispered in my ear: “Don’t worry, lad, you’re in the mid19th century at a premier of the Symphonie Fantastique

conducted by Hector Berlioz himself!”

Now, going from the Badger Line to the 19th century in half-an-hour would mess with even the strongest of minds.

But I knew Swordcock, so I prepared myself beforehand with a small dose of liberty cap mixed with Dunn’s River Nourishment. The crowd started to clap as a chap with a hairdo like an ancient teddy bear god made his way through, shaking hands and gently bowing for the blushing ladies.

“Get ready, Marvin — look there!” cooed Lady Swordcock.

“Behold, Paganini!”

A tall, hunched man with long, romantic hair and intense black eyes like a raven appeared from the hoi polloi in front of Berlioz. A strange, pulsating light emanated from the scene as they gripped hands and with a flash of light and a bang, I found myself in Swordcock’s parlour. “Wake up, Marvin!

You okay, lad!? Here, ’ave a sherry. You’ve never travelled via the creative lines of history on the astral plane before, I see.”

I swigged the sherry and dabbed the sweat from my forehead. “A great piece of art, Marvin, is an element of great power that fights the dark forces. To be present at its inception is…” [To be continued…]

CAPRICORN DECEMBER 23 - JANUARY 20 Alban Hefin, as the ancient druids called it — the longest day of the year, summer solstice — is once again upon us. Creatures and spirits of magic and merriment dance from the under and over realms to entice romantics and dreamers to join them in celebration. Some never return!

This is a seriously cosmic time, so stop worrying about bills and deadlines, etc. and

plan a trip with a loved one, two-legged or four-legged, down to the countryside and let yourself go with the fairies.

Wear garlands of flowers in your hair, dance around a solstice fire, rouse the local town shops and markets Donald Ducking, and feel your third eye twitch open, shaking the sleepy dust of reality away.

ALL PRAISE THE OAK KING!

AQUARIUS JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 19 A chimpanzee holds hands with a polar bear, striding through a field of flowers. An Indian family have a picnic nearby. Their baby gurgles happily, clambering over the belly of a huge lion, relaxing in the sunshine contentedly. A white man in a beige safari suit, blonde hair and perfect teeth, sits on the shoulders of a gorilla while having a cup of tea. Good grief, this is amazing, this vision! What could it mean? Confusion is building up… Hang on, Tarquin! For fuck’s sake, you’ve propped up the crystal ball with Watchtower again!

GEMINI MAY 22 - JUNE 21 Whistle sweet Jenny with me down ’ere lane Through sun speckled wood, out to old Salisbury plain And there we will dance till the moon shines on the hay Your sweet apple kisses my last to set me on my way For at dawn the village gather, and I their fatal guest The solstice sacrifice, I’m robin redbreast

SCORPIO OCTOBER 24 - NOVEMBER 22 I ’eard a maggot munching in my head. I asked, ‘How’s this possible!?’ It said: ’Cos you’re

bloody dead!’ Write a silly poem today.

CANCER JUNE 22 - JULY 23 Bitchmaster Lord Labia sat flexing his torpedo of love before pulling a well-worn rope next to his chaise longue.

“Wankston Wanky! Could you stop playin’ with yourself and bring me some teenage titty milk up from the parlour; a couple of hedgehogs with those mini-thongs with matching mouth pieces I had made in Guttenberg with the miniature apples strapped on to the masks.”

“Ooh, yes sir. I know the ones.

Anything else, sir?”

“And tell Lord Swordcock we’ll be Donald Ducking for dinner tonight.”

“Donald Duck, sir?”

“Yes, Wanky.”

“But sir, blue whale is on the menu for tonight.”

“No, I meant the dress code, you interminable genital fidget.

It means one is naked apart from one’s t-shirt, thus Donald Ducking.”

“I’ve come, sir. I shall send a telegram right away, sir.”

LEO JULY 24 - AUGUST 23 I was told for good mental health one has to have an active sex life. That’s all very well unless you are having trouble getting some. Maybe you are grossly overweight or not classed as good looking (in the eyes of society, which means nothing, dear reader!).

Well romance is about atmosphere, and I’ve had plenty of better nights in with French sticks, pork pies and a nice bottle of red. I think Freud said something about the search for oneself in objects and desire, the key word here for me being ‘object’ — that means it doesn’t have to be human! I think I’m a bit zesty with a soft centre, so I’ve opted

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT ORDER THEY COME IN, I JUST FEEL THIS SHIT”

to celebrate the solstice and eventually make love to a ‘Taste the difference’ Tesco apple crumble out on the patio. To make the mood a bit raunchier I’ve got ‘Whole Lotta Love’ to blast out on the stereo.

PISCES FEBRUARY 20 - MARCH 20 You find yourself erotically compromised towards inanimate objects at an important board or business meeting. Don’t fight it! Show your colleagues what you really think of his board chart or her data objectives file!

TAURUS APRIL 21 - MAY 21 Slag.

VIRGO AUGUST 24 - SEPTEMBER 23 Ooh, ah. Feel the quality of the paper, rub it between your thumb and fingers. Feel me, Mental Marvin, coming at you. I’m gonna sex you through this here paper…

Incense pyramid is kicking off a cosmic pong, got some Foreigner on: “I wanna know what love is”. I’m hard as fucking granite now… Any moment that page is gonna rip and I’m gonna fly out…

TICKLE MY BOTTY WITH A FEATHER. I mean, aren’t we having lovely weather? Still horny? I thought not. The days of clever wordplay are over in the modern romantic universe. A great shame. But at the turn of the last century, when the redbricked cruelty of the Victorian period had done its worst, and men’s and ladies’ passions were kept away behind twitching moustaches and extended bottom-caged bustles. This was the only way for folk to try it on and save face.

Imagine the scene: Lord Mount Horsham, Fifth Earl of Cadbury, at the races. Horny

as hell, moustache twitching furiously, he spots a filly of good breeding, sidles up to see if the bet’s on… leans quietly to her left side, a light cough… she tilts her delicate cheek. “Ma’am, tickle my botty with a feather.” The lady shrieks, “I beg your pardon!”

People start to turn around.

Horsham coolly clears his throat and announces at an audible volume, “Aren’t we having lovely weather?” The wager is off but Horsham avoids a public scandal, saves the lady’s dignity and his own dubious reputation. Expertly, he doffs his hat and coolly sidles behind the tea tent for a frustrated yank. Curiously, no less than a month later, the lady of said above event arranges a stay at Horsham manner. Done deal.

SAGITTARIUS NOVEMBER 23 - DECEMBER 22 Visit a distant relative’s grave this weekend and make a day of it. Stop off and enjoy the fine local ales and simple, honest conversation of country folk — those uncursed by the lures and pressures of the metropolis. Then try some of the local dogging opportunities on the A-roads on the way back home.

ARIES MARCH 21 - APRIL 20 For the past few weeks, you found yourself a bit lost. This is not uncommon: we are all a bit lost when universes switch ages, i.e. Pisces to the age of Aquarius. Relax. We are still in the hangover of Pisces. If you were mental in the age of Pisces’ heyday (Victorian period), you were locked up in an asylum, and became the family curse! Now if you aren’t seeing a shrink or on anti-depressants, then people think you must be nuts. So just relax and let the new age begin.

SUBSCRIBE NOW! FOR ONLY £15!

In an utterly transparent attempt to sell you a free newspaper, the publishers of THE STOOL PIGEON are offering you the chance to become a subscriber.

WHY rush around your local high street when you could have each new issue delivered direct to your door?

ONE YEAR’S WORTH (FIVE ISSUES) WILL BE DELIVERED DIRECT TO YOUR DOOR! I AM SENDING THIS FORM WITH A CHEQUE FOR £15* (PAYABLE TO JUNKO PARTNERS PUBLISHING) TO THE STOOL PIGEON, 21A MAURY RD, LONDON, N16 7BP.

ALL SUBSCRIBERS RECEIVE A FREE T-SHIRT! YES!

A BEAUTIFUL BLACK TEE DESIGNED BY OUR FRENCH FRIENDS AT KULTE.

Every reader will be given one absolutely free when they subscribe to The Stool Pigeon.

*INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIBERS, PLEASE ORDER ONLINE: THESTOOLPIGEON.CO.UK UK RESIDENTS MAY ORDER ONLINE TOO, OF COURSE

NAME: ADDRESS:

EMAIL(SPAM FREE):

S

M

L

XL

Please specify your size. These t-shirts are also available to buy from our website.

BUY BACK ISSUES HERE, BUT HURRY, THEY’RE GOING FAST! BACK issues have been kept to one side just for you! And they’re only...

5

£

.00 Each!

FOR details of who’s inside, please visit: www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk Order online or send a cheque made payable to Junko Partners Publishing to the address above.

SUBSCRIBE

66

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Sound & Vision Box Shot

DVD Choice TOM DICILLO (DIR.) When You’re Strange Wolf

What can be said about the Doors’ back story that hasn’t already been covered? The truth, for a start.

As the first high-profile feature about the band since Oliver Stone’s 1991 dramatisation, When You’re Strange had a chance to set the record straight. The idea was to do this through archive footage only – no talking heads, no retrospective insights from the surviving members, and no dodgy re-enactments.

The film opens with footage from Jim Morrison’s unreleased but widely bootlegged short film, HWY, overlapped with radio commentary breaking the news of Morrison’s death – a tongue-in-cheek nod at the conspiracy theories that have persisted since his demise in 1971. Though there are photos and clips that even diehard fans may not have seen (particularly of Morrison as a teenager), these moments are fleeting and the vast majority of this film will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Doors Collection.

Where the film trips up is its non-linear timeline. In fact when the film premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, a spate of criticism about the narration’s flaws forced writer and director Tom DiCillo to hire Johnny Depp to re-dub it. There’s an obvious logic to drafting in a familiar voice the audience can trust, but it’s not enough to paper over DiCillo’s questionable account of the band’s history.

When Depp’s stunted, hush-toned commentary claims that: “[Morrison] understood exactly how to make it all work for him, and perhaps to protect himself, he made it seem like he couldn’t care less” it’s just one of several dubious claims that take great liberty in filling in the gaps between archive clips.

When it’s stated that the band’s increasingly fractured dynamic prompted them to seek a different direction by “turning to meditation” while “Morrison keeps tripping”, it’s not only misleading but contradicts the earlier claim that Robby Krieger and John Densmore first met at meditation class.

Taken as a whole, the film’s inflammatory time warps, half-truths and oversights are enough to dash any hope for factual accuracy, rewriting an already blotted chapter in rock history.

NO DISTANCE LEFT TO RUN

BBC4 No Distance Left to Run is a full-length feature documentary following Blur on their reunion tour of 2009 after a 10-year hiatus. It’s something of a celebration and symbolic finale to their cause and effect upon British music culture at the dawn of a rather dull decade, it marks out their inception, invention, evolution and demise as one of Britain’s greatest bands.

Directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, the film is a touching tribute from the start to finish. Exploring the history of how Albarn and Coxon first met at school in Colchester, to their time spent at Goldsmith College where they met James and press-ganged Rowntree (a Colchester council worker at the time) into forming the chart-topping band that Blur would become.

For fans old and new, No Distance flits back and forth in time to chronicle the bands rise and fall from fame in great detail, with each member contributing candid comments to add colour and clarity to the grainy footage threaded through the film. And as much as it does to compile the band’s history with thoughts and theories for fans to dribble over nostalgically, their reunion – and underlying inspiration for the film – is a result of them wanting to put a happy ending to their time together as opposed to their tumultuous break-up back in Britpop’s heyday.

If anything, No Distance Left to Run is one of two things: 1) a well-orchestrated piece of merchandise for the band to lay as a headstone over their career; and 2) it plays out as part of the healing process for both band and fans.

Compelling and frank interviews with Damon, Graham, Alex and Dave won’t shine any new light on what is already known about one of the country’s most documented bands, but they act as confessional testimonies to the reasons behind their triumphs and tribulations.

At times, the documentary overplays their credentials, most notably when James claims that Britpop was “100 per cent Damon Albarn’s idea.” He continues in saying that Modern Life Is Rubbish was the sole beacon of Englishness in a sea of US-influenced grunge and England’s infatuation with shoegaze at the time, as the film attempts to rewrite history and dispel any knowledge of other such founding fathers such as Suede and The Auteurs, and pub band spinoffs like Oasis and Menswear.

Nor is there any commentary on the fact that Britpop was purely a marketing ploy by the record companies to boost record sales through a territorial battle. Instead this is a sentimental portrayal of a band that grabbed the zeitgeist by the tit-load and milked it for all they could, even when revisiting and revising their overall impact.

But for all the details that are overlooked (including that of Albarn’s purported drug issues), No Distance Left to Run acts as a ceremonial snapshot of Blur’s inauguration, invasion and fall from fame, all strung together on the back of a reunion that left those at Glastonbury and Hyde Park nostalgically lusting for the English dream of the disillusioned mid-nineties.

Also out now...

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

DON LETTS

PORCUPINE TREE

DAVE DAVIES

ODDSAC

Strummerville

Anesthetize

Mystical Journey

Plexi

Strummerville

Kscope

Detune

Animal Collective’s new ‘visual album’, ODDSAC, is the result of four year’s worth of trying to marry their kaleidoscopic pop with images just as vibrant.

Though the film is entirely without plot, it plays out as a series of musical and visual motifs intertwined to disorient the viewer with jarring, hallucinatory hiccups. It’s an abstract and erratic trip that lasts for just 53 minutes, jumping from tranquil scenes to static-like sequences that both bore and bombard the viewer through sensory overload.

Utilising tracks put aside by the band at various points over the last few years, fans who came in on the back of the group’s newer accessible releases are likely to be confounded, while the band’s faithful following are sure to find it a feast.

Produced by musician and film director Don Letts, Strummerville charts the work of a new music foundation inspired by The Clash’s late lead singer Joe Strummer.

Following his death in 2002, the charity was set up in the spirit of his name the following year to create opportunities for people through music that have the will but not the funds to further their creative talents.

The documentary is spliced with previously unseen footage of the iconoclastic bellwether in concert and at home; comments on the man from the likes of Damien Hirst and Billy Bragg, and their relationship with the charity; and interviews with those who have been affected by its work. A touching tribute to a man of the people.

Porcupine Tree — an experimental post-rock band who formed in London in 1991 — have just released Anesthetize, a DVD recording one of their live shows from 2006 between releasing albums Deadwing and Fear Of A Black Planet. They were probably good in their early days, but today Porcupine Tree makes for a poor, hokey version of Incubus blended with Nine Inch Nails: melancholic keyboards, plaintive lyrics, and neo-metal guitar solos. Somehow, the recurring images of children swallowing pills on the overhead screens are more hypnotising than the band’s actual performance.

Though the band are tight and the quality of the recording is superb, it’s not enough to counteract the dullness of the music. In a word: unnecessary, unless you’re the ultimate fan.

This feature-length documentary starring the lesser-known, gaptoothed cofounder of The Kinks is the personally-charged memoir of Dave’s long-running quest for enlightenment. It’s intended as an educational and spiritual selfhelp DVD for those seeking illumination about their curious beliefs in astronomical energy, the metaphysical, otherworldly, and other such kooky notions. It’s fair to say that Davies comes across as an ethereal nut in the process, as when he’s not educating the viewer about the intangible, he’s bumbling around on screen like a Thunderbirds character strungout on spiritualism and lysergic flashbacks. Shot like a Channel 5 shock-umentary, it has to be seen to be believed; and what is seen can only be believed with a mescaline suppository, cup of tea and a hefty pinch of salt.

Reviews

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

67

Long Players

DEVO Something for Everybody Warner Bros.

When probed about what keeps Devo going, Gerald Casale invariably says this: “De-evolution is real.” It’s his précis of his band’s revolutionary manifesto, casting consumerism as a regression of the species. Casale invests a lot in the slogan, which he’s been repeating like a stuck record for years. His band have been similarly stuck, touring the hits regularly but releasing no new records for two decades. ‘Something for Everybody’ finally ends their creative hiatus - with a bang.

This new opus reunites Devo with the label on which they first emerged, namely Warner Bros. The DIY route has plainly never appealed to a band committed to subverting the system from within, and their desire for another crack at the mainstream has only built over 20 years of enforced silence, halfway through which they released a retrospective titled ‘Pioneers Who Got Scalped’. Even anti-capitalists want to get paid, it seems.

‘Something for Everybody’ harnesses accumulated frustration to great effect, delivering an emphatic, exhilarating surge of synth pop which re-broadcasts Devo’s message with a power that defies any onset of cynicism or conservatism. Following tradition, the album is styled as an ironic corporate mission statement, poking fun at its creators’ aspirations via its title and cover image, not to mention the mock desperation of ‘Please Baby Please’ or jokily banal ‘What We Do’ (“...is what we do”). Alarmingly, Devo claim an advertising agency assisted with the presentation of the album - a joke, one hopes.

The album might seem smug if Devo weren’t as energetically eccentric as ever. Though technological advances have added some precision and heft to their sound, Devo’s aesthetic remains identical to that which guided them in 1978. Mark Mothersbaugh’s vocals are still disquietingly nerdy and lustful. The rhythms are still robotic and relentless. Comically simplistic melodies power the choruses, not least those of ‘Cameo’ and ‘Mind Games’. Elsewhere, old glories are revisited, as when ‘No Place Like Home’ evokes ‘Beautiful World’.

The album rolls back the years and sates Devo-addicts’ cravings for more of the same. The lack of artistic progression is inevitable. After all, de-evolution is real...

NOK

ACTRESS

DANGER MOUSE AND SPARKLEHORSE

DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES

Splazsh

Dark Night Of The Soul

Archive 2003-2006

Honest Jon’s

Parlophone/Lex

Bella Union

London’s night has been mined so much for its anxious atmospheres and street-lit disquiet that it takes a certain purity of vision to bathe it in a fresh glow. Step forward Darren Cunningham, aka haunted urban house producer Actress. This is a frequently surprising album that seems to teeter constantly on delirium’s cusp - opener ‘Hubble’ is a thing of percolating, panicked synth quells, while the naïf industrialism and kraut thrust of ‘Maze’ delights absolutely. It’s colossally important that Splazsh enters your life.

Much history behind this excellent record already and you can only pray that EMI’s Parlophone aren’t officially releasing it now to cash in on the awful death of Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous), who shot himself in the heart in March. Of course, hearing these songs again after Mark’s tragic demise provides an extra and appalling resonance.

Vic Chesnutt’s also on here and he’s dead now, too. Shit, depressing review. Sorry. At least Lynch’s vocal contributions to the album are bizarrely amusing.

Archive was once an abortive effort at recording an album between the sample tapestry of 2005’s The Cold Nose and this New York duo’s 2008 masterpiece, In Ear Park. These spectral sketches of plinking piano and stunning melodies revisit the latter record’s ethereal qualities and further underline Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen as a singular songwriting talent. If these songs must be considered cast-offs, then this lost album is one of beautiful mistakes and perfect failures.

EFFI BRIEST

FOL CHEN

MICAH P. HINSON

Rhizomes

Part II: The New December

...And The Pioneer Saboteurs

Blast First Petite

Asthmatic Kitty

Full Time Hobby

A Brooklyn band who aren’t all about dressing up as pandas and making flim flam music as an excuse to pretend that The Decline Of Western Civilisation isn’t happening? Lawks. Effi Briest, named after a German realist novel, are a learned sextet who employ guttural rhythms, awkward vocals and unexpectedly assaulting drones to achieve the rare feat of doing something new with the lonely angularity of post punk. They will not be appreciated.

They are the hip Briest.

The main body of this quirky, postSparks, progressive chamber pop album will be sneaked into a few houses, Trojan horse-like, disguised by the pure double-whammy of the opening tracks. ‘The Holograms’ has the similar effervescent, “I’ve just had five pints in the afternoon and NOW I FEEL GREAT!” mania of Oh No Ono’s ‘Internet Warrior’ and ‘In Ruins’ coasts along on a Timbaland-style beat and processed, synthetic harp trill.

Little else reaches far beyond pretty good, though.

And here we were thinking all the blood in American indie rock had been drained from spending too much time posing in the woods instead of shooting the bristly creatures within. Micah P. Hinson’s fifth LP thrums with glorious string-led bile against what he sees as the terrible effects of the Obama administration, taking a much-needed turn for the melancholy and apocalyptic after the overly syrupy sentiment of his last record.

Reviews by Jeremy Allen, Daddy Bones, Anaïs Brémond, Alex Denney, John Doran, Charlie Hale, Phil Hebblethwaite, Kev Kharas, Kicking K, Niall O’Keeffe, Iris Mansour, Laura Snapes, Cian Traynor, and Luke Turner.

68

Long Players

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

In another universe, parallel to ours but not too distant, Mathangi ‘Maya’ Arulpragasam is the pivotal character in Pulp’s ‘Common People’. She may have come from Sri Lanka rather than Greece but she certainly had a thirst for knowledge.

She studied art and fashion rather than sculpture at St Martin’s college and if one were to be very cruel to

M.I.A. (something she’s been enduring a lot of recently, not least at the hands of the New York Times’ Lynn Hirschberg), one could also substitute the name ‘Justine Frischmann’ for ‘dad’ in the line about the moneyed saviour who could “change it all”.

But the disparity between her status as a mansion-buying, record execmarrying, gauche political ingénue and her self-perception as a fourthworld radical isn’t really that important as regards her output... just add her to an ever growing list of occasionally demented pop stars who do some of their best work while losing the plot (Bowie/Prince/Ol’

Dirty Bastard). So beyond the dayglo, fashion mag, slum face rapper’s confused message, this is a collection of mainly superb tracks.

Among the essentials here are ‘Teqkilla’, a lolloping, acidic slice of skwee-leaning dubstep that successfully mimics the experience of being leathered on the lethal South American liquor, while the rhythm is partially bolstered by glasses clinking and shots being poured. The heaviest here is ‘Steppin’ Up’, which survives her slightly spam-tongued “dub a dubba dub/club a clubba club” rhymes because of its 100 per cent sonic militancy, coming across as ‘Stigmata’-era Ministry being

remixed by Adrian Sherwood. Taken without its video, the Can-style freakout drums and sped-up Suicide loop of ‘Born Free’ is utterly masterful.

One of the real misfires here is ‘It Takes a Muscle’, a slightly wonky take on eighties pop reggae worthy of UB40 or Boris Gardiner that is surprisingly is produced by the normally reliable Diplo. Only the permanently retarded or pot addled will buy into her assertion that Google and your iPod are being used as monitoring devices but, overall, this is a genuinely refreshing album on which the post electro-clash/Kate Nash single ‘XXXO’ is actually one of three lowlights. JD

LAURIE ANDERSON

SLEIGH BELLS

DANIEL JOHNSTON AND BEAM

MOUNT KIMBIE

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER

Homeland

Treats

Beam Me Up!

Crooks & Lovers

Returnal

Nonesuch

Columbia/N.E.E.T.

Hazelwood

Hotflush

Editions Mego

In an interview promoting her ‘Homeland’ project - back when it was just another of her seminal techenhanced spoken word shows everyone’s favourite massively underrated multi-medium (see above, catch up) said the show sprang from a sense of loss. But it wasn’t until she was interrogated by her translator that it finally emerged what the plight of the NYC internationalist was in the NeoCon Noughties: “I’d lost my country”.

The same feeling has informed her first album in almost a decade, but those expecting agit-prop will find instead a series of nocturnes, her signature warm chrome keyboards disguised as more traditional tools, and high-concept jokes traded for unmatched atmospherics and an oracular tone. Strings shudder on the edge of shredding. The pace, default glacial, splits around pangs of bass. Antony Hegarty, Eyvind Kang, Kieran Hebden, John Zorn, marxophone, orchestron, igil - all brought together in as clean and sharp a studio sound as a climatecontrolled vitrine - cut and pasted from context, playing in unearthly harmony.

The songs are about the fall-out of globalisation (“Rocks and stones.

Broken bones / Everything eventually comes crawling home”) and the inert solidarity of apathy (“And you, you who can be silent in four languages / Your silence will be considered your consent”). But Homeland means family as much as it does a constitution - and if Anderson obliquely protests its loss politically, she finishes by finding it again - quite sincerely, in the society of those she loves (it’s dedicated to her parents). She’s one of our strongest, truest voices precisely because she’s more both/and than either/or. You should love her for it. KK

The debut from Brooklyn duo Sleigh Bells is one of the year’s most difficult records as well as one of the most refreshing. In fact everyone seems to hear something different in the kind of piercing racket that only the pairing of a former hardcore guitarist (Derek Miller) and an exgirl group singer (Alexis Krauss) could produce. The duo’s genresplicing theatrics are brash, flippant and subtle, causing even the smallest nuances to seem like revelatory ideas. Though their live show is essentially karaoke with added guitar, the record’s production works wonders with such a crude formula, jackhammering at decibel levels deliberately unfit for laptop speakers.

When the duo’s demo, 2HELLWU, surfaced online last autumn, the track ‘Ring Ring’ stood out as a soft, sugary pop number that utilised a loop from Funkadelic’s 1971 classic ‘Can You Get to That’ to great effect.

Now re-titled ‘Rill Rill’, Sleigh Bells have made that groove their own, jazzing it up with bells and finger snaps, offering a welcome moment of respite from the album’s otherwise unrelenting bombast.

Though it doesn’t always work - the misfiring ‘Rachel’ tries to get away with bluster alone, providing a lull towards the album’s end - the likes of ‘Straight A’s’ and ‘A/B Machines’ crank up so much sonic destruction that any missteps are quickly forgotten. Having scored a record deal with M.I.A’s label, N.E.E.T., Sleigh Bells look like a shrewd signing for whom mainstream breakthrough seems inevitable. But at this point it’s too early to tell whether the duo’s pile-driving arrival will endure or whether they’ll prove to be a novelty act that lasts just about as long as the ringing in your ears. IM

No doubt the pigeon-toed hipster fuckwits who deemed Daniel Johnston’s recent ATP set “cute” will lap up yet another record of his mewling, wheedly songs. Yet their fetishising of one man’s mental illness and obsession with love, sugar products and superheroes is a deeply misguided notion of outsider art, and when combined with the cheery brass and strings of backing band Beam, the result is the year’s most unexpectedly morbid record. Not to mention that it’s shit. Nil pigeons.

Master remixers Mount Kimbie just smushed together every sonic trick from the last 10 years to make a heady, sickly sprawl of a debut, more curated than created. It’s all here: growly low-end bass, manglings of minimal techno, lostin-the-Segapark synthesisers, R&B vocals turned into the hiccoughs of a nervous cyborg, drums like femurs snapping in outer space... on and on it goes. An unrestrained adventure in electronica-land led by two demented magpies.

Puck-eyed and perennially adrift, Oneohtrix Point Never’s relative popularity spike has come on his own terms and, as the momentum built with last year’s Rifts comp and the astonishing Memory Vague DVD, accumulates here in opener ‘Nil Admirari’. The route remains the same: Daniel Lopatin is a man you go to for invisible soul rewiring. After the aggro of its opener, Returnal opens up into gorgeous drone and becomes a place you’d die to visit at remote points beyond midnight.

PERFUME GENIUS

TY SEGALL

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS

Learning

Melted

Disconnect From Desire

Turnstile

Goner

Full Time Hobby

From the album’s opening line, “no one will answer your prayers until you take off that dress”, 26-year-old Mike Hadreas makes it clear that the strength of his writing more than makes up for thin, piano-led arrangements and lightweight production. Though his voice and style warrant comparisons to Chris Garneau, it’s the poignancy of instant classics like ‘Mr Peterson’, the expertly executed tale of a paedophile teacher, that sets him as a class apart.

When San Francisco’s Ty Segall first appeared three years ago, he acquired an instant cult following for his ability to cook up irresistible fuzz pop while playing guitar and drums - at the same time - in the sweat pit of every twobit club that would have him. John Dwyer offered to put out his scorching self-titled debut in 2008 and, two LPs later, Segall’s tunes now positively thunder with the amphetamine rush of Hamburgera Beatles. Garage gold.

This electro pop trio were so desperate to change direction that they’re now almost unrecognisable from their absorbing 2008 debut. Rousing memories of being trapped in a car with a tape of Roxette remixes, the New Yorkers have opted for bland synths, fizzing drum machines and a second-rate shoegaze filter. The poor production not only smothers the Deheza sisters’ choir-like vocals but renders the tracks emotionless, meaningless and entirely indistinguishable from each other.

M.I.A.

/\/\/\Y/\ XL

Long Players

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

the last one and integrating the experimental rock mores of the one before that.

The truth is more problematic than that. Where Twenty One flashed eighties pop tropes with gaudy flair on the pizazzy likes of ‘Two Doors Down’ and ‘Half In Love With Elizabeth’, Serotonin is a more guarded and perhaps less immediately likeable listen than that. This time around, the me-decade synths are wheeled out to service well-crafted but essentially dull ballads like ‘Too Late To Talk’ (“you were the apple of my eye / my Phoebe Cates from Richmond High”) and midpaced downers like the accomplished ‘Dreaming Of Another World’.

69

It’s a mixed bag, in short, with ‘Flash A Hungry Smile’ a hook-studded blast from the past and ‘The Girl Is Gone’ a tender slowie in the vein of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’, but with blander numbers like ‘Dreaming Of Another World’ steering dangerously close to the charmless FM shallows of Razorlight. In the past Mystery Jets have offset their moments of regret with rowdy clatter. Here it’s all nicely produced moping about antidepressants and being slightly older than you were the last time you made a record - a shame, since Serotonin’s pallid AOR sheen can’t quite dispel the notion that somewhere in here lurks the ghost of a great pop album.

Popular thinking on Mystery Jets tends to fall into one of two camps, the first being that the London troupe traded ragged prog glory for lightweight pop pastiche when they airbrushed frontman Blaine Harrison’s dad Henry from the picture and made sophomore LP Twenty One The second, that they focused their ragged prog

meanderings into glorious pop pastiche when they made sophomore LP Twenty One. Either way, the record failed to set the world alight, making its UK debut at a disappointing #42. Better make room for a third camp, then; one whose response might neatly be summarised as: “Who?” For this writer, at least, Twenty One was a bracingly uneven affair which had moments of real melodic punch, even if it did betray a slight air of “tonight, Matthew, we’re going to be Duran Duran in Daz-white Miami Vice blazers”. Two years on and Serotonin is being touted as a refinement of that template, doing away with the kitschier tendencies of

OMAR SOULEYMAN

WAVVES

GUILTY SIMPSON

TOBACCO

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Jazeera Nights

King Of The Beach

OJ Simpson

Maniac Meat

The World Ends: Afro Rock & Psychedelia in 1970s Nigeria

Sublime Frequencies

Bella Union

Stones Throw

Anticon

Soundway

Imagine a Scottish singer called Rabby MacFerrin, popular on the wedding circuit. Ginger of beard and proud of sporran, he eschews balladeering on the plight of his people in favour of dark love songs written by his poet friends. His frantic backing music is made of souped-up bagpipes played through a synth modulator. Bizarrely enough, he becomes a smash hit with the urban youth of Syria. Such is the career of Omar Souleyman, reversed. The past couple of years have seen this Syrian of indeterminable age in his trademark keffiyeh, sunglasses and moustache become something of a cult sensation in the UK and beyond.

But Jazeera Nights, the third compilation of his music, proves that Omar Souleyman is no mere live curio. It’s perhaps initially tricky to grasp his music in recorded form, for you’re never going to hear an Omar Souleyman album: his music is released piecemeal on cassettes, and this collection is culled from the past 15 years. Yet this scattered approach is rather fitting: as music fragments here, so it does in the Middle East, Souleyman borrowing from traditional Dabke music and Iraqi chobi along with other music from the region. These ancient forms are then rendered new through the deep booms of bass and the frantic, high-treble keyboards. It’s a heady brew and matches lyrics in songs like ‘I Will Dig Your Grave With My Hands’ or ‘My Tears Will Make The Stones Cry’ which express love with an intensity now sadly missing in platitudinous western pop. At a time when musical boundaries are rendered meaningless and the world grows ever smaller, we can expect to see many more Omar Souleymans: we should welcome them with open arms. LT

There could hardly be a more apt sounding death knell for lo-fi indie garage than Nathan Williams’ infantile pop farts. Both the genre and Wavves itself have been due a backlash for some time now.

Williams came crashing to attention for his bratty onstage breakdown at Primavera 2009 and then again with a melodramatic, indie-style punchup with The Black Lips’ Jared Swilley not long after. Back then simplistic, roughly recorded pop was still at a comfortable distance from reaching saturation point. But, as indie folk illustrated, these cycles tend to run their course as soon as the mainstream becomes bombarded with formulaic reproductions.

Which brings us to King of the Beach.

Williams’ “comeback album” sees him teaming up with the rhythm section that walked out on the late Jay Reatard and conjuring a bigger, cleaner sound under the studio supervision of producer David Herring. The same falling falsetto harmonies and Phil Spector beats are ever-present, proving that rather than trying to evolve his songwriting, Williams is forcing melodies to fit the same template utilised on ‘So Bored’ from last year’s Wavvves.

Flashes of effective pop writing (‘King of the Beach’, ‘Take On The World’) are watered down with throwaway moments that become unbearably grating, from insipid rhymes (“My feet... are a-sleep”) to unconvincing exercises in selfloathing (“I hate my music, it’s all the same,” “All my old friends hate me, but I don’t give a shit”).

Ultimately King of the Beach feels like an effort to establish Wavves as the male equivalent of close friend Best Coast, right down to a similarly styled album cover, but ultimately the only edginess here is the sound of barrel-scraping. IM

Simpson’s flickering lyrical images of Detroit are to 8-Mile what Raging Bull was to Rocky.

He was always a strong MC but finds a perfect foil in Madlib, whose splatter of neon funk rhythms make this second LP engrossing. There’s a surfeit of long interludes on this screwball trip (in fact it’s mostly interlude) but even as a sprawling concept piece it’s fantastic, becoming more cohesive on repeated plays. Hip hop album of the year so far?

It seems clear that the further Anticon and affiliates get away from their backpack hip hop roots, the more satisfying their output is.

The playful proto chillwave and digital psychedelia of cLOUDDEAD and Odd Nosdam is complemented by the synth psych of Tobacco, now on his second and most satisfying album. Like a punch drunk Trans Am at their most driving balanced by the ghostly presence of AFX, BOC and OMD, this is the bomb.

It was against a backdrop of a country recovering from a civil war that much of this astonishing compilation, the result of yet another fine treasure hunt from Soundway, was recorded. By unselfconsciously blending the (to us) familiar heady sounds of sixties psych and groove with traditional African rhythms and instrumentations, these songs capture a sense of release and optimism, and a new music being forged a million miles from Western hippydom’s desperate decline.

WE ARE SCIENTISTS

JANE WEAVER

WOLF PARADE

Barbara

The Fallen By Watch Bird

Expo 86

Masterswan

Bird

Sup Pop

A major bonus of the acceleration of popular culture is that dead wood floats away with speed. I mean, anyone remember that band Razorlight? And anyone remember these idiots hanging onto the coat tails of the Arctic Monkeys a few years back in the vain hope that some of their popularity might rub off? In consummate proof of this group being a toxic indie cul-desac, Razorlight’s drummer is now a Scientist. Is there anything else you need to know? Nil Pigeons.

In creating this concept album of “cosmic aquatic folklore”, Jane Weaver submerges herself in something rich and otherworldly; a sense of the gothic that has drunk deep on sorrow and rum, not snakebite and black. The synthesiser’s washes and eddies, sounds of waves and gulls, quiet drums and multi-tracked vocals give the air of a woman singing distractedly to herself on some windswept, lonely shore waiting for a lover who’ll never return. Deeply romantic, but never wet.

Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug have made for an uncertain alliance recently. Since finding form with their respective solo vehicles, Handsome Furs and Sunset Rubdown, it’s becoming harder to tell which outfit is the side-project. Despite back-andforth songwriting duties, the arrangements soon sound alike. The songs don’t go anywhere, dragging on longer than they need to be, their prog-like instrumentation lacking the necessary audaciousness and suggesting this duo have grown apart.

MYSTERY JETS Seratonin Rough Trade

70

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Demos CHAPTER XXVII. CONSIDER THE SITUATION I FIND MYSELF IN. AS I WRITE, IT’S 12.20 ON SUNDAY NIGHT. IT’S BEEN A HEAVY WEEKEND. SO FAR TODAY I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO MUSTER THE ENERGY TO SHOWER, AND ANY THOUGHT OF EATING EVAPORATES AS SOON AS I REALISE EATING INVOLVES PLACING PIECES OF KILLED ANIMAL AND HEATED VEGETABLE INTO MY BODY

GUESS

THROUGH A HOLE IN MY FACE. I’M TIRED, I’M CONFUSED, I’M DIRTY AND I’M HUNGRY, AND FIVE YARDS AWAY MY GIRLFRIEND IS TRYING TO SLEEP, BUT SHE CAN’T, BECAUSE THE BASEBALL BAT I USE TO STOP FLIES GETTING IN THROUGH BILLOWED CURTAINS ONCE THE WINDOW’S OPEN HAS FALLEN OFF THE RADIATOR AND ONTO MY FOOT IN THE DARK.

I BETTER REVIEW THESE DEMOS, THEN.

Strangely enough, BLACKFIN’s music is not the wake-upscreaming introduction to this issue’s pile I imagined it would be. The music itself isn’t particularly enjoyable, but the first track from their Shadow Chemistry LP features a young, white man whining about his comedown. Hey, man! I could get into this! Unfortunately, any empathic bond that may have built up between myself and Blackfin during ‘The White Lady’ has disappeared like a drug friend by the end of the following track, in which that singer claims to be both a chameleon and a fly. These are audacious claims. And, as regular readers will undoubtedly know by now, the demo pile is no place for audacity.

“surprise-tinged praise” or “semen-tinged hatred”.

MYSPACE.COM/FEVERFEVERTHEBAND

According to rock lore, DAMN VANDALS met online on a graffiti forum and started making noises together while redecorating a youth club as part of a 500-hour community service order. Their crime? Daubing ‘DESTROY MONDAYS’ on the side of a commuter train in Catford. It’s ironic, then, that Damn Vandals have ended up writing songs like ‘Cocaine Love’ for the very squares who battle so busily to keep them down. LESS BANKSY MORE WANKSY, GUYS. MYSPACE.COM/DAMNVANDALS

MYSPACE.COM/BLACKFINMUSIC

The word ‘quirky’ appears four times in ALICE ROCK’s press release. Thank god their music’s shite and they look like cunts.

BLACK VELVETEENS sound like Damn Vandals if Damn Vandals could afford to think heavy thoughts in clean cars.

MYSPACE.COM/BLACKVELVETEENS

MYSPACE.COM/ALICEROCKMUSIC

THE TRUTH ABOUT FRANK make gentle drone music you can’t hear very well because the CD whirs too loudly when you try to play it. This is either one of the greatest acts of self-sabotage, or an irritating coincidence reaffirming life’s futility.

MYSPACE.COM/TRUTHABOUTFRANK

That I can overlook the use of the word ‘quirky’ in DIEGODZILLA’s press release speaks volumes for the insidious, banal euphoria of their music. Whatever’s arch about them is turned morose and likeable by the way they remodel their sampled synth grabs into photographs from tropical holiday brochures. ‘And Then I Saw You At The Disco’ is especially great — sounds like The Specials keening for reasons not to commit suicide in the late-nineties. A rare and charmingly naif pleasure, even if they do need to change their name.

MYSPACE.COM/DIEGODZILLA

Sounds like THE RECUSANTS had a good time recording their demo and, at the end of the day, that’s what’s important really, isn’t it?

MYSPACE.COM/THERECUSANTSMUSIC

They look like nice guys, but despite YOUSAVEYOU’s insistence I strongly doubt that their music will help me “withstand pain”, “drink more” or “put me back in touch with the predator I am”. Why? The one who’s singing definitely smells of mace. Never trust anyone who smells of mace.

MYSPACE.COM/YOUSAVEYOU

KARAOKE FOR BEGINNERS wear shades and Converse and live close enough to Camden to be able to drink there all the time (or at least boast about it as if it’s something that’s hard to do). The sleeve of their demo features a man ‘smashing up his guitar’ (pre-mess/proof of destructive tendencies).

Predictably enough their EP is less remarkable than the fact it’s called ‘There’s A Foetus In My Room’ and the realisation that scenes like those depicted on its cover will soon be considered as quaint as grainy photos of scared Victorian children dressed in their church clothes.

MYSPACE.COM/KARAOKEFORBEGINNERS

FEVER FEVER are a “grunge-tinged art punk” band from Norwich. As such, I’m pretty sure you already know what they sound like — I’ll leave you to decide if that warrants

It’s an unfortunate and unhappy feature of music that anyone making it who’s clever enough to call a song ‘Burt Bacharacnid’ invariably winds up in a pointlessly aggressive, ‘angular’ noise-rock band. BRONTO SKYLIFT: your mess is a vaguely enjoyable one, but I would not build a Friday night around it.

MYSPACE.COM/BRONTOSKYLIFT

I can’t work out if the fact that FEAL REAL sound like Mi Ami fronted by Jack Barnett makes them desperate hipsters or a logical 2010 update on The Clash. I’m erring with neither option, and instead plan to spend half an hour or so listening to Mi Ami, These New Puritans and The Clash to cheer me up before I drag my tired and sorry hide into bed.

Maybe it’s ’cause it’s nearing 3am, but AUTOPORTRAIT’s ‘Songs For The Quietness’ EP does something unprecedented and makes it two more-thandecent demos in a row. Leila Zerai’s ambient pop drifts — composed on laptop and trombone — feel haunted, odd and appealing. Her coy throat loiters in this record’s spaces in such a way that they remain alien but nonetheless become hugely inviting - it’s a bit like the sensation you may have felt when you’re walking home from work and you get to wondering what it’d be like to unlock the wrong door, wipe your feet on the wrong doormat, sit down for dinner at the wrong dining table.

MYSPACE.COM/LEILAMUSIC

MYSPACE.COM/FEALREALX

When the singer from REVIVOR mewls “Your sorrow is insincere” in a fake Canadian accent, time turns into bread and statues of small dogs across the world start weeping Sicilian lemonade. Someone, somewhere, is laughing and wanking. This is the beginning of the end, ‘muchachos’. Lo siento, mi dio. Lo siento, mi dio. Revivor appear to be from Ireland, but when a friend of mine drinks too much tequila his day-to-day identity disappears; replaced by an alter-ego.

The alter-ego belongs to a reluctant Spanish prostitute named Maria. Revivor sound like the sort of thing her pimp would listen to when life starts to get a bit too much.

MYSPACE.COM/REVIVORMUSIC

OUR PICK FOR THE FAT ADVANCE: DieGodzilla just pip Autoportrait.

A CLARIFICATION: In the December 2009 issue of The Stool

Pigeon (#24), a review of The Eyes In The Heat’s demo stated that: “These three tracks from The Eyes In The Heat have got us thinking: is this band better than Chew Lips?”

Subsequent events have made it necessary for us to reassert the negative implications of this review, Chew Lips being an almost intolerably bad musical combo. We apologise for any confusion caused.

REVIEWS BY KEV KHARAS.

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’.

72

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Business news

Spanish Pay Per Play deal pirates a load off the of balls hook THOMAS A. NONYMOUS

agents PRS For Collection Music (formerly Performing Right Society) have

By Alex Denney

in Spain have ruled that file sharing is comparable to lending libraries, after action was taken against a site offering links to copyrighted download material.

The case against file-sharing site CVCDGO.com began five years ago when Spanish police raided a house in Madrid, dismantled the site and arrested four people.

Proceedings were brought to a close by judges who argued that file sharing was like the “loan or sale of books”, and therefore no offence had been committed.

It isn’t really like a loan, though, is it?

When sailors of the British East India Company were accosted by pirates en route to robbing some poor sods on the Indian subcontinent of their natural resources, did they rubber date-stamp their cargo so its recipients would know when to bring it back? No. Have Somalian pirates been banned from the International Shipping Library for late return of Peter Kay’s

Judges

‘Top Of The Tower’ DVD, ‘borrowed’ in 2005? Again, that’d be a negative.

Anyway here’s that verdict in full, as delivered by three judges at Madrid Provincial Court who ruled that “since ancient times there has been the loan or sale of books, movies, music and more.”

“The difference now is mainly on the medium used - previously it was paper or analogue media and now everything is in a digital format which allows a much faster exchange of a higher quality and also with global reach through the Internet.”

The court’s other findings ruled that the presence of advertising on the site did not constitute a crime, since it did not host the actual copyright files and made no profit directly from any infringements.

The decision is the latest in a string of actions thwarting anti-piracy campaigners, and has angered audiovisual rights collecting society Egeda and Columbia Tristar, who tipped off police about the site in 2005, claiming it allowed users to download films on P2P networks.

announced that there’s no need for white-collared workers to miss out on the World Cup for fear of legal retribution in the office.

The society, which penalises those who play any registered piece of music in public spaces without permission, are offering companies who want to turn the TV on during the World Cup a free one-month music licence so they can do so legally.

The idea is that employers should allow their staff to watch key World Cup games televised during the daytime within the confines of their office to keep staff from bunking off.

This isn’t entirely an act of generosity on behalf of PRS. The hope is that they’ll make businesses more aware of the need for licences to play music, while not looking like the extended arm of Bono reaching into their pockets every time ‘Vertigo’ is unleashed as the soundtrack to a game’s highlights. A lose-lose situation by all accounts, especially when it can all be watched on iPlayer or downloaded on the steal.

But let’s spare a thought for Feargal Sharkey who, for two days running, was spotted outside the PRS office smoking away as if Northern Ireland had any representation in South Africa other than an Embassy. Maybe PRS would like to extend such compassion towards their smoking staff who still have to endure the ruling that they must be five metres from any public building with a fag lit. Not our Feargal, though, who was stood directly outside the offices’ rotating doors.

In other PRS-orientated news, the society have announced that it will be reviewing the royalty rates it charges to gig and festival promoters. The current rate is set at three per cent of ticket receipts, which is the fee that the live sector must pay to the songwriters and publishers who own the songs performed at their events.

PRS state that this is lower than most other European collecting societies, yet the recent boom in the live music sector might suggest that they’re looking to increase the figure.

Glastonbury-goers must find a small amount of comfort in the fact that none of their money will be going to U2, anyway.

THE MARKETS

WORST MONTH IN MUSIC HISTORY

as they stood on 21/06/2010 EASYJET 6 Month Share price UK£ 500 450 400 350 300 Jan 10

Feb 10

Mar 10

Apr 10

May 10

Jun 10

Apr 10

May 10

Jun 10

May 10

Jun 10

May 10

Jun 10

LIONEL CAKE glad tidings from the disease-ridden Titanic that is the music industry as the last week in May this year was announced as the worst for album sales in decades. Bit much? Maybe. But then again, maybe not: just 4,978,000 units were shifted for the week ending May 31 in the US – the worst since sales tracking system Soundscan was introduced back in 1994, and maybe the worst since the early-seventies, according to Billboard’s calculations.

Contrast that with the highest weekly total in history of 45.4 million in late 2000, and it makes for sorry reading in what remains the largest global market for music.

Soundscan’s latest bombshell comes in the context of a bigger picture where, out of the mind-bending 98,000 albums released last year, only 2.1 per cent crossed the 5,000 sales mark. Which means that meagre percentile accounts for a whopping 91 per cent of the entire sales for the year, and the other 9 per cent is drawn from around 95,942 albums.

And so it goes: while you and your insufferable bandmates get all giddy as the ink dries on your first label contract, all we’re hearing is another nail in the coffin of the industry.

And with Soundscan playing its violin serenade, the toffs continue to flap: according to Business Week, the US launch of Spotify has been delayed because the Big Four labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner) want the company to scrap its free service and find a guaranteed revenue stream it can share with them. Meanwhile seemingly one-off successes like Radiohead’s flexible approach to pricing and SuBo’s viral marketing are failing to provide a reliable alternative model.

Universal Music Group Distribution president Jim Urie argues that May’s slump provides “all the more reason why everyone in the industry should be focused on getting the US Congress to introduce legislation that makes the Internet service providers our allies in fighting piracy. Piracy is getting worse and worse and the government needs to focus on that.”

More

HMV GROUP 6 Month Share price UK£ 120 100 80 60 40 Jan 10

Feb 10

Mar 10

JD WETHERSPOON 6 Month Share price UK£ 550 500 450 400 Jan 10

Feb 10

Mar 10

Apr 10

FTSE ALL SHARE 6 Month Share price UK£

2950 2900 2850 2800 2750 2700 2650 2600 2550

Jan 10

Feb 10

Mar 10

Apr 10

THE NUMBERS High Low Stock

Price Change Yield P/E

45.07 14.57 AppleC

47.03

240

33

Amstrad

203.75 +13.75

3.1 13.96

595

509

BSkyB

491.5

-12

N/A 20.7

Chrysalis

163

+0.5

0.9 52.57

196.5 133

+1.6

N/A

N/A

41.09 25.01 Dreamworks $42.45 +0.32

5.4

442.38 31.41 Easyjet

398.00 +1.75

N/A 52.2

281.25 225.25 EMI

245.25 +9.25

3.92 N/A

274

158

213.5 HMV

N/A

+2.25

2.5

304.1 -2.90 Google

238.98 -18.52

N/A

N/A

17.25 9

9.5

-23

N/A

165

42.54 20.10 MGM

39.79

+0.21

2.6

34

18.87 12.64 Motorola

$22.48 -1.9

0.9.1 14.2

22.53 17.89 Phillips

25.35 +0.35

1.8

34.30 23.17 Reg Vardy

909.5 +5.5

1.1 15.76

47.25 17.75 Sanctuary

21

MUSICCH

7.75

N/A

+2

n/a -5.264

248.95 19.31 Somerfield 197.00 0.0

12.8 17.23

4,400 3,590 Sony

0.6

129

32

3,850 +30

Topps Tiles 201.75 +1.25

21.9

0.6 17.85

189.15 32.22 Vodaphone 118.00 +3.25

N/A

134

16.95 15.23 Warner Grp 20.17

NA

N/A

+0.10

Business news

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

73

BIG FOUR MARKET SHARE EMI Group 13.4% SONY 21.5%

Morsels Public Humiliation

WARNERS 11.3%

It seems like the economic crisis has hit the original kings of bling and all things prodigious at Public Enemy HQ. The hip hop pioneers have been forced to drop their fundraising goal on fan funding site SellaBand from $250,000 to $75,000 six months into their campaign. Having already raised $56,000, they now believe that the $75k mark will be “much more appropriate” for their business model.

Either that or their previous calculations made on a massive calculator medallion were well out.

Radio Dread

INDEPENDENTS 28.3%

UNIVERSAL 25.5%

RISE OF DIGITAL MUSIC On February 24, 2010, iTunes sold its 10 billionth song.

According to a survey in 2008 in the UK, on average, every digital musical player contained 842 illegally copied songs.

Known for his enthusiastic and often encouraging words in support of the major record labels, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was caught pulling a funnier face than normal behind their backs earlier this month. Having shot to fame on the back of a six album deal with record label giants EMI, the turncoat is now encouraging young artists to try and make it on their own rather than signing to the sinking ships of a major. What’s next Thom? Give your music away for free, will you?

Big Scrapple

The Top 10 albums in the US sold a combined 60 million copies in 2000; in 2006 this had sunk to 25 million.

Word on the cyber street is that Apple have been going around and pressuring various record labels to stop working with Amazon on its ‘MP3 Daily Deal’.

It’s purported that the boys in white had told labels that they wouldn’t promote any releases that Amazon featured as part of its credit crunch offer. Let’s see how Steve Jobs’ powers of persuasion go down with the U.S. Justice Department, who are now looking into it.

Digital Watch

20%

30%

36%

Despite winning awards, plaudits and pretty respectable RAJAR listening figures for a digital-only station, NME radio went off air in June. This is the first arm of the Conor McNicholas’ multiplatform NMEmpire to bubble under the current economic crisis. And with the magazine’s ABCs plummeting with every quarterly that ticks by, you may wonder when it’s style-oversubstance weekly will follow.

Pea Green

2007

2008

2009

Percentage denotes amount of total music sales were digital.

DECLINE OF ALBUM SALES

After shaking their lovely lady lumps at two shows at Dublin’s O2 back in April, the Black Eyed Peas looked to further their financial credentials at their official aftershow party that night. It’s reported that the Peas were looking for ?50,000 for their presence to grace local nightclub, Tripod, proving that hip hop’s entrepreneurs are still alive and kicking in a time of economic doubt.

Laying Low US band The Layaways received their first Spotify cheque last September to the total amount of diddly-squat. For the month, Spotify paid 0.02 cents, 0.03 cents and 0.06 cents per stream (the differences stemming from different tiers of service and/or regions). Their payout was so small that it was rounded down to 0.000000 cents. Turns out it would take someone 212 hours to listen to a fourminute track 3,181 times to equal the 70 cent wholesale cost of a typical 99 cent download. That’s the equivalent of listening for 12 hours a day for nearly 17 straight days.

1000

Millions Sold

800

600

400

200

0 1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

74

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Classifieds BACKLINE FOR HIRE

TOWERGATE STAFFORD KNIGHT CO LTD.

AUDIOHIRE

55 Aldgate High Street London EC3N 1AL T. 02074817600

133-137 Kilburn Lane London W10 T. 02089604466 WWW. audiohire.co.uk

INSTRUMENTS FOR SALE

ROBANNA’S STUDIOS

SELECTION OF GUITARS available in a

Robanna House Cliveland Street B’ham B19 3SN T. 01213333201 WWW. robannas-studios.co.uk

BAND DRIVER HIRE GREEN MAN van tours can take up to a fourpiece band with equipment and PA to any gig in UK or Europe. Experience with backline and man management. GREEN MAN takes care of the business GREEN MAN style. T. 07780832059 E. gingerstallone@hotmail.com

BIG TOPS

G BROWN ASSOCIATES 10 Downing Street London SE1 2AF T. 02073282078

MWM ACCOUNTANTS & ADVISORS 6 Berkeley Crescent Bristol BS8 1HA T. 01179292393 29 Ludgate Hill London EC4M 7JE T. 02079199700

FLIGHT CASES

400 Derby Road Nottingham NG7 2GQ

FIELD & LAWN MARQUEES LTD.

AMPTOWN CASES

Unit A58-A60 New Covent Garden Market London

21-23 Cavendish Street Peterborough Cambs PE1 5EQ T. 01733 557212

CROSSBOW 322 Church Road Northolt Middlesex UB5 5AP T. 02088413487 WWW. splitterbus.co.uk

DAN’S LUXURY TRAVEL Royal Forest Coach House 109 Maybank Road London E18 1EJ T. 02085058833

FOXY MUSIC NIGHTLINERS LTD

INSTRUMENTS WANTED

WINTERS

BIG TOPS UK LTD.

BUS HIRE

straight swap for two turntables.

E. jmurphy@gmail.com RARE TIN WHISTLE made of 12 Carat gold. In the key of high D with six holes. £300 ono T. 07972402664 TURKISH DIVAN 140cm in maple. £220 ono T. 01206397026

CONDOR CASES

FENDER Precision STILL Wanted. Anything considered preferably pre-1979. T. 07813066437 DRUM KIT still wanted by competent amateur.

Ideally a five-piece but less or more, who cares.

T. 07966212416 CASTANETS - any colour or material needed by flamenco dancer for rowdy celebrations on July 11th. T. 07973512647

Wendover Road Rackheath Norwich NR13 6LH T. 01603735900

INSTRUMENT HIRE

LIGHTING HIRE ASTRAL DESIGN 40-42 Connaught Road Chatham Kent ME4 5DJ T. 01634842500 The Beckery Beckery Road Glastonbury Somerset BA6 9NX T. 01458833186

CONCERT LIGHTS (UK) LTD.

for new and used CD, DVD, & Vinyl

LASER LIGHTING & SOUND

T. 0208740 9595 (M) 07729619388

39a Woodbridge Road East Ipswich IP4 5QN T. 01473721690

NORTHERN LIGHT Assembly Street Leith Edinburgh EH6 7RG T. 01315532383

SUPERMICK GROUP LTD. 16 Stoneleigh Street London W11 4DU T. 02072212322

MANAGEMENT 3 KINGS MANAGEMENT are looking for bands/songwriters for U.S. representation Email management@3kingsmangement.com

45 Market Gates Shopping Centre Great Yarmouth Norfolk NR30 2AX T. 01493842887

PROTECHNIC LTD.

B SHARP PIANOS LTD.

CHARIOT SPA

Unit 109 Central Park Petherton Road Bristol BS14 9BZ T. 01275833779

Baptist Church Wordsworth Road London N16 8DA T. 02072757577

Fairchild Street London EC1 T. 02072475333

MASSAGE SERVICES

COOKES BAND INSTRUMENTS 34 St. Benedict Street Norwich NR2 4AQ T. 01603623563

01736798837

MASSAGE SERVICES Luke Temple, Manchester, 07860705230 Strong boy, warm hands, happy endings.

Unit 12 Canalside Industrial Park Kinoulton Road Nottingham NG12 3BE T. 01159899955

55 Wyverne Road Chorlton Manchester M21 T. 01614349823

Millennium Studios 4-5 Elstree Way Borehamwood Herts WD6 T. 02084063758

GRAFFITI ARTISTS CHAFFEURS

ALL STAR LIMOUSINES 110 Womersley Road Knottingley West Yorkshire WF11 0DL T. 01977607979

ZAP GRAFFITI artworks across the UK promoting graffiti as a positive artform through tailored workshops, training programmes, public studio and supplies. Fancy a graffiti artist at your event?

Zap Graffiti Arts, 2nd Floor Grand Control 35 Renshaw Street, Liverpool, L1 2SF T. 0151 708 7073 WWW. zapgraffiti.co.uk HARDWARE FOR SALE

MISS DAISY’S DRIVERS 12-16 Leopald St London T. 02084063758

PARKER’S CARS 12-16 Yusmaladee St London SE12 6NS T. 0208 406 3758

DIY LABEL From 1991, classic cassette culture fodder from the now defunct duo from Israel, available for the first time in 15 years. Remastered onto CD-R. Only £5 P+P inc. from WWW.droprecords.co.uk

7 Ivebury Court 325 Latimer Road London W10 T. 02089606644

MARKSON’S PIANOS LTD. 8 Chester Court Albany Street London NW1 T. 08000748980 WWW.marsksonspianos.com

GUITAR CENTRE 126 Meadfield Road Langley Slough SL3 8JF T. 01753542720

MICKLEBURGH 1-9 Stokes Croft Bristol BS13PL T. 01179241151

NEW KINGS ROAD VINTAGE GUITARS

but great picture quality and stereo speakers.

Comes with free remote control. £50 o.n.o Pick up only from Colchester area. T. 01206397026 ANNIVERSARY paperback books from The Stool Pigeon including a selection of classic interviews and stories from the last five years.

Come on you cunts buy one we’re skint.

WWW.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/blog/stool-pigeonsfifth.html

65a New Kings Road London SW6 4SG T. 02073710100

ABLEMARLE

INSURANCE BROKERS

0207 613 5919

DJ TEES - T-SHIRTS THAT ROCK! T. 01653695632 for a catalogue WWW. djtees.com T-BIRDS quality band merchandise. No order too small or large. T. 015025008050 ORIGINAL VINTAGE MERCHANDISE

LOSER from London seeks someone/people to make music with. This is real.

E.armenarmenia@hotmail.co.uk WWW.myspace.com/thecinemaceiling CHINESE keyboard player needed for a one off festival performance from Asian catering tribute band MSGMT. E: number47@hotmail.com TOURING cabaret outfit based in East Yorkshire seeks fit and well hung stripper to play guitar in touring tribute act NUNS & ROSES for upcoming dates across UK. E: badhabits@gmail.com

15-19 Upper Montague Street London W1H 2PQ T. 02077241917 10 Gray’s Inn Square Gray’s Inn London WC1R 5JD T. 02074044002

DAVID WINEMAN SOLICITORS

GRAY & CO. 3rd Floor Habib House 9 Stevenson Square Piccadilly Manchester M1 1DB T. 01612373360

BREBNER, ALLEN & TRAPP

AINN. T. WORFDAT - Music Division

HUMPHREY’S & CO. SOLICITORS

The Quadrangle 180 Wardour Street London W1F 8LB T. 02077342244

Richmond House 16-20 Regent Street Cambridge CB2 1DB T. 012233577131

14 King Street Bristol BS1 4EF T. 08005422769

ERNST & YOUNG LLP

MUSICIANS’ INSURANCE SERVICES

UNIQUE & NATURAL TALENT

1 More London Place London SE1 2AF T. 02079512000

312 High Street Harlington Middlesex UB3 5BT T. 08453457529

57 Elgin Crescent London W11 2JU T. 02077921666

Unit 3 Central Park Military Road Colchester Essex CO1 2AA T. 01206369966

B & H SOUND SERVICES LTD. The Old School Crowland Road Eye Peterborough PE6 7TN T. 01733223535

BETTER SOUND LIMITED 31 Cathcart Street Kentish Town London NW5 3BJ T. 02074820177

DECIBEL AUDIO LTD.

SHIRTYSOMETHING

Unit 2 12-48 Northumberland Park London N17 T. 02088803243 WWW.handheldaudio.co.uk

PO Box 6519 Nottingham NG3 5LU T. 01159202645 SO BOARD Limited edition t-shirts WWW.soboard.co.uk

MISCELLANEOUS occasional cakes, made to order. Outstanding detail, all edible. recent bakes include the 5-piece drum kit cake, and Hammond M3 Ginger cake.

T. 07813066437

ARTISTE CONTRACTS LTD.

AUDIO PLUS

Unit 19 Greenwich Centre Business Park Norman Road Greenwich London SE10 9QF T. 08451284185

The Old Dairy 133-137 Kilburn Lane LondonW10 T. 02089643399 WWW.ticklemusichire.com

LEGAL REPRESENTATION

Trafalgar House Grenville Place Mill Hill London NW7 3SA T. 02089051831

A load of original T shirts and Merch, contact WWW.petertosco.com or, WWW.cafepress.com/petcatdesigns.co.uk

ACHY BAKEY ART Instrument-themed

Craven House 121 Kingsway London WC2B 6NX T. 02074007800 WWW.davidwineman.co.uk 10b Printing House Yard Hackney Road

MERCH & CLOTHING

TICKLE

BURLEY & COMPANY

FINANCE & ACCOUNTANTS A & CO

DRUMHIRE Unit 14 Triangle Business Centre Enterprise Way Salter Street London NW10 6UG T. 02089600221

DAEWOO widesceen television. Not LCD or HD

INSURERS

60-62 Clapham Road London SW90JJ T. 02075825566 WWW.musiciansunion.org.uk RIZZO THE CLOWN Balloon sculptures. Gags, custard and helium included. On twelve step progamme. T. 07966212416

ABC ENTERTAINMENTS

BRM PRODUCTIONS

ELSTREE LIGHT & POWER TAURUS SELF DRIVE LTD.

MUSICIAN’S BENEVOLENT FUND 16 Ogle Street London W1W 6JA T. 02076364481 MUSICIANS’ UNION

P.A. HIRE

GENERATORS 4 Rosewall Terrace St. Ives Cornwall TR26 1QJ

CALL MUSIC TR ADER

MUSICIANS WANTED

ALLEN’S MUSIC CENTRE

37 Shooters Hill Road London SE3 7HS T. 02088588100

C A S H PA I D

Undershore Works Brookside Road Crompton Way Bolton BL2 2SE T. 01204391343

Dales Road Ipswich Suffolk IP1 4JR T. 01473740445

MARNIC PLC

You need ’em, come get ’em from us in London.

Email editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk

BATMINK LTD.

LIGHT ALLOY LTD.

GAFFER TAPE

10 0 0s of FREE JIFFY BAGS

HAND HELD AUDIO LTD.

HIPPO SOUND PA HIRE T. 01373813518 MEGA WATT SOUND Tall Trees 136a Roe Lane Southport Merseyside PR9 7PJ T. 01704220639

MUSIC BANK (HIRE) LTD. 1st Floor Building D Tower Bridge Building Complex 100 Clements Road London SE16 4DG T. 02072520001 WWW.musicbank.org

Classifieds

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

DECIBEL AUDIO LTD

THE JOINT LTD. 1-6 Field Street London WC1X 9DG T. 02078333375 WWW.thejoint.org.uk MAD DOG REHEARSAL ROOMS Unit 57

Unit 19 Greenwich Centre Business Park Norman Road Greenwich London SE10 9QF T. 08451284185

E3 AUDIO

Deeside Industrial Estate Welsh Road Deeside Clwyd CH5 2LR T. 01244281705

Available for all size parties and gigs. 1K to 10K rigs available.

T. 07780832059 E. gingerstallone@hotmail.com

ORGANISATION 4 Crescent Stables 139 Upper

SECURITY CASTLEBANK SECURITY SOLUTIONS Unit 6 Hollins Business Centre Rowley Street Stafford ST16 2RH T. 08451112048 WWW.castlebank.info

Park Farm Buckland Down Frome Somerset BA11 2RG T. 0137381351

ROCK STEADY Broomloan House, G51 2YS Glasgow T. 01414199559

THE PA COMPANY LTD.

VANS/EQUIPMENT HIRE

Unit 7 The Ashway Centre Elm Crescent Kingston Upon Thames T. 02085466640

Best rates for backline hire, self drive splitter vans, EU & UK tour management. Work waiting for drivers with their own vans. Midlands and London based. Can deliver. POA. T. 07875556467 WWW.blacklighttours.co.uk

Unit 5a Spectrum Business Centre Medway City Estate Strood Kent ME2 4NP T. 01634720700

music photography in Glasgow. Live gigs, promo photoshoots, artwork, etc. Print sales available.

It’s not red it’s...

WWW.crimsonglow.co.uk E. itsnotred@gmail.com

JENNY HARDCORE MUSIC PHOTOGRAPHY Freelance photographer available for live/press/artwork shoots. Studio or location.

Competetive rates and discount unsigned artist packages. For further info and examples of portfolio please visit : WWW.jennyhardcore.co.uk

SOUP RECORDING STUDIO Get that ‘Darren Hayman, Wave Pictures, Let’s Wrestle, Allo Darlin’’ sound under the Duke of Uke, Hanbury St., London EI6QR T. 07986101125 E. theehaircut@gmail.com WWW.soupstudio.co.uk

REHEARSAL SPACES THE BOOM BOOM ROOMS Beehive Mill Jersey Street Manchester M4 6JG T. 01619504250 FRONTLINE STUDIOS 18 Cave Street Bristol BS2 8RU T. 01179248252

CROSSTOWN TRAFFIC

THE PREMISES STUDIOS LTD. 201-205 Hackney Road London E2 8JL T. 02077297593 SCREAM STUDIOS Module A1 Enterprise Point Melbourne Street Brighton BN2 3LH T. 01273671086

PIANO MOVERS

GUNFACTORY REHEARSAL & RECORDING STUDIO

MATCO PIANO TRANSPORT

49-51 Leswin Road Stoke Newington N16 7NX 02079239533 info@gunfactorystudios,com www.gunfactorystudios.com

PIANO TUNERS Baptist Church Wordsworth Road London N16 T. 02072757577

PRESSING & DUPLICATION

STRONGROOM 120-124 Curtain Road London EC2A 3SQ T. 02074265100 WWW. strongroom.com.

SURVIVAL STUDIOS Acton Business Centre School Road North Acton London NW10 6TD

T. 02089611977 TERMINAL STUDIOS 4-10 Lamb Walk London Bridge London SE1 3TT T. 02074033050 WWW.terminal.co.uk

288 Kensington High Street London W14 8NZ T. 02076032016

B SHARP PIANOS LTD.

Reply, quoting ref on envelope to address at front, or by emailing editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk with ref in subject box. Confidentiality assured.

BLACKLIGHT TOURS

PANACHE AUDIO SYSTEMS

CRIMSON GLOW PHOTOGRAPHY freelance

PERSONALS

Richmond Road London SW15 2TN T. 02087896444

HIPPO SOUND PA HIRE

PHOTOGRAPHERS

kafri rehearsal studios Arch 357 Laburnum Road. London E2 8BB 07828 254 458 www.kafristudios.co.uk www..kafristudios.co.uk

kafristudios@yahoo.com

ROYALTY EXPERTS MBA LICENSING SERVICES LTD. 4 South Street Epsom Surrey KT18 7PF T. 01372840280 THE ROYALTY COMPLIANCE

The Limes 78 Bute Road Wallington Surrey SM6 8AB T. 02086473948 HANS FOR VANS T. 07782340058 North London based company with splitter and minivans, guaranteed to beat any quote.

MATT SNOWBALL HIRE Unit 2, 3-9 Brewery Road London N7 9QJ T. 02077006555 WWW.mattsnowball.com

STARCRAFT EXECUTIVE TRAVEL Fleet Hampshire T. 01252812328 WWW.starcraft.co.uk TUITION BASS GUITAR TUITION Beginners to intermediate. £20 per hour. Based in East London.

Musician Institute graduate / pro musician.

Call Andy T. 07904227751 APPLE MAC TUITION Beginners to advanced in all things Macintosh & Adobe Creative Suite .

Good day rates. T. 07966212416

WOMEN SEEKING MEN RENE seeks Renata who’s been saving all his love for me. Preferably straight. REF: 2701 NEUTERED CAT with claws seeks man with fresh cream for exciting nights out on a hot tin roof. REF: 2702

MEN SEEKING WOMEN DTE STR8 SWM secretary ISO SWF NSA with GCH into BB PNP & shorthand. REF: 2703 NICE GIRLS wanted for companionship and may be a LTR? Must be into rock, punk, gothic, metal, bohemian. Fun-loving kind please, capaable of lots of TLC? Write me a nice letter.

Who knows what life can bring us both? NTW please! REF: 2704 BUTCHER looking to get a bit behind with his orders, and share his love of tripe. REF: 2705 TAXI DRIVER W.L.T.M open-minded fantasy fulfiller with own toys. Clean licence essential. REF: 2706 SCAT MAN seeking Arabian princess with a big mouth and quiet disposition. No weirdos or midgets. REF: 2707 MALE LIBRARIAN desperate to find a wordsmith to keep his book worm hard these lonely summer months. Must be able to stimulate both of my heads. REF: 2708 Reply, quoting ref on envelope to address at front, or by emailing editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk with ref. in subject box. Confidentiality assured.

MEDIADISC Unit 4C 101 Farm Lane London SW6 1QJ T. 02073852299 WWW.mediadisc.co.uk

SOUND RECORDING TECHNOLOGY LTD. Audio House Eddison Road St Ives Cambridgeshire PE27 3LF T. 01480461880

SOUNDS GOOD LTD. The UK’s home of CD, DVD & Cassette manufacturing, and multimedia services.

12 Chiltern Enterprise Centre Station Rd Theale Berkshire RG7 4AA T. 0118 930 1700 F. 0118 930 1709 E. sales-info@sounds-good.co.uk WWW.sounds-good.co.uk

PYROTECHNICS ARSON AROUND Match Lane Beccles Norfolk NR32 T. 01502589939

PAINS FIREWORKS LTD. The Old Chalk Pit Romsey Road Whiteparish Salisbury Wiltshire SP5 2SD T. 01794884040

SHOOT FOR THE STARS South Manor Farm Bramfield Halesworth Suffolk IP19 9AQ T. 01986784481

RECORDING STUDIOS 2 KHZ STUDIOS 97a Scrubs Lane London NW10 6QU T. 02089601331WWW.2khzstudios.co.uk

SAWMILLS RESIDENTIAL RECORDING Golant Fowey Cornwall PL23 1LW T. 01726833338 WWW. sawmills.co.uk

75

The Stool Pigeon, 21a Maury Road, London, N16 7BP

MEAN FIDDLER PRESENTS

LITTLE DRAGON + SPECIAL GUESTS

THU 23 SEPTEMBER

KOKO LONDON Doors 7.00pm Camden High Street NW1 7JE www.koko.uk.com

HER BIGGEST EVER UK SHOW

ALICE RUSSELL Live at the HMV forum London

plus very special guests

THURSDAY 9 DECEMBER 9-17 Highgate Rd, Kentish Town, London, NW5 1JY. www.kentishtownforum.com

BOOK NOW: www.seetickets.com • 08700 603 777• www.meanfiddler.com

THE 1-2-3-4

SATURDAY 24TH JULY 2010 SHOREDITCH PARK

LONDON

N1

5 STAGES OF FUTURE ROCK & ROLL AND ELECTRONIC ACTION

FUCKED UP DUM DUM GIRLS WAVVES THE SILVER MACHINE

PETER HOOK (JOY DIVISION / NEW ORDER) & THE LIGHT PERFORM ‘UNKNOWN PLEASURES’ (EXCLUSIVE LONDON SHOW)

VIVIAN GIRLS THESE NEW PURITANS OPTIMO TODDLA T & MC SEROCEE SHUNDA K (YO MAJESTY!) ROLO TOMASSI A GRAVE WITH NO NAME S.C.U.M VERONICA FALLS VIC GODARD & SUBWAY SECT

BO NINGEN WE HAVE BAND ZOMBIE ZOMBIE THRUSH METAL FLATS MAZES COMANECHI SPECTRALS TRAILER TRASH TRACYS

A1 BASSLINE ACTION BEAT AUTOKRATZ DJS BABESHADOW BITCHES BLOOD MUSIC BRETON CIVIL CIVIC CLUB THE MAMMOTH CRISIS IN TASTE DARK HORSES DAVE DORRELL DEADLY RHYTHM SOUNDSYSTEM DECASIA DEVINE INCEST DISASTRONAUT DDD DEEP SHT DOLLOP DON’T DIE JUST YET DRUM EYES DT FRANCO GALVANISED HIND EAR HOCUS TOCUS HUMAN HAIR INVASION ISLINGTON BOYS CLUB JAVIERE RAZZMATAZZ JIM SCLAVUNOS KILL THE DANDIES KOOL KIDS KLUB KOUDLAM SPEAKS LA SHARK LONGMEG LE VOLUME COURBE MARIA & THE MIRRORS MATTHEW !WOWOW! MIM (BLACK CAB SESSIONS) NECRO DEATHMORT NO BRA NO CARS NOT COOL NUKE EM ALL ONEMAN PULL IN EMERGENCY QUEENS OF NOIZE RANDOM IMPULSE RED DRAPES SCREAMING TEA PARTY SHARKS SMASH & GRAB SONIC MOOK EXPERIMENT STEVE MORELL STILL CORNERS SUNDERBANS SWATHES THE LOVELY JONJO THE LONG MARCH THE PRE NEW (PRESENT EARL BRUTUS) THE PROPER ORNAMENTS THE RULLING CLASS THE TAMBORINES THE TOES THINGS I NEVER TOLD YOU TRONIK YOUTH TURBOGEIST ULPA VICTOR TALKING MACHINE VON HAZE VONDLEPARK

TICKETS £20 WWW.THE1234SHOREDITCH.COM www.seetickets.com

THE1234AFTERSHOWS ENTRY INCLUDED IN TICKET PRICE*

333/MOTHER HOSTED BY A CRISIS IN TASTE & THE SONIC MOOK EXPERIMENT BAR MUSIC HALL HOSTED BY NUKE EM ALL CATCH HOSTED BY DON’T DIE JUST YET V’S DECASIA COCOMO HOSTED BY P.I.X MAGAZINE DOORS CLUB HOSTED BY DIVINE INCEST ELECTRICITY SHOWROOMS HOSTED BY THE1234 AND JUKE MAGAZINE EL PASSO HOSTED BY SAFARI HOBBY HORSE HOSTED BY CLUB THE MAMMOTH HOXTON SQUARE BAR HOSTED BY DEADLY RHYTHM OLD BLUE LAST HOSTED BY COOL FOR CATS RIVINGTON ST. WAREHOUSE PARTY HOSTED BY THE1234 THE WORKSHOP HOSTED BY GALVANISED UNDERBELLY HOSTED BY SENSATIVE YOUTH *ENTRY WITH WRISTBAND SUBJECT TO CAPACITY AND VENUE

THE LOCAL PRESENTS

“Shhh...”

The next installment of quiet BLISS! SUNDAY 1st AUGUST 2010 at CECIL SHARP HOUSE with special quiet sets from:

NEDRY NILS FRAHM OMO - ALEX HIGHTON KLIMA - MODDI RACHAEL DADD GLISSANDO LOST LEFT - O-ARC TREECREEPER David Sheppard DJ

REGENTS PARK ROAD, CAMDEN

KYTE HEATHER WOODS BRODERICK GRAND SALVO FUZZY LIGHTS DUOTONE - TULA MARINERS CHILDREN COMMON PRAYER Plus more...

WWW.THE-LOCAL.ORG.UK

PRESENT

an ne new ind in indoor door indie er ro rock ock ck and and Ame Am A Americana eri ericana e ric ricana ric iicana c ca fest fe fes festival e tival es tival tiv val al l for fo fo Lo London ondon don do on W Wednesday ednesday 115 5tthh

Friday F riday 17 17tthh

Thursday T hursday 116 6tthh

p plus lus s special pecial guests guests

plus p lus s special pecial guests guests

DAY Y TICKETS TIC CKE CKETS ETS AND ETS AN A ND 3 DAY DAY PASSES SSES S AVAILABLE AVAILA AVAILAB AVAIL

A Kilimanjaro njaro pr presentation presentation esentation t Kilimanjaro, PCL and DHP by arrangement with Primary Talent International present

CARIBOU KILIMANJARO, EYOE, DHP & FRIENDS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH PITCH & SMITH PRESENT

* WITH FOUR

TET

FRIDAY 19 NOVEMBER

LONDON CORONET*

0844 477 2000 / TICKETWEB.CO.UK

SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER

MANCHESTER* WAREHOUSE PROJECT

0844 888 9991 / TICKETLINE.CO.UK

SUNDAY 21 NOVEMBER

October 2010 20 Norwich UEA 21 Eastbourne Winter Garden 23 Birmingham Town Hall 24 Oxford The Regal 25 Bristol Anson Rooms 31 Manchester Ritz November 2010 01 Glasgow Old Fruitmarket 02 Edinburgh Picture House 04 Newcastle Northumbria Uni 05 Leeds University 07 Nottingham Trent Uni 08 London Roundhouse 12 Cardiff Coal Exchange 14 Bath Pavilion 15 Brighton Corn Exchange

GLASGOW O2 ABC*

0844 477 2000 / SYNERGYCONCERTS.COM

01603 508 050 01323 411 555 01217 803 333 01865 241261 08713 100 000 0870 2200 260

MONDAY 22 NOVEMBER

September 04 Oxford O2 Academy2

LEEDS SOCIAL BRUDENELL

0844 477 2000

TUESDAY 23 NOVEMBER

0161 832 1 1 1 1

BRISTOL THEKLA

05 Birmingham Hare & Hounds 16 Nottingham Rescue Rooms

08444 999 990 08444 999 990 08713 100 000 0113 2454650 08713 100 000 0844 482 8008 02920 230 130 0871 230 5595 01273 709709

0871 230 0010

08 Brighton Concorde 2 0844 477 2000

12 Leeds TJ's Woodhouse Club 0113 245 5570

14 Glasgow Oran Mor 0844 847 2487

WEDNESDAY 24 NOVEMBER

BRIGHTON COALITION

October 07 London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire

01273 606 312 / SEETICKETS.COM

TUESDAY 07 DECEMBER

0844 477 2000

MINEHEAD ATP IN BETWEEN DAYS

Tickets also available at: www.kililive.com • artistticket.com pclpresents.com • alt-tickets.co.uk

New album 'Wilderness Heart' out 13 September

A Kilimanjaro, DHP, DF Concerts, Metropolis Music & Futuresound presentation in association with X-ray

myspace.com/blackmountain • blackmountainarmy.com

KILIMANJARO BY ARRANGEMENT WITH 13 ARTISTS PRESENT

08713 100 000 / ALT-TICKETS.CO.UK

0871 310 4221

Tickets also available from: KILILIVE.COM•ALT-TICKETS.CO.UK LUNATICKETS.CO.UK • GIGSANDTOURS.COM • GIGSINSCOTLAND.COM

Kilimanjaro friends present

0113 245 5570 / SEETICKETS.COM

15 Manchester Academy 3

SEETICKETS.COM / ATPFESTIVAL.COM

WEDNESDAY 08 DECEMBER

LIVERPOOL KAZIMIER

0844 477 2000 / TICKETWEB.CO.UK

KILIMANJARO BY ARRANGEMENT WITH X-RAY PRESENT

WEDNESDAY 01 DECEMBER PLUS GUESTS

THURSDAY 07 OCTOBER SEPTEMBER 20 21 22 23 24 25

NEWQUAY WALKABOUT 0871 220 0260 Bristol O2 Academy 0844 477 2000 Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms 023 9286 3911 Oxford O2 Academy2 0844 477 2000 London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire 0844 477 2000

Tickets also available from: kililive.com 0871 230 5595 usual outlets www.salmonelladub.com

LONDON HMV FORUM 0844 847 2405

TICKETS ALSO AVAILABLE AT: WWW.KILILIVE.COM • 0871 230 5595 THE ALBUM ‘BABY DARLING DOLL FACE HONEY’ FEATURING THE SINGLES ‘I KNOW WHAT I AM’ AND ‘DEATH BY DIAMONDS AND PEARLS’ OUT NOW WWW.BANDOFSKULLS.COM WWW.MYSPACE.COM/BANDOFSKULLS

LONDON 02 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE Tickets available from: www.ticketweb.co.uk 0844 477 2000 www.kililive.com 0871 230 5595 The album ‘The Winter Of Mixed Drinks’ out now.

Full UK tour onsale soon – check website for details. www.myspace.com/frightenedrabbit www.frightenedrabbit.com

SKINNY PUPPY S U N D AY 1 8 T H J U LY 2 0 1 0 LONDON THE HMV FORUM 0870 150 0044

0 8 4 4 4 7 7 5 7 7 5 / W W W. G O L D E N V O I C E . C O . U K

T I C K E T S AVA I L A B L E AT K I L I L I V E . C O M

A G O L D E N V O I C E P R E S E N TAT I O N

.92) 4%77-32 %8) (%:) 1%6/ 1366-77 8,) &09)832)7

.90= (-%0 8,) 2%8-:)7 %(6-%2 63=) 8,) )<-0)7 &-+ 7%2(= ,-7 *0= 6-8) &3=7 '039( '328630 &0%'/ &32>3 6-',%6( =392+7 8,) ,301)7 &638,)67 83(( 4%68 ',-14

%9+978 8,) 59)&) 7-78)67 &%2( 7911)6 -2 8,) '-8= ;%=2) ³8,) 86%-2´ ,%2'3'/ (%0) ;%8732 ;-0( 238,-2+ 43/)= 0%*%6+)

7)48)1&)6 %6/ *)%8 .3,2 .3;-88 %2( 46)783 &%00)88 ,367) *)%8,)67 8,) '67 ',%6-8= 463+ 63'/ 6):9) 7%1 &%/)6 +-60=1%2 )-0)2 .);)00 &%2(

3'83&)6 *-20)= 59%=) 09/) (39')8 7'6)%1-2+ *)1%0)7 1)967%908

9/ :)29) 3* 8,) =)%6 ` 032(32 :)29) 3* 8,) =)%6 -2()4)2()28 7-2') ` )78%&0-7,)( /-0&962 ,-+, 63%( ` 032(32 2; .6 8,)091-2%-6) '3 9/ ` ` -2*3$8,)091-2%-6) '3 9/ 8-'/)87 %8 ;)+388-'/)87 '31 8-'/)8;)& '3 9/ 8%0/-2+ ;,)2 8,) &%2( -7 40%=-2+# 6)+6)8*900= ;) '%2238 &) *6-)2(7

'-:-0 '-:-'

2); 7-2+0) 692 3:)6(6-:) *9'/ =398, 398 23; 32

² :-2=0 14 %44)%6-2+ 0-:) -2 032(32

*)78-:%0 .90= 2388-2+ ,-00 %687 '09& .90=

'%1()2 &%6*0= .90= 8,) *03;)6438 .90= 2); '6377 -22 %9+ *%')&33/ '31 '-:-0'-:-' '-:-0'-:-' &03+7438 '31

84

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Sports RICHARD GRIP HIPSTER TIPSTER He’s always on the hunt for a steamer

Beautiful chaos of Harlem gig proves you can trust hippies HARLEM THE LEXINGTON, LONDON

By CIAN TRAYNOR Photo by REBECCA MILLER /

are too many songs on Harlem’s new album Hippies — a front-loaded collection of blistering, three-minute garage pop — so the chance to see the best ones distilled into a set delivered with the backdrop of their notorious touring antics is too tempting an opportunity to resist. The trio don’t disappoint on either front. From the beginning, Harlem seem to have an inebriated looseness about them. They slur their words, repeat themselves within the same sentence and launch into their acerbic ditties with all the casualness of a drunken rehearsal in front of friends. Set opener ‘Someday Soon’, a bitingly infectious revenge fantasy, is coughed and spluttered out with ramshackle charm. But the sound isn’t quite right: strings have been broken and a noticeably impatient Michael Coomers declares his guitar unusable, casting it off to the side.

The kick drum is next to go and the band look like they’re in no mood to have an off-night. Yet, even as their grievances with the sound mount, the crowd hardly notices — lapping up both the cutting and the catchy, amused by (if not totally unaware of) the band’s frayed tempers.

“Everything’s broken up here,” says a bloated-looking Coomers. “But, you know, uh, thanks for comin’ out.”

Given that this is no-frills party music about girls, drugs and

There

bitterness, it doesn’t require finesse, tight musicianship or even a clean sound. Nor does the execution rely on charisma or witty banter between songs. It would be a touch naive to expect it when you’re being regaled with tunes titled ‘Gay Human Bones’ and ‘Psychedelic Tits’. Yet it sounds good all roughed up and splitting at the seams, executed with all the tension of a band who seem like they’re on the verge of splitting up.

Midway through the set, Coomers and songwriting partner Curtis O’Mara switch places, as they do at every show. While O’Mara is a tidier

drummer, Coomers makes for a better frontman — and once Coomers disappears behind the drum kit, his presence is easily missed.

“Everything’s fucked up!” repeats O’Mara, wiping his brow before kicking into a song quickly brought to a halt by bassist Jose Boyer, screaming, “We already played that song!” Boyer, for his part, looks at least somewhat aware that they’re performing a show in London for paying ticketholders.

Though the disorientated trio seem unconvinced by reassurances that it sounds perfectly fine in the crowd, by

now the onstage bickering has swelled into a worthy sideshow in itself.

‘Number One’, a song about being married in a voodoo ceremony while trapped in a cheeseburger, offers another chance to harmonise about hallucinations but the band have run out of patience, mucking to a messy but satisfying finale. Harlem are singalong simplicity at its finest and, despite tonight’s flare-ups, clearly don’t take themselves too seriously.

Regardless of the conditions, their music is conducive to having a good time — even if they can’t always join in themselves.

LIARS, FACTORY FLOOR / SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE, LONDON

Liars not on fire as support band wipes the floor with them

By BEN HEWITT tonight the night when the mighty Liars juggernaut starts grinding to a shuddering halt?

Until now, their fifth album Sisterworld annihilated all before it; a scorched-earth policy unleashed to devour and destroy the dystopian hell of Los Angeles, the band’s current stomping ground. Yet right now, they sound curiously flat; curiously quiet. For all of frontman Angus Andrew’s onstage quips about escalating oil disasters as slicks spread across the Atlantic Ocean, it’s his own band who are running on empty.

It could be that the head-caving support slot from Factory Floor was so terrifyingly nasty that anything which followed in its wake was destined to sound timid; or the die may even have been cast when Angus bounded onto the stage wearing a scuzzy t-shirt and jeans combo that,

Is

far from screaming rock’n’roll, resembles the type of garb Nick Cave probably wouldn’t even contemplate donning to plaster his bathroom.

Whatever the reason, this isn’t Liars as we know them. Even adding two extra members to their standard three-piece set up seems to have been detrimental — they might seem more polished, but the likes of ‘Here Comes All The People’ and new single ‘The Overachievers’ lose their edge despite gaining a glossier sheen.

But while the onstage posturing and larking about belies the core intensity of Sisterworld, it produces a celebratory atmosphere, buoyed by what almost constitutes a greatest hits set for Liars. There’s a shock airing of ‘The Garden Was Crowded And Outside’ from their 2001 debut They Threw Us All In A Trench And Stuck A Monument On Top, the scratchy post-punk of which still sounds gloriously patchy, while other nuggets

from the deepest recesses of their back catalogue such as ‘We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones Of Our Own’ and ‘Sailing To Byzantium’ are also rescued from obscurity. And no amount of joviality can dull the most bracing moments of Sisterworld, whether it’s the brutal-yet-heartbreaking strains of ‘Scissor’ or the terrific ‘Scarecrows On A Killer Slant’, with Angus casting himself as a modern day Travis Bickle intent on washing the scum from the streets.

It’s the encore, though, which showcases Liars at their best: stripped back down to their customary three members and tearing through renditions of ‘Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack!’ and ‘Broken Witch’ that are equal parts haunting and exhilarating. They may have been lacking intensity, but even when running on reserve, they’ve still got more in the tank than most of their contemporaries.

HI, I’m Richard Grip, your Hipster Tipster. Something a bit different this issue. I’d just flown in on Saturday after hanging with some of LA’s coolest people and Perez Hilton, and I was due to attend the Gigtwots.com Best Commercial Product Placement On A Website Awards when I thought I’d fuck it off, unpack my luggage, throw on a sarong made from a bed sheet that’s weathered a fair splattering of ladylove and hotfoot it down to Caligula with a pot-bellied pig I teefed from a gay Korean’s house following a party in Bethnal Green a month back.

The party was sick. I was loaded up on Ritalin and Benzo madness and there was plenty of lez love, which is my favourite.

In all the exuberance I decided to ceremonially slit the fucking pig’s throat and really make this party fly, just like the last days of Rome. Only all these girls started screaming and — bosh!

— in come the rozzers flooding the place quicker than a virgin entering Megan Fox’s flange. I was suddenly thrown into an ambulance and carted off to a secure mental ward where I write my copy sat in a blooddrenched sheet on a Blackberry I smuggled in up my arse.

Not having the nomination list for the Gigtwots.com Awards, it’s difficult to give you any tips this month. But what I can do in these desperate times is set up a book. I’m being forced to watch Germany vs Serbia with Chris Moyles and Comedy Dave commentating, proving how fucking nuts this place is. So I need you to make some guesses for cash!

Throughout the duration of this game, I need you to answer me how many times the zombie Arab bloke in the flip-flops will pace up and down the corridor.

Plus answer me how many times during my stay here (and thus far I’ve been sectioned for 72 hours) the Mexican in the headphones will come up to me and say, “Eeeeez mental ’e ’eeeez.” And when I say “Who is?” he’ll say, “Billy Joel.”

Finally, I want you to tell me how many skins the hermaphrodite dressed as Jenny Agutter in Logan’s Run scabs off me during my time at her Maj’s pleasure. It’s six so far, so that should give you a clue. Send your fivers to Richard Grip, Hipster Tipster, The Stool Pigeon, 21a Maury Road, London. The closest gets half the money! Sweet!

SHARP END OF THE RUT STAG & DAGGER / VARIOUS VENUES WE ALL HAD A BLOODY GOOD TIME STAGGERING AROUD EAST LONDON’S CUTTING-EDGE FESTIVAL Words by VARIOUS WRITERS Photographs

ERIKA WALL & MICKEY GIBBONS Until recently, London’s underworked creative classes, skyrocketing rents and belated publicity have combined to turn Shoreditch into an asphalt sick bucket for home county stag nights of late, while artsy types have fled north up the A10 to Dalston. By that logic, Buntingford will be the UK’s hipster resort of choice come 2050, but for now we’re still south for Shoreditch’s Stag & Dagger festival. This year saw The Stool Pigeon make its debut splash into the murky waters of the event, hooking up with photogenic blog lovelies No Pain In Pop for a steamy ménage-à-several headed up by These New Puritans. Who were perfectly shameless, we might add. But since we are, at heart, curious animals, we had spies ensconced in every corner of every venue involved in the night-long jamboree, and here we humbly present a selection of the highs and the lows.

TRAILER TRASH TRACYS, 93 FEET EAST Unless our ears deceive us London’s Trailer Trash Tracys are leaning a little harder in the direction of The xx since last time we heard them. That sounds cynical on paper, but in truth it suits the shoegazey four-piece very well. Specifically, they’ve brought an evocative sparseness to their sound, which is equal parts Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack and Cocteau Twins’ morbidly chiming pop. At times they remind us a little of Miss Havisham’s wedding party band – but with the veil still drawn on news of a debut album, we’ll have to make do holding our breath for the honeymoon just now.

GYRAOTORY SYSTEM, THE MACBETH The Macbeth is normally home to a privileged cabal of the most po-faced cunts imaginable, so it’s heartily refreshing to see a packed venue of punters grinning ear to ear there tonight. That’s as much to do with the sight of four peculiar-looking gents parping earnestly into their brass appendages as it is to do with the somewhat serio-comic nature of Gyratory System’s output. To get a rough idea of their sound, imagine Fela Kuti, Steve Reich and A Hawk And A Hacksaw coming together to create a rave outfit bolstered by treated trumpet sounds that are dazzling in their precision-orchestrated lunacy. Inspired.

DOMINIQUE YOUNG UNIQUE, HOXTON SQUARE BAR & KITCHEN Floridian rapper Dominique Young Unique will get her stage soon. So far, in London, she’s mostly performed on the floor, or near it — at an impromptu PA at the Electricity Showrooms in Shoreditch (to a bunch of bemused

These New Puritans - Erika Wall

Comanechi - MG

suits) and on the one-foot riser (an excuse for a stage) at Barden’s Boudoir in Stoke Newington.

Tonight, she’s in the bar bit of the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen, but give her any audience, at any elevation, and she’ll gun them down. She’s a natural-born killer and a crazed performer. She’s hooked up with a former Dead Kid, Jan, on gizmos, giving this a bizarre, half-Tampa/halfDalston vibe. Pure hip hop in its widest sense.

WHITE HINTERLAND, THE MACBETH Surrounded by candles, a beat-up cassette player by her bare feet, Portland’s Casey Dienel uses a ukulele, keys and loops to conjure the rich textures of her idiosyncratic chamber-pop, bringing the room to a reverential hush. Not that the venue is in any way quiet, as the classicallyeducated singer-songwriter is joined by brooding assailant Shawn Creeden, who pummels the synths like a maestro hell-bent on mutating the atmospheric magic of new album Kairos. Things simmer down for a characteristically skewed take on Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love’, before the pair disappear, leaving behind a force-field of feedback and a crowd still spellbound.

LONELADY, CAMP We came to see a grotty throwdown but noisy two-piece Comanechi, but CAMP was running insanely late.

So we saw LoneLady instead and she was fucking amazing.

Lonelady - MG

Dominique Young Unique - MG

DJ Carli - Erika Wall

86

Sports

Ganglians Alienate Hardcore, Real Estate Genuine Hot Property REAL ESTATE, GANGLIANS / CARGO, LONDON CIAN TRAYNOR taken a year for Ganglians’ Monster Head Room to find a UK release and even longer for the band to organise their first trip to Europe. Yet despite the level of anticipation in finally hearing the live incarnation of their lysergic sunshine pop, the group overlook album highlights such as ‘The Void’ and ‘100 Years’ to try out a varied set of new material instead — but it quickly becomes apparent that Ganglians can’t cut it live.

The sound is dreadful and the Sacramento stoners only make it messier, seemingly unfit to reproduce anything resembling the jarring qualities you hear on record. The glassy eyed bass player looks like he’s in his own world, disruptively banging on his instrument for no apparent reason, while Ryan Grubbs’s vocals are processed through so many effects pedals that the lyrics are unintelligible. Heads shake in frustration and the disappointment is palpable: Ganglians have been found out.

The crowd noticeably thins for New Jersey’s Real Estate, which is a shame because they’re impressively tight.

Their self-titled debut was one of the best albums of last year and hearing their shimmering surf rock reproduced so flawlessly can’t help but buoy the atmosphere. ‘Green River’ gets a faster, heavier treatment, new song ‘All Out of Tune’ borrows the groove from Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ to great effect, while ‘Younger Than Yesterday’ from their ‘Reality’ EP fits in seamlessly.

The quartet, which includes members of Ducktails and Alex Bleeker & The Freaks, know each other’s parts so instinctively that they can perfectly judge the exact window of opportunity to down a beer, kicking back in and blazing through a tidy set that leaves you wanting more.

It’s

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

SLAYER / THE FORUM, LONDON

ON AND ON NORTH OF LONDON, SLAYER REIGN OVER KENTISH TOWN WORDS BY JOHN DORAN PHOTO BY MARIA JEFFERIS

T

WO THOUSAND YEARS AGO, THE FORUM WAS A PLACE TO BE IF YOU WERE A

Christian. You were likely to be rendered to viscera, bone and jelly by tooled-up gladiators and howling lions. One second you’re blinking in the harsh Mediterranean sunshine clutching a fish symbol, the next you’re gone; a fine pink mist hanging in the air... all in the name of entertainment. Tonight’s roaring devotees may reject grand monotheist folly but they mean no harm to anyone... Well, maybe to each other in the pit during ‘Raining Blood’, but that’s a contract that people enter into willingly.

This is not just any Forum, though.

This is the Forum in Kentish Town and plenty of fanatics are here tonight to do the bidding of their masters’ voices. There will be mindless devotion to the riff, even though this music is far from brainless. Slayer are by turns, humanists, provocateurs, blood thirsty voyeurs, anarchists, dumbassed shock rockers, tattooed existentialists, militant conservatives and war-hating peaceniks. They have occasionally aligned themselves with the Horned One Downstairs but only to highlight how much they want to oppose thoughtless subservience to the Big Guy Upstairs. They choose damnation and freedom of thought over the slavery of salvation. They symbolise the glorious and powerful contradiction at the heart of all metal.

Don’t fit in? An individual who refuses to yoke up? There’s a place where you can go; it has a uniform and you can join in the chant. Shout with me now: “God hates us all!”

They are dark masters of an older aesthetic. Slayer, like all of the best bands in existence, have come to

resemble action figures of themselves. Kerry King, head tattooed with demonic go-faster stripes and massive Brian Bollandera Judge Dredd belt/battleship chain and Jeff Hanneman, the ice hockey playing Nazi biker from Hades, take guitars, while Tom Araya, part Wookie, part Swamp Thing, all hellacious surf dude dad, straps on the bass. This of course leaves sullen drum savant Dave Lombardo looking like the black beret-wearing, macchiato-sipping, Sartre-quoting intellectual that he

probably is. (That said, Liam Gallagher would look like Noam Chomsky if he took the stage with Slayer’s longest serving trio.)

“Like a disease spreading death, erasing your existence,” intones Araya rhythmically on the title track from World Painted Blood, erasing the painful memory of Slayer’s single concession to nu metal, Diabolus In Musica. This is joined quickly by ‘Hate Worldwide’ and the speed metal fury of ‘Cult’ from Christ Illusion — a punchy reminder that they are back to their unbeatable live best now that Lombardo has glumly accepted his fate as drummer in the world’s best metal band. Welcome To Slayer. You’ll Never Leave.

Of course the fight back started a few years before the return of the prodigal, as a piss and vinegar version of live favourite ‘Disciple’ from 2001’s God Hates Us All proves.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at Araya’s local church, which he attends twice a week with his family in tow, when his curious pastor asks: “So Tom, can you talk me through some of the concepts behind South Of Heaven and how this relates to your unshakable faith in God?” Of course ‘Hell Awaits’ and ‘Raining Blood’ exist to momentarily fire up the atavistic, stone age fears we have of demons, in a gloriously visceral moment of spiritually safe pantomime. Experiencing ‘Angel Of Death’ live is like the anti-rapture. As the double bass kick tattoo tears apart the air, your body could just about melt, seep through the carpets, through the building’s foundations and into the substrata. On and on south of Kentish Town. Hail Slayer.

Long may their (mainly) bloodless blood sport continue.

Chimes & Bells ring truest in a Danish city that’s hardly a hot spot SPOT FESTIVAL / VARIOUS VENUES, AARHUS, DENMARK

By HUW NESBITT had said that A a r h u s ( D e n m a r k ’s second city, port town and host to Spot festival) was fucking bland, and they were dead on. Although the festival itself was pretty good, the city is so boring that at some point in its recent history its town planners decided to import bits of Danish heritage architecture and put it all in the centre, calling it something imaginative like, ‘The Old Town’. The rest of it looks like Reading shopping centre married Southampton’s docks and couldn’t afford the divorce.

Apparently it’s also a student town, too. This makes no sense whatsoever as there were no drugs and you needed an IMF fund to go boozing. Whatever, the music made up for it and, as a showcase festival, Spot pisses on the likes of the Camden Crawl from a great height, Copenhagen’s Eim Ick being the first example on Friday afternoon.

According to the guidebook, the skinny teen with the laptop on stage is also in another band, and that Eim Ick is just a side project.

If true, then a career’s advisor needs to have strong words. His psychedelic techno creates squalls of sound and emotion in the venue; pockets of digital rhythm pulsing, meandering off over cliff-faced melodies. It’s a blithe, pastoral take on the genre, and fresher than any.

Later the following day, Iceland’s FM Belfast turned up for a turn, and if you didn’t get there early or have a relative in Danish politics (the festival is heavily subsidised), then you were out on the street.

Normally electro-pop is about as appealing as sticking your hand in a blender, but FM Belfast are brassy, catchy and you’d have to be Pol Pot not to like their cover of ‘Killing In The Name Of’.

Biggest victory for the Danes was probably Chimes & Bells on Saturday, who played like Mogwai on a spectrum of uppers fucking Princes Diana circa-1989. If this lot aren’t getting ‘liked’ on Facebook in the next six months, then look out for the Whore of Babylon and her multi-headed reptile.

Other minor gripes included: the much hyped Efterklang’s misery rock (soporific); the security at Band Ane’s set (in which she allegedly butchered Kate Moss and Kraftwerk) for not letting anyone in, and missing the neon-Scott Walker pop of Kim LAS on Friday, because he was on too early and everyone else was drunk. Apart from that, top marks.

People

Sports

Sakura

Summer 2010 The Stool Pigeon

LIVERPOOL CLAP THEIR HANDS SAY...

HAIR

THE PHENOMENAL HANDCLAP BAND THE MASQUE, LIVERPOOL /

Whadayaknow? It’s another band from that New York borough (partly).

Blending neo-baggy grooves with funk-rock guitars and superfly seventies keyboard sounds, this seven-strong Brooklyn/Manhattan collective have just broken into the 6 Music playlist with new single ‘Baby’.

The guitarist on the left has a tiedyed shirt and the disposition and

hair (facial and cranial) of Justin Lee Collins.

He and a similarly enthusiastic and hirsute guitarist on the right of the stage act like groovy bookends to the two girls and guy occupying centre stage, on keyboards, vocals and percussion, who are all black hair and sulky pouts.

It’s an odd juxtaposition. The

central three probably thought they were joining an electro band but went to the wrong rehearsal room and got sucked in by the Handclap hive-mind.

Nevertheless, they make a lush noise together, with several tunes featuring blissed-out choral vibes straight out of Hair (the musical).

The hippie guitarist is the best singer in the band by a moonlight mile, wrapping his tonsils lovingly around some Bill Withers chord changes.

I sometimes play this game — guessing the profession each band member would choose if they had to give up music. The girl on the right has all the humour of a wannabee chemistry teacher. The rhythm section are already probably secret web designers. Furry guitar man on the other hand, would give out free hugs on Times Square for the rest of his days.

In the set closer, an ‘Age of Aquarius’-style epic, it seems the stage is about to levitate to the throbbing, anthemic juggernaut of sound. They even throw in some handclaps! Not a phenomenal amount — just enough to justify the dodgy name. Spoonboy

Washed Out postpones life of leisure to make sure London feels it all around

K K EV

87

HARAS

JOURNALIST

HOME COUNTIES

Issue Twenty Seven SUMMER,2010

TYPESETTER M.GIBBONS.

A performance by...

ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI / AT

THE

FREEBUTT,

BRIGHTON

On Thursday June 10, 2010

This SUPERGROUP of mercenary outsiders visited the aforementioned venue to play songs from their new long-player Before Today.

UNRULY MURDEROUS AND

A Review of the Proceedings

WASHED OUT / CARGO, LONDON

By STALEBREAD CHARLIE Photographs MEGAN SHARP verything kind of happened in reverse for Washed Out, aka Ernest Greene. His songs spread like wildfire before he’d ever thought about playing them live. Tonight, he turned up with indie rockers Small Black as his backing band and put everyone in a spin. You’ll see it.

E

If you woke up tomorrow and you were Ariel Pink, would you tell anyone? The while-you-slumber-brain-swap scenario’s a good acid test, I think, when the time comes to separate your gilded heroes from your tarnished anti-heroes, your valiant from your victims. Ariel’s no villain, but the tale everyone’s telling - that now, with 4AD’s money and studio time, shy, bedroom-bound Ariel’s heroically overcoming his own inherent oddness, as if it were somehow beatable — is pure bullshit. Ariel Pink’s still a lunatic, and if I woke up in his head tomorrow I’d kill and kill and kill until they believed me enough to at least try to return me to the safety of my own skull.

WHICH IS NOT TO SAY I DON’T ADMIRE THE MAN’S POP SLIME AND PINING RADIO SMEARS Onstage at the Freebutt tonight, Ariel’s not hugely different to the character we trailed for an hour beforehand: the forlorn, flayed-mink-man who’d wandered Brighton head bowed, cackling, occasionally, in custom made platform heels and sequined jacket. He ate in an organic restaurant in The Lanes, but was too sickly to finish his Moroccan chicken and couscous. When he’d gone, I took a piece of the bread he left. It tasted like a vuvuzela sounds.

IT’S OK, THERE WERE NO ‘PAPS’ Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, that famous troupe, no longer exist solely in the mind of their frontman. Ariel’s new band are honed and tight, and he celebrates this by getting them to play a song about an

unruly man who keeps jizzing over his dozing girlfriend. ‘Jules Lost His Jewels’ sounds brilliant, prime-time cocksure, no longer lost underwater or at the outer edges of our radio galaxy. At this point things feel so poised I can’t help but grin at the cowbell and the power chords that sound played by bare-chested lothario punks with hair lacquer and earrings. ...and this cleaning up isn’t some ‘hip to be square’ thing. The Weirdo Ariel Pink hasn’t miraculously become a better man in order to prolong his status as a boundaryskirting pop curio. It’s a shot at something else, not contrived enough to be arch or natural enough to be heroic. It’s a collision of artifice and naked ambition that rids the lonely bedroom muck from loyal haunts like ‘Among Dreams’ and ‘For Kate I Wait’.

I SUPPOSE IT’S CARDS ON THE TABLE TIME As the bruises fade from these compositions, they’re no longer beneath the bedroom noise blanket of being ‘an Ariel Pink song’. A cover of Rockin’ Ramrods’ ‘Bright Lit Blue Skies’ is fresh-faced and deliriously upbeat, ‘Fright Night’ somewhere between power ballad and yuppy murder synthpop. The cocked hair metal guitars of ‘Butt House Blondies’ feel ludicrously overblown in a way that wouldn’t have been possible before. By removing the barriers that kept him from the canon, Ariel moves close enough to embrace classic radio rock before plunging a knife into its back.

GOOD MURDERING, ARIEL

Sports

88

The Stool Pigeon Summer 2010

Inside 1

2

3

5

4

8

9

10

11

12

16

13

14

Truth about

In a spin with

SLAYER

LIARS

WASHED OUT

Crossword

6

7

Killing it

15

ACROSS

DOWN

1 5 6 7 9 10 11 13 16 17 18

1 2 3 4 8 9 11 12 14 15

Black Francis’s new X-rated album (13) Quietly spoken REM album (6) Bat For Lashes single (6) If I ______ You - Townes Van Zandt (6) Manic Street Preachers sent them away on recent album (6) Sunshine pop band who opened Monterey in 1967 (11) There’s one of Industry in Preston (6) Beth Ditto’s band is much talked about (6) Freeman and Armstrong’s post Operation Ivy band (6) It’ll be the death of Lou Reed (6) The Fireman (4, 9)

Gary, synth-pop pioneer (6) Votel and Gough’s was Twisted (5) Q-Tip’s was called Quest (5) Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince (5) Captain Beefheart has several to be licked off, baby (5) Tony Olabode’s is Blak (5) Arab _____, Moffat and Middleton (5) Love Gods featuring REM members and Warren Zevon (5) Released new album Transference this year (5) _____ Gir, Country Roadshow leader (5)

XXVI Solutions: Across 1 Mermaid Parade, 7 Steve, 8 Nile, 9 Boac, 10 Drums, 11 Late, 12 Marr, 13 Evolution, 19 Lee, 20 Stove, 21 Badge, 22 Letter, 23 Myself Down 1 Magnolia, 2 Roulette, 3 Interpol, 4 Pavement, 5 Autobahn, 6 Electric, 14 Velvet, 15 Utero, 16 Organs, 17 Atthe, 18 Legal.

17

Crossword No.XXVII compiled by Ed Mugford 18

The Stool Pigeon

NEXT ISSUE OUT IN SEPTEMBER

is a Junko Partners Publishing production General enquires to: info@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Editorial: editor@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Art Dept: artdept@thestoolpigeon.co.uk Registered as a newspaper with the patent office www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk www.myspace.com/thestoolpigeon

The Stool Pigeon Fifth Anniversary Books

The collected writings of our longest-serving columnist, Son of Dave.

The best Stool Pigeon stories from the first five years.

78 pages, £4.99

166 pages, £7.99

Buy both volumes for £10 from thestoolpigeon.co.uk Also available from Amazon and selected independent record stores across the UK, including Rough Trade and Sister Ray (London), Rounder (Brighton), Jumbo (Leeds), Swordfish (Birmingham), Rise (Bristol) and Diverse (Newport).