Why Denim - in retrospect - are better than Pulp, part one. Because Denim eschewed the Jarvis cult of personality that, in retrospect, makes us unable to listen to any Pulp ever again. This worked against Lawrence’s success at the time, because the indie kids who this record was marketed at wanted a figurehead and a personality and Lawrence’s Denim was just…weird. Impersonal. Skewed. Absent. The real radio, that real sound of faraway pop coming at you from a bored session musician and somehow alchemically transformed into something magic by the very airwarves.

We weren’t ready for it, is what it was.

Despite the indie filler tracks on Back in Denim, the proper songs on it transcend irony and 90s retro-futurism in their very purity. They stand alone in their stubborn one-track-mindedness and slightly autistic intent. And they rock. I don’t miss the early 90s at all. I was a bored, frustrated 14 year old, and I knew no better, despite the occasional glimmer of hope from the outside world. But god, the nihilistic joi de vivre of Middle of the Road, it rings true whatever age you are. At the time I just thought it was funny. Now I hear it as eerily prescient, as me and my wife (who LOVES this record beyond reason) down white wine and watch CDUK, entranced by the Kanye West videos. It was made by someone ensconsed in indie, trying to make glorious sense of a long-gone mainstream and, by and large, succeeding. In 10 years’ time we may well listen to similar evocations of the 80s (which are all over us like fucking pesticides) and similarly smile. We might. I won’t ’cause I’ll be too old by then and I’d rather buy Dave Swarbrick solo albums and recordings of 1920s Houston piano blues anyway so let’s not use me as an example. But yeah, as such things go, Back in Denim is in a class of its own. It’s an example of the power of pastiche. And we all know how powerful that is, as much as we pretend to scorn it.

night.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Saturday, July 31st, 2004
(9 Comments)

US embassy shenanigans

Me and C went down to sunny Grosvenor Square in London, today - where, at the behest of some fair Americans, we queued for five hours (300 minutes), no exaggeration. We didn’t mind. There were plenty of others doing the same. And we had good company. And crosswords (not cross words) and books to keep us company. In true British spirit, we packed a lunch and spoke to our neighbours to keep our peckers up.

The interview for the visas itself - which seemed strangely unnecessary, considering how everyone had filed their applications in minute detail already - was over in under two minutes. A couple of questions were fired at me and at C, an eyebrow was raised momentarily at C’s tale of woe - and memories and emotions, kept in check for almost six years now, came flooding back over both of us as we wandered out into the sunshine, C finally allowed to visit America once more.

We celebrated with a cocktail (mine, blue: C’s red) and a noodle supper.

Now we are tired, and in a strangely emotional mood.

Posted by Everett True on Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
(1 Comment)

Any doubts I might have about the Carrion Sounds record is hereby dispelled by these here pictures

Let me at them! Now!

Last night I went on Resonance radio with the other half of Morgen & Nite, Mr Nite, who insisted on playing Space is Deep by Hawkwind. I faded it out, saying (in my best Radio 3 voice) ‘that’s enough of that, this is Kosmische Radio, now let’s be civilised and GERMAN,’ before collapsing into giggles. (One should not giggle live on the radio. The only other time I did it was once when I did a show of religious music, and had to introduce a song from an album called ‘I’m a Mormon’. Try saying that and not laughing, unless of course you are a Mormon, in which case it’s still quite funny.)

Anyway.

Throwing the civilised German remit out of the window, we also played: Comets on Fire (cue much headbanging); a lovely new track by the Vanishing Breed called Ich habe keine angst (http://www.vanishingbreed.co.uk/vanishingbreed.html), Moebius/Beerbohm, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra, Embryo, Sunroof!, The White Noise and lots of stuff that didn’t go together in the slightest. We were a bit drunk, and had way too many CDs. Apologies to anyone who listened. But at least we didn’t play Khanate, and HOW GOOD is that Comets on Fire stuff? Pretty damn good. Pretty Damn Good.

Meanwhile, back at my makeshift desk, I’m embarrassing myself sending emails to writers saying, ‘I liked your pitch for X! Please do it!’ only to have them write back saying ‘um, that wasn’t me, Frances…’, and eating leftover sausages dipped in chutney.

Someone get me a secretary. Preferably a cute one.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
(4 Comments)

Here’s a picture of John Balance from Coil and a man playing a hurdy-gurdy. Just so’s you know what I was up to last night. You can’t tell from this photo, but Balance’s straitjactket/edwardian pyjamas had no bottom, or at least only half a bottom. It was most distracting. Coil gigs are fun: on a Sunday night in Hackney, where else would you get to hear a DH Lawrence lookalike singing about sex with Sun Ra? A queasy pleasure, sure, but you’re glad they exist. Appropriately, later that night I ate pate with mayonnaise on toast. It was nicer than you’d imagine.

Coil review, with more nice photos by Mark Pilkington, to follow soon.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, July 27th, 2004
(5 Comments)

Censored, on orders from Kazakhstan.

Posted by Everett True on Sunday, July 25th, 2004
(No Comments)

No question, you want summer music, here it is in all its queasy, grooving, smiling, heavy city bright sun concrete cloudy brooding lovelieness - although I first heard this record, this, probably the happiest piece of jazz, of not happiest pieceof all music that I own, and how dare my wife say I like depressing music, on a rainy autumn day in Plumstead - that was when I heard King Sunny Ade too, that same day. Well, today I am on random setting, like a Roland SH-1, SH-101 or SH-09. I put my hand into the Mexican shopping bag that holds all my CDs that don’t have proper cases (MUST get some kinda system for these, must must must) and pulled out a grime compilation our publisher sent to me and a Manuel Gottsching thing and some CD I played on and look, that new Daniel Johnston tribute record I can’t bring myself to listen to yet (has anyone listened to it? What’s it like), that new Red Krayola thing that just got reissued, some of which kicks ass, and OH YES THIS IS WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR, the Joe Meek compilation my ex made for my sister but she gave it to me, I don’t think she liked it that much. THAT’S what I want today, although other things are calling, not least a mix CD intriguingly called ‘Psyche Folk’ that one of my favourite music friends put together and I know it’ll have all that stuff I need to check out but don’t want to check out too much in case it sounds like me or I sound like it or whichever but that needs to be checked out anyway and you know what, after I’ve listened to Lawrence of Newark, which, despite Plan B being a jazz-free zone (so far…), I have to tell you all is a work of fucking GENIUS of the highest order, check out track two and marvel, I will listen to that damn Joe Meek, because today I’m on random setting and on random setting you can listen to whatever bubblegum you like (and you can listen to Nanci Griffith too!) and buy a HUGE bottle of vanilla coke and a bottle of rose cava, and a bunch of lilies and a silk scarf from the charity shop and all kindsa things. Last night I read a book in which a man talked about the time he used music to help him escape from and work through and almost figure out something bad that happened in his family. I could taste in his words he wasn’t just talking about music as a background help, a palliative, a little painkiller. He was talking about going at it and grabbing it and about how it was, literally, saving him. It was the thing he used to make sense of other things. He was allowed to say stuff like that because he meant it. Some of our writers sent me some great pieces of writing. I went swimming like my life depended on it, very fast, considering I swim in the slow lane, and drank ready-mix margaritas with a wise, graceful lady in a labyrinthine flat full of rare books. I woke up early and spoke to Everett on the phone. Soon there’s going to be another whole issue of the magazine out and I’m really, stupidly excited, although I know it means a month of sleepless nights and crazed cross-purpose emails and expensive trips to Brighton, where we get to eat nice food and listen to the Fire Engines and get hassled by the cat. This site’s great, but there’s something about words on paper and pictures on paper that makes me smile much more. Random setting. More vanilla coke. This weekend I have my first hen party (which I have organised!) and possibly the last ever Coil gig. I love Coil gigs, that mixture of the genuinely terrifying and the funny, the intense air of abstract misogyny that hangs over everything and that I still can’t quite decide how I feel about, the wonderful sound of synthesisers doing what they ought. True psychedelia, often, with the sense of the ridiculous and ideas-above-one’s-station that that also encompasses. Someone wrote in a blog that me and my lift-fixing friend’s first gig as Morgen und Nite last week (one guitar, one amazing synth, loads of pedals, severe black clothing) sounded like Heathen Earth by Throbbing Gristle. Is that a compliment? Back to work. Probably time to switch the random setting back to square wave.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Friday, July 23rd, 2004
(No Comments)

where is the sun, it’s JULY!

Posted by Sarah Bowles on Thursday, July 22nd, 2004
(1 Comment)

My god, this record is good. It’s so good. And check out the lady on the front, parked up outside a street of cheap 1950s London semis on a motorbike, wearing aviators, leather gloves, fluffy-sleeved parka and a crown. God this record is good. It echoes and booms like little else on my shelves* and I have no words to describe it, except that it comes from outside my frame of reference, it comes from my city, and it probably comes from the future, if there was such a thing. It’s this first track, Aktion Pak, that’s getting to me right now. It has a breadth and charge and a pace and a bizarre skewed structure that lifts it above the stuff I used to hear coming out of Chimes nightclub when I lived in E5. It’s got this weird strength and tautness and tightness above the muddiness of the bass and the delayed vocals. It’s like someone pinging a bit of razor wire as if it’s an elastic band, and aiming it right at your eye.

*shelves! Ah, shelves. So about a month ago now, I bought some heavy industrial shelves from a junk shop. Proper lab shelves, says my friend Mr Nite who fixes lifts. Alright! Part of my fantasy that actually I don’t live in a twee Victorian flat, I live in a huge factory space where I can have huge parties, tap dance, make huge music and ride my bike around the room, that’s what these shelves are. But. Heavy as fuck. Proper, proper heavy metal. The real shit. I had no idea until I tried to lift one. So they sat in the hallway while I thought about getting a boy round to help put them up but never got around to actually doing it. A couple of boys even offered, but I never took them up on it. Then yesterday I awoke in the most evil bastard of all moods.There’s only one thing you can do when you feel like that, and it’s DIY, pure and simple. I figured the pain of dropping one of these damn girders on my head would at least serve as a distraction from my mental, ummm, anguish. So I put on a DIY outfit of jeans, boots and white vest, trying to look a bit like Gina Gershon in ‘Bound’ but without the plumber’s kit. And I got to work. I had to balance things on my head. I had to balance things on chairs. I had to almost chop my hand off and do my back in and scrape the skin off one arm. I had to swear and listen to Chrome. I had to stop occasionally for tea and despair. But now my speakers are at head height and my CDs are all nicely displayed, and my god, I’m proud. My wife says, when you’re feeling down, action equals satisfaction. She means, DO SOMETHING. At all times. She is so right. I’ve even left her a special space for her CDs.
Just so no-one thinks they’re mine, y’understand.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, July 21st, 2004
(No Comments)

Posted by Sarah Bowles on Tuesday, July 20th, 2004
(1 Comment)

my bike tyres leave crisscross patterns in the mud.

Posted by Sarah Bowles on Monday, July 19th, 2004
(1 Comment)