ALWAYS THE SAME or FOREVER CHANGES?

Ok, so, the day after tomorrow I will be unceremoniously leaving Leicester – the town in which I’ve lived for 5 out of the past 6 years – probably forever.

I didn’t really intend my departure to be so sudden and drastic, but so it goes.

Leicester is not initially the most exciting, culture-rocking city in the UK but nonetheless it has been good to me over the years, and there are a number of people and institutions I will definitely miss. I was going to take this opportunity to sing their praises as I ride off ass-backwards into the diminishing sunset, but on second thought that would be a bit maudlin and unnecessary – if they or their representatives are reading then they probably know who they are, and, well, don’t look back, as The Remains, Bob Dylan and Belle & Sebastian (in that order of relevance) have all reminded us over the years.

So anyway, this is the last post I’ll make to this weblog from my drab old work PC, and expect things to be a quiet for maybe a week or so as I sort myself out.

After that, if all goes to plan, I should be posting from my shiny new Apple Mac, one like all the cool kids have, which will be sooo awesome, and will no doubt allow me to do exciting hi-tech stuff, like posting MP3s, or creating highly compressed psychic chaospheres that will blast out of the screen and fill your head with the exact experience of what it was like to attend a gig or listen to a record, thus rendering the act of writing irrelevant, or, y’know, whatever other rad stuff you can do with computers these days.

That’s if I can rig up a half-decent internet connection down in the depths of darkest Wales – last time I looked they had a service down there quaintly known as “intermittent broadband” – eg, it goes at about half normal speed and shuts itself off every five minutes.

So like I say, we’ll see, but watch this space.

Charalambides
The Luminaire, London
8th July 2006



As with so much of the music I like the best, I find it quite difficult to write about Charalambides. All the more so now, in light of the frightening grace of the performance Christina and Tom Carter delivered to a sparse crowd in a darkened upstairs room in an obscure corner of our nation’s capital a couple of weekends ago.

It was the first time I’ve really seen the band play (a few minutes at ATP 2004 not withstanding), so comparisons are difficult, but truly, it was a GREAT one. As with any band whose music I’m particularly drawn to, there are certain elements of Charalambides I particularly like, certain things I wish they’d do more and other things I wish they’d do less – y’know how it is. Well every little thing at this performance was just so – I’d find it hard to imagine a better Charalambides show.

So I’ve been picking over this review ever since, and the eternal question remains; how am I to approach the task of conveying to some limited extent the properties of this lucid, unique music, and the effect it had upon me, within the limits imposed by these humble prison bars of text on a screen?

Well there are several possibilities;

First of all I could dive right in the deep-end, letting rip with the kind of impassioned, expressionistic prose often favoured by certain current writers and publications; do away with factual reportage altogether and take you straight to the heart of personal revelation, inspired tangents etc. I could explore the usage of the word ‘psychedelic’ as applied to music, it’s meaning, it’s aims, it’s methods, and the ways in which a modern band can apply them in such a way as to rise above the clichés and cut to the very real heart of our lives and emotions, as opposed to adopting the rather easier escapist strategy, gambling off gleefully into overloaded fantasias of blood-drenched mountains, Tibetan kitsch, hyperspace confusion and retro fuzz. For, yes, much psychedelic music aims at attaining escape velocity from earth-bound reality, this we know, and it is fine and good and mighty, but it is not Charalambides. Instead, the Carters keep their feet on the ground and cut slices out of the air around them in search of an internal psychedelic space – a trembling spark of divinity that exists in ourselves and in other people and in the intimate details of the space between the two. A space that from within which we can stare for hours at arrangements of hair, or grass, or sunlight, or skin, or shadow.

I could call upon the image of Aldous Huxley, mapping eternity within the folds of his corduroy trousers. I could talk about getting similarly absorbed in the spaces between long, ringing guitar notes, about disorientating changes of pace between holy inertia and brittle, screaming drama. I could discuss the never fully realised potential of the vibrating, interplanetary guitar tones of the San Francisco ballroom sound, smothered at birth by macho blues blasters but here tonight given free reign at last.

(Pauses for breath.)

But, the thing is, Charalambides’ psychedelic space remains – crucially - within the accepted boundaries of human experience, and it is consequently always under threat from brutal, mortal interruptions. Interruptions from change, from time, from drama, from narrative, from basic despair and old fashioned tragedy… and isn’t that essentially what we get our kicks from after we awake drooling on the pillow after another no-mind holiday in the land of eternal sustain? So this is why (despite claiming the free/psyche/whatever underground as their chosen home), Charalambides still persist in chipping away at those most uncool of things, SONGS. Simple, devastating, open-ended songs that could last 2 minutes, could last 20, carved from the arcs of a few choice, timeless phrases, sometimes breathless and blissful, sometimes excruciatingly hurt and frightened, and, at their most powerful moments, navigating a terrifying trajectory between the two.

But I couldn’t really subject you to a full-length review of that level of rambling abstraction. I mean, it would be a bit much, wouldn’t it. I need to balance all that guff with a straight-up, factual report!

I need to tell you that the Carters both played electric guitars throughout their set, and shiny, expensive-looking ones at that. And that, yes, they sounded incredible – truly, they understand the possibilities for wringing exquisite sounds out of those stringed, plugged in things. I guess the fact they play in some pretty far-out tunings probably helps. Admittedly, I’m entirely musically illiterate, so I could well be talking crap, but the exact composition of their volleys of notes and long, lonesome, ringing tonalities sound notably different from the stuff you usually hear coming from guitars, and there is much frowning over tuner pedals to be done between songs here tonight. And, in another major point of departure from the majority of psychedelic rock, it’s notable that those harmless little devices are the pedals most favoured by this band at the moment. Admittedly, Tom does employ some devastating fuzz and wah-wah for the more dramatic / spaced moments, but for the most part, this sound, with all its forays up to heaven and back, relies upon the imaginative interplay of hands, strings, pick-ups and amplifiers. A brave and refreshing decision in this day and age, when even mild-mannered indie-pop bands seem to fall back on tacky wall-to-wall distortion when playing live.

Needless to say, stripped of special FX and additional instruments, the duo’s playing is necessarily amazing – it’s rare in any kind of music to hear two instruments so completely entwined, to the extent that they finish off each other’s phrases like twins or lovers finish off sentences. Although, having said that, it’s notable how much Christina downplays her guitar skills in Charalambides (a sampling of her prolific solo work reveals said skills to be formidable). She lets Tom dominate, working his astonishingly expressive Jerry Garcia via Albert Ayler styles throughout whilst she often sticks to just providing slow, minimal bass-string rhythms.

Presumably she is concentrating more on her captainship of the songs, and her voice, as on the new album, takes on a more central role than ever before. Christina’s singing is striking and odd. I’m not sure I even like it that much on a purely instinctive level, but I’m glad it’s there, adding tension, form and an uncertain, untouchable emotion to the band’s music. Rather than the drawling, bluesy vocalisations of, say, Cat Power or Bardo Pond’s Isobel Sollenberger, (which to my mind would seem more naturally suited to the music), her voice is sharp, pain-stakingly articulated, cold and hesitant. In places it’s almost as if she’s trying her best to be ‘ethereal’, but betraying some kind of tense, neurotic anguish which always creeps in around the edges, jarring violently with the hazy, frozen bliss-time conjured by the guitars in the moments it is given full shape. Back at home, it is this voice which keeps ‘Joy Shapes’ and ‘A Vintage Burden’ from creeping into my pile of ‘drfiting-off-to-sleep’ CDs too often. The guitars might be in love, but the songs are not happy ones.

Also interesting is the way Charalambides songs seem to be fluid entities, expanding, contracting and changing shape as the players see fit, anchored around just a few evasive lyrics and repeated motifs. More experienced veterans of Charalmabides live shows can no doubt set me straight on this if I’ve got the wrong idea, but it’s remarkable tonight that whilst the three most memorable compositions from ‘Joy Shapes’ are all aired, all seem to be dispatched with in under five minutes, whereas on the album they’re pushing 20 each. Similarly, “Two Birds” from ‘A Vintage Burden’ flies way beyond the confines of the somewhat understated album version, opening up to embrace some of the evening’s most heart-stopping guitar crescendos.

Another review approach would be to try to pin-point Charalambides’ place in the world in terms of the musical traditions which have informed them or with which they may claim common ground, allowing readers to build a picture of the band’s world by proxy. Though much maligned, I feel this is as valid an approach to music writing as any and can touch on some interesting truths if used in a thoughtful fashion and not reduced to off-hand ‘X + Y = Z’ banalities. But reading back, I reckon I’ve already chucked in enough outside reference points to get people in the right ball-park, so let’s skip this one.

Or if I feel the need, I could even delve into my own emotions, examining how the music of Charalambides related to my preoccupations and troubles, entwined itself within my soul and mind, tweaking, rousing, tugging, confusing, comforting and subduing... well rest assured I don’t feel the need – let’s skip this one too.

So, inevitably, none of those approaches come near to doing things justice, and I shall waste no more words. All that needs to be said is that Charalambides played, and will continue to play, a music that is old and nameless, new and necessary, that moved things in my heart, moved things in my head, took me inside itself and showed me places that music rarely does.

...

And although I’d imagine your tired eyes have probably had enough Times New Roman for one lifetime after that little exegesis, I’d feel bad if I didn’t also find time to mention Steffan Basho-Junghans, who also played at the Charalambides gig, and who was truly excellent. A genial, ruddy-faced chap of Scandinavian extraction, Mr. Junghans’ work will no doubt be familiar to connoisseurs of post-Takoma instrumental guitar stylings, but it’s a new one on me. I’d told (or have possibly just assumed) that he has taken on the middle part of his name in tribute to the late Robbie Basho, and this indeed proves a good reference point, as, generally speaking, Steffan seems to pick up where the former Basho left off, departing from the (relatively) down to earth, blues/riff based stylings of Fahey and Kottke and getting high on altogether thinner air, catching a ride into more spiritual realms and patiently assembling mountainous, modal fantasias from his steel strings. He starts slowly, and I fear loses many of us with a lengthy attempt to evoke a waterfall style drone from repetitive open-string slide-work (I can imagine it working a lot more effectively on record..?), but once he gets going his playing is as devastating and captivating as any of the hallowed adepts of the mysterious art of guitar-picking. His piece ‘Last Days of the Dragons’ (yes, he introduces his songs, tells us what they’re about – something I always appreciate from instrumental performers) is particularly breath-taking. It’s always a privilege to witness musicians of this calibre play, and I think, not one which should be taken for granted – a sentiment which applies to both of the performers I’ve written about in this post.

A Rare Digression into Current Affairs;

So, tearing myself away for five minutes from pop music, packing up my belongings and generally moping around indecisively, I can’t help but notice that it's all kicking off in the Middle East at the moment.

What’s started it all off then, the more naïve observer might be tempted to ask. Well, I mean, who cares, what is it that EVER starts these things off..? Same old bunch of shamelessly nonsensical playground crap. So it goes.

One element I find particularly eye-opening though is the ‘accidentally’ recorded conversation between Bush and Blair, recorded the other day at the G8 summit. For interested parties who might not have seen it elsewhere, here it is in full (link);

BUSH to Blair: "I think Condi is going to go (to the Middle East) pretty soon."

BLAIR: "Right, that's all that matters, it will take some time to get that
together ... See, if she goes out she's got to succeed as it were, where as I
can just go out and talk."

BUSH: "See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hizbollah to
stop doing this shit and it's over."

BLAIR: "Who, Syria?"

BUSH: "Right ... What about Kofi? That seems odd. I don't like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically ceasefire and everything else happens."

BLAIR: "I think the thing that is really difficult is you can't stop this unless you get this international presence agreed." ...

BUSH: "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad and make
something happen. We're not blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

Now initially, none of that seems TOO damning. I mean, in view of both leaders’ records for cheerfully skewering their own reputations in public at every opportunity. Bush’s blinkered pro-Israel stance is of course teeth-grindingly wrongheaded and self-serving, but it’s also tediously well-established. Aside from that, he appears to at least have an awareness of what’s going on and what he’s going to do about it, which is more than can be said for most of his public appearances. His last few sentences even sound like something a reasonable man might say. He even uses the word “irony”!

The more one reads the above transcript however, the more subtly alarming it starts to become. You see, whenever I watch/hear/read reports of international diplomacy in the news, I've always kind of assumed that we're getting a highly simplified version of events, and that in reality the important people concerned (regardless of my low opinion of their politics and morals) must spend a long time on things, painstakingly working through the economic concerns, hidden agendas, social consequences and likely public/media interpretation of their decisions, compiling and reading reports, consulting people in the know for advice etc. etc. – basically that beyond their necessarily bland and one-dimensional public statements, they must at least UNDERSTAND the various deeper levels to what is going on in the world and why, see their allies and their enemies and who has what to lose and what to gain, talk it through extensively in private with representatives of the other nations involved before deciding on any action and, y’know, generally take all this into account when formulating their evil sche… I mean, er, diplomatic strategies.

What the transcript above suggests though is that to a certain extent it actually IS just a case of "ok, so we'll make so-and-so go over there, and they'll sort them out, and maybe you go and make such-and-such shut up, and I'll give blah-blah a call, but don’t tell so-and-so or he’ll act like a jerk about it", as if they were working out a cantankerous PTA meeting or something.

Maybe we can reassure ourselves with the idea that we are merely listening to the mumbling figureheads representing larger and far more competent bodies of subordinates (ala Yes Minister), but the scary thought persists that maybe it really IS that chuckleheadedly simple.

And meanwhile the bombs continue to fly and people die, not even for the more traditional reasons of geo-political greed and calculated power-mongering, but just through plain… dumbness.

It’s kind of mind-boggling.

Jennifer Gentle – Valende (Sub-Pop)

It is oddly surreptitious that a second-hand copy of this album should reach my hands in the same week Syd Barrett died. Picked up on the recommendation of someone whose opinion I trust, it is obvious from the name onwards that Jennifer Gentle – who are a band, not a person – have drunk deep from the well of Barrett and absorbed his spirit in a very profound sense. But that doesn’t really mean they SOUND like Syd Barrett as such, and in fact they don’t really sound like anything at all that I can easily attach a name to.

So, by way of a review, imagine the following;

Somewhere out there, not too far away, there is a moon orbiting a big old planet, and it is inhabited by a race of strange, comical creatures – Moonbeasts, let’s call them. The Moonbeasts have for a while been tuning into entertainment transmissions from earth, and whilst they are fascinated by, and somewhat jealous of, our wealth of pop culture, they have a deeply-held belief that they can do better. In the interests of proving this, they have launched a rocket containing one of their own musical prodigies straight towards earth, in the hope that he will become a star. Unfortunately though, something has gone awry, and instead of the Moonbeast equivalent of James Brown or the Moonbeast Madonna, we’ve somehow ended up being sent the Moonbeast Syd Barrett instead!

And so, armed with guitars and flutes and pianos and cymbals – unfamiliar instruments which he has diligently adapted to his alien physique and learned to play – Moonbeast Syd has landed on earth and made a record. He still plays using the musical scales of his own species though, and still sings in their language. But don't worry, as he has an experimental piece of apparatus with him, a ‘musical translator’ of sorts, which he can feed his recordings into and have them magically emerge in a form understandable to earth-men. Or at least, that’s the idea, but like I say, it’s kind of experimental, and it has lots of knobs and dials, and he’s not sure whether he’s set it up right. But undeterred, our heroic Moonbeast hammers away at his strange instruments, belting out what in his world are simple songs of love and joy and togetherness, along with some dazzling instrumentals conveying a deep sense of unity and spiritual peace that surely the people of Earth will be able to relate to.

So anyway, by January 2005 he has finished putting the album together, and he’s feeling pretty pleased with himself. So he takes it in to Sub-Pop (his favourite earth record label) to see what they reckon. And the guys at Sub-Pop say; “hey, yeah, this is the craziest thing we’ve ever heard, we’ll totally put this record out! But best drop all the alien bullshit, no one will ever buy that. We’ve been meaning to get around to signing some freaky European bands to make ourselves look cool though, so how about we pretend instead that you’re actually two Italian men who are in a band called.. uh.. Jennifer Gentle? Yeah, the kids’ll dig that for sure! We’ll make millions!”

As usual, the guys at Sub-Pop are wrong, and the album is almost entirely ignored by everybody.

Eighteen months later, in the week that the Earth Syd Barrett dies, I buy a copy for £2.50 and am moved to write this review.

Deathblog Special Edition:

Goodbye Syd.



Not really what I most wanted to hear yesterday morning.

Although to be honest, it's hard to really know what to feel about the death of someone whose life and personality has been a complete mystery for more than 30 years.

But still, let us not forget that beyond all the drug-related nuttiness with which he is immediately associated, Syd Barrett was and is an incredibly important figure as both the archetypal psychedelic hero and an amazingly imaginative guitarist and song-writer (not to mention a really cool-looking motherfucker) in the early Pink Floyd, and as the creator of a unique wealth of funny, moving and deeply odd songs during his solo career.

He took an approach to things that, for the time, was uniquely direct, honest, self-effacing and – dare I say it? – thoroughly punk rock, and I won't even bother trying to catalogue the array of notable bands and performers who have obviously taken him on board as a #1 inspiration in the ‘80s, ‘90s and ‘00s.

As I've said before and will say again, I think that, despite his troubles, Syd had the smartest career trajectory in musical history. I mean, think about it; he founds one of the most long-running and successful rock bands of all-time, masterminds their one truly great album, takes a shitload of drugs and indulges in crazy behaviour and gets himself kicked out before they turn crap, then records a couple of madly inspired off-the-cuff solo albums, thus forever guaranteeing his status as a cult hero, and proceeds to bugger about in his garden for the rest of his days, living off kick-backs from the massively successful band he started.

Face it, the guy was a genius.

Aside from anything else though, I'm content just to restate that every recording he lent his hand to remains startlingly, timelessly good, and although I guess in reality the chances of him ever breaking cover to say hello to the world were pretty slim, I'm still sad that this has to be the end of the story.

So, just for the hell of it, here are five of my favourite Syd songs;

“Here I Go” (from The Madcap Laughs)
Just a straightforward, flawlessly cool, funny song that cheers me up every time I hear it. Positive proof of Syd’s warmth, wit and skill as a songwriter, without a hint of druggy weirdness. And so un-self-consciously egomaniacal – “..she said ‘a big band is much better than you’!” – oh, the horror! His deadpan singing on this track is so perfectly phrased too – just unspeakably wonderful throughout.

“Lucifer Sam” (from Piper at the Gates of Dawn)
Not merely a song about a witch’s cat, but a FANTASTIC song about a witch’s cat, with mutant surf guitar, totally spaced out organ and some of the most peculiar noises and lyrics that ever found their way into a three minute 60s beat group song (no small boast); “Jennifer Gentle / you’re a WITCH!”

“Octopus” (The Madcap Laughs)
I’ve always wanted to unleash this upon a busy dancefloor just to see how people would react. True believers would get down to it I think. In terms of a hyperactive guy with an acoustic guitar just expressing his uncontrollable joy about, well… everything in the world, it remains unbeaten. Absolutely crazed guitar rhythm too – just try playing it! It seems like everyone in the land was churning out nutty, whimsical afternoon-tea-and-LSD styled nonsense songs circa ‘68/’69, and most of the results are just so much period cheese these days, but this track perfectly exemplifies what set Syd apart from that – he wasn’t just hamming it up in the accepted style of the day, he was really feeling this shit! Listen to him go!!

“Astronomy Domine” (Piper at the Gates..)
Well sometimes you’ve just got to, haven’t you? And if this isn’t Genesis in the bible of truly psychedelic rock, you can be sure it’s a pretty hefty chunk of Exodus. That chord progression is just SO wrong, and yet so right.

“Late Night” (Madcap..)
Just a beautiful, beautiful love song. To those seeking to establish the lineage of more recent wide-eyed, big hearted outsider folk spirits: begin your quest here. “..and the way you kiss will always be / a very special thing to me..”.

And gosh, that’s without even mentioning “Bike”, “Golden Hair”, “Love You”, “No Good Trying”, “Flaming”…. and there are plenty of good songs on ‘Barrett’ and even ‘Opel’ too, not to mention the joys of “See Emily Play” and “Arnold Layne”, but it seems it’s still ‘Madcap..’ and ‘Piper..’ I like the best.

So so long Syd – admittedly you weren’t really there since ten years before I was born, but I’ll miss you all the same.

Laughing about Architecture

Hey everybody - my apologies for not getting any proper new posts together this week; I've got a few things in the works, so watch this space for more of those blocks of hyperbolic text you so love.

For the lack of anything else to do in the past couple of days - boredom at work becoming terminal since I've eased off my usual obsessive email writing - I have consumed a hell of a lot of music writing, online and elsewhere.

And I've found two brief bits that have actually caused me to chortle out loud and quietly giggle to myself for a while; a rare achievement in record reviews and the like, which have a tendency to be quite dry, and all the more so since I very rarely laugh at anything these days (well, as in, laugh out loud at something deliberately formulated as a joke - I guess I tend to laugh more via the to and fro of a good conversation, or just at random, surreal junk that happens to catch my eye..).

So anyway, first off I laughed at a bit in this month's issue of The Wire, where Byron Coley comments of a new compilation of post-punk obscurities; "The singles represented here barely existed when they were new. Now it's as though they were never more than dreams John Peel had after a particularly large meal."

Secondly, I laughed at how Fluxblog describes a song by Harpers' Bizarre as sounding "so near to bliss as to make the Beach Boys sound like a gang of rampaging thugs".

I love the idea of the Beach Boys as a gang of rampaging thugs. Imagine it; all these guys with their stripy shirts and big grins, totally ripped on speed and just tearing the fuckin place apart while rocking their three-part harmonies... I can see it now. Then they really WOULD have been the best band ever. Pity they went for downers instead, huh?

So here's to more funny, elegantly constructed music writing I guess.

Keep on rockin', and I'll see you next week.

(here's a post I've had on standby for a couple of weeks;)

THE GREATEST RECORD COVERS OF ALL TIME:
Part One in an On-going Series...



Needless to say, I don’t actually own this album, but it has stared back at me from my computer desktop for many months, and is a constant source of inspiration.

Everything about it; the dude himself, the awkward way the photograph is posed, the scary pools of black where his eyes should be, the woods, the title, the gothic font and the bright red letters contrasting with the black & white... just, wow.

I don’t know a lot about who Ed McCurdy was or what he did. I’m sure if I wanted to I could google him up in about three seconds, but I fear that he may actually have been quite uninteresting, so instead I’ll live in blissful ignorance and drink in the exquisite mystery of the satanic beatnik motherfucker portrayed upon this album cover.

It took several viewings before I even noticed the woman kneeling(?) in the bottom right. I like the idea that she is perhaps a good housewife who has set out for some firewood or something, and Ed just happens to be there, leaning against a tree, singing selections from his ‘Lyrica Erotica’... “hey baby, look into my eeeeyyyyeeess...”.

And, hey, it’s only ‘Volume One’ too!