Audio Journal : 22/12/2010

Saint Etienne, the trio of Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley released a song with Tim Burgess from The Charlatans called 'I Was Born On Christmas Day' in 1993. Its title alone assured the song of a modicum of airplay during the festive season that year, and I know it's popped up on several Christmas compilation albums since. The song is an upbeat piece of pop majesty, but apart from the line in the chorus about being born on Christmas Day (being a reference to Bob's birthday), it isn't really a Christmas song; it's just a song with Christmas in the title, released at Christmas.

It would appear that Saint Etienne, who I didn't even realise were still operating, have released a festive fan-club only album called – fnarr, fnarr – A Glimpse Of Stocking. My days of being into the band roundly stopped after the best of album Too Young To Die, which I still listen to from time to time. I didn't intend to try and get a copy of A Glimpse Of Stocking (which collects every Christmas song recorded by the band) and after hearing the new track 'No Cure For The Common Christmas', I am even less likely to do so. Sonically, it sounds like 'I Was Born On Christmas Day', has the same euphoric (if jaded) Euro-disco edge, but like a pissed relative on Christmas Day, it falls down somewhere along the lines. I was quite looking forward to rekindling my love for Saint Etienne, but sadly not after this song.

This being my final blog of 2010, it seems appropriate anyway to talk about Christmas songs. This year, more than any, the magazine list writers have been attempting to persuade us punters to shell out on alternative Christmas albums – i.e. not the usual derivative compilations of Elton John's 'Step Into Christmas', John 'n Yoko's 'Merry Christmas (War Is Over)', Chris Rea's 'Driving Home For Christmas' etc – with Johnny Cash's overlooked Christmas album seeming to top the 'must have' lists.

But what makes a Christmas song 'good' anyway?' Is it a religious re-telling of the Nativity, messages of love and goodwill, glam rock anthems with choirs of out-of-tune Brummie kids or just a nice pop track adorned with tinkly bells? If there is no prescribed formula as such for a Christmas song, why can't a song like Pulp's 'Disco 2000' become established as a Christmas song?

'Disco 2000' was released way back in November 1995 and its chorus foretold the millennium fever that enveloped pretty much everyone who uses the Anno Domini calendar as 1999 passed into 2000. Getting released a shade too early for the Christmas top-spot that year ensured it was probably all but forgotten by the year end charts; later the band would prevent the song from being used in TV and radio adverts in 1999 / 2000, effectively scuppering many an ad man's wet dream of carelessly and lucratively tacking the song onto any product during that time.



Can 'Disco 2000' be held up as a Christmas song? Undoubtedly. It is an accessible pop song with a Slade / Wizzard-esque glam guitar introduction and a huge chorus ideally suited to Christmas / New Year parties of the time. Plus, by not being a Christmas song in the truest sense of the word (no Nativity, no religious undertones, no tinkly bells) it lasts all year, unlike Christmas trees, Bailey's and festive goodwill. Even at fifteen years old it hasn't lost any of its lustre and unexpected festive sparkle.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, thanks for following, and expect more weekly musical witterings next year.

'Disco 2000' is featured in my second annual Christmas short story, Josh & Laura, as the soundtrack for a scene set in a student end-of-term Christmas party (see, it works perfectly!). Josh & Laura can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Audio Journal : 19/12/2010

What's not to like? Take five compositions by John Carpenter for his quintet of cult psychological horror films – Escape From New York, Escape From LA, Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween and The Thing – and let two French electronic music wizards (Étienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman, aka Zombie Zombie, named after a 1984 ZX Spectrum game) re-record the tracks with a contemporary edge. Well, I say 'contemporary'. Electronic music has had a tendency to always try and sound like the golden age of analogue synthesis, and this EP has a tendency to sound simultaneously retro and bang up to date as a consequence.

The point is that these soundtracks were good to start with. Carpenter wrote and performed most of his scores himself, or with collaborators – The Thing was a collaboration between him and no less a luminary than Ennio Morricone. Zombie Zombie add beats and other signal flourishes that simply add to the drama of the originals. The main theme from Halloween still makes you hold your breath in anxious fear-induced excitement, but a track like 'The Bank Robbery' (from Escape From New York) is given an urgent beat and frantic synth breakdown at the very end, making it ideal for minimalist dance floors; like a remix of the Airwolf theme tune, only with more drama. The Escape From LA main theme becomes an hard-edged, industrial jack-booted synth-fest, not unlike Deutsch Amerikanisch Freundschaft circa 'Sex Unter Wasser' or Nitzer Ebb circa 'Let Your Body Learn', a sort of cinematic Electronic Body Music as that genre became known. Fans of Carpenter and electronic music generally should definitely look out for this.

Two highly limited edition CD-Rs, in hand-made packaging, from the Apollolaan label fell on my doorstep in the last week. The first, a 3", single-track CD-R from Space Weather (Alistair Crosbie, who has graced this blog before, on electric guitar; Brian Lavelle on electronics and Andrew Paine on bass) is entitled The Weather's Maiden. It was an edition of 100 and is now all sold out. This is a release that sounds markedly different at different volumes; at low volumes it sounds like a bleak, distant sonic landscape of hissing radio waves and transmissions from some frozen, desolate, abandoned world. For some reason it sounded to me like a soundtrack to the film Hardware, a British film from 1990 that painted a very bleak picture of the future, wherein savage death robots were unleashed on the populace to control the population growth. Listened to at louder volumes reveals other aspects of this sonic stew; heavily-processed, looped guitars (I think) dominate the background and deep bass tones and drones offset the spiralling, whining electronics. It is something constantly shifting, rarely static, and could have extended far longer than the fifteen minutes we have been gifted here.

The other Apollolaan release was Peter Delaney's live set from Amsterdam's VPRO festival in May 2009. This 5" CD-R is again an edition of 100 and comes in a cardboard Muji CD sleeve adorned with the white outlines of houses. I had never heard of Delaney before being sent this. He is an Irish singer-songwriter whose songs are frankly a delight for the ears. These are delicately-rendered acoustic folk ballads, occasionally dark and mysterious and evoking the vastness of the sea; but mostly these songs are uplifting affirming in nature. Delaney's perfect live set proves him to be an accomplished lyricist and his guitar playing is intricate and finely-wrought, gentle and enveloping, his voice having remarkable range and a subtle emotional intensity.



There is much that I could say about this, but to write further wouldn't ever come close to doing these songs justice. So I will just say that I honestly don't think I've ever heard a more beguiling record in my life. Higher praise than that I honestly can't find. There are a few copies left at apollolaan.co.uk; you would be wise to buy one quick.

Audio Journal : 04/12/2010

Reading The Times magazine a weekend or so ago, I alighted upon a series of photos by Kevin Cummins of Joy Division. Cummins' black and white shots have become as synonymous with the imagery of this band as Peter Saville's iconic sleeve for Unknown Pleasures – monochrome, dark, misanthropic. It's an image that a film like Twenty-Four Hour Party People tried to redress, in part, though it's difficult to totally move away from the notion of the band being a bunch of misery guts when there's the unavoidable fact of front man Ian Curtis's suicide (hence Anton Corbijn's Control, based on Curtis's widow Deborah's book Touching From A Distance); Cummins, in the brief blurb attached to the photos, said he regrets not capturing more photos of Curtis smiling.

So I thought I'd listen to the Joy Division back catalogue and look for clues to a happier, less grumpy world view. I failed, so instead here's a playlist I came up with for Mrs S a few years ago, highlighting my ten favourite Joy Division tracks. Note that 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' doesn't feature; I love that song, but it's a bit 'obvious'.

Unknown Pleasures



1. New Dawn Fades
2. She's Lost Control
3. Interzone

I recall buying Unknown Pleasures after saying farewell to my then-girlfriend as she set off on a train back to her home; something about the goodbye must have made me think 'Right, now's the time to finally buy Unknown Pleasures', for that's exactly what I did.

'New Dawn Fades' was a song I first heard covered by Moby. Whereas his version was angry, buzzing with a distorted aggression, Joy Division's version is far sparser, lots of reverb masking the gaps. It's certainly heartfelt, tragic and almost disturbingly negative. 'She's Lost Control' has some of the most inventive drum processing by Martin Hannett or any other producer, creating a sound not dissimilar to spraying aerosols (instead of using cymbals) and banging pipes (instead of using snares). Hooky's muted bassline dominates until reedy, inchoate guitars ascend. Curtis's lyrics detail flashes of madness from the female subject of the song. This was punk turned inside out – all the traces are there, yet none of them are.

Joy Division referenced William S Burroughs on 'Interzone', this being the disturbing parallel nightmare world of his Naked Lunch novel. This is just about the most straightahead punk track Joy Division ever produced, all snarling overdriven guitars and urgent drums; but the lyrics – two parallel sets in the left and right channels. Even when passed through Hannett's unique, and occasionally overbearing, filter this punchy little track never loses its raw appeal. To hear this in an even rawer state (without the double vocals), check out the Stooges-esque demo version that emerged from when the band were still called Warsaw.

Closer

4. A Means To An End
5. Decades

I bought my Joy Division collection in the wrong order, starting with their second (and technically final) album, Closer. Having been a New Order fan by then for some time, the album was initially confusing – delicately maudlin and introspective. Not quite ready for that degree of misery, I gravitated toward these two tracks: 'A Means To An End' for its buzzing guitars and earnest pulse, a definitive take on punk's spirit delivered in a more controlled manner; and 'Decades' for its fragile keyboards and slow build, its plaintive vocal refrains and its captivating grandeur (the keyboards on the live version I also have do tend to get a bit wonky and out of tune).

Still

6. The Sound Of Music
7. Dead Souls

The Still compilation chiefly reminds me of the first term of my university third year, and arriving back feeling miserable and lost. Still became the soundtrack to those first few weeks. Still was a posthumous collection of tracks not properly recorded, plus live songs (including the band's seminal take on Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' and most of their last ever concert in Birmingham), all polished into decent shape by Martin Hannett. 'The Sound Of Music' has a trudging, slightly phased beat and scratchy, restrained guitars that wouldn't have gone amiss on a Wire album c. 1978.

I first heard 'Dead Souls' when it was covered by Nine Inch Nails for The Crow soundtrack. The steady drum patterns here are again gently phased, giving Stephen Morris's kit the sound of a drum machine. Unlike most Joy Division tracks, the intro has an extended instrumental interplay between Bernard Sumner's guitar cascades and Peter Hook's elastic bass. If it wasn't slowed down to a sludgy, dystopian pace, it would almost have a punk-funk sound a la Gang Of Four. It is a wondrously bleak track.

Substance

8. Digital
9. Transmission
10. Atmosphere

Substance, like the 2CD New Order album of the same name, gathers together singles and other odds and ends not featured on other albums. 'Transmission' was the band's début Factory Records single. It sounds like post-Devoto Buzzcocks and comes across as reasonably upbeat – at first – but includes quotes from self-styled Satanic guru Aleister Crowley; as the track progresses what at first sounded euphoric becomes more dark. 'Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio,' implores Curtis, ever more urgently. Deborah Curtis' book was titled after a line in this song. 'Digital' is far too joyous to fit the mood of their two LPs; it has one of the most infectious basslines I've ever heard, plus an urgent motorik beat and some fine staccato guitar. The track was recorded in their very first sessions and included on the first Factory Records sampler double 7" EP. (I have had this song in my head all week.)

'Atmosphere' is a towering work of genius, relying heavily on Hannett's skills as a producer to create one of the best torch songs of the era. Curtis gives his best attempt at an impassioned Scott Walker vocal, drums pound in the distance, bass notes float in and out and the origin of New Order's distinctive keyboard sound rise up from the depths. It never fails to send a chill. There is hope somewhere in this song, but it's elusive. Definitely elusive.