maggieloveshopey's blog

(I'm reprinting this from my actual blog, seeing as KPunk (I think) had something nice to say about it, and it may be of interest to some of you. It originally came at the end of a series of entries about my favourite records of the year)

...It’s interesting to me that this selection features a lot of instrumental music.I’m thinking this reflects a malaise in the contemporary scene, because it sure looks to me like no one has anything to say anymore.
The US is saddled with one of the worst administrations in their history, a horrendous gaggle of corporate whores with their noses in the trough, their eyes blinded with corrupt ideology and their hands giving you the finger. A similar situation under Reagan threw up Husker Du, Big Black, The Minutemen, Black Flag, a thriving underground full of fire and passion who railed against these charlatans. It was similiar in the UK as well. Okay, so Crass were unlistenable and Red Wedge was an embarrassment, but at least people were trying to do something positive.

Some record sleeves I found while browsing the other day

Nothing screams "sex, drugs and rock'n'roll" like this one:

This is a fine example of the Japanese mania for putting cute things in inappropiate settings. Look! Chicks rocking and moshing and stagediving! Kawaii!

I think here I like the idea that punk is about beating people up coupled with the message "Enjoy punk rock!":

A couple of months ago, I went through a phase of listening to loads of RDF, which led me back into the depths of the record collection to those halcyon early 90s crusty days. (Bonus points if you got the Orbital gag there). I went so far as to compile a mix called “Wango Riley’s Travelling Stage Revisited”. Wango’s was a fixture of the free festival circuit, as much as Pete Loveday’s Russell comics or dodgy blokes trying to sell you dodgy things, an old truck with cabin and flatbed intact, but the sides cut away to leave a covered stage and backdrop. One of my favourite festival memories is watching Poisoned Electrick Head play there at a festy near Nottingham. The PEH live experience was in full effect - that same experience which, according to the band, had been known to cause spontaneous DNA restructuring in casual observers. This meant two manic frontmen wearing luminous road safety vests and robot dancing while the musicians all played in boilersuits and Geigeresque masks (it must have been baking in there). The sun was setting over the trees on site when a random spectator climbed on top of one of the buses parked near the stage and started mucking about with sticks and petrol. And then a huge plume of flame came racing from his mouth. I was stood there with a great band fizzing through my synapses, watching someone breathe fire against the dying of the day. You don’t get that at a Keane gig.

Looking at the latest issue of Music Week, I note that The Kooks are still hanging around the top 20 album chart, with whatever their pissweak excuse for a record is called. Don’t this unpleasant bunch of stage school brats sum up everything wrong with the term “indie” in 2006? A world where multinational lager companies sponsor alternative rock festivals, emo has somehow traveled from Rites Of Spring and Texas Is The Reason to Panic (and no, I’m not putting the exclamation mark in, you tossers) At The Fucking Disco and any bad metal band with their fingernails painted black, while the NME is doing advertorial spreads with Topman? Oh yes, the NME. Where to start? Their relentless quest to persuade the readership that New Rave means anything outside of a few East London art school students seized with an ironic nostalgia for Altern8? The Klaxons are the musical equivalent of sitting around the sixth form common room talking about the TV programmes you used to watch when you were a kid, and don’t you forget it. Listen, mate, I’ve been round the block a few times, I remember Romo, and Fraggle for that matter. You’re not fooling anyone. Or how about the championing of a –what is it? third, fourth, fifth generation? – Cramps tribute act?* Or the whoring out of reviews to whatever’s got a good promo plot this week? Nine out of the ten for the Kasabian album? It’s okay, but it’s not all that, is it? I’m not sure if this your actual editorial interference from record companies with big advertising budgets to withhold, or just the writers being scared of missing the boat as spectacularly as they did with the second Oasis album, which received lukewarm reviews all round, only to be declared Best Thing Ever when everyone in the UK went and bought 37 copies each. Of course, this trend started with the third Oasis album, which was greeted more rapturously than a busload of orphans taking a wrong turn into the Catholic Priests’ Country Awayday Weekend, but was actually one long evil burst of cocaine flatulence. I am aware that criticising the NME as an act of cultural subversion is about on a par with saying that racism is bad, but these things all need to be said.

OFFSHORE by EARLY DAY MINERS

Having listened to altogether too much tasteful Americana of late, last weekend I was in the mood for something different, some new cosmic freakout or experimental rock to blow me away. A chance listening post in Shibuya led me to this record. As the sleeve sticker had it, "a 37 minute epic in six parts". Bang, direct hit on my muso nerd bone.

It opens with "Land Of Pale Saints", a driving ten minute instrumental that thankfully doesn't sound anything like the weedy UK former indie act The Pale Saints. There are layers and layers of guitars building on each other in a manner not a million miles from Pelican's prog metal, augmented by rising and falling keyboard washes. About five minutes in the guitars drop out, and the drums take centre stage, as they will again and again throughout the record. Purposeful and ominous, they lend a foreboding air of apprehension until this too stops, and is replaced by a brief interlude of strings and feedback, signaling a move away from noise and into a quieter place. This stretch, starting with "Deserter", has a hushed, nocturnal quality (most of this record seems to take place in the dark), the same spooky ambience that Daniel Lanois brought to Emmylou Harris' "Wrecking Ball". The music stretches out, becomes reflective and the first vocals appear, a man and a woman singing together over rolling percussion and a lost harmonica echoing in the dark. The lyrics of "people lost underwater" and a "ruined city" conjure images of loss and floods, and bring New Orleans' recent history to mind, as they must surely have been intended to.