Sorry again for the slow updates… been so tired and busy it’s fucking mad.

Music news in brief;

I know I’m a bit late on this one, but I’ve finally found a cheap copy of The Thermals ‘More Parts Per Million’ and… holy fucking hell, it’s one of those “my new favourite band!” moments. It’s undoubtedly the best Punk Rock* blast I’ve encountered since the holy light of ‘Mclusky Do Dallas’ a couple of years ago. It’s just… wow! I want to play it to every uninspired trad guitar rock band in the world and say “LISTEN UP YOU LOSERS! THIS IS HOW IT’S DONE!!”
The Thermals formula is so simple, so utterly un-new, so uncontrived and yet… so utterly fucking brilliant. I guess basically you’ve got the harmonious pop songwriting of the buzzcocks, a post-Pavement smart-arse lyrical slant and most importantly of all the sheer joyful ENERGY rush of the Ramones (and nobody else before or since). With music consisting of literally nothing except fuzzed up barre chords, clattering drums and strangulated yelping (no instrumental bits or bridges or any of that shit!), the Thermals are driven forward at the edge of the musical speed limit not by any preconceived ideas or progressions, but by a sea of pure fucking energy, as they kick through 14 songs in 27 minutes on a four-track in some guy’s living room and stick the tape straight in the morning post to the record label... and it’s fucking exhilarating! This album has saved my life over the past three days, I must have played it about 20 times... it’s keeping me alive! The Thermals are the kind of band that make me want to say fuck a lot. FUCK! AAAaaarrrghh, I love this fucking record so much!!! It reminds me why I got into all this indie rock shit in the first place! It makes me shriek with fucking joy! Aaaarrrgghh!


*my definition obviously, not the utterly irrelevant ‘genre’ definition..


And, hey, since I've got nothing else very coherent to sayh right now, I think Pete’s got something to say. Shall we see what it is?

>Went down to the charlotte last night to see a few bands. Rather good it was too.
>A band called Redjetson played first and, well, were kinda >forgettable. Everyone else seemed to really like that though. It’s just that 6 >guys, 3 playing guitar, doing ‘epic’ quiet/loud rock don’t really do it for me. At >best I guess they reminded me of idlewild when they go for the slowburner, but then >that was when idlewild always sucked most I reckon. If I was being really nice I >could throw a joy division they’re way, but I don’t feel like it.
>There’s a lot more I want to throw at Youth Movie Soundtrack >Strategies. Money, badly inked letters of love and devotion, great great >words. Because they blew me away. For half an hour I could forget where I was. Just >tremble and stutter slightly. Yeah that one’s got poster boy looks but I love the >way he holds his guitar. switch on switch off. Dagger sharp guitar lines. switch >on. a LOUD dream. Switch. Blow to the back of the head, counting backwards til >you’re back at the start. Switch. emotion to EMOTE. The loudness within. Switch. a >deafening rumble. Turn up the slintness (a good thing).Again. reach accross and >kiss yr lover as the dj plays explosionsinthesky all over the fast lane.switch >on.head LIGHTS!. Last thing you remember.that.noise. Stop. End credits roll. Leave >in silence. Tell everyone about that great movie you saw.
>Cat on form were superb as ever. They really seemed much tighter >as a band. I love the basic set up. The idealistic words, the raw punkness. Every >squalling mis hit note. It always excites and inspires me. Even though they say >things like “this one’s about how fake everything is on MTV...” which you can take >as given really…you know where it comes from is just so damn real, you know they >mean IT. Even if it’s not quite the way they say it. And finally a band who sound >ok in the charlotte with it’s held together by cellotape soundsystem… they make me >wish I could get up[ and shout things. Or do something more.just validate my youth. >My anger and confusion that this town gives me.
>
>Anyway.. And we’re seeing Sonic Youth soon aren’t we! That had almost slipped my >mind! Oh sweet hurrahs! Guess we can arrange that sometime… Take it easy, pete.
>

Weirdly, this evening I am obsessed with the idea of trying to figure out how to play “Superstar”, the Carpenters song as memorably covered by Sonic Youth.

For somebody as tone-deaf as I am, this is quite tough.. I’ve come up with some things that sound a little bit like the initial bit of the melody, but not really enough like it..

A more beautiful song I have rarely heard, and I can’t get it out of my head.

Of course, I could just wander around singing it until I fall over, but that would be.. worrying behaviour, frankly.

Anyone out there got any hints?

Hi, I know I’ve been neglecting my weblogging duties recently, and for that I apologise. I blame the distress of returning to 9-till-5 work and the fact that a power surge killed my modem last week. But anyway, not to worry, I've got a good old rant for you this evening.

So.. it was my birthday last week (a staggering 22 since you ask), and having been thoughtful enough to provide relatives with a list of cool stuff a while in advance, I received some cool stuff by way of gifts.

My two favourite presents were Sunn O)))’s ‘White 1’, which will henceforth be played at my wedding, funeral, Desert Island Discs appearance and all other notable occasions, such is it's brilliance, and a copy of Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind’s book Lords of Chaos, you know, the one about Black Metal and the associated crimewave and stuff.

After spending a weekend in bed consuming these two cultural artefacts, it is my duty to inform you that I now worship Odin, and will do my utmost to drive the weak followers of the puny Christ from this land with axe and fire. Beginning next week.

To be honest though, I don’t know if I really enjoyed ‘Lords of Chaos’ as much as I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an extremely informative and well researched book, and it’s pretty fascinating. It’s just that.. well I guess firstly I don’t think it went into enough depth on the anthropological aspects of the Norwegian BM phenomenon. By which I mean, it failed to really get inside the heads of the metallers to a sufficient extent or to provide convincing explanations of how their crazed patterns of belief took hold – it was more inclined to rely of dodgy pop-sociological explanations and to take obviously self-aggrandising bullshit statements from the participants at face value.

Mostly though, I think the problem I had with the book is that it did a lot to undermine my view of Black Metal as an acceptable and exciting musical genre, by spending chapter after chapter revealing the grim extent of the connections between BM and extreme right-wing neo-nazi stuff. As somebody wisely pointed out to me a while ago, “you can’t just go ‘oh, that band are nasty racists, but the rest of them are ok’, you’ve either got to accept the fact that a lot of these people are politically dodgy or stop listening to the music, cos it’s basically the most militantly WHITE form of music ever devised”.

And the facts presented by ‘Lords of Chaos’ basically reinforce the truth of that warning. While obviously very few Black Metallers aside from Varg Vikernes are actually outspoken Nazis, that’s far from the end of the story. You’ve got to wonder why so many of them remain so vague about their exact political beliefs in interviews, baring in mind that any obviously fascist statements would likely equal record boycotts and commercial suicide. And looking at this in the context of a musical genre obsessed with militant Nietzschian ‘strength of will’, macho viking-fantasy and resurgent pre-Christian tribal culture, together with frequent interview rhetoric of unashamed misanthropy and elitism, and tirades against ‘disgusting and unnatural’ ideas such as ‘humanism’ and ‘political correctness’ and… well, the picture doesn’t look promising for us wussy lefty metal fans.

Further to this, you’ve got to worry about the apparent tolerance of fascism in the BM world. Hellhammer, drummer in Mayhem (about the only member of the original line-up who’s not dead or incarcerated), makes openly racist comments throughout the interview with him in the book and, erm, nobody seems too bothered. Former Emperor member Faust, whose arrest and conviction for the stabbing to death of a gay man are recounted in detail in the book, was released from prison last year having failed to utter a word of remorse, and reports suggest that he’s out having a laugh with his old pals, making guest appearances on peoples records and the like, and generally being treated as a scene veteran / hero as if nothing had ever happened.

And apparently the Norwegian slogan on the back of Darkthrone’s ‘Transilvanian Hunger’ translates as “Norwegian Aryan Black Metal”. And apparently a lot of extreme nationalist publications feature regular columns on Black Metal.

And so on. Naturally this whole aspect of it really, really annoys and depresses me.

I mean, I won’t deny I’m fascinated by Black Metal culture. Look at it this way – you’ve got all these morbid outcast teenagers isolated in Northern Europe, and somehow they get hold of a bunch of heavy metal from the US/UK, and completely missing the inherently farcical nature of the whole thing, they decide to take the theatrical excesses of Venom and Slayer at face value, making them the basis for their whole philosophy of life… I mean, WOW! How cool is that?? What a great basis for a story. And so then they start worshipping pagan gods, wearing chainmail and spikes in the high street and running around graveyards at night waving axes around.. COOL! Those crazy guys! And they make their own music, kicking out the campness of previous metal and replacing it with remorseless demoniac brutality and an almost spiritual intensity, and WOW, check it out, totally extreme metal made by people who actually MEAN IT! Pretty startling stuff, effortlessly evoking the darkest of European gothic romanticism with a disturbing puritan harshness and a strange beauty all of its own, and, hell, I really get a kick out of it. And so before you know it, things get completely out of hand and they’re desecrating graves, burning churches in an organised rebellion against Christian orthodoxy and eventually even hacking each other to death.. now sure, that’s all very morally reprehensible, but I think I can see the fun side and, ha ha, THAT’S the way to fucking do it, y’know! It's astounding to hear about these crazy modern day beserkers actually practising what they preach, and instantly building up a world of fascinating urban myths and rumours in the process..

And then they have to fuck it all up by growing up to be a bunch of pompous Nazi twats.

Damn.

I’ve just had a listen to this odd compilation CD I got out of the library. The design etc. looks like yr. standard lounge/chill-out bollocks, but two things attracted me to this disc; 1)It’s called “Look into the Flower: Trip on Psychedelic Grooves” – a great title for anything. I’d listen to a CD by anybody if it was called that. 2)It’s on Blue Note, the jazz label. And 3) I’ve never heard of any of the tracks or artists listed, but they all sound a bit weird.

And it’s a pretty cool listen actually. Admittedly, a lot of it drivels off into kitsch/lounge/porno territory, which isn’t really my scene, but some of the tunes really deliver on the title. I don’t know what genre this stuff is really.. it’s a bit too straightforward and, well, silly to really make it as jazz, but a bit too lively and crazed to qualify as ‘lounge’. The best thing on here is the second track, ‘Streets of Calcutta’ by one Ananda Shankar. As the observant amongst you will have noted, it’s an Indian record, and it’s absolutely joyously mental. It’s sort of based around big Lust-For-Life style drum action, on top of which sitars, freaky organs and blaring horns are chucked around and piled up on top of each other seemingly at random, to fantastically enjoyable effect. It sounds like the perfect soundtrack for a surrealistic 60s Hollywood Technicolor chase sequence through an Indian city, preferably featuring a brightly painted 2CV, overturned market stalls, Peter Sellers and a lot of silly hats. It is joycore.