culture - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part Two)

Here are some more of the things I thought were good this year

Vaguely (or very) shoegaze-related releases of the year

I didn’t like the term ‘shoegaze’ back in the early 90s and I don’t like it now. I dislike ‘dreampop’ even more. Neo-shoegaze has now got to the point that original shoegaze got to; 99% of it is boring. But I do like some of it and these were good:

Stella Diana – Nitocris (self-release)

Naples shoegaze trio Stella Diana seem to be influenced mainly by the less experimental end of the original shoegaze scene (Just For A Day-era Slowdive with a pinch of Ride), rather than My Bloody Valentine or Curve, but on this, their third album, it all comes together with some quality songwriting and excellent performances.

Minor Victories – Minor Victories (Fat Possum Records)

I didn’t like this as much as I thought I would in fact; but it’s definitely a good album. As with so many ‘supergroup’ records, a bit underwhelming and boring overall, but the good bits, like ‘For You Always’, (where, as usual, Mark Kozelek makes one wish he seemed to be as likeable as he is talented) are so good that it’s definitely worth checking out.

Alcest – Kodama (Prophecy Productions)

For me, Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde is still the perfect Alcest album, the one where the shoegaze and black metal elements blended most seamlessly and where Neige’s vision seemed most clear and fresh. But Kodama is the best he’s made since then, the reintroduction of the metal elements slicing away some of the flabbiness of Shelter. The striking artwork and design of the album also rekindled the spark which had become somewhat mellow over time.

Daniel Land – In Love With A Ghost (self-release)

More singer-songwriter oriented than the other releases here, Daniel Land’s In Love With A Ghost meshes a strongly atmospheric dreampop feel with a very human, rather than celestial approach. His songs; sad, happy, richly lyrical, have everything to do with real life, making this the most approachable and loveable shoegaze(ish) album I’ve heard this year.

More non-genre-specific Releases of the Year

The Vision Bleak – The Unknown (Prophecy Productions)

Even without the conceptual baggage of their previous albums, The Vision Bleak’s latest opus is an overpoweringly rich and theatrical work of gothic melancholy. Konstanz and Schwadorf’s art will never be for everyone, but The Unknown is as accessible and as eccentric as anything the duo have recorded.

Kaada/Patton – Bacteria Cult (Ipecac Recordings)

In terms of time spent listening, Bacteria Cult may actually be my release of the year; the pairing of Mike Patton and Norwegian composer John Erika Kaada makes most of Patton’s other collaborations feel like novelty acts. Sweeping, epic, beautiful, funny and atmospheric, the music on this album is great as background or foreground and I am yet to be bored by it.

Jozef van Wissem – When Shall This Bright Day Begin (Consouling Sounds)

I wrote a detailed review of this great album for Echoes and Dust so will keep this short. This is a beautiful and haunting album of wistful (non-traditional) lute music with some experimental elements. It doesn’t sound like anything else in my Releases of the Year.

Darkher – Realms (Prophecy Productions)

An unclassifiable album of darkly romantic, sort of gothic (but without being theatrical) mood music. So immersively atmospheric that it takes a while to realise just how tightly written and well constructed Jayn H Wissenberg’s songs are.

Rachel Mason – Das Ram (Cleopatra Records (LP) / Practical Records (cassette)

I wrote extensively about this album here but since it was very nearly my album of the year, here’s a bit more: Rachel Mason has produced so much, in so many fields – performance art/sculpture/filmmaking/music, etc (check out her website for a cross-section) – that it’s easy to immerse oneself in her work. In music alone she is amazingly prolific and has amassed a vast and crazily varied discography (fourteen albums, plus various collaborations) within just a few years. Das Ram is a bold, exciting and accessible album, utterly different from the acoustic/folk rock textures of Mason’s earlier works like Turtles or Hamilton Fish… and even further removed from the raw, homemade quality of Gayley Manor Songs. Only a handful of artists have convincingly made a gesamstkunstwerk in the idiom of popular music without falling into the trap of overblown pretension – and most of those have spread from within the music world outwards. With Das Ram, Rachel Mason has become one of an even more select group – an artist who has learned to express herself with equal authority in whatever medium she chooses – and who seems to have fun doing it.

also…

Japanese Breakfast – Psychopomp

Deceptively cheerful lo-fi indie pop with incisive tunes and lots of heart

Blizaro – Cornucopia della Morte (I, Voidhanger)

John Gallo’s Goblin-worshipping occult synth doom rock(?) is at its best on 2013’s Strange Doorways compilation, but when this album is great, it’s really great.

Nox – Ancestral Arte Negro (Forever Plagued Records)

Pure Colombian brutal-but-atmospheric black metal – short, to the point; perfect.

More to come….

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part One)

Last year, I ended up writing multiple ‘releases of the year’ lists because I kept forgetting great things and having to add more posts to include them. I feel like keeping it (relatively) concise this year but will probably end up doing the same again.

Anyway, I thought I’d group things differently this time, so here are a few (non-exhaustive) groups of things that all fall into my ‘releases of the year’. They aren’t in any order of preference aside from the ‘release of the year’ itself, which will come last of all. I use the term ‘releases’ because, although it sounds far less good than ‘albums of the year’, I am including all sorts of releases. There aren’t really any rules (aside from year of release, obviously) because why would I make any? And so…

Hellos of the Year (new artists/debut releases)

All years are probably good for new artists and 2016 was no exception

Kib Elektra – Blemishes (Bezirk Tapes)

I’ve written about Abi Bailey‘s Kib Elektra at length here as well as reviewing the EP for Echoes and Dust so will keep this brief. Kib Elektra’s debut is a brilliantly orchestrated collection of contrasting textures and sounds, organic, electronic,earthly and celestial; and the songs are great.

ThrOes – This Viper Womb (Aesthetic Death)

An impressive debut in every way, This Viper Womb is remarkable for the balance between precise detail and overall effect; it’s an emotionally involving, musically intense journey – brutal but subtle, extreme metal that doesn’t fit easily into any pigeonhole.

Naia Izumi – various releases

Guitarist/singer/composer/etc Naia Izumi has released a series of fantastic and wide ranging EPs throughout 2016. Her style is not easy to define, but it incorporates elements of math rock, R’n’B, blues, ambient music… Lots of things, but all done with feeling and amazing instrumental skill – listen here

Zeal & Ardor – Devil Is Fine

Sometimes classified as black metal but really a kind of blackened blues, Zeal & Ardor’s music has deep, but varied roots and a spooky atmosphere all of its own. Listen here

Debz – Extended Play (Choice Records)

Again, I’ve written about this elsewhere, but this EP is a refreshing and messy mix of grungy pop, punk and peculiarity.

Candelabrum – Necrotelepathy (Altare Productions)

Unhinged but hugely ambitious Portuguese black metal, Necrotelepathy is a true symphony (while not being remotely ‘symphonic’) of rusty, shrill, clanging and nasty black metal that lasts for a long time (two songs, 33 minutes) but has a strangely cleansing effect on the ears.

Dia – Tiny Ocean (Manimal Records)

A lovely EP of shoegaze-infused baroque pop, or something like that. I wrote about it here and you can check out Dia here. Hopefully lots more to come.

New-old Releases of the Year

Many, many great reissues this year, these were ones worthy of attention:

Uriah Heep – …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (deluxe edition, BMG records)

I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, but in short – one of the great (and not as respected as it should be) heavy rock albums of the 1970s, remastered, repackaged and with another disc with a whole new, previously unreleased version of the album, great sleevenotes etc etc etc. The reissue of the almost-as-epic Salisbury is just as great. If the (presumably forthcoming) Look At Yourself and Demons and Wizards maintain the quality, 2017 already has something going for it.

Thus Defiled – An Unhallowed Legacy (Shadowflame Productions)

Not quite as lavish than the Uriah Heep reissues (Shadowflame’s budget presumably somewhat less than BMG’s), but just as iconic; two classic turn-of-the-millennium releases from UK black metal overlords Thus Defiled, packaged nicely, sounding fantastic: classic stuff.

David Bowie – Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) (Parlophone)

I can only dream of having the vinyl version, but whatever the packaging, this is Bowie’s best (i.e. my favourite) period, treated with respect and sounding perfect. I just wish the missing Gouster songs were there.

Established artists, latest Releases of the Year

In no order…

Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto – Leaves of Grass (Morr Music)

A criminally overlooked record, perhaps because of Iggy’s great but more conventional Post-Pop Depression, Leaves of Grass is an EP of readings from Whitman’s book of the same name, with atmospheric electronic backing. Iggy proves himself an unexpectedly, but on reflection not surprisingly brilliant interpreter of Whitman’s poetry. I wrote more and better about it here

Wardruna – Runaljod – Ragnarok (By Norse)

Not so much a recreation of the lost music of the viking age as an imagining of it through immersion in the culture, literature and instruments of the era, as well as in the natural landscapes of Scandinavia, Kvitrafn’s latest album is harder to define than it is to feel. The atmosphere is primal and traditional, while not really following any musical traditions; sonically Runaljod – Ragnarok is as much an archaic, organic version of an Eno or Vangelis record as it is ‘folk music’, but somehow the authenticity of Wardruna’s vision and passion makes it feel like a window into a living past.

Egor Grushin – Once

Once made a big impact on me partly because of the deeply worrying socio-political context in which it was released (my review of this album for Echoes and Dust goes on about it), but months later, its graceful, logical beauty is still deeply soothing.

SubRosa – For This We Fought The Battle of Ages (Profound Lore)

Inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic 1921 dystopian novel We, SubRosa’s themes of freedom and control couldn’t be more prescient, and the album is suitably challenging, aggressive and epic. By far their greatest album to date.

end of part one…

next: more releases of the year, including the Goodbyes of the Year

Not the Releases of the Year 2016

‘Album of the year’ lists are fine for representing a specific time period in music, and interesting because of how personal and subjective they are – an element which becomes eroded by time, as is easily seen from the consensus found in the majority of ‘great albums of the 60s/70s/80s’/etc lists and the fact that ‘new’ classics from those eras can be discovered decades later.

Anyway; all of this is to ask what importance a ‘releases of the year 2016’ list can really have for someone (i.e. me) who was listening to Claire Waldoff on his way home from work. One way to find out is to look back over the last few years to see how many of my own previous releases of the year have stood the test of (a relatively short amount of) time to become actual favourites. So let’s do that.

My records (pun shockingly not intended) of such things only go back a few years and I am sticking to things that actually made it onto my lists and not the many things I have subsequently discovered from those years (2012-2015 I think), but blah blah blah; disclaimers aside, here’s what the stalwarts of the last few years (and 60 or so albums) look like, plus notes related thereto:

STILL CURRENT LISTENING

Ihsahn – Das Seelenbrechen (Candlelight Records)

What I said then:

Metal acts are all too often praised for bringing any kind of non-metal musical influence into their work (tentative, seriously out of date bits of techno or hip-hop are probably the least daring way to ‘innovate’); but with Das Seelenbrechen, Ihsahn made an album that wasn’t just ‘extreme metal with (whatever) elements’. The electronic, gentle and improvised parts of the album are no less natural than the heavy riffs, raw vocals and Nietzschean philosophy. Clever, extreme (in lots of different ways) but accessible, because at its heart are great songs which don’t necessarily belong to any particular genre.

What I say now: I think Das Seelenbrechen has gone on to become Ihsahn’s least popular solo album, but I stand by what I said and, for me this, together with the 2007 Hardingrock album, is the artist at his creative peak (so far). This year’s Arktis. is a great record, and arguably much more fun than Das Seelenbrechen, but also far more conventional. Not a bad thing, but Das Seelenbrechen sounded at times like Scott Walker and a group of jazz musicians playing metal/metal musicians playing jazz, Arktis. sounds like someone who loves 80s metal and rock interpreting it in their own style.

Collectress – Mondegreen (Peeler Records)

What I said then:

Experimental string quartet Collectress make music that has many moods but is always interesting. On Mondegreen, the sound ranges from the bustling, Steve Reich-ish ‘Spell‘ to the haunting, tense ‘Harmonium‘ to the wistful, minimalistic and strangely nostalgic-sounding ‘Owl‘. It’s a beautiful album, each song creating its own pervasive mood but somehow becoming an entirely coherent whole; and it sounds absolutely nothing like anything else I heard this year.

What I say now: I still feel the same about the album, but what strikes me most now is the way each piece of music conjures up its own visual world; it has a strange, benign doll’s house feel to it, theatrical and haunted without being spooky.

David Bowie – The Next Day (ISO/Columbia)

What I said then:

A great album (if not a ‘return to form’ exactly, since his form has been pretty dubious for a long, long time), with a few lesser moments (the 90’s-ish indie-ish attempts at being modern grate a bit) which don’t however spoil the whole.

What I say now – This is an odd one, in that the album disappeared from regular rotation for a good year or so, only to be rediscovered with so many other Bowie albums, after his death. Still, I don’t think it’s one of his best overall (certainly less good than Blackstar), but the best songs are ‘classic Bowie’

Sangre de Muerdago – Deixademe Morrer No Bosque (self-release)

What I said then:

Moody, windswept and mysterious Galician folk music; beautiful, desolate and organic.

What I say now – One of the ‘lesser’ albums of the year at the time, but it has outlasted many records that I preferred back then. The slightly hushed quality and campfire sound effects etc give it a unique charm; I keep meaning to check out more of their work (and have listened to bits and pieces) but I kind of like having this one perfect album.

John Baizley, Nate Hall & Mike Scheidt – Songs of Townes Van Zandt Vol II (My Proud Mountain)

What I said then:

Powerful versions of Townes Van Zandt’s earthy folk/blues songs, all the better for the starkness of the recordings.

What I say now – another one that was a bit of a sleeper; I liked it, listened to it a lot, and moved on. But at some point it suddenly felt very relevant and I feel like I know/feel the songs much better now.

Nebelung – Palingenesis (Temple of Torturous records)

What I said then:

This instrumental ‘dark folk’ album is probably one of my most listened-to albums of the year; beautifully atmospheric music that seems imbued with the essence of autumn.

What I say now – not much to add to that, really. This year the band released a re-recording of their checked out the recent re-recording of their 2005 debut, Mistelteinn and it’s really good, but I prefer the purely instrumental album.

Sonny Simmons & Moksha Samnyasin – Nomadic (Svart Records)

What I said then:

There’s a very Miles Davis-y feel to this album, despite the psychedelic and drone elements. The blend of Simmons’ sax with Moksha Samnyasin (Michel Kristoff’; sitar, Thomas Bellier; bass, Sébastien Bismuth (drums, electronics) is what great free jazz is about; not aimless noodling, but intuitive, almost telepathic interplay and the exotic atmospheres and intense moods that result.

What I say now – Nomadic ended up being one of those albums where what were initially my least favourite tracks have ended up being my favourite ones. Its richness keeps it alive.

Secrets of the Moon – SUN (Lupus Lounge)

What I said then:

There’s not a lot of emotionally complex black metal music out there; a shame, because the expressive possibilities of the form are arguably greater and more powerful than any other metal genre. Also a shame, because, as with any genre of music, the best black metal transcends its idiom and is simply great music; and such is SUN, the sixth album by the always-dependable Secrets of the Moon. ‘Dependable’ is rarely used as a huge compliment for a band, but although the last few Secrets.. albums have been powerful and mature, none of them really suggested an album as immense as SUN. Inspired to a large extent by the suicide of ex-bass player LSK, it’s a work full of strange, desolate yet apparently hopeful imagery. Mysterious, elusive, it’s an album whose emotional punch is as unexpected as it is tangible.

What I say now – SUN was consistently an album whose songs popped up on shuffle and amazed me with their greatness. Although a black metal album of sorts, it doesn’t really follow any of the genre’s conventions; what I said above, in fact.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

ALSO-RANS & ODDITIES

Ancient VVisdom – Deathlike

I loved this at the time, but even then I preferred their debut A Godlike Inferno – and now I find I still listen to that, but rarely Deathlike…

Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest

The downside to BoC’s more ambient approach with this album is that it is great while it’s on, but I rarely think about it between times

Manierisme – フローリア

I have failed to convince people of Manierisme’s genius more than almost any other band. And I still think Jekyll is a genius, but the balance of horribleness to sepia-toned nostalgia isn’t as successful here as on his earlier work.

Eleni & Souzana Vougioukli – To Be Safe

I’d absolutely still recommend this brilliant and beautiful album to anyone, but it ended up having less longevity for me than I expected

Beastmilk – Climax

See above; a very good album, but retro gothy rock felt surprisingly fresh when Beastmilk (now Grave Pleasures) released their debut; now it doesn’t

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Push The Sky Away

Possibly I am just spoiled for choice with Nick Cave, but at the time I thought this would take its place with Tender Prey, The Good Son, Henry’s Dream etc, but I listen to those regularly, this only every now & then

Absentia Lunae – Vorwarts (ATMF)

It’s not that I don’t like this fine black metal album, it’s just that I want all of their work to grip me in the same way that their mighty In Vmbrarvm Imperii Gloria does. And it doesn’t, quite.

Mirel Wagner – When the Cellar Children See the Light of Day (Sub Pop)

I remember this being great, and I think it is – but I haven’t really gone back to it since the initial excitement wore off.

Scott Walker & Sunn O))) – Soused (4AD)

My initial (but positive) impression that this is somehow just slightly less good than either Scott Walker or Sunn O)))’s usual records has grown – it’s not as good.

YOB – Clearing the Path to Ascend (Neurot Recordings)

Don’t get me wrong; this is one hundred percent a fantastic album, it’s just that its main legacy for me has been to send me back to Mike Scheidt’s criminally underrated 2012 solo album Stay Awake

Jarboe and Helen Money – Jarboe and Helen Money (Aurora Borealis Recordings)

Pretty simple – great record, but I wore it out by listening to it too much. It may come back though.

Odessey & Oracle – Odessey and Oracle and the Casiotone Orchestra (Folkwit Records)

Same – brilliant album, but extremely strongly flavoured in a way that makes it not for all moods…

Valet – Nature (Kranky Records)

A good album that I barely remember; will have to check it out again at some point, though.

Right; time to get on with the albums of the year….

Weekly Update: Halloween Horror – Outsider Music & Venusian Death Cell

It’s Halloween next week; and what better time to write a few words about the parallel universe of outsider music? ‘Outsider music’ is one of those nebulous but still quite useful terms that litter the language of music. Like “singer-songwriter”, it doesn’t really denote a specific style, genre or sound, but also like “singer-songwriter”, it conjures a specific image, or set of images; the lonely, perhaps crazily talented, perhaps technically inept, perhaps emotionally unstable or mentally ill musician or songwriter who definitely has something unique to communicate; but not something that the majority of listeners will want to hear, and therefore not something that the mainstream (or even non-mainstream but still commercial) music industry thinks it can sell, at least initially.

The (relatively speaking) successful outsider artist garners an inevitably niche/selective/small fanbase over time (the definition of a ‘cult following’) and these fans are drawn to their music for a variety of reasons; various hues of sheer curiosity, amusement, a genuine love of the outré qualities of the artist’s work, or just a recognition that, however it has expressed itself, there is a genuine talent at work, albeit one working outside of the usual boundaries of popular music and/or taste. Every now and then an outsider artist even becomes genuinely successful and achieves ‘insider’ status (I just made that up; Christ knows what ‘insider music’ would be), but mostly even the successes; Syd Barrett, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Tiny Tim – end up inhabiting a kind of twilight zone version of fame that is far removed from the experience of the mainstream artist. People usually discover their work because of its notoriety; by chance, or by reputation, but rarely because it’s played in public spaces, on the radio or on MTV (or Spotify, for that matter).

Jandek's 'Staring at the Cellophane' (1982) — Jandek’s ‘Staring at the Cellophane’ (1982)

It’s notable too, that outsider artists are rarely made famous in the first instance by the public (honourable exception; Tiny Tim, but it seems fairly likely that the public at the time saw him – not surprisingly – as a comedy novelty act, rather than the genuinely peculiar character he seems to have been.) Mostly, it is musicians, followed by critics, who initially recognise the appeal of outsider artists; probably because on the whole they tend to listen more closely to a greater volume/quantity of music than most people and are therefore attuned to listen for something different, whereas those within the talent-spotting wing of the music industry also hear lots of music but have, by and large, been listening for something similar to whatever is successful at the time, or at least something saleable. In a few cases (mostly those already mentioned, but also, far more shockingly, Jandek; a fascinating artist whose massive body of work is surely one of the most forbiddingly bleak and uncommercial in the ‘singer-songwriter’ sphere) the musicians enjoy some critical acclaim and are invited to come in from the cold, to play some shows and gently erode their mystique. In becoming something more than outsiders, but something far less than mainstream celebrities, the classic outsider artist loses something of their appeal, perhaps because entertaining (or ‘entertaining’) a real audience, made up of fans and interested parties leads to a significantly different kind of music from communicating with oneself or, at best an imaginary and perhaps ideal audience. It’s basically the same process that happens with any artist when they exchange whatever their lives and inspirations were, for the life and experiences of a successful musician.

Naturally, there isn’t a vast amount of literature on outsider music; or demand for a vast amount of literature on outsider music, but for a highly readable and well-researched overview, Irwin Chusid’s Songs in the Key of Z, The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (Chicago Review Press, 2000) (and the associated compilation album) is still pretty unbeatable (although the old RE/Search books ‘Incredibly Strange Music’ vols 1 & 2 from the early 90s are also packed with great stuff, not all ‘outsider’, but all worth a look).

Not appearing in any those pages though, is one of my favourite purveyors of outsider music, the one-man (David Vora) Irish band Venusian Death Cell. I’m slightly reluctant to write about VDC because (a) I have only heard a fraction of his music and (b) labelling someone as an ‘outsider artist’ feels a bit harsh in a way. Theoretically (and perhaps actually at some point, judging by his extensive bio below) some kind of metal band, there is no metal to be heard on any of the VDC albums I own, perhaps because (judging by sound alone) it’s difficult to approximate heavy metal with one guitar, no distortion/effects pedals, a small drum kit, a four-track recorder and one man working everything, and also hard to be metal-to-the-max when singing about soya desserts or ‘actor Ian McCulloch’ and when one’s cover art – though on its own terms highly evocative and suited to the music – is not quite up to the standard of the archetypical Derek Riggs style metal album cover.

So, the appeal of VDC – in the albums I have – is mainly not its metallic or heavy element. Sonically, the artist Vora’s music most resembles is the aforementioned Jandek , but – and it’s a crucial part of the appeal of outsider music generally – the personality/atmosphere and themes imbued in Venusian Death Cell’s work are entirely unique. Whereas Jandek’s work was/is lo-fi as music but mysteriously professional (or at least not hand-made) in its presentation (back in the early 80s he was putting out vinyl albums with picture sleeves just like (well, not just like) any small indie band on an actual label, Vora’s is unashamedly home-made, distributed on CD-Rs with photocopied artwork and lyrics. He is also a more accessible person, insofar as his own name, address and email address appear on the album inlays, while Jandek works through the austerely impersonal facade of the quasi-corporate ‘Corwood Industries’.

The VDC discography as far as I can make it out is below, it may not be complete and titles of the measly few albums I own are in bold. I will get more of them eventually. Some names may be wrong; I got them from the bio above and they aren’t all easy to read.

p a r t i a l d i s c o g r a p h y

1996 – Reap Invert (tape)

1997 – Natural Harmony (professional 24-track studio recording!)

2000 – Mystery

2001 – Moods(?)

2002 – Fiends

2003 – The Darkest Globe

2004 – VDC/Shitoba?/Miasma/Colin Cross (4-way split tape, P.O.P. Shitcords)

2005 – Half Born Dead

2006 – The Devil’s Land

2009 – Abandon The Desolate

2010 – Fines?

2011 – Raging of the Blind Mice

2011 – The Eagle

2012 – Schizophrenia

2013 – Collector of Death Metal

2013 – Day

2013 – Halloween V: Halloween Horror

Halloween V was my introduction to Venusian Death Cell and is possibly my favourite of the three I have. It’s definitely the least aggressive-sounding, more like a one-man version of The Shaggs than the metal I expected, despite the imagery and songs with titles like ‘Lucifer’, Cold Cancer’ and ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ (full lyric below, just because). It also has some oddly wistful, quite affecting songs like the haiku-esque ‘For You’ – “You are depression/Breaking free/Now Happiness/You were alone/Now you’re happy/Lovely for you.”

2013 – Abandonned Race (sic)

Far more chaotic and noisy, mainly because it has far more and louder percussion and therefore more shouted vocals, Abandonned Race is also a far less happy experience than Halloween V, but as good in its way. Topics are bizarrely wide-ranging, from religion, black metal and relationships to mental health and soya products (‘Milkland Millennium’)

2014 – Honey Girl

The most recent of the VDC albums I’ve heard, Honey Girl is also the shortest (8 songs in approx ten minutes) and is very much in the mould of Abandonned Race; sonically slightly harsher than Halloween V, it’s a bracing blend of performance poetry, crude proto-noise-metal and therapy; the lyrics are preoccupied with what were presumably Vora’s circumstances at the time:

“Heavy drugs, weight gain/Strange happenings/Psychosis and madness” – Psychotic

Terrible paranoid fear/affecting my happiness/eating my mental health…” – Terrible Fear

Despite the explicit unhappiness, Honey Girl isn’t the harrowing experience one might expect. Vora’s art is cathartic, rather than suffocating, and the cheerful note on the back of Honey Girl‘s booklet – “Honey Girl is a labour of love! Thanks for listening, hope you enjoyed!” captures the feeling of the music; in unloading his woes, somehow Vora doesn’t dump them on the listener. And that, at least partly, is the appeal of the not-very-musical music and apparently random subject matter of Venusian Death Cult. The seeming lack of any kind of artifice is, given the sophistication of most popular music, very appealing. What Irwin Chusid refers to as “the outsider sine qua non of earnestness” is present everywhere in Vora’s music. When he writes in the sleevenote to Abandonned Race, “Abandonned Race is a musical journey mainly for my own pain & pleasure rather than proving anything to those who happen to hear it.” it rings absolutely true. And this is not a kind of quasi-childlike ‘innocence’; Vora’s lyrics may not be written in the usual rock music language, but they are highly sophisticated, albeit in a matter of fact way:

Romancy – 1871 Lunacy Act in Ireland/Governs consent issues – /100% capacity to decide or none/Court makes all decisions about your life/(Criminal Law Act 1993)/Offense to have intercourse with mentally impaired/outside marriage (Halloween V: Halloween Horror) The explanatory note after the lyrics reads; “Lyrics are about those with extra support needs and their relationships”.

There are also forays into both Irish-language and French-language lyrics; which mean nothing to me, alas, but again underline that this is not a naive talent, just an unorthodox one. Whatever the language, VDC’s songs are mostly not all that easy (for me) to relate to; Vora’s preoccupations are not necessarily shared by everyone, or very many people at all – but that doesn’t make them less engaging. In fact, it’s the feeling that the listener is getting a glimpse into the normally private world of another human being – a sometimes troubled mind in all its seemingly unedited variety, brought to you by the medium of (nearly) music, that makes hearing Venusian Death Cell – and outsider music generally – such a refreshing experience. In the universe of Venusian Death Cell, with its seemingly random connections, weird logic and strangely semi-familiar landscapes, you (or at least I) and your everyday world are the outsider. It’s an interesting sensation.

Zombie Flesh Eaters

Ian McCulloch stars in films/Zombie Flesh Eaters, Zombie Holocaust and Contamination

Chorus: Zombie Flesh Eaters x 3

Daughter goes to find father/With Ian, the journalist/Zombie adventures on an island

Repeat Chorus

Video…nasties/Eye…gouged/Shark and zombie fight

Repeat Chorus

Notes: Lyrics are about the film Zombie Flesh Eaters, video nasties and the actor Ian McCulloch

Weekly Wafflings

For a variety of reasons, it’s been far longer than intended since I last posted anything here. So this is now the first of my weekly updates, which will mostly, I hope, be posted every Friday.

It’s been a funny summer; a house move, a lot of nice weather interspersed with a lot of rain, and (ongoing) the most unsettling national/international situation I can remember living through, which has involved are-evaluation of what I believe in politically and so forth – but I have a bigger summer review type thing in the pipeline at some point, so this is just a quick note until I have something more substantial to post. Onwards!

Current listening

I’ve heard a lot of good music recently, both old & new; in regular rotation have been: Egor Grushin’s beautiful Once and Domenicano, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention’s Burnt Weenie Sandwich and Uncle Meat, The Beau Brummels (who are never quite as good as I want them to be – ie not as good as The Lovin’ Spoonful) but have some really good songs, Kenny Drew & Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen’s Duo, Bessie Smith, a really interesting album called Stations by i am rhino and ruin which I’ll write about in more detail at some point, the wonderful Annette Hanshaw, John Baizley, Nate Hall & Mike Scheidt’s Songs of Townes Van Zandt, Louis Prima & Keely Smith, Maki Asakawa, Myriam Gendron’s Not So Deep As A Well, Japanese Breakfast, Alcest’s Kodama, Nick Jonah Davis’ House of Dragons, The Pastels, everything I could find by the brilliant Stupid Daikini, the new Wardruna album, Yurei’s Night Vision, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds’ Skeleton Tree, Madder Mortem’s Red In Tooth And Claw (which reminds me in some ways of the amazing Jingo de Lunch album Perpetuum Mobile) and Rachel Mason’s forthcoming and very addictive Das Ram, among other things, which brings me to…

Albums of the Year

I haven’t started making an actual list yet, but it’s that time of year when some albums have firmly earned their place in the AOTY list and others are looking likely. It would be nice if Prophets of Rage released an album, but oh well. I’ve no idea how long the list will be, but I can say at this point that it will certainly include Bowie’s Blackstar, Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto’s Leaves of Grass (not really an album but I’ll make an exception), Darkher’s Realms, Emma Ruth Rundle’s Marked For Death and Kristin Hersh’s amazing new book/double album Wyatt at the Coyote Palace.

*coincidence of the week!*

there are currently two lovely & sad (though otherwise not alike) songs called ‘Guadalupe’ regularly visiting my ears; one by the aforementioned Kristin Hersh and the other by Esmé Patterson.

Current Reading

I read Gail Carriger’s The Custard Protocol books way too fast and then spent the summer reading other things, notably Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood which was just as gripping and vivid and horrible as I remembered and Michael Moorcock’s two Corum trilogies (now on the last volume) which have been surprisingly comforting, not just because they are old favourites, but because of the rational but not backwards-looking philosophy that underlies Moorcock’s writing, even when the books are at their most typically ‘heroic fantasy’/swords and sorcery in their stories and action:

“Do you know that you dream of these gods – that you are stronger than they – that when you are fearful, why then you bring fearsome gods upon yourselves? Is this not evident to you?”

“Everything may exist for a short while – even justice. But the true state of the universe is anarchy. It is the mortal’s tragedy that he can never accept this.”

Other forms of entertainment

Grim times call for light entertainment (sometimes anyway); and I have watched and enjoyed an inordinate amount of Columbo and M*A*S*H in recent weeks/months; which suggests that war and murder are more soothing than one might expect. Less ephemerally, I have been looking at lots of art, mainly online inevitably, and am especially liking Awol Erizku at present for his re-framing & questioning of art history. So here’s his lovely Girl With A Bamboo Earring:

Until next week…

Ride On A Golden Wave: Uriah Heep’s …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble

Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (Vertigo/Mercury, 1970; Bronze shortly thereafter)

This year (2016), BMG begins an extensive reissue campaign of releases by one of the original Spinal Tap-influencing ‘rock dinosaur’ bands, the mighty Uriah Heep. Along with an anthology, the first of these releases is, logically enough, the band’s 1970 debut – one of my favourite albums of all time – …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble. This album is probably not cool. Judging by the mostly negative reviews it got in 1970 (‘If this group makes it I’ll commit suicide’ and ‘it’s too loud, too repetitive, too predictable’ are representative quotes) it never was cool, but 46 years later it can stand proudly alongside any of the hard rock, blues rock, progressive rock or rock-rock albums of its era.

And it was an era of rock; bear in mind that that particular year also spawned Deep Purple In Rock, Black Sabbath AND Paranoid, Led Zeppelin III and many more and, while the mighty Heep are perceived to be a relatively underground cousin of Deep Purple & co, they too ponced around the US in Lear jets and limos in a way that few new rock bands do nowadays. Judged on those 1970 albums alone, the band were clearly up there with the best. Slightly less heavy (but who wasn’t?) than Black Sabbath, more jazzy and poetic than Deep Purple, more riff-centric and bluesy than (1970-era) Led Zeppelin, …Very ‘Eavy… is monolithic but nimble, straightforward but, except in its most bludgeoning moments, not at all simplistic.

Unlike most decades, the 60s is often felt, culturally, to have a clear and decisive ending; from the perspective of nowadays, the Stones at Altamont and the Manson Family in Death Valley ended the peace & love/flower power era that was already shaken by the revolutionary events and protests of 1968. But the pre-Uriah Heep story, that of a band called Spice, (essentially Heep sans organist Ken Hensley), talent-spotted while playing in ‘The Blues Loft’ in High Wycombe, could not be more redolent of the hippy era. To me, the best work of Uriah Heep always has a hazy aroma late 60s underground optimism and …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble is a kind of time capsule of a world almost as distant and quaint now as the Victorian Age. This was a time when – as the great Charles Shaar Murray wrote (in a Cream magazine T-Rex article in 1972, just as the world moved into another cultural phase) – “Any gentle freak who believed that Nostradamus and King Arthur were alive and well in a UFO hovering somewhere over Glastonbury Tor, or who read Tolkien and Moorcock over his brown rice and apple juice, just had to own the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums...” It was these kind of freaks, one assumes, who in their less gentle moments, wanted to rock out to Spice. In High Wycombe. Incidentally, it may be this very hippy-hangover aura that prevented Uriah Heep from being as influential on the metal scene as their contemporaries, Black Sabbath (whose musical background in blues rock was very similar). Indeed, I can personally testify that the whole flared-trousers-and-moustaches vibe of the Heep (as well as the slightly bland rock they were putting out at the time) was enough to prevent some 80s metal kids from checking out their older work.

Anyway; Spice became a pretty well known band on the progressive rock circuit in the dying years of the 60s. In fact, their music as preserved on the first few LPs is very much ‘progressive’ in the late 60s blues rock sense (in which sense Led Zeppelin were also progressive), but not in the sense that ‘prog’ came to mean as the 70s wore on. Mick Box, founder, guitarist and, to this day the real heart of Uriah Heep, began as a jazz player and it was perhaps this more than anything, that coloured the heavy blues rock that Spice played; parallel to the British Blues boom but not really part of it, the band used elements of the blues, but they were never constrained by its structures.

The Band

Mick Box: guitar

(highly underrated as player, composer & all-round riffmeister)

David Byron: vocals

(a versatile, very English-sounding rock voice, equally at home with swaggering, earthy blues-rock vocalising and delicate fantasy

Ken Hensley: organ, guitar, vocals etc.

(Without Hensley Uriah Heep would have been far more like a standard late 60s blues-rock band)

Paul Newton: bass, vocals

(in the classic 70s tradition the bass is loud, clear & occasionally funky on this album; co-wrote lots of the songs.)

Alex Napier – drums (on half of the album)

(great, agile and subtle drummer, not as thunderous as some contemporaries, but for my money up there with the best; retired after leaving the band I believe)

Nigel “Ollie” Olsson: also drums, plays on a few songs

(another great drummer; went on to play with Elton John after his stint in the Heep)

THE ALBUM

1. Gypsy (Mick Box/David Byron)
The perfect opening track; after the busy little intro the simple, bludgeoning guitar/organ riff provides an excellent backing for David Byron’s authoritative vocal, establishing the Heep as a band of (for the time extremely) heavy sound and somewhat whimsical, romantic preoccupations; hippies in fact. Excellent organ and guitar soloing and harmony backing vocals by pretty much everyone make this a superb manifesto for the band’s approach. 70s heavy rock par excellence

2. Walking In Your Shadow (Paul Newton/David Byron)

An excellent funky drum intro which should be (has been?) sampled leads into a dynamic blues-rock song with another perfect vocal by David Byron. The song is a relatively understated version of the kind of pleased-with-itself blues rock swagger that Whitesnake were to excel in later in the decade, and it has an excellent Mick Box solo too.

3. Come Away Melinda (Hellerman/Minkoff)

A delicate and drama-filled version of the much-covered melancholy anti-war folk/protest song. Byron’s clear enunciation and expressive voice make the most of the (possibly slightly twee and pretentious) post-apocalyptic lyrics. Lovely mellotron-flute intro and lovely acoustic guitar; the key word is ‘lovely’. The great vocal is made even better by imaginative use of stereo.

4. Lucy Blues (Mick Box/David Byron)

A somewhat quizzical and sad blues-rock song, Lucy Blues is, despite occasional claims at the time that they were Led Zep clones, the closest Uriah Heep comes to Led Zeppelin on this album; not all that close. And with all respect to the iconic Robert Plant, David Byron managed the same kind of expressiveness without the melodramatic whimpering and screaming. As the original sleevenote remarks; ‘hardly unpredictable but rather pleasant’. Nice piano work adds to the barroom blues feel, far less epic than the usual Heep sound. Byron’s English accent gives the song a strange and unique flavour, as it tends to do on all of the more blues-based material – one of the features that makes early Uriah Heep so distinctive. Meanwhile, Ken Hensley proves himself master of the classic blues Hammond organ solo too.

5. Dreammare (Paul Newton)

Side two commences with one of the heavier songs on the album. Dreammare has an ominous organ intro, a strangely funky, reverby riff and a suitably feverish quality, enhanced by the speaker-to-speaker shimmer on the vocals. A nicely bad-tempered, squalling guitar solo too. This is perhaps the only song where the claims of sheer noisy unpleasantness could be deemed fair enough; for non-rock fans anyway.

6. Real Turned On (Mick Box/David Byron/Paul Newton)

Proto-Whitesnake swagger again (but even more so), Real Turned On is a cocky mid-tempo blues-rock tune with an angular riff, several good solos, tons of slide guitar by Ken Hensley and a good naturedly sleazy David Byron trying to lure a young woman with wine and so forth. Unreconstructed 60s freewheeling sexual (and arguably, but arguably not, sexist) revolution rock, it ends, oddly, with screeds of apocalyptic feedback.

7. I’ll Keep On Trying (Mick Box/David Byron)

Archetypically 70s flared-jeans hard rock, with organs, screaming guitar and an impassioned David Byron vocal. The tune skips between sinister-toned, portentious organ and wailing vocals and nimble-fingered fiddlyness during which every band member gets to show off, before settling into a heavy blues riff. There are tranquil interludes and dramatic, siren-like guitar and even a Zappa-esque wah-wah solo. If you don’t like this, you probably don’t like Uriah Heep; fair enough.

8. Wake Up (Set Your Sights) (Mick Box/David Byron)

The final track on the album is also the most ‘progressive’, jazzy one, which manages to encapsulate all of the facets of early Heepdom in six minutes. The intro has David Byron intoning ‘aaahhh’s over a bass and organ scales before a dramatic, grandiose verse about justice prevailing, before the music becomes a kind of hoppity, percussive jazz with some excellent bass playing and very understated guitars. As the song builds (with some enjoyably silly vocalising; ‘justice, justice, just-iiiice‘ etc) it breaks not into rock but another jazzy verse/chorus and then a lovely soft pastoral interlude before fading out. Byron’s vocal is highly theatrical and generally one of the best he ever recorded and it’s just an excellent, dynamic end to a superb album that people don’t like as much as I do; their loss.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the album is housed in one of the great rock sleeves of the era: a fallen warrior (David Byron in fact) covered in cobwebs, the darkness surrounding him only broken by the (superbly-fonted) logo and title. The gatefold features a photo of the band onstage.

The album was released in the US in a different and slightly inferior form (missing Lucy Blues, and featuring instead the great Bird of Prey from the band’s second album, Salisbury). The US album is simply called Uriah Heep and its cover – a kind of dragon/wyrm thing – is not one of the great rock sleeves of the era.

——————————————————————————————————

Although …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble is one of those rare perfectly formed albums that can only be marred by adding bonus tracks to, it is also one of those albums I have to own on multiple formats, and the 1996 CD release adds bonus tracks, thus:

Gypsy (single edit)
What is says; a shorter version, omitting the organ intro & so forth. Pretty great, though unnecessary

Come Away Melinda
An early version recorded by Spice before they changed their name to Uriah Heep. Interesting, not hugely different from the album version really, but Byron’s vocal has less feeling and it’s generally not quite as good.

Born in a Trunk
A rocking Spice tune, this features the kind of dynamics that early Heep excelled in, plus another strangely English David Byron vocal and some great funky drum breaks.

BMG’s latest version is in all regards superior to the 1996 version: wisely retaining the whole of the original album (but with beautifully remastered sound) as disc one of two, it adds an entire (and to be fair, slightly inferior) version of the album on disc two. These are unreleased (earlier or alternate takes) of most of the songs, plus the US mix of Bird of Prey and a nice Spice track called Magic Lantern.

Although the earlier versions are, naturally, mostly not quite as good as the finished ones, they are nearly there and, while Spice without Hensley can never equal Uriah Heep, that late 60s atmosphere, an indefinable (and you would think incompatible) mixture of unpretentious ‘let’s just get up and play’ attitude and love of airy, fantastical romance is present in its most concentrated form.

Difficult, But Fascinating: The Gail Carriger interview

Preamble to the Preamble…

Following the success of steampunk icon Gail Carriger’s recent novella, Poison or Protect the new novel in her Custard Protocol series, Imprudence is out now and Gail was kind enough to answer some questions for me. If you are already a fan, you may wish to skip all the waffle and go straight to the Q&A below. If you want to know why I wanted to interview her in the first place, read on.

The preamble proper; whys & wherefores…

Up until the 1990s, I would always have said I liked vampires, werewolves and ghost stories. But although my love of horror, science fiction and fantasy has never diminished, the post-Anne Rice* world, with its endless teen soap opera-style angst-ridden ‘nice’ vampires and increasingly formulaic genre conventions left me cold and I tended more and more to re-read favourite authors from the past (or, in the case of HP Lovecraft, read the works of his associates) rather than pick up anything new. That was until I first read Gail Carriger’s debut novel Soulless a few years ago. Sadly, I don’t remember where I first heard about it (online, I assume), but from a quick read of the first few pages, I was hooked, and welcomed vampires, werewolves and ghosts back into my life.

*No slight whatsoever intended towards Anne Rice herself, or her excellent novels; as well as an incredible storyteller, she revolutionised the horror genre at a time when all of its other revolutions seemed to be towards a more one-dimensional, graphically violent approach. Not that I mind that in itself.

Soulless wasn’t Dawson’s Creek with vampires; the supernatural characters were, as with most modern/post-modern fiction, given a similar complexity to their human counterparts, but Carriger goes further, weaving the supernatural/natural worlds together in an ingenious yet extremely logical and historically-informed way. Part of what makes this so successful is that she placed her characters in a parallel version of the Victorian era, creating a society where vampires and werewolves, without sacrificing their predatory nature, exist alongside their mortal contemporaries as yet more finely nuanced layers in the already-complicated social hierarchy of Victorian Britain. If the Victorian era represents the height of the British preoccupation with social class and proper manners, these become even more crucial in Carriger’s world, where the correct way to interact with social superiors/inferiors includes people, possibly on both sides, whose politeness is the only thing preventing them from drinking your blood/eating you.

The author’s masterstroke (Or ‘mistressstroke’? Should be right but has inappropriate connotations and too many ‘s’s, so masterstroke it is) was placing into this brilliantly realised world, one of her greatest creations to date, Alexia Tarabotti; intelligent, wilful, tough, of fairly-good-but-slightly-shaky social standing (aristocratic, but a spinster, and more interested in science than fashion) and born without a soul, the contrast between Alexia’s dramatic, fantastical and romantic adventures and her own prosaic, practical-yet-impulsive nature makes Soulless (and its sequels) as lightheartedly funny as they are action-packed and dark.

With The Parasol Protectorate series and the ‘young adult’ Finishing School series complete and her latest series The Custard Protocol well underway (volume two, Imprudence is published this summer, on July 19^th) as well as a stream of short stories and novellas, Gail is intimidatingly busy (not to say prolific), but nevertheless gave up some of her valuable time to answer a few questions.

Far more information can be found on her excellent website, and she is also especially fun to follow/engage with on Facebook and Twitter. But enough ado…

lovely portrait of Gail by Vanessa Applegate

The Interview…

With your website, blog and personal appearances, your fans have quite a lot of access to various facets of your personality, but to what extent is the public Gail Carriger something you create versus (or as well as) being ‘the real you’, if that’s a question you can answer?

There’s not a lot of difference between the two, it’s more a matter of what I focus on talking about publicly. Because I am so open and all over the internet, I tend to keep my relationships, close friendships, and family out of it. After all, they didn’t ask for that kind of exposure. I don’t talk about politics, and I rarely talk about the nitty-gritty of writing or offer writing advice, there are others out there who do this more eloquently than I ever could. I also don’t talk much about the mundane of everyday life: my policy is that if I don’t want to read about it, why would anyone else?

As the last question suggests, your fiction is part of a wider world/lifestyle that your readers get involved into varying degrees, but do you have interests that you wouldn’t consider incorporating into your fiction?

I don’t think so. It would be hard to keep the things I love out of my writing for all time. There are things that haven’t come up yet, but I wouldn’t rule them out.

Gail in Steampunk regalia, by J. Daniel Sawyer

You (fairly) recently announced you will be self-publishing alongside publishing the usual way, should fans expect a big (or any) difference between the two?

Well my self published stuff will be confined to novellas and short stories under 40000 words. So that’s a big difference. I suppose it might feel a little more unfettered. I’m not limiting myself to anything typical about any genre that I’ve worked in before. I figure all bets are off. I’m taking on anything I feel like from full on romance, to light BDSM, to LBGT relationships front and center, to class relations, to darker themes with less comedy. It’s still all me though, that oddball bend toward silliness that people expect will likely never go away.

Victorian writers like Dickens and Trollope often wrote their novels in monthly installments, which seems a very high-pressure way of writing but lends itself to a great deal of detail and fast-moving action, does that kind of writing have any appeal for you?

Yes, but I don’t think I could do it given my current travel schedule and traditional publishing commitments. I always fancied writing Alessandro as a serial. Another big problem is all the contract workers. That kind of process needs a dedicated available team of developmental editors, and copy editors, and proofers, and formaters. Not to mention a killer outline for all the installments up front. (Because you can’t go back and fix and error at the beginning if already published.)

A related question, writers in the Victorian era often became associated with particular illustrators (like Dickens and ‘Phiz’) but at some point the idea of illustrations in grown up (I would say ‘adult’, but the connotations!) fiction went out of fashion, do you think the cover artists for your books have shaped readers’ ideas of your characters in the same way that those Victorian illustrators did for the writers of that era?

Perhaps a little. Cover art is important, but more to encourage people to pick up the book than to give them a visual clue into the author’s imagination. Most of the time we aren’t even consulted, so it’s entirely marketing. (Not true for me, luckily.) I doubt that cover art has as much impact on imagination as illustrations did.

In some ways the ‘virtualisation’ (ugly made up word!) of books/growth of digital formats (and online retailers) means that fewer readers pay the full cover price for a book, but conversely means that some people will pay more for small/special editions (like the Subterranean edition of Soulless that I still need to buy). As someone who grew up in the papery book era (I’m a couple of years older than you and assuming – perhaps wrongly – that you were not a technologically precocious child who only read books via a Commodore 64 from floppy discs) what are your thoughts on all this for the present and future of literature – good, bad, or just different?

I’m one for different. I like the changes going on right now. And I am lucky enough to have options because people want to read my stuff. A whole cornucopia is open to me which, twenty years ago, wouldn’t have been possible. I can write novels for my publishing house, write short works with side characters and self publish those, and I can arrange side deals with boutique publishers, like Subterranean, for high end limited editions. I don’t like it when my work is pirated or stolen, but every new technology has a price of admission and there is not going back now.

Your books have so far mostly been in series’, but at what point in the writing/planning process do you know that a novel will be part of a larger structure?

Depends on the novel. I didn’t know Soulless would be a series until contract negotiations and I didn’t know how long that series until half way through the third book. I’m not sure how long the Custard Protocol will be but I’m writing it as couplets so each two stand alone but also tie in to the others (likely 4 or 6 total). The Finishing School, on the other hand, was always going to be four books, and I had the arc planned from the beginning.

All the novellas are entirely stand alone, although they seed to each other and my full length works, because I can’t help dropping cookies and scattering favorite characters through everything I write. Depending on how well they sell (read: worth my time to produce) the novellas are loosely gathered into three collections all of them steampunk comedies of manners.

The Delightfully Deadly novellas are espionage romances spun off my Finishing School series, and could go up to 7 stories. Poison or Protect is already written and in production, and the other 6 just in note form. I’m using my Supernatural Society novellas to tell LBGT romances. I have 2 planned, one written, and some possible shorts. And the Claw & Courtship novellas all feature werewolves. I have 2 mapped out with a possible third and a short story. Basically, I’m using the novellas to write whatever I want when I feel like writing it, so I am leaving my options wide open.

Your novels would (or, thinking about novel-to-movie adaptations could) make good movies, would that be something you would welcome?

I think it would be very exciting, but I’m also realistic about the chances that anything would ever happen. The Parasol Protectorate books have been optioned for television, but that is all so far.

What are you most excited about right now?

Going hybrid and bring out the first novella, editing the second one, and writing the third. I’m super absorbed by cover art, fonts, and everything that goes along with the packaging of a book. I’ve never done it before and it’s really fascinating. Difficult,but fascinating.

Do you have any plans to come to the UK in the foreseeable future?

Nope. Like a vampire I only go where invited and I haven’t been asked in a while. I’d love to come back, I always enjoy visiting but I usually need some kind of event to draw me over. If I could afford it, I’d come every few years, I miss it there.

another great Vanessa Applegate photograph

Need more Carriger in your life? There’s a wealth of excellent information on all things Gail on her wiki and her fun vintage fashion (and related stuff) blog is here

Tea-table Books 1: Dust & Grooves by Eilon Paz

Tea-table* books is an occasional series devoted to the best books for casually enjoying while relaxing with a hot beverage. Usually large format and illustrated (yes, just like ‘coffee table books’), the best tea-table books are of course just as good when read from cover-to-cover, but their real charm is their ‘dip-into-able’ quality. But enough preamble: onto this particular example –
*don’t like coffee

Dust & Grooves: Adventures in Record Collecting by Eilon Paz (Ten Speed Press, 2015)

As fans of the excellent website Dust & Grooves will know, photographer Eilon Paz is fascinated with record collectors and their collections. The site grows ever bigger, and is a home to some great journalism as well as hundreds of beautiful photographs, but there’s still something special about this book. Necessarily more focussed than the site, if not exactly more portable (enjoyably big and heavy) it’s pretty simple: Paz photographs collectors in their record rooms, surrounded by their vinyl and (along with various writers) talks to them about the music they love and how they collect it. In the second part of the book there are great in-depth interviews with some serious collectors, including Sheila Burgel, Rich Medina, Gilles Peterson, Questlove and Jonny Trunk, among others.

The photographs are beautiful in themselves and are both revealing and extremely tantalising to pore over; what are all those other records on the shelves? What does a launeddas sound like? (the internet can help with that; pretty cool as it turns out.) The people and their stories are hugely interesting and it’s nice that, whatever one’s own musical interests are, the people collecting country or hi-life records (or indeed Sesame Street ones) are just as fascinating as those whose albums and 45s one covets. Record collectors are interesting because people are interesting and music is interesting; and there are always more records to hear and more people to meet, so it is (hopefully) a very repeatable formula. Taste is a strange, illogical thing (I have a vast, unfinished article for this very blog that has so far failed to illustrate that point adequately, but may appear here eventually) and as the stories in this book reveal, for most collectors music has been a journey from one particular passion or field of interest to many, often barely related ones.

Though not a serious collector myself (more an unfocussed accumulator) this is a book that makes me want to collect records. And listen to them of course; it’s heartening that of the collectors in this book,all are first and foremost fans of the music they collect and not collectors and cataloguers of mere (if they are mere) objects. So yes, it’s a good book.

The Third Monthly Report: March 2016

By this point, 2016 has started to develop its true character, mainly based on famous people dying and political and religious extremism: halcyon days! Ah well, never mind, I’ve listened to, looked at and read lots of things which passed the time pleasantly and helped to block out the nasty stuff: so that’s nice. Re those things, more below…

Sweatshop by Peter Bagge (Fantagraphics Books)

At first, Sweatshop feels more like one of Peter Bagge’s more lightweight, knockabout strips like Batboy or Studs Kirby, and compared to the brilliant Woman Rebel it is, but there’s more substance to the characters in Sweatshop than you’d think. This is perhaps because the situation (a group of ambitious young cartoonists working for a grouchy, reactionary, but famous old cartoonist to produce his well-known but trivial newspaper strip) is one close to the hearts of Bagge and his own team of artists. It’s funny and silly, but also well plotted and with some sharp observations about the world of cartooning as well as human relationships etc; a good book in fact.

Various short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The selection I have was collected by Penguin Classics in Bernice Bobs Her Hair and other stories) I first read Fitzgerald’s short stories when I was a teenager and have gone back to them every now and then. I’m always surprised by how funny and sad they are. I bought Bernice Bobs Her Hair because of the beautiful photo of Louise Brooks on the cover and I’m glad to see Penguin are still using it for a similar book of Fitzgerald’s stories.

Anthrophobia by Godhole/Crozier & Godhole’s s/t EP (Mind Ripper Collective)

I had already heard both of these great releases but when I saw that Mind Ripper were selling them on vinyl 7″s ridiculously inexpensively. Anthrophobia is a brilliant meeting of two very different musical personalities, with Godhole’s intensely emotive and strangely catchy powerviolence being distorted almost to the point of non-music by Crozier’s harsh noise; it’s bracing and not at all pretty, but it has a real impact and is worryingly addictive. The same is true of the Godhole EP, although it is relatively more disciplined insofar as it sounds like a band, rather than a catastrophic nightmare.

Islands by The Cosmic Array (Folkwit Records)

For 99% of the time, a complete contrast with the above (though the second half of Drones is surprisingly noisy and atonal), I was especially impressed by the forthcoming Cosmic Array album because I didn’t expect to like it at all. “Alt country/Americana”, ‘immersive and cinematic’ or not, is not really my thing* but in fact this album brings together a beautifully peculiar space-age melancholy that has (to me) hints of the Flaming Lips, Spacemen 3, My Little Airport and even the BMX Bandits and a sound that is a hybrid of UK indie and alt country (Fire Up The Sky is, strangely, almost shoegaze-alt country; actually, Moose’s XYZ was a great shoegaze/Americana album, so maybe not so strange?). Anyway; the songs are catchy and nice, Paul Battenbough and Abby Sohn are really good, expressive vocalists and it really is a big, widescreen cinematic sound as advertised; so put aside anti-country prejudices (if like me you have them) and give it a listen.

*BUT: check out Hale (2012) by The Sterling Sisters if you’ve never heard it: great

Gensho by Boris with Merzbow

From mellow Welsh-American music to Japanese heavy noise; Gensho includes a cover, swathed in echo and delay, of perhaps my favourite My Bloody Valentine song, Sometimes and that kind of sums up the album; it’s beautiful and haunting and harsh and (only occasionally) nearly unlistenable, but it’s great. Merzbow’s harsh, but essentially malice-free abstract noise takes (to say the least) the slightly saccharine edge off of the more pop/shoegaze direction Boris has been making over the last few albums and Boris’ essential musicality makes Merzbow feel less like an experiment to test the capabilities of your speakers/ears; less background/white noise-like. It’s a great partnership and I’d like them to explore it further.

Changeless by Gail Carriger (2010)

A lightning-fast re-read for possibly my favourite of Gail Carriger’s brilliantly witty and tongue-in-cheek steampunk novels concerning the soulless heroine Alexia Tarabotti; I don’t really believe in having crushes on fictional characters, but if I did, I would. I think it was at the end of this book that I realised how much feeling I had invested in the characters. Although she is often compared to PG Wodehouse (fair enough in a way), I’d say (if forced to compare) that for me, Gail Carriger combines the lightness of tone and depth of feeling that I find in two of my favourite ever books; The Rock Pool by Cyril Connolly and Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell.

Bacteria Cult by Kaada/Patton (Ipecac Recordings)

The third collaboration between Mike Patton and John Erika Kaada is, despite the ominous title, an extremely wide ranging and often light-toned (if moody, in the film-soundtrack sense) collection of dramatic and sometimes operatic (but not always melodramatic) pieces, ranging from the strangely Tom Waits-like Papillon to the Morricone-ish Black Albino. It’s a perfectly judged album, Mike Patton’s voice(s) interweaving with the orchestra to create individual pieces that are at the same time short and vast;too involving to be ‘background music’ it really does sound like an epic soundtrack in search of who knows what kind of film.

I also rediscovered to mix CDs (never sounds as good as ‘mixtape’) made for me by a friend years ago which embody all that is great about a classic mixtape; I didn’t know all the songs (or bands) before I heard them and I didn’t end up being a fan of everything on them, but there’s something about a home-compiled (nowadays people would probably say ‘curated’) tape of someone else’s music that is fascinating and entertaining, plus these have fantastic collage artwork. I hope the ‘youth of today’ still makes these kinds of things! Anyway, offered here as a kind of playlist not of my making: much of which is recommended –

WEIRD MIX

VHS or Beta – Heaven
Toadies – Possum Kingdom
This Mortal Coil – Holocaust
Thee Headcoats – I’m Unkind
The Locust – Skin Graft At 75
Strung Out – Tattoo
The Specials – Too Much, Too Young
Sneaker Pimps/Portishead – Water
An Albatross – The Great Sarcophagus
At The Drive In – This Night Has Opened My Eyes
The Buggles – Video Killed The Radio Star
Billie Holiday – On The Sunny Side of the Street
Billy Bragg/Wilco – Ingrid Bergman
Blondie – One Way Or Another
Bouncing Souls – Break Up Song
Bright Eyes – Something Vague
Cat Power – Where Is My Love?
Cranes – Lilies
The Faint – There’s Something Not As Valid When The Scenery Is A Postcard
Fugazi – Waiting Room
Go-Gos – Lust To Love
The Mars Volta – Son et Lumiere
Mates of State – I Got A Feelin
Mates of State – I Have Space
The Misfits – Scream
Screeching Weasel – Zombie

STUFF + THINGS

Bright Eyes – The Calendar Hung Itself
Gogol Bordello – Bulla Bulla
Ima Robot – Dirty Life
Ima Robot – Twist + Shout
Frou Frou – Breathe In
Placebo – Blind
Devandra Banhart – My Ships
Devandra Banhart – Legless Love
The Cramps – Eyeball in my Martini
Nightmare of You – Thumbelina
Nightmare of You – In The Bathroom
Jets To Brazil – Chinatown
Sleater Kinney – Funeral Song
Sleater Kinney – Dig Me Out
Sonic Youth – 100%
Tegan and Sara – Walking With A Ghost
Tiger Army – Never Die
Tilt – Libel
The Weakerthans – Wellington’s Wednesdays
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Date With The Night
William Shatner – I Wanna Sex You Up
The Smiths – The Boy With The Thorn In His Side
Scarling – City Noise
Roy Orbison – In Dreams

and there you have it: March 2016 – onwards!

All the stuff and more; why bands should split up and never, ever reform

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that there are a few reasons that bands who have long since split up should reform, but they are mostly reasons relevant to the band itself and not their fans;

unfinished business (various kinds)
reaping the rewards (personal, financial) that they didn’t get the first time around
because they (think they) are better songwriters/musicians than they were before – that kind of thing.
It’s fun being a band again

BUT – much as I loved Lush, Ride, Slowdive, The Stone Roses, Pixies and definitely wish them all well, do I want new albums by them? Even if (as seems unlikely – and in the case of The Pixies definitely wasn’t the case) the new albums are “better” (whatever that means) than their old ones, part of the appeal of those bands (leaving aside nostalgia and the age I was when I first liked them) is the completeness of their discographies; a whole story, from start to finish.

As with most pop/rock music,The Beatles are archetypical. If their discography had stretched from 1962 to 1970, but with one strange album from 1979 where they sounded a bit like The Beatles, only in 1979, with maybe ‘Just Like Starting Over’, ‘Getting Closer‘, ‘Blow Away‘ and ‘Wrack My Brain‘ on it, would Beatles fans be any better off? If nothing else, it would spoil the strangely mythical story arc as recorded in the Anthology documentaries etc, not to mention their embodiment of the cultural phenomenon that is remembered as ‘the sixties’.

Obviously there are many bands with long, good careers, bands who manage to produce something surprisingly great, even in their ‘twilight years’, but nevertheless the classic band (or just human?) trajectory is:

early promise (or astounding precociousness)
maturity (‘best’ period)
post-maturity (weird/interesting period)
end (can be many kinds of end)

There are many permutations on this formula, but a relatively short, intense career (5-10 years?) can be the most satisfying one to look back on, especially from the point of view of the record collector who wants to own everything, in every format and version. Ideally (again, from the collecting point of view) a career should make a nice box set (or two; albums/singles, although it’s inevitable that if a band is commercially successful, record labels will make much more than one or two nice box sets out of their work; “reissue, repackage, repackage” etc).

This article was prompted by the seemingly untimely demise of the brilliant avant-grind/death metal/peculiar UK underground band Oblivionized, followed by the realisation that a couple of demos, an EP, and a few split releases, culminating in a pretty much perfect album is in fact a model career. Their work began in a certain style, they perfected that, moved on, experimented, made something new, perfected that and then quit while they were ahead. And it’s all out there, relatively easy to get hold of and there you have it; the complete Oblivionized collection. Might be a bit of a wait for the box set though.

The Smiths are another favourite band with a model career; and at this point it seems like Morrissey has made it pretty certain that a reunion can never happen. Even though I would no doubt want to see them live if they did reform, I’m glad it seems unlikely. As it stands, The Smiths’ career has that Beatles-y sense of symmetry; The Smiths, where they set out their style in its roughest form (actually my favourite album though); Meat Is Murder and The Queen Is Dead refining it and perfecting it; a sense of strain and everything going a bit odd with Strangeways, Here We Come (my second favourite). Plus a fantastic run of singles, some demos and Peel Sessions and a live album; and then end it before it gets to the first not-good album; perfect. For the individual Smiths, as for The Beatles, their post-band careers would be far more erratic, but successful enough (in Morrissey’s case more than successful enough) that they have no pressing reasons to relive their youth as grown-ups, with all of the high-school-reunion awkwardness one assumes comes from that situation.

It’s nice that The Smiths are, thus far, holding firm; one imagines that the financial rewards would be almost irresistable; and normally I think it’s fair to say that financial factors play a part in the majority of reunions of ‘heritage’ bands (classic cases; The Sex Pistols, Velvet Underground). Normally it is circumstance rather than integrity that prevents bands from working together again; too much water under the bridge in the case of Abba, or more tragically The Doors, Joy Division, Nirvana among many others; these bands have untarnishable careers for the saddest of reasons.

It’s entirely reasonable and understandable that artists want to relive their glory years; but they are called glory years for a reason – they can’t come again. Most bands with any kind of longevity are built around the vision of one or two members anyway (except The Ramones I guess) and how many bands that are any good have had more than a decade of productivity without any lineup changes or inferior albums? And how many reunions have resulted in the best album of a band’s career?

Best not to do it people, once the thrill of seeing you in concert has passed you will have taken the shine off your greatest musical achievements; and no-one except your bank manager will thank you for it.