It’s not much of a surprise that a Peter Jackson film is beautifully-filmed. Neither does it come as much of a shock to find that its one flaw is that it drags a bit in places – so eager to preserve its dreamy stillness and occasionally unbearable tension – but like most of Peter Jackson’s work, it has much to recommend it.
I think Day Is Gone was the first song I ever heard by Cardiacs. It was on the cover-mount cassette tape that came free with Lime Lizard magazine.
Written for Collapse Board
“Mostly only art created by women has any validity. The male experience has been created and recreated so often” – Everett True, 1992
That is such bulls***. It’s like saying that only Tuvan throat singing/rock hybrids have any validity because you don’t get much of that, either. (And, f***, it’s good stuff.) I don’t flip the sleeve over to check the gender before I’ll listen to the record, any more than I’d think too much about whether they were, say, Turkish. And, yes, a Turkish act does bring a certain flavour to the mix that you rarely get with non-Turkish acts. It’s informed and shaped by its Turkishness but not wholly defined by it because it’s more than that and to reduce it to that is to insult it.
Take Aylin Aslim, for example. I don’t know who she is, but I love her. I don’t have the slightest clue what she’s singing about (though Google translate tells me it’s called “ghoul”). There’s definitely a Turkishness to what she does, but I don’t set out to listen to Turkish folk. I just like this one – her – because she has such a don’t-give-a-f*** attitude and playful energy that makes her an absolute joy to listen to.
My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is one of the greatest albums ever made – and listening to it makes me feel like I’m falling through clouds. This song – To Here Knows When – is making me fall asleep right now.
One of the interesting things about the fallout from this hacking scandal is that it’s made a lot of people re-examine issues of integrity in the press.
Over the past couple of weeks, the Guardian has (rightly) accused the other papers of being crass about Amy Winehouse, The Times‘s readers reacted with outrage after it published the Facebook updates of the as-yet-uncharged suspect in the hospital poisonings case, and in another post the paper complained about the giant amount of bulls*** that goes into the interview process. Overall, what people want is fairness and honesty. Continue reading
I’ve never actually danced to this, which is bloody tragic when I think about it. I’m going to have to find a day when nobody’s around and I can have my music on speakers (or when I have my headphones on and nobody’s in the office) and have a really good dance. This would just be the most exhilarating song to dance to. I’ll spare you the pretentious bollocks about “thunderous tribal percussion” and let you experience it for yourself. I can’t imagine a song that would be more fun to dance to.
Sunburn. Chronic hayfever. Having to wear sandals and then getting little stones trapped in the sandals. Any one of the myriad reasons why July is not my favourite month. Plus it’s usually pissing down – I mean, this is England. Cold, wet feet in sandals with a stone in the sole, and hayfever. I’m not quite sure why Chris Connelly hates July so much (as opposed to, say, April), but whenever this month rears its ugly little head, this song just pops its way into my brain and I find myself humming it by the water cooler.
I might have been a mischievous little minx, generating controversy over at Collapse Board, but frankly I blame ET for making the flippant remark in the first place. “Mostly only art created by women has any validity”? Absurd! Yes, we can all point to talented and able female rock stars, but where are the trailblazers? That was the crux of my argument, in an itty bitty nutshell. I could say the reverse about pop music, where it’s the boys who lag behind.
Then my pal Shannon jumped in with a name: Kate Bush. Whether it contradicts or supports my argument depends largely on whether you classify her as “pop” or “rock”, but I’m going to give him this one cheerfully because Kate Bush was like nothing else that came before.
Oooh, tricky one. OK, here’s one. I don’t remember “first hand” industrial music prior to the late 1980s – anything I heard that dates back further I heard many years later. There were many sub-categories, of course, but broadly if you asked me what “industrial music” sounded like I’d have said something like this: Continue reading
Everett True has written an obituary over at Collapse Board, which is more eloquent than anything I had to say. I’m sad – I liked her voice.
