Hollow Earth

Fun For All The Family EP (1992)

Keep It In The Family EP (1992)

Deaf In The Family EP (1993)

The Family We Never Had EP (1993)

(Click to enlarge)

Remember the other day I wrote about how lucky I had been to have known Paul Arden? Well in the end I did get to go to the Lecture thanks to the generosity of Paul's business partner Nick Sutherland-Dodd who magnanimously scooped me up. Thou shalt go the ball! Creative Review has made enormous mileage out of Paul recently. Apparently their commemorative post to Paul online has generated more traffic and more comments than any other on their website. It's an excellent magazine, which I subscribe to, so I'm really happy for them.

Following on from the lecture at which Nick handed round some of Paul's treasured books, they've run a feature on them in the August edition entitled Arden's Books. I saw this in the mag, but I clearly wasn't paying very close attention because it had to be pointed out to me that half the page dedicated to Jozsef Pesci was full of pictures Paul and I worked up together for an "inspirational" presentation. This some time before "It's not what you are..." They look awesome. Actually I have Paul to thank for inspiring me to collect Photography books of which I only have a small number, but very much enjoy browsing.

One small niggle, the CR copy beside the Pecsi pictures says: "Arden may not have known this when he bought this book, but Pecsi, who was born in Budapest in 1889, was a much awarded portraitist, fine art and advertising photographer." This sounds just a wee bit smarter-than-thou. I would be willing to wager money that this factoid came courtesy of Google, and I strongly suspect that in 1997 such information would not have been so easily procurable.

Never subscribed but lordy these have certainly accumulated over the years! I imagine if one was to transcribe and index them into a database (though there is a useful accompanying website to my collection) then it would be quite an awesome resource. Was going to cull all my magazines but in the end couldn't bear to part with these, or my complete collection of FACT I might add. iD and The Face on the other hand were summarily wiped from the face of my basement. One can say it, because bless 'em they have departed, but featuring on the cover of The Face was tantamount to (a) recently having been very hot but (b) the imminence of no-one really caring about you any more.

The latter part of our Journey from the entrance of Wiltshire into Salisbury was very rough and abounded with Jolts, the Holes we were obliged to go through being very many and some of them Deep; and so it was with much Relief that we left the Coach at Salisbury and hired two Horses for the road across the Avon to the Plain and Stone-henge. When we came to the edge of this sacred Place. we tethered our Horses to the Posts provided and then, with the Sunne direct above us, walked over the short grass which (continually cropt by the flocks of Sheep) seemed to spring us forward to the great Stones. I stood back a little as Sir Chris. walked on, and I considered the Edifice with steadinesse: there was nothing here to break the Angles of Sight and as I gaz'd I opened my Mouth to cry out but my Cry was silent; I was struck by an exstatic Reverie in which all the surface of this Place seemed to me Stone, and the Sky itself Stone, and I became Stone as I joined the Earth which flew on like a Stone through the Firmament.

This section is as much about cadence, but there are other passages thicker with relinquished vocabulary ("harlot", "phrensy", "magick", "coxcomb", "tavern", "jakes" etc) but you get the picture. Anyway thinking about this brought back to me the time when I was studying English Language, most specifically Pidgins and Creoles. One of the things that used to fascinate me was that Jamaican Patois was built upon English of just this same era. Rather than advance in sync with its mother-tongue however, patois evolved independently from this point in time - an analogy perhaps for the population's abandonment on this island.

It's not just the preponderance of biblical language, we seem to assume this is wholly owing to the people's religious inclination, but perhaps it was as much to do with the 18th century's argot employing it. But think about those other words: bloodclot ("bloody clothe"), bredrin ("brethren"), cuvitchous ("covetous"), dally, ear-sey ("hearsay"), evilous, gorgon, hitey titey ("hoity toitey"), hush you mout ("hush your mouth"), pon, raggamuffin (my favorite!), renk ("rank"), slackness, sufferation, vex, yard. And that's just off the top of my head (winks). There's a load more which I'd be tempted to include but which might stretch the case.

Maybe people will be surprised that I like Spotify as much as I do? After-all it's not an out-dated format is it? And I'm the sad bloke who clings to his Revox Tape Deck and collection of vinyl albums. The bad thing about iTunes is that it attempts to substitute the mp3 for the CD or the LP, and there's no contest whatsoever. Spotify on the other hand entirely dispenses with ownership. But what about the sound quality, that other Ingram bugbear? If you're a paying customer you get a 320 kpbs stream, and even if I'm just a wee bit sceptical (not being able to ratify this), coming through an Apogee Ensemble DA convertor at home or through one of these and a pair of Sennheiser HD 650s when I'm out and about, it sounds excellent.

What about the Music they have on offer? I'll freely admit that when it comes to 12" dance music you're stuffed. Or anything even reasonably obscure or avant-garde - there's nothing for the Mutant Sounds crowd. Or Reggae. Or Funk. Indeed I estimate that probably only 1% of my record collection is in there. But that still leaves an awful lot, and more to the point there is a huge amount of stuff available to explore, music one has never heard before. I've still been picking up vinyl by Harrison Birtwhistle, Live Skull, Ninjaman, Louis Andriessen, Pierre Boulez, Pilldriver, Group Doueh and Hyper-on-Experience but with Spotify you're sorted for the wicked middlebrow stuff...and the links to the Allmusic database are great as well.

On their website it says: "Feel free to drop by if you’re in the neighbourhood…" - so actually working round the corner and being a meet'n'greet sort of guy I thought, that's just what I'm going to do. OK, so it's a step down from hanging out with Grant Hart and David Thomas as a teenager [insert Bragging Rights] but YES - Go to the music! When I walked into the ground floor of the enormous shiny Centrepoint tower-block and practically had to duck and weave past the security guy on the door I immediately sensed something was wrong. When I told the receptionist I had come to see Spotify she looked worried. Calling their offices she got the office-manager on the phone who confessed that actually they only had a few ad-sales people in the building (who were at lunch) and she couldn't let me in as she was on her own. No transparent-rimmed-glasses-wearing hipsters, leaning on servers sipping cappuccino debating the finer points of Sonic Youth? No. Nothing to see and no-one to talk to. So yeah, that was a con, a branding exercise if ever there was. (Nicely) I told the lady how bitterly disappointed I was, and she promised to get her Press Department on to me to arrange something. No-one ever bothered to get back to me.

The thing about Spotify is that apparently it's massively in debt, its advertising model is not up-to-speed (you can tell this by the appalling adverts for, yikes, Suitopia.com - the voiceover of which seemingly recorded in the toilet by the website's owner). Music Industry "insiders" are supposedly giving it a year before it goes bankrupt. It would be a shame if it did because it is THE model for music in the future, forget Last FM, this is the only format which can take on iTunes- especially if they can nail streaming onto mobile phones (in the pipeline over the Google Chrome OS). I suspect that Google, who have launched a similar service in the Far East, must be eyeing it waiting for it to fail. I mean, the founder Daniel Ek, he's a plucky Swede (who previously worked as CTO at Stardoll) but he's up against the mightiest, most savage, entertainment business titans in the world, and, even though I hope they don't, I suspect they'll crush the guy.

So I read this enormous piece by Paul Morley in July's Observer Music Monthly. Through the grapevine I knew he'd been at the The Royal College of Music being taught Classical Music. And I thought yeah I'd better write down my thoughts about that. And then I forgot about it for a week. Then I see (via Blissblog) this article in which Morley interviews Goldie. Then this evening I saw on TV the documentary they made about his experience and so I really couldn't put it off any longer.

Lord in heaven where does one start! Obviously the Alex Ross book has a lot to answer for. Now I got a huge amount out of this book, I can't pretend it didn't mean a great deal for me to see the Classical Music cosmos connected to my own musical map - on a personal level as well seeing how my father's music might also be my own. And this is clearly what Morley, fixated with the delirium of connections as he is, found in the book as well. But truthfully the best thing about that book was also the reason that as it's range edged closer and closer to the present day it started to feel more and more hollow.

If one accepts that the music of Sibelius or Weill or Britten was the contemporary equivalent of Boards of Canada or The Young Gods or Nurse with Wound then what place does Classical Music since the 1960s have in the equation? Rather than cleaving to the history of orchestral music it should have finished off, not with Adams and Part but with (I don't fucking know) The Dirty Projectors and Zomby. Indeed I think "The Rest Is Noise" even weakens the case for people like Steve Reich of whom I have long been a fan. While I'm criticising the book, and there really ought to be little bit more balance in its reception, and this from someone who emailed Ross a (sincere) love letter of gratitude, it's very weak on Electronic Music.

Subsequently I have had a few experiences with Classical music which have served to remind me exactly what I detested about the milieu in the first place. Most notably was the Matmos and London Contemporary Orchestra concert I went to in May. Sick and venal though it is for me to confess this, what really bugged the shit out of me was the kind of people who perform Classical Music. They seemed so confident, happy and upright it practically made me retch. Lots of them wear glasses. The girls have sweeping long hair and often wear ear-rings. They talk cheerfully among themselves and obviously have comfortable little in-jokes. People have no right to be like this! They should be twisted, uncomfortable, miserable and bitter like me and Mark Fisher. 

Paul Morley must have understood from the Ross book that Classical composers like Richard Strauss and Morton Feldman were twisted fucks. Certainly not the equivalent of Rock Stars, that age-old cliche, but the same thing in the sense that they were the visionary, demented decadents of their day. What he seems to fail to get his head around is that to attempt to make Classical Music in 2009 (and his piece was actually very good) is utterly confused. An interesting exercise f'sure but..... And the whole thing about scoring music is this anachronism writ in 20 foot tall neon writing. Who the hell would attempt to do something as inane as scoring music? In the 21st Century it's an utterly nonsensical exercise.

What I especially disliked however was the way that Morley uses Ross against himself and Music Criticism in general. In the film as well he says "Alex Ross is a better Music Journalist than me" (or words to that effect). He seemed to need to apologise for his lack of Music Critical acumen. This I hate with a passion. Look, as I was trying to communicate the other day, Music Journalism is jive. Good music journalists are basically just nutters! It's not about Spelling, Grammar, Philosophy, History, Sociology and it sure as hell isn't about Musicology. It's about riding the zeitgeist, feeling pre-echoes, chasing phantoms down blind alleys, the past crumbling and reassembling itself before your eyes - stuff like that. And communicating those feelings with as much veracity and intensity as possible. And this, which could be said about any discipline whatsoever, as soon as you try and erect gateway criteria or qualifications or rules, it withers and dies.

So when Morley, for the umpteenth thousandth time comes up with statements like this: "Perhaps in the new world where everyone's opinion and roughly compiled knowledge can be evenly distributed throughout the internet as though it all has equal validity, where the authoritative role of the critic has been near fatally wounded by the inexorable spread of user-generated content, by constant access to music that can bypass the recommendations and knowledge of traditional skilled gatekeepers, it isn't so much a risk to tamper with my critical swing." (And let's not pretend that he isn't saying: "...all you worthless bloggers...") I just find it so grim. Ok, he is writing from the perspective of someone who presumably feels challenged in his career, who feels like many other journalist today that the certainties they relied on in the past are no longer there - but this constant flux affects us all. I'm not about to start blaming the Post-Production, Design, Animation and TV Graphics Industry at those moments when I can't get any work. It's adapt or die. And thank god for that, because otherwise you have culture on a life-support machine = Classical Music.

This came out last year but I didn't see it anyone's best-of lists. Wow what an awesome piece of stuff! Actually not a huge fan of this axis (I've checked my pulse and The Roots do nothing for me) but Badu's work kicks ass. Her previous record is also excellent if a little less confrontational, philosophical and sly. Pregnant to bursting with US Black History, it's a bit like having the entire Nation of Islam knocking on your front door. Rat a tat tat. Reminds me that along with a million others I bought her debut for my wife (charming but lite), but also like a million others lost touch with her.

In actual fact Longstreth's passion for music reaches as far back into his past as anyone I can recall. OK, he wasn't playing the piano at 5, but he did have has own band aged 12, and in my book that qualifies as quite precocious enough thank you very much. Actually it's this sustained obsession with all its twists and turns, from Nirvana influences to the chronologically subsequent impact of Minor Threat, Pavement, The Beach Boys and The Beatles, Wagner and the Portland scene that paradoxically really makes me buy into Dave's ethos.

The early 4-track recordings we hear often reveal really stunning music. The Beatles-y stuff Dave and his brother were making when he was 16 was really excellent. I can't think of anything else I've heard which I thought does as much justice to the Sergeant Peppers/White album sound - those burnished, round, plangent, peeling guitars and stroppy, clippity-clop drums. Without Abbey Road and its million-pound compressors and valve amps to boot. And I love the fact that they never sought to get this stuff released, as if why bother?

The absolute crux of the interview, which gets to the heart of why Dirty Projectors matter as much as they do is Dave's almost casually discarded (but clearly considered comment) that they're trying to turn "something idiosyncratic into something shared". If you've missed the connection this is exactly what Captain Beefheart achieved with Trout Mask Replica and he went about it the same way as Longstreth too, by coaching and dictating terms to a bunch of sympathetic others. This must be as difficult-as-hell social situation to engineer. The band in this instance becomes practically a cult. Its constituent parts happy to unquestioningly accept its leaders position.

Beefheart legendarily was a total asshole in this context, and was deeply ungenerous with regards to acknowledging and accepting the sacrifice his band made for him. Their genius was to abdicate responsibility, they were aware that they would be unable to turn in "something idiosyncratic into something shared" if they all stuck their oar in. Even if they would have made sensible and musical contributions it would have weakened the message. Longstreth on the other hand seems to be quite reasonable. In the course of recording when the band are wheeled out to demonstrate some concept or other, either Angel or Amber volunteers an approach and, with a decent degree of cheerful humility, Dave gives it the enthusiastic thumbs up. There was no awkward pause.

The Dirty Projectors concerns are essentially very Proggish. One thing that continually springs to mind when I hear their stuff is Gentle Giant and their counterpoint. But equally I suppose the hocket recalls Steve Reich's "Drumming" which was also made the point about communality. I don't have a problem at all with this degree of pretentiousness but it is brilliantly leavened by Longstreth's attitude, which shows a marked awareness of the preposterousness (even hilariousness) of him being a Modern Composer - even if that's exactly what he is.

So yeah definitely check out "Bitte Orca". The last album, The Black Flag one, was great too if not as crisp. Me I'm off to investigate the very early Dirty Projectors stuff which (small orchestra in tow) actually looks like it might have predated Vampire Weekend's thing by a number of years.