Audio Journal : 05/04/2010

Go to: My Other Blog :: Documentary Evidence :: twitter.com/mjasmith

Two albums have dominated my listening this past fortnight. The first is Goldfrapp's Head First, which was released a couple of Mondays ago. A neat antidote to the already bland synth-pop-with-girls of La Roux, Little Boots et al, Head First finds the duo of Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory kicking the younger upstarts into touch with a shimmering collection of mostly upbeat pop tracks eschewing the early Eighties leanings of most retro popsters in favour of the late decade digital-analogue blend as perfected by the likes of Erasure. A full review can be found here.

The other album is Complete Greatest Hits by The Cars. Until about a month ago my knowledge of this Boston, MA band was limited to the track 'Drive', used heavily by Bob Geldoff during Live Aid clips; it's not a bad song, but it suffers from over-exposure, plus it provides few clues to the much better material elsewhere in their back catalogue.

The Cars were described as being a blend of punk's minimalism, art rock and Fifties rockabilly riffery; for me, it's the big Eighties keyboard sound and the clipped, funk-esque guitar riffs both of which bring to mind the work of their fellow alternative / college radio luminaries Talking Heads. Tracks such as 'Best Friend's Girl', 'Let's Go' and 'Good Times Roll' are stand-out songs on this twenty-track compilation, and I'll definitely be delving into their albums proper soon.

Let it be known that I am not a fan of The Beatles. I bought The Beatles (aka The White Album) for its avant-gardist leanings and wasn't disappointed, but apart from the odd poppy song here and there, I'm just not a fan. Mrs S, introduced to their music by her father, is a fan and has – time after time – scolded me for my repeated question 'So, is this John singing or Paul?'. I do, however, enjoy their music on a Sunday. Don't ask me why.



Imagine this: listening to every Beatles album, sequentially, in one sitting. Nothing would send me insane quicker, but there is a solution. Avant garde soundsmith Steve McLaughlin, for his piece Run For Your Life, sped up every song by 800% and combined them together into one hour-long track. What's surprising is how, even at this speed, you're able to identify recognisable sections of tracks. 'A Day In The Life', for example, retains much of its drama despite losing any sense of subtlety. The early tracks, all speed and rock 'n roll energy, zip by in a messy amphetamine blur, while the more interesting stuff (from Revolver onwards) – where speed was sacrificed in favour of a more considered sonic template – make for interesting listening at this high velocity. Strangely enough, it's still the McCartney tracks that grate. As with the plunderphonic work of John Oswald, it's not exactly easy listening (but to me, listening to The Beatles at the regular speed isn't either). Judge for yourself by downloading the track from the Ubuweb archive here.

Vinyl Corner

More Eighties pop this week, this time from Howard Jones; Jones was famous for using 'keytars' and for having enormous hair, even by Eighties standards – as evidenced on the sleeve to 'What Is Love?'.

'What Is Love?' was arguably Jones's biggest hit in a career which spanned both sides of the Atlantic. Wikipedia states that his sound was an appealing mix of New Wave and Sixties hippiness – I don't hear that on this track; instead you get some ruminative psychological musings on the meaning of love (a popular theme among New Romantics, naturally) and a big Eighties sound dominated by Fairlight horns and springy bass synths. In one of my earlier websites, during one of my 'charity shop round-ups' of records I'd bought from local Colchester thrift stores that week, I remember being quite disparaging of this song and Jones generally. Looking back I don't honestly know why, as I think this is a really good track.

The B-side on the other hand ('It Just Doesn't Matter'), is rubbish.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 28/09/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

Only those emerging from solitary confinement would have failed to notice that The Beatles have had their back catalogue repackaged, remastered and re-released, forty years on from their swansong Abbey Road. In our house we’ve watched three anodyne documentaries on the BBC and have very rapidly got sick and tired of walking into pretty much any shop only to have huge cardboard displays containing the remastered digi-pack albums foisted upon us.

Not only that, but we have the albums – in their last remastered guise – in the house already, relics from the days when my wife and her three closest friends were mad keen on the band as teenagers. We’ve found ourselves asking what the point of a remaster actually is when the material is that old. Surely the nature of recording methods back then means there comes a point where the only way you could improve the sound would be to record the instruments again using modern technology?

Nonetheless, in deference, we decided to have a Beatles-only Sunday and spent the day listening to their back catalogue of 200-odd songs on random play. In doing so, we came to the inevitable and well-trodden conclusion that the John Lennon-penned numbers were always the best. Our kids think the comedy Ringo numbers and the goofy Paul McCartney compositions are the best. We can only hope that they grow out of this and see sense in time.

I mentioned a number of blogs ago that I’d been working my way through a number of boxes of old CDs which have permanent and unfortunate residence in my loft. Returning the box I’ve been working through – which contained mostly dance music and industrial albums – I brought down the next one and alighted upon a copy of minimalist composer Philip Glass’s Low Symphony.

Glass, who just received his first Prom performance and who has of late moved into more accessible territory with soundtracks such as that for the Streep / Kidman vehicle The Hours turned his hand to producing an orchestral arrangement of David Bowie’s seminal Low. This was the first album in Bowie’s ‘Berlin’ trilogy and the first where he worked with iconic ex-Roxy Music keyboardist and soundsmith Brian (Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle) Eno. Working in Berlin’s Hansa Studios, a former Nazi ballroom, the furtive Bowie / Eno collaboration produced a bleak body of songs which would go on to inspire the likes of Joy Division (Joy Division’s original name was Warsaw, named after the track ‘Warszawa’ on Low).

Glass tackles three tracks from the Low sessions, the effect being a typical absorbing set of compositions which find little reference point in the original songs. I don’t listen to classical music generally and have no real understanding or vocabulary when it comes to describing such music, but suffice to say that this is both accessible and challengingly minimal.

Not so for The Arditti Quartet’s tackling of John Cage’s compositions for strings. Cage, a founder of the New York avant garde and a member of the Fluxus movement, is notorious for his work 4’33”, a piece of 'silence' lasting for the title’s four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The deal is that there is no such thing as absolute silence – in performances, whilst the ‘player’ would sit motionless, invariably there would be sound from the audience, a cough or what have you; the absence of complete silence would prove Cage’s notion that although theoretical to achieve, this is an impossibility in reality. Cleverer still, adding up the seconds in the performance length – 273 – and inverting that number, you get to the theoretical lowest temperature achievable, the notional Absolute Zero, a similarly unachievable yet theoretically feasible result.

In any case, Cage was an artistic and leftfield pioneer. His scores for strings dumped the traditional methods of writing notes and octaves, preferring instead to provide actions, frameworks and the musical equivalent of the vaguest stage directions. The result is nothing short of faltering atonal dissonance and only in my broadest-minded moments can I listen to this all the way through. Far better, at least from an accessible entry point to Cage’s work are Boris Berman’s performances of the Pieces For Prepared Piano, wherein Cage offered more specific and prescriptive treatments for the interior of a piano, the end result being a sequence of clanks and scrapings that industrial pioneers like Einstürzende Neubauten wouldn’t find unappealing.