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THIS IS ENGLAND (dir: Shane Meadows)

Posted: May 10th, 2007, by Alex McChesney

After leaving the cinema, still with that punched-in-the-stomach feeling that Meadows’ films tend to invoke, we flagged down a cab to take us home.

“Man, what a fare,” the driver said in an exasperated voice as soon as we moved off, clearly hoping that we’d ask what was up. Stupidly, we did so, triggering a lengthy story about the “black gentleman” who had gotten into the cab before us, and had given directions in some kind of incomprehensible “jive talk”. This segued into an extended diatribe on the english-language capabilities of what felt like every nation under the sun.

I so, so hoped that, story exhausted. he would eventually fall-back on the standard “what were you up to tonight?” conversation-starter, whereupon we could straight-facedly reply “we went to see a film about racists,” but sadly he never did.

Not that it’s that simple. This Is England‘s skinheads aren’t two dimentional thugs, nor cyphers in the service of some leaden moral point, but skillfully-drawn to the extent that you’ll find yourself empathising, if not sympathising, with even ringleader and de-facto baddie Combo (Stephen Graham). It’s really newcomer Tomas Thurgoose’s show, whose turn as Shaun, a schoolboy living in a crappy run-down suburb, recently deprived of a father during the Falkland’s war, who falls in with a bunch of harmless local skins. The initial third of the film moves from kitchen-sink “grim-up-north” drama to gentle comedy as he finds a sense of belonging and a surrogate family with his new gang, who want nothing much more out of life than to have a bit of a laugh and listen to ska records. It isn’t until their former mate Combo gets out of jail with a head freshly filled with far-right sympathies that events take the expected dark turn. Both Meadows and Thurgoose make the transition seamlessly, with the latter proving himself to be a young actor with an exceptional range.

This Is England is by turns witty, sad, violent and profane, and certainly not for the faint-hearted. It’s also the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

IMDB page for This Is England
Shane Meadows’ Wikipedia entry

Some Nightmare Before Christmas Thoughts

Posted: December 11th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

The Good

The new site at Butlins in Minehead features clean, well appointed chalets with widescreen-TVs and DVD players. You didn’t see that at Camber Sands.

Meeting fellow Diskanteers who had previously just been names at the bottom of reviews.

Alexander Tucker’s wonderful folky-melodies, which are looped and layered and looped again until building to a wonderful and soothing drone. I’m keen to check out some of his recordings, none of which, sadly, could be found at the merchandise table.

Decent weather for the first couple of days.

Lots of friendly folks who are happy to chat to you even when sober.

David Tibet and Nurse With Wound in hip-hop collaboration shocker!

Getting in to see the Stooges on the second day (despite not having the “correct” wristband). This was the last band of the festival for us, and after three days of chin-stroking, some all-out rawk showmanship was the perfect closer.

The Bad

Lengthy queues to get into the two main venues at any time after about 8pm. You didn’t see that at Camber Sands. The best tactic seemed to be to pick the stage which featured the most acts you were interested in, find a comfortable spot, and stay there. Gone, sadly, are the days when you could flit from stage to stage and potentially catch every band of the festival.

The mad crush to get on the coach to/from the nearest railway station. On the way there we opted to avoid the crowds and get a taxi, only to be scalped £45 for the privilege. On the way back we had a lengthy wait in the rain in order to have a reasonable chance of getting a seat on the first bus, and there was plenty of pushing and shoving in the scramble to get on board.

Jackie-O Motherfucker cancelling.

Third-day noise fatigue.

Our neighbours inviting the whole camp back to their chalet for a party at four in the morning.

The Ugly
Dead Machines’ samey noise and urine-popsicle story.

MÚM – The Peel Session (Fat Cat)

Posted: November 27th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

For all that the late John Peel gave music, it’s the Peel Sessions that will stand the test of time long after anecdotes about taping his show onto C90s as a teenager and queuing up to hand him a demo tape that one time he DJed at your student union have grown even duller than they already are. At their best they were a chance for a band to experiment and try out new material in the studio. At their worst an invitation to a few point-missing acts to replay their songs note-for-note, though this was, thankfully, a rare occurrence. This EP, consisting of the four tracks from Múm’s lone session recorded in 2002, falls somewhere in-between those two camps. Three songs from their 2000 album “Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK”, and one from 2002’s “Finally We Are No One” are offered up, and while there are no radical departures to be had, the necessary compression of time and budget imposed by a radio session, along with the opportunity for post-album tinkering, has had a pleasing effect on them.

Scratched Bicycle and Smell Memory, for example, both gain extra glitchy beats, and feel less fussy more skittish than their official counterparts, but despite the odd electronic edition or momentary meander, it’s the the uncluttered production that truly benefits the songs and grants them a general intimacy where once they might have felt a little too fragile and distant for comfort.

Hardly an essential purchase for the Múm-curious, then, but not without merit for those feeling starved of their gentle Icelandic tinklings.

Fat Cat

SONGS OF GREEN PHEASANT – Aerial Days (Fat Cat)

Posted: November 25th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

In August of last year I gushed about Green Pheasant’s eponymous debut album – a handful of songs originally recorded at home on a four-track for demo purposes, but which so impressed Fat Cat that they chose to release it with hardly any modification. I did, however, have one reservation: much as I loved its woozy, dream-like quality, I did wonder how much of that was down to the circumstances of its recording. The low-fi, distant qualities of cassette tape suits gentle acoustica more than any other genre you might attempt to commit to it, and the production on that album, consisting largely of turning the “reverb” dial all the way to eleven, could easily have been a response to the weaknesses of the format as much as a deliberate attempt to gently obfuscate. Would the larger budget that signing would inevitably bring result in a more obvious, less charmingly obscure sophomore album?

Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. Aerial Days sees Duncan Sumpner reject the temptations of the studio and continue recording at home, albeit having splashed out on some slightly more modern recording equipment, resulting in an album that’s more an appropriate and carefully judged step forward than a baby-and-bathwater-discarding act of self indulgence. As before the songs have a hallucinatory quality, but the hints of a folkier past have been toned down a little, a some new-found freedom has been exercised in terms of instrumentation, with friends adding recorder and trumpet to the bedroom guitar-and-drum-machine setup.

The only mis-step being a slightly-too-twee cover of the Beatles’ “Dear Prudence”, Aerial Days enriches the sound of its predecessor with care, and its creator deserves credit for restraint alone.

Fat Cat

ATP: Nightmare Before Christmas Tickets

Posted: November 7th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

Yes, I know this is supposed to be an arts and culture blog and not some sort of hipster’s dating service, but basically we (being myself and my good lady wife) have booked a four-person chalet at this year’s ATP:Nightmare Before Christmas festival in Minehead on the 8th, 9th and 10th of December, and are in need of a couple of nice, friendly, preferably non-sociopathic persons to fill the other two bunks. Tickets are £135 a head and have sold out, so if you left it a wee bit too late, now’s your chance.

If you’re interested, do drop me a line at alex.mcchesney@gmail.com Cheers!

Update (01-12-06): After having a few offers that came to naught, these tickets are still available, so it’s not too late!

Pixies To Record New Album

Posted: October 24th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

According to various news sources, The Pixies, having played every venue on the planet during their two-years of “comeback” touring, are planning on going into the studio to record a new album.

I am quite excited – they were, in my opinion, the best rock band ever to walk the Earth, and while I don’t much care for Frank Black’s recent solo outings, The Breeders are still a force to be reckoned with. I am, however, preparing myself for disappointment.

What do you think? Cause for celebration or car-crash waiting to happen?

Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait

Posted: October 9th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

First, a confession of prejudice: I don’t like football. In fact, sometimes I hate it with a passion. The antipathy comes from growing up in a soccer-free household and being the wilfully unsporty kid who always got chosen last for school playground matches anyway. The strong dislike comes from living in Glasgow. I’m not sure if that part requires explanation or not. Anyway, my heart sank rather when, upon signing up for a course on contemporary international cinema at the GFT, I found out that the first screening would be a documentary about a footballer.

But Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait isn’t your average documentary. The film follows Zenedine Zidane throughout the course of the Real Madrid vs Villa Real game of April 23, 2005, in real time, from the moment he steps onto the pitch, to the moment he leaves it 97 minutes later. The progress of the game itself is mostly incidental; what’s happening elsewhere on the pitch is of little or no interest to the camera. Only Zidane himself is important.

The majority of the film keeps him centre-screen, following him around the pitch, but it is punctuated by shifts in style. The camera will drift out of focus, or become momentarily distracted by some tiny detail – the goal netting, or a television camera – or disappear to the very top of the stadium and take in the whole-game in long-shot. We are briefly treated to a short series of subtitles from, presumably, an interview with the man himself, in which he talks about playing football as a child. Sometimes we hear his every breath, muttered word or thump of ball-against-foot. Presumably he has one or more radio mics on him. Either that, or this film deserves an oscar for foley work alone. At other times, only the excellent Mogwai soundtrack is audible. At one point, the sound of the match is replaced with that of children playing.

The problem is, for all its technical excellence, and the bravery inherant in making such a film, is that Zidane isn’t particularly enjoyable to watch. For much of the film, he is blank. Stoically focussed on the progress of the game elsewhere on the field. When the ball does come to him, it’s gone again in moments, and with a couple of exceptions you are left with little or no sense of where it went or how his actions affected the outcome of the match. The film doesn’t stick with him at half-time, preferring instead a montage of images from around the world on a single day, and by never allowing him an existance beyond the pitch, he becomes a sweating, spitting footballing machine whose final product you have precious little chance to appreciate since, whenever he does encounter the ball it is gone again in moments. The film doesn’t really care about the game, only the player, but divorcing one from the other leaves him diminished and dull.

If the intention of a portrait is to give you some insight into the person depicted, then you come away from this film having learned that Zidane is a professional footballer who’s concentration on the game is absolute, except on occasions when his temper bubbles over, as in the incident which earns him a red card, ending his game, and the film, anticlimactically.

And so you wait, patiently, for one of the film’s aforementioned breaks from watching Zidane run on a giant green treadmill, and when they come they can be surprisingly beautiful. In one brief sequence the roar of the crowd, and the accompanying Mogwai soundtrack, are filtered and distant as we are taken on a walk from the corridors behind the stands into the stadium proper, like a fan who had to nip out to piss and his hurrying back in case he misses something. Aside from being aesthetically pleasing, these moments impart a sense of place, and the communal event taking place, and seem far more powerful than watching Zidane spit for the 80th time.

If the point is to give you a sense of a man withing the same framework as you, a member of the public, might otherwise experience him (by watching a game), but with all extraneous detail stripped away leaving you with just him and his game, then as an experiment the film is a success. Unfortunately, the findings of the experiment seem to be that there isn’t much to show.

But, then, maybe lacking the gene that allows the appreciation of football also means being unable to appreciate lengthy closeups of sweaty footballers. I think I’m happy about that, come to think of it.

Zidane, un portrait du 21e siecle at the IMDB

Risky Quizzness

Posted: October 2nd, 2006, by Alex McChesney

First record you bought and do you still own it?

“Hits 6”, part of a short-lived compilation series that rivalled the “Now That’s What I Call Music” behemoth. Purchased on cassette from John Menzies in Paisley and played through my tinny little tape recorder that was normally used for loading Spectrum games. Side 1 Track 1 was Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)”, making it the very first song I purchased with my own money. I think I still have it in a cardboard box somewhere.

Last record you bought

Three at once out of Fopp:
1. “Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain” by Sparklehorse. Disappointing.
2. “Remixes” by Four Tet. Patchy but good in places.
3. “I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Kick Your Ass” by Yo La Tengo. It’s ace.

Last song you downloaded

I don’t tend to download much music. The only downloaded music I’ve ever paid for is the iTunes-only “Bam Thwok” by the Pixies. The concept of paying for a piece of music with DRM embedded to tell me what I can and can’t do with it makes me blind with rage. If only all online music stores were like Warp’s Bleep. I still prefer to buy CDs, however, even if the first thing I do is rip them to MP3.

Last song/record you went to enormous lengths to find

Sadly I am too lazy to go to enormous lengths for anything much.

Most elaborately packaged record you own

Probably something on Constellation records. It takes me about ten minutes to extract one of their CDs from the packaging.

Last song you listened to

“Savage Composition” by Don Caballero.

Favourite mixtape someone made you that you still listen to

I no longer have any cassette-playing apparatus, and nobody’s made me a CD in ages.

What records are you going to buy next?

I heard a bit of “Expert Knob Twiddlers” by Mike and Rich (aka Mike “µ-ziq” Paradinas and Richard D. “Aphex Twin” James) the other day, and it sounded very good indeed, so it’s on the list.

What are your top 10 most listened to songs on iTunes/last.fm/whatever

From iTunes:

10. Xylin Room – Autechre
9. Hallo – Astrobotnia
8. Lightworks – Astrobotnia
7. Pin – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. Dahlem – To Rococo Rot
5. Blown – LFO
4. Thomas the Muthafuckin Tank Engine – Datashat
3. Tascel_7 – Arovane
2. Nonlin.R – Arovane
1. City Girl – Kevin Shields

Things I like

Snow
Curry
Sleep
Wind-up robots

Not

Sleet
Celery
Not enough sleep
The evil robots from that really tricky level in Ouendan.

Ten worst/most unlistenable songs in your collection?

Ten? Since I don’t have all day, I’ll do you five.

Du Du Du – Du Du Du by Half Japanese
I love Half Japanese. Even the really early stuff, recorded in Jad and David Fair’s parent’s basement. They knew they wanted to be the best rock’n’roll band in the world, and they weren’t going to let a complete lack of technical ability get in the way of achieving that goal. Most of that first album, “Half Gentlemen, Not Beasts” is hard to listen to, but the spirit of it shines through. However, not even the staunchest advocate of outsider music can deny that much of it, such as this 7-minute long recording of a single bass note played over and over again, is pretty mince.

Stutter Rap (No Sleep ‘Til Bedtime) by Morris Minor and the Majors.
It crept onto my iTunes somehow.

Ventolin – Aphex Twin
That high-pitched whine is allegedly the sound Richard D. James heard when having an asthma attack as a child, and it’s about as pleasurable to listen to.

Scooby Doo – The Pubs.
Me and a friend covering the theme to Scooby Doo in my parent’s garage, when we were both old enough to know better. An embaressment that comes out with alarming regularity when I have drank to excess.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) – Whitney Houston

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

Posted: July 13th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

I’ve had a Nintendo DS for a few weeks now, and the first game I got for it was Animal Crossing. If you’re not familiar it, it’s a fun little free-form game in which you move into a rural village populated by anthropomorphic animals. There’s no set goal as such. You can wander around the village, chat to your neighbours, fish, catch bugs, buy clothes and furniture for your little house or save to have it expanded, do some gardening, etc, without fear of any real “failure” condition. All in all it’s quite a relaxing escape from the real world. Interestingly, it also runs in real time. If it’s 12 noon on Sunday 16th of July when you’re playing it, it’s 12 noon on Sunday 16th of July in the game. The sun will be up, and any particular events that are taking place that day, eg a birthday party for one of your neighbours, will occur in the game.

Anyway, despite, or maybe because of, the lack of any strict set of achievements required of you by the game, it has been the most common resident of my DS’s card slot ever since it arrived. Over time, however, I have become increasingly aware of a dark heart beating beneath my town’s saccharine-sweet exterior.

Take Phyllis, for example. She’s the pelican that does the night-shift in the post office. Unlike her sister who works there during the day, she is consistently rude to me, and the one time I saw her in the museum coffee shop and tried to strike up a conversation, so told me in no uncertain terms to bugger off. (Of course, nobody says bad words in Animal Crossing, but you can’t disguise the intent.) At first I thought she was just being a bitch, but then Sally Squirrel told me she saw her crying the other day. Clearly something is up. Is she going through a painful divorce? Dealing with the death of a child? I don’t know, and she ain’t saying.

Then there’s Rodeo. This amiable bull-like character moved into the village a few days after I did, but I haven’t seen him wandering about town much recently. I try to drop in on him when I can, however. He always seems to be suffering from mysterious flu-like symptoms which are magically alleviated by the special “medicine” he sends me to buy from Tom Nook’s shop.

And what of Nook himself? In the English-language versions of Animal Crossing he’s described as a raccoon, but his name is actually a pun on his real species, the Japanese Tanuki. Tanukis are often depicted in Japanese culture as having comically large scrotums. They are the Buster Gonads of the animal kingdom, if you like, and this fits Tom Nook’s character quite well. While, of course, we never see his genitalia, you can’t help but have a sort of grudging respect for someone who will land a massive, involuntary mortgage on a new resident in exchange for a comically tiny house, as Nook does as soon as you arrive in town. He clearly has the biggest balls of all the residents, metaphorically if not literally. In fact, beyond stumbling across some cash hidden in a tree or under a rock, Nook also provides the only source of income in the game, by purchasing items from you that you may have found or been given. In a sense, every inhabitant of the town lives in servitude to Tom Nook, bringing him offerings so that they might scrape together enough cash to get by.

The sickness isn’t just confined to my village, either. I passed on my AC addiction to my wife, who, after playing around with mine for a while, purchased her own DS and copy of the game. Using the DS’s built-in wireless connection, you can “visit” other people’s villages and chat to the animals within. On one such trip to her town, I encountered a sheep called (of course) Baabera. Clearly a sad, lonely character*, she offered me a biscuit only to then say “oh, my boyfriend must have came in and eaten them all while I wasn’t looking”. On return to my own village I discovered that she had sent me a somewhat disturbing letter along the lines of “It was nice to meet you yesterday. I would invite you round again, but my boyfriend wouldn’t like it.” Naturally, nobody has seen this “boyfriend” of whom she speaks, and it is fairly obvious that she has invented an imaginary partner for herself. But has she done so because of lack of company, or is it more about keeping the world at arm’s-length by endowing him with a violently possessive nature? Who knows what past trauma drove her to this state, or how deeply her psychosis runs? I, for one, am staying well clear.

Anyway, I have to go now. Apparently Pee-Wee the Gorilla just found the body of Sally Squirrel washed up on the beach wrapped in plastic…

* This from a thirty-year old man writing about videogame animals like they are real people.

KEIJI HAINO & SITAAR TAH! – Animamima (aRCHIVE Recordings/Important Records)

Posted: June 13th, 2006, by Alex McChesney

Having been seduced by nice packaging, the breathless recommendation of the record-store staff, and the loose purse-strings that payday always brings, however briefly, I took this album home wondering if I’d made a wise purchase. Having seen Haino perform at Glasgow’s Instal festival a couple of years ago, I knew that it would be an interesting record, if not an especially pleasant one to listen to. I was concerned that, having been played once, it would end up on on eBay, or, worse still, egregiously keep around solely for “my record collection is better than your record collection”-type bragging rights.

Man, was I wrong.

Which isn’t to say that this album marks Haino’s embracing of the pop song, but nor is it the straight-up unstructured guitar-noise that I had come to expect, and realize that I didn’t much enjoy listening to particularly often. Instead, it is an unexpectedly beautiful thing which builds slowly from a bare tickling of the ears to a powerful meditative thrum that made me feel quite peculiar. Staring into space for extended periods as it repeatedly found sympathetic frequencies within my skull, I felt oddly refreshed after taking off my headphones, as though I had just undergone the aural equivalent of being driven through a car-wash.

Sitaar Tah!, as the name suggests, are a 20 piece sitar orchestra, who, over the course of Animamima’s two tracks (One per disc. Both recorded live.) make wonderful drones which rise and fall like tides, while Haino is handed the keys to the school music department’s store cupboard and left to his own devices, adding, among other things, occasional flute, vocals, and electric hurdy-gurdy, precisely when required and never more.

Once in a while, a record comes along that reminds you why you are a music nerd in the first place. Animamima is a refreshing glass of ice-water after the dry cream-crackers of endless soundalike “The” bands.

aRCHIVE Recordings
Important Records