Short Sharp and too the point

I am a lover of the vebose and over long music review but I am also a fan of the short one.

This is a great little site that provides:

album reviews in 75 words or less
(but words with 2 letters or fewer do not count)

http://www.75orless.com/

Go have a look.

Mazen Kerbaj and The Israeli Air Force

MAZEN KERBAJ
A minimalistic improvisation by Lebanese trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj 'duetting' with the Israeli Air Force as it bombards Mazen's home city of Beirut. Recorded by Kerbaj on the balcony of his flat in Beirut on the night of 15/16 July 2006.

Mazen Kerbj is the lynchpin of the nasant Lebanonese impro scene. This piece of sound art was recorded from the balcony of his flat in Beirut. This duet is between Kerbj extreme trumpet playing and the sound of the Israeli Air Force as it bombards his home city on the night of 15/16th July 2006.

Kerbj use of the trumpet stretches the sound palate of the instrument. This is not playing in the sense of melody or rhythm. The trumpet is used as a source of sounds without recourse to traditional methods. Scraps, clunks, blown air, pops and whacks are the order of the night. The timbres that the trumpet produces sound as if they have been passed through a series of electronic filters but Kerbaj is infamous for the range of sounds he can draw from his instrument. On Rouba3i his playing covers similar non treated realms. The friction of the metal itself, the possibilities of tonal and texture nature of the sounds are explored.

For all the sound mining and avant garde nature of the Kerbj’s performance it’s the backing track that catches your attention. The sound of aircraft, exploding bombs (some distant, some terrorifly close), post dentionaon sirens, dog barks, car alarms an eerie silences. It’s a six minute trip into the hellish heart of a war zone. The sound of violence. Ultra Red’s attempts to explore acoustic space as enunciative of social relations ripped open by warfare. The Fire This Time unfolding in a live environment.

After listening to the track on a loop for over an hour I found sleep difficult to achieve but that must be nothing compared to the nightmare of those living in Beirut. I do not have the power or the language skills to describe the power of this piece. Download it and let the impact flow through you.

Starry Night (excerpt)

Starry Night (excerpt)

Kerbaj.com

Mazenkerblog

Nick Heywood - Kite 7"

Nick Heyward – Kite (Epic 1993)

So here’s the first of my reviews of records that I found abandoned in charity shops, dime stores or car boot sales. Its something I spend to much time doing but its great fun.


I wasn’t buying this blind or rather deaf. I owed this snapshot of perfect pop on cassette single when it first came out. Somewhere along the line it went missing and when I unearthed it in a pile of 7inch singles it brought a smile to my face.

The song is constructed around a gloriously infectious acoustic hook. This is a cooling summer breeze of hidden brass and dolorous strings. Nick Heyward always had the knack of penning watertight tunes and on this track he was on top form. Nick Heyward’s story is an interesting one. He split his band Haircut 100 at the peak of their popularity. This was the usual lead singer bigger than the band ego fit. No Nick wanted to escape the clean cut image and commercial straight jacket that success had unwittingly fostered. After some initial success with a more introspective sound Heyward disappeared into the musical hinterland. Kite was a surprise return to the charts as his most successful record in America. It stood out like a shining diamond amongst the grudge sludge in the US in 1993. This was cystal clear, sweet and charming the polar opposite of the dark heavy macho posturing of much of grunge scene. This was lemonade to their methadone, poptastic Beatles to their stained Black Sabbath.

After a single play on a Saturday afternoon I was still humming it on the following Wednesday evening. Now that what I call a memorable melody. Three minutes and five seconds of top notch pop.



To watch the video go here

Yellow Swans

Yellow Swans – Drift

Oakland based Yellow Swans have garnered a reputation for their extreme electronic assaults. Their music viewed as a bitter fusion of spastic drum machine rhythms, lashing spilt wire firestorms and shuddering feral pulses. This study in the quieter aspects of the noise genre comes as something of a surprise.

The Drift is spilt into three long tracks that swell and recede like a computer virus eating away at an aging hard drive. The sound stripped of drums and percussion is a static wave. Swirls of reverb drenched interference, sound modulation and high pitched electronic whine. The extreme nature of the treatment given to the sounds makes it impossible to pinpoint their source. Swells of arching desolated distortion crash against brief clipped bassnotes, strange undulations melt into granular question marks.

Yellow Swans show remarkable skill for creating space and progression out of shards of electronic detritus. Each movement evolves and decomposes. A dense matted web of sound will build and thicken before shattering into blissful hiss and a slow burning buzz and drone. The fleeting moments of aural overload are buttressed by long periods of drifting beautiful noise. Drift’s swarming electronics, lonely disintegrations flicking sonic spittle and open end vista are a liberation. I have been lost in this for days, dive in and disappear.

Tony Heywood (c) 2006

Million Pound Donut

They had been rumours circulating in publishing circles that the book publisher
Bloomsbury’s had forked out a cool million pounds for a pop stars autobiographical
musings. Even in this age of huge lottery wins and million pound game show prizes in
struck me as a huge amount to pay. I amidatley started to think who’s story would be
worth that kind of outlay. It would have to be someone world famous. The story would have to be laced with scandal and controversy. I could only think of Michael Jackson.
Surely the inside story of his life might command that kind of outlay. He could do with the money as well if rumours are too believed. I thought that was sorted then but no it’s not him. I then started to think of a list of people who might bring some sort of return on that kind of investment. If not Michael Jackson then maybe, Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, no none of them. Morrissey has been talking about writing his in recent interviews but that would be stupid money to pay for his. Elvis Costello could undoubtly pen a decent one again though he is hardly worth that kind of money. Chris Martin’s (heaven forbid) might demand that kind of cash as it mixes music and ‘A’ list Hollywood. God, it would be as dull as spending a bank holiday in Homebase choosing paint with a group of Nuns. Yet it is none of these. It is and I shit you not, Gary Barlow. Who? Gary Barlow, the rotund, boring song smith from Take That. A million pounds for his autobiography? Bloomsbury’s must be suffering from the kind of lost critical judgement that effected Creation post Oasis. Flushed with the Harry Potter millions they seem to have lost any sense of perspective. Alan McGee’s taste disappeared in a cocaine haze fulled by the cash pouring into Creations accounts. Creation had signed the Jesus and Mary Chain, House of Love, My Bloody Valentine and Primal Scream when all where at the top of their game. Post Oasis is was Heavy Stereo for Christ sake. How on earth do Bloomsbury’s think they are going to recoup their million pound payment?

Rock biographies, like those of famous sports personalities tend to be fairly liner and blander than a low fat ready meal. Few artists really want to wash their dirty linen in public. They white wash, twist the truth and grandstand. Shallow exercises in vain glorious self promotion and that’s the interesting ones. With the stupid exception of the puke stained and outrageous Dirt by motley Crue few are worth reading. They tend to be a greater waste of paper than even bloody sudoki. It’s the unofficial biographies that really dig the dirt. The Albert Goldman exposes of Elvis being the both the greatest and most unsavory of the lot.

Autobiographies of bands or artist are interesting enough to begin with. The details of the formation of a band, the first time they knew they could write songs, the heady rush of fame. Unfortunately they then play out with the regularity of an English penalty shoot out. You don’t need to read as you know what happens next. Album, tour, album, tour,
breakdown, divorce, album, tour, album repeat till end of book.

I can’t see that Gary Barlow’s will be even that interesting. The band where never a
bunch of school mates battling against the odds to succeed, you are not going to be
routing for them to escape from their dead end lives. I am certainly not holding my
breath regarding his song writing secrets. Those lighting flashes of inspiration that fired the likes John Lennon or Marvin Gaye will be entirely absent. Close your eyes and try and sing a Take That song from memory. See what I mean.

Barlow from what I can remember is a child of showbiz and even won some awful Saturday morning kids TV compertion to pen a Christmas song. That’s how unrock and roll he is. Can you imagine Noel Gallagher or for that matter Shayne Ward bothering with that aged eleven. They would have been out shop lifting or getting drunk on cheap cider.

When Barlow’s career began to stall, which was after his second solo single, he resorted to a kind of Take That kiss and tell. He admitted to taking ecstasy coke and sleeping with groupies. Shit, shock, horror really Gary. You where in the biggest boy band of your generation and that’s all you indulged in. The band on the bottom of the bill at The Bull and Gate behave worse than that. Odd that those revelations appeared in the sun just in time for the release of your second LP wasn’t it. To make it an even mildly diverting read its going to have to contain levels of debauchery that would make Caligula blush.

I guess he will surprise us by saying that Robbie Williams has a few issues! That Robbie just needs to be loved and that Gary holds no grudges. For someone who seems so driven by the idea of music as business as opposed to art I can’t buy that. The bloke used to buy the top forty to listen to the songs in an attempt to mathically dissect what made them work, why they had become hits, what was the magic formula. He doesn’t have the music in his soul but in his wallet and in his brain. I am sure he sits at home sticking pins in one of those freaky Robbie Take That dolls. I don’t know anything about the book trade but surely Bloomsbury’s money would have been better spent giving 100 new authors a £10,000 development cheques.

Good luck then Bloomsbury you are going to need it. Next time you want to snap up an
autobiography of a pop star then trying thinking of someone who has had a hit record this century. I am sure there are interesting stories out there. Why they didn’t think of Pete Docherty is beyond me.

Tony Heywood (c) 2006

Love Music Hate Racism

Love Music Hate Racism is the snappily titled campaign that is aiming to use music as a tool to combat racism and the rise of the BNP and far right in the UK. In these increasingly fraught and heavy days I am continually astonished by the lack of any kind of political discourse in the world of music. The NME in the late 70’s and early 80’s was aflame with political passion. Every band and artist featured in its pages seemed to stand in opposition to the right wing agenda of the time. Manifestos seemed more common than bass players. Compare that to the present day where being famous and rich enough to develop a serious drug habit seems to be the limit of most bands ambition.

The talk of the current crop of big name ‘indie’ bands picking up the baton from the post punk artists always seems to neglect one fact. The artists in the first wave of post punk were mixing complex cultural criticism, Marxism and melody. The love song was deconstructed, the economic system questioned, the fabric of consumerism torn to shreds. Now we get songs about pulling at a party, taking drugs, how much we hate our old band mates…. all fairly shallow and self-centred. Where are all the protest songs? Where are those standing up for the disenfranchised?

Red Wedge seemed to give this sort of thing a bad name. Mixing pop and politics seemed to be regarded as the realm of the arcane and old. Bless Billy Bragg for still composing impassioned songs about the issues of the age. I worried that the Bard of Barking was a throw back to a bygone era. Just a single man and his cheap guitar battering back the forces of fascism. Thank heavens he kept the faith.

See Billy Bragg has always been a huge fan of soul music and has learnt from it’s power. Music can unite, heal, and win hearts and minds. It is a powerful tool for progress and I am glad that people seem to have remembered that at last. Love Music Hate Racism is staging a number of gigs in the coming week to spread the anti-racism message before the local elections.

Stars of the Grime scene, Lethal Bizzle, Roll Deep and DJ Statik along with the likes of Mylo, David Gray, Pete Doherty and Carl Barat are lending their support to the cause. In a week that has seen yet another racially motivated murder, this one in Sheerness in Kent, then the gigs can’t come soon enough. I can only hope that this flowering of political consciousness will result in a volatile mix of music and politics coming back into vogue. From the moment Richie Edwards disappeared any kind of wider debate about culture or politics begin to disappear from music. Even leftfield music. The Manics began an all too understandable retreat into self doubt. Post-Riche the politics were still there but they became less biting and more reflective.

You can fully understand why the Manics pulled back, but the retreat of Primal Scream seems less understandable. Bobby Gillespie has always talked a good fight and they have been very supportive of left wing issues. Yet somehow Gillespie’s politics have always felt more like a gesture than a real commitment. I can’t see it any other way after they renamed the track previously titled Bomb the Pentagon. If the sentiments of the track were true before 9/11 then surely they were true after it. If they hated American Imperialism before 9/11 and they still hate it now then why suddenly keep quiet? Or was it just teenage rebellion dressed up as politics? When the reality hit home the band had a change of heart? Maybe or maybe they just shat their clichéd leather kecks thinking it could end their career. Then they would have to stop taking drugs, hanging out with supermodels or going to Elton John’s wedding. Nothing more than the musical equivalent of wearing a Che Guevara t-shirts down the student union bar.

But not everyone bottles it. The hostile reactions that have followed acts as diverse as the Dixie Chicks, Steve Earle and Bruce Springsteen in The States are testament to that. Some artists seem to be willing to risk their livelihoods in the name of an ideal. To stand up and be counted whatever the cost. Who would have dreamed that the Dixie Chicks are more rock n roll than Primal Scream?

So if you live near one the gigs in the coming weeks then get down there and show your support. On www.lovemusichateracism.com there is a wealth of information about helping out, staging your own gig, etc…Agitate, educate, organise…….

The Rebirth of the Single ?

Gnarls Barkley's ‘Crazy’ topped the single charts on the strength of download only sales. The physical formats of the single only hit the shelves once the track has hit the top spot. It has been argued in some quarters that this signals the end of the single. This is plainly idiot speak. The reality is surely the other way round; this is the start of a new golden era for the single.
The growing success of downloads makes access to the charts much easier for unsigned bands. Who needs a record company to package and market your product when you can do it all yourself. It strips away the costs of mastering and pressing up CD's, the hassle of finding a distributor.
The means of production are now firmly in the hands of those making the music. It’s the punk ideal in reality. For all its DIY rhetoric the two standard bearers of punk, The Sex Pistols and The Clash both signed to major labels. They were co-opted into the machine and became marketed rebellion. Now bands can really control the whole process. Karl Marx inside Windows XP. Bands subverting the capitalist system, using technological progress to seize control.
We could be harking back to a period of time pre-Beatles when the single was king. The art of the perfect single reborn; no longer relegated to a subservient role of an advert to promote the money spinning LP. Now the single can become a beautifully executed piece of work in its own right again. The new DIY ascetic could shatter the stifling Dad Rock/Cheesy Pop orthodoxy that currently seems to dominate both the charts and mainstream media. Six Music with its tag line of 'Closer to the music that matters.' Is a prime example of why Gnarls Barkley's success is so welcome.
The 'that matters' bit that pisses me off. Matters to whom? The sanctified tastemakers of 6 Music? Their listeners? It confers certain smugness, an elitist musical snobbery that’s sad. Oh get your head out of your arse please. We’re not still in school are we? Where the ‘cool’ kids listen to music that the chavs don't get. Now that attitude can be excused in the heady flush of youth. When you are still groping around in the dark for your sense of identity, music can be a powerful tool to define your self-image. Surely that mentality, like drinking snake bite and religious buying of the NME its something you grow out of.
Don’t get me wrong, I do listen to 6 Music and even enjoy it sometimes. It’s a guilty pleasure though and leaves the same sort of awkward feeling you get from laughing at fat people or seeing someone fall over in the street. Why? Well because it peddles soft focus indie nostalgia. I love the Pixies and hearing them blare out of the radio as I have my morning coffee can be a thrill but the reality is that this is 2006 and maybe something new wouldn’t go a miss.
The daytime play list at 6 Music conforms to a very straight and uniform idea of kind of music ‘matters’. This is just a random section copied and pasted from Vic McGlynn’s daytime show last week:

Richard Ashcroft - Music Is Power (14:44)
The Auteurs - Lenny Valentino (14:48)
Ron Sexsmith - Former Glory (14:52)
Belle & Sebastian - The Blues Are Still Blue (14:59)
Jonathan Richman / Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (Once) (15:05)
Coldcut / Roots Manuva - True Skool (15:09)
The Icicle Works - Evangeline. (15:12)
The Cure - Catch (15:17)
The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist (15:33)
Jose Gonzalez - Crosses (15:37)
The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health (15:42)
Franz Ferdinand - The Fallen (15:48)
The Manic Street Preachers - Slash And Burn (15:50)


In over an hours worth of music only the harsh blue electronics of Knife and the cut and copy magpie instincts of Coldcut deviate from what is basically a guitar led, indie circa 80-90 view of music. There is nothing there to jolt or inspire, nothing to incite or annoy. It plays safer than Chelsea with a 1-0 lead.
Those selections imply that for music to ‘matter’ it needs to have guitars, a male vocalist and ‘mean it man’. Guitars = depth. Oh really.
So The Cure's ‘Catch’ has a deeper message than Eminem’s ‘Mosh’? Richard Ashcroft's hollow blustering music has more worth than American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson? I don’t hear it. It’s such a reductive and luddite way to program a music station. I’ve always been amazed by old school Goth’s disdain of heavy metal. Goth is just metal with pretensions as art. Christ, it’s the same music, Goth is metal for posh kids in the A stream. All you need to do is Swap metal themes of goblins, girls and denim for Goethe, Dracula and eyeliner. The problem is these kids have grown up to run radio stations, work in A&R and edit the monthly music magazines. It's a shame then that their attitude to music hasn’t evolved beyond the school gates.
The preaching to the converted allows everyone to coast, it stifles progress. The mythical £50 man can spend his dosh on re-issues of CD’s that he already owns and on new artists that sit comfortable within the boundaries of what he already knows and likes. Franz Ferdinand are simply a Showaddywaddy or Shakin Steven’s for the post punk generation. They are peddling a facsimile of the past as some kind of modernism. For pink zoot suits and brothel creepers read stripy t-shirts and skinny fit jackets. The same cocktail just mixed in new way.
The new Massive Attack collection is a tragic example of believing that guitars bestow gravitas. They once produced music full of soul, blended reggae with hip-hop and a blistering sense of time and place. As the core of the group fragmented and 3D gained creative control the guitars arrived and magic departed along with the beats. They became a below average guitar band when they had once been forging a whole new future for British music.
With the rise of Myspace and digital downloads the revolution could be just the beginning. The smug elitist tastemakers in radio stations, A&R departments and those glossy monthly magazines should wake up. This really could be the start of something.

Decline of Record Shops in The UK

I was saddened to see that Replay Records in Bath has finally succumbed to the inevitable and is set to close its door's for the last time. It will leave Bath without a decent independent record shop. Reply just seems to be the latest in a long line of indie record shops that are disappearing up and down the country faster than Posh's career options. I will miss Reply for a myriad of reasons. I swear when the shop staff left of a night the 12"vinyl got down and dirty with the hip-hop imports. The racks of vinyl seemed to create new sub-genres of dance music all the time. Cross breeding and birthing, glitchhouse, dark-core, slow core, dark hard step gabba….

Reply was more than a record shop. It was an informal space for all things musical in the local area. All the available space in the shop seemed to be splattered in Day-Glo posters, flyers, hand stapled fanzines, appeals for bass players into 'Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul & Mary' and in recent years a set of DJ decks for sale.

The staff where always willing to pop upstairs and then like a cross between Harry Potter and Shaggy from Scooby Do produce a copy of the new LP from Warp or Matador a week in advance of its official release. That's not the type of service you receive in the hollow acres of Fopp where emphasis is on price slashing and shifting units. Fopp strike me as an soundclash of Tesco and Starbucks. A ruthless business dressed up in bondage trousers and a Coldplay t-shirt.

For all my wistful nostalgia about Reply's decline I am as complicit in it's downfall as hubris has been in Tony Blair's. Why? Well, I am in love with the downloaded MP3 and FLAC file. The ease in which you can gain access to the music you have just heard or read about, the portability of the tracks, the ease of the whole process. When you need to buy a Wedding Present b-side from 1988 at 10.00pm for that mix cd you’re compiling for your mate, not a problem. Log on, punch in the details, sit back and in a matter of seconds it's all done.

Gaining access to tracks is never going to be an issue in the age of iTunes and Napster. The information about gigs, up and coming bands, DJ sets has been streamlined and delivered into your inbox via mailing lists. Myspace is a wonderful tool for searching out new bands. I just wish you could build in some kind of influence filter. For god’s sake, if you can't play in time at least be honest in your stumbling and shambolic performance. If you sound like you have just met please don't claim to sound like Beatles.

The one thing I will really miss about Reply is the way that the staff were so well informed and loved their job. They could guide you towards something they knew you'd love because they remembered what you bought and were able to recommend stuff to you. It something I thought I'd lost forever until someone pointed towards www.pandora.com.

Pandora is an online radio station with a clever twist. You control the play list. The simple interface prompts you to enter an artist or song you like and then attempts to build up a roster of other tracks it thinks you will admire. I must admit before I tried the site out I was stuck by the kind of weary cynicism that must flow through Nancy Dell'Olio on a Sunday morning. Surely it's just a thinly disguised marketing tool. That bit on Amazon where they suggest CD you might like with if not knobs then buttons on.
Niche marketing dressed up as innovation.

So it was with a sense of detachment that I typed my first entry into Pandora. I was tempted to play the indie snob and type in some obscure 80's band that only ever issue one 7" single on Sarah Records. I decided this was pointless so went for a big fish and started with REM.

Impressed? Me. Pandora starts by selecting a track by the artist you entered. Amazingly it didn't pull up Everyone Hurts or heaven forbid Shinny Happy People, no the REM track it started with was Beat A Drum (Dalkey Demo). It's the b-side of Imitation of Life. (I had to look it up, I am not that sad). REM were followed by some Morrissey and Golden Smog.

Okay a fair reflection of an REM fans taste but not rocket science and it hasn't help me find any new music. All straight lines, no interesting detours. Then Pandora pulled up two bands I've never heard of Honey Dogs and Cardinal Trait both jangled and emoted in way that would win the hearts of those in thrall of Mr Stipe and co.

Time then I thought for something a little more extreme. I tried Big Black, uber producer Steve Albini’s first hardcore band. After the pluming Big Black track ‘Jordan, Minnesota’ Pandora treated us to some Fugazi, Bloodstains and Germs. All suitably post punk trashy and dense. It seemed as if Pandora really worked, acting as a well-informed conduit for music knowledge. I then noticed the guide us tab on the screen.

The 'Guide Us' function allows you to add in a variety of other bands or tracks to your selection in an attempt to really gauge your musical taste. Lovely, the chance to recreate the John Peel shows from the mid 1980's. I quickly added in The Swans, The Fall, The Smiths, Lee Perry, New Order and The Wedding Present. A pretty fair selection of Peel's favourites from the time I thought.

Now Pandora did seem to struggle, it was fine with Lee Perry and played a great selection of some dub, no issue with The Fall or even The Wedding Present. It pulled Hefner, Fairweather, Pavement, British Sea Power and Chikinki from its record box (well database) but it then started to go rather giddy. It seemed to be New Order and A Certain Ratio that confused it. New Orders disco melancholy was followed by Wang Chung, Steven 'Tin Tin' Duffy and Ric Ocasek. It had the makings of a soundtrack to some brat pack film starting Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. A Certain Ratio detoured down to Southend sea front for an 80's soul weekender. All funk-lite in the form of The Tubes and Modern English, it was hellish. I am sure Satan plays slap bass. I then discovered that you can only fast forward through so many tracks an hour due to licensing restrictions. The trick was to add in another band so I chucked The Field Mice into the mix. This seemed to bring things back onto an even Peel (sorry I couldn't resist that.)

So I went looking for something to replace the bespoke service I used to receive in Reply and found the cyber ghost of John Peel. Now if only it would play tracks at the wrong speed and talk with compassion and humour about Liverpool FC and then we may really be onto something.

The radio station I 'created' is here:
http://www.pandora.com/?sc=sh19315028

Tony Heywood (C)2006

(In order to unlock Pandora you will need an American zip code. These are not difficult to find on goggle.)

Belong - October Music

Belong - October Music

My father once had a job whacking rust off the inside of a ship’s hull with a large metal hammer. The rust matted his hair, stuck to his skin and coated his tongue. Each swing of the hammer was followed by huge dank reverberations and further showers of rust. The sound was amplified in the cavernous darkness of the ship’s depths. It seemed to feed on itself. Each return was heavier and more saturated. The ungodly sound freaked him out so much that he didn’t go back after lunch. It haunted his nightmares for weeks. If I played him October Music I am sure it would unearth the memories of that morning and return him to his misspent youth in London.

The soundtrack of my father’s nightmare is bliss to me. October Music is full of static despair, vapour trails of twilight, ghosts of some forgotten form of sleep. This is music as fractured drift; melting icecaps, frost bitten gold. The music is a slow revel, creeping like ivy over an abandoned house. Snatches of iridescent harmony collide with disintegrating chords. The music swirls, repeats and dissolves in a luminous blanket of fuzz and distortion. Imagine William Basinski remixed by My Bloody Valentine or Pluramon scored by Morton Feldman.

New Orleans duo Turk Dietrich and Michael Jones recorded October Music in Dietrich's bedroom studio. The lush textures and sly chromatic shifts belie such humble origins. Sounds are processed and warped, morphed into new tones and timbres. The tracks swim in gentle waves of noise. This is Post Rock atom splitting. The tried and tiresome tension and release, anti-climax and crescendo of much of the genre has been fractured and dispersed here. Melodies are disrupted, classical progressions rupture and split open, spilling out shards of retracted noise.

Dividing the LP into tracks seems perverse, as it should be heard as a single movement. There is drama here but it’s found in the Pinter like pauses, the sudden volume losses, the U-turns and disintegration.

The gentle sound of organ washes ushers in the Never Lost Never Really, the organ tones hang suspended before being slowly and beautifully engulfed in swarms of guitar. The processed signals die away before resurfacing in a series of complex reverberations. It’s the sound of Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room rewired through a guitar and a series of broken effects pedals.

The beauty of the title track resides in the repeating of a buried and blurred motif that could be a guitar, a string section or the sigh of an angel. The track uncoils from skeletal electric hum, through the echoing of single notes to silence and back again. It’s the sounds of the slow insatiable decay of metal by time. Rust never sleeps, time never ceases, corrosion is endemic.

October Music unfurls like a winter morning, the details hidden beneath fog. The tiny sonic details appear only on closer listening. When you lose yourself inside it you can hear the sine waves that shimmer through All Equal Now, the strung out bass notes that sound like a burnt out star on I’m Too Sleepy, Shall We Swim. The epic The Door Opens Another Way is like heartbreak dropped into a Dichroic prism. Refracted melancholy and white noise heaven.

It is a while since I have been so bewitched by a piece of music. This cleanses the soul. Allow yourself to bathe in its liberating phosphorescent light. Disappear for forty minutes inside Belong’s shattered world. This is perfect.

Tony Heywood (C) March 2006

Chart Hype - The Modern Way!

Crushed by the wheels of industry. The Modern and chart hype.

UK retro glamsters The Modern have been unceremoniously thrown out of the singles chart. They have been found guilty of attempting to fix their chart position by bulk buying both CD’s and downloads. The band crash landed in the chart last week at number 13. I don’t think it would have been the sales patterns that alerted the OCC to the fix but the simple fact that a record so shockingly awful could have entered the chart that high.

Chart rigging is an art form that has been perfected by record companies over the years. As an ex record shop employee I have been known to not scan certain records through the reader in a vain hope of lowering chart positions and scan a few sly ones for my favourite artists. Working for what was one of the big chains at the time I never got offered bribes but friends who worked in local independent shops did. Free t-shirts, cd’s or gig tickets where offered in exchange for a few extra swipes of the light pen. This was in the age before electronic tills, yes I am that old.

Payola Scandals (paying for airplay) are as old as rock n’ roll itself. In 1959 the first major investigation in payola began and it quickly gathered evidence that resulted in 25 DJ’s being charged. The highest profile casualties of the scandal where Dick Clark and Alan Freed. Freed the John the Baptist of rock n roll refused to accept or deny the claims had it ruined his career.

Payola is not consigned to history. In 2000 a Texas Radio station was fined $2,000 for being paid to play Bryan Adams records. Its likely that the fine would not have even been the cost of a single play that the station charged. In July 2005 Song/BMG settled with the New York attorney general Elliott Spitzer to the tune of $10 million. According to some unnamed sources, the pay-for-play was quite overt with one Sony executive saying that "Please be advised that in this week's Jennifer Lopez Top 40 Spin Increase of 236 we bought 63 spins at a cost of $3,600.

The UK market in the 80’s used the mass marketing of singles in order to promote/force records further up the charts. Singles released in a varity of format, single, picture disc, coloured vinyl, poster pack, double 7” single the list was almost endless.

The result was that the chart company now restricts formats to only three styles of release. One of these must still be a physical format such as CD, vinyl or cassette. The Gorllias reportedly released just 300 copies of the single "Feel Good Inc." in a 7" vinyl format only in order to get the single into the lower reaches of the chart three before the download became available. It was a kind of promo release with chart in its sights.

The Official Chart Company issued the following statement regarding the modern;

During the course of last week OCC's market research agency identified unusual sales patterns related to the physical formats of this release. Further security checks revealed that significant bulk purchases had been made on this single through one online retailer.

Many of the bulk sales identified were traced to persons and/or organisations seemingly connected to the band. For this reason OCC took the decision to disqualify the record from the chart published on Sunday (March 12) as the vast majority of sales could not be verified as genuine purchases by music buyers.

The OCC added that while they make small allowances for keen fans trying to improve their favourite band's chart placings, in this instance "standard data checks revealed hundreds of copies being purchased by a handful of individuals. Under these circumstances to preserve the integrity of the Official Top 40 the action was taken to remove the single from the chart

So the Modern’s problem seems to be the stupidity of the method that they used and not the fact that they where cheating the system.

Mind the records are so poor that they where bound to get caught.

For reviews of the last two Modern singles go here:

Industry

Jane Falls Down

Tony Heywood 2006 ©