This sounds as good as it sounds

In lieu of new blog content here is a link to Rock singers singing without the music.

Mumford and Sons - Babel

Mumford and Sons have got very, very popular in the last 6 years so I decided to give their latest offering, Babel, a checkout to see what all the fuss is about as you don't sell over 200,000 albums without something going for you. Of a formula, which appears to be what these guys have.

If you like jingle and/or jangle in your banjo music with a smooth acoustic guitar backing then you will love this album, because every single track has it in spades. It's a pleasantly upbeat sounds that is easy on the ears (helped by the amazing clarity of the mix and the production) and seems precision aimed at getting your feet tapping along, as proven by them being a hit on the festival circuit. It's their core sounds (sometimes mixed up with a piano or a violin) and they like it enough to put on in every tune but it also means that there are no standout numbers on the album as they all just roll into one another and end up being rather 'sound-alike'. I had hoped for more variation, more experimentation, but its not there in any meaningful fashion which resulted in the album becoming a pleasant washover. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting a psychodelic freakout or a death metal track at the back of the album. It was just that even on the slow tracks there was an inevitable 'and now for the bounce along bit in the same rhythm as the last 5 songs'. As I said though, very foot tapping and very easy to get into (until the point around the last 3/4 of the album when it just got comfortable my ears stopped bothering to listen) so I get why so many people are all for it as it is going to offend no-ones sensibilities due to never challenging you in any way.

So that was the music, but what about the lyrics? Afraid to say that it's very much the same, just with more 'fill in the gaps' nothingness. The singing is strong, of that there is no denying, but once you get beyond the rousing chorus it is a collection of vague pronouncements on the general theme of lost love, being miserable and then managing to be strong again. Standard stuff, however it never feels like it gets personal enough to really feel anything. There is no sense of it ever actually having happening, so it becomes a colouring in book of generalised emotions: easy to feel connected to because these are 'anybody' stories but never giving you anything to really latch onto. There are also some lyrical wonders like "I came home like a stone" and a song about tearing down walls that is called Babel. Profound stuff, until you actually think about it.

It is, sadly, all a much of a blandness. This is 'authentic music' for people who can't be bothered with putting any real emotion into their listening time, bubblegum folk with a nostalgic singalong section that's been scientifically designed to never bring you down with a true feeling. If it does move you then I would have to ask 'why?' as I am quite sure you won't be able to give me a specific other than it sounds kind of fun and has a nice chorus, or giving me some tosh about how its 'real music' or some other retro-folkie bollocks. This is an Asda of folk music dressed up as a family corner shop, nothing more and nothing less.

Music blogging is hard

So a quick, and quite self-indulgent, post on why music blogging is not all that easy (and why I currently have writers block).

The main thing is that music is not the easiest of things to write about as the very medium is not a written one. You can do the history of it, the state of the industry, or the lyrics really well but the only true way you can experience music is by listening to it. Some second-hand emotions can be expressed but "the band came out for the second encore and the crowd went wild" or "the album is like a slap to the senses" doesn't express anything much. Even if you break it down into technicalities of time signatures and note sequence you are not going to get what is happening until you actually hear the tune itself. So writing about music (as has been proven by the music press again and again and again) actually becomes a list of dates, vague intentions, and observations about your own biases rather than the actual thing itself. This is why the more successful music press has CDs on the front of their journals, so you can actually do in thirty minutes the thing that they have spent 100 pages trying to explain.

Negativity also plays its part in slowing down my writing, which may come as a surprise. It is always much easier to write why you dislike something than it is as to why you like it, mostly because you just need to find one or two negative points to be able to totally reject a musicians work. Saying why something is good is a whole different story though, as you have to open up and build an argument for why someone should take the time to listen to whatever it is you have found that you think sounds that good. Slamming a band or a situation is a quick and cheap write, but it's not a path I want to go down on this blog as I'd rather tell you about a great new find than some shit that you either have already heard or are never going to have bother you. This is obviously not helped when the bulk of music I get forced on me from the main-stream 'pop' world is such weakarse garbage, the temptation to just lashout at that is sometimes overwhelming.

And then there is time, the eternal enemy of all creativity but especially so when it comes such a consumed medium. Not time to sit down and write but time to sit down and enjoy the music itself so that I can write. If I want to write an album review it's a six hour process as, IMO, you need to listen to the thing that many times to get a real feel for it. Now that shouldn't be too much of an issue but at the same time I have got a collection of tens of thousands of hours of music already that I want to listen to again, on top of the opportunity to just go tune surfing on youtube or something similar. And I mean 'just listen to the music', not 'listen to it whilst trying to come up with something smart to say about it' as those are two totally separate things.

This is before you hit generic issues like 'not sure what to write about', 'not sure if people will give a monkeys about what I write' (which if you are doing a blog you have to care about otherwise it becomes pure ego-wanking into the void) and 'do I blog or do some house work/cook the dinner/play with the cat ' etc.

Not the greatest of situations to be in, but on the plus side I had the rather excellent new album "Echogenetic" by FrontLine Assembly playing whilst doing it so all was not lost.

Nostalgia for an age that never existed

Being both a muso and someone who is getting on a bit one of the most frequent conversations I end up having with friends is about 'how much better music back then...', followed up by a dose of 'not like the junk that you hear now'. This is not necessarily a bad conversation to have with people as there has been a heck of a lot of good music in the past and there is a lot of bad music out there at the moment, however it does ignore one key fact: There has always been bad music (which, for the purpose of this post is defined as 'disposable pop-pap that no-one will remember in 6 months' ) and it has always been the majority of what you will hear in the 'general music listening land' of the general public and mainstream media.

If you take any period of time and actually look at what people were listening to you will discover that there was no golden-period of high-quality dominance and that the good to bad ratio was always relatively similar. The only two periods were there is any major difference is at the every start of the charts, where Pop was just getting established as a genre and not that many records being sold at all so the sales being split flatly across demographic and style, and the very recent years, in which singles sales have gone down as everything other than Pop has moved onto different sale streams. Everything between the mid-50's and the mid 2k's has had a mix of the good, the bad, and the utterly indifferent. The majority of 'amazing scene's' were never that above ground and only got the fame they did in hindsight by being distinct enough to be interesting and musical enough to stand the test of time. For the average person the 50s were dominated by Frankie Laine, not Elvis,  the 60's were more about light ballads than the Summer of Love, and as I always point out the 80's are best summed up by Ultravox being kept off the No.1 slot by Joe Dolce. The current dross is no different to the old dross, except that its got a bit more talent show orientated.

So why do people always look back at them and say 'ahhh, those were the days'? Well some of it is simple of when you are born, and how much time you actually have. When you are a teenager/young adult you have more time to go and find music to listen to, rather than being busy and just listening to whatever is on the radio. You also don't have a big stock of songs to listen to as you are still to find 'the love song', 'the party tune', or 'the breakup song' etc that will always be with you. Once you have a mental stock of a couple hundred songs you don't need to do much more hunting and you are going to have other things to do with your life. The average persons music collection will be dominated from songs that came out either when they were 15 to 25 or were played on a scene they were into at that time. The lack of 'bad' in that period is further explained by you simply not remembering it because you were too focused on the good stuff. The background dross was just background and is very similar in quality and quantity to the background dross these days, you just haven't heard as much of the good stuff that would normally balance it. If you scratch beneath the 'heard on the telly, on the bus, or in the chart store' surface then you'll find just the same amount of quality music.

You also have the media manipulation element, especially when it comes to retro shows. No one is going to watch a show called '10 most mediocre hits of the XXs', so they are trimmed down to either the very, very good or the very, very bad. You are also unlikely to get anyone making a film about a band or scene that they didn't find exciting and vital, which is why so much naff is glossed over. Then you have the 'cheap TV' element, with  the Old Grey Whistle Test  being a great example of this effect. The show is often rolled out as an example of the dominance of 'serious rock' in the 70's, even though at the time it had piss-poor viewing figures. Why did it exist? It was incredibly cheap to produce and was in a time-slot that no-one else wanted. Why is still shown? It was almost exclusively live performances from bands willing to sign any deal for some exposure so it's incredibly cheap to play again. Why is it watched so much? Curiosity combined with being told 'these songs are amazing' and muso's who find that kind of show exciting having spent the last 20 years saying how important and influential it was. The history of music has been cherry picked to hell & back so many times it has now been accepted as fact, especially because the guy on the telly has told us the same story so many times.

Music is always vital and developing, with great new stuff coming out all the time. It's just that you are not going to find it on a bus, on a shampoo advert, or in the Top Ten rack at Tesco. That is where you are going to find the filler tracks for peoples lives that are here today and gone tomorrow, as they have always been and will always be. And if you want to get back to a 'Golden Age of Music' then all you need to do is take yourself back to how you felt about and discovered music when you liked it the most, because your new favourite song is just around the corner.

And the award for???

Due to punk rock in the UK (or globally for that matter) not having much truck with award ceremonies its around this time of year that the two major contemporary heavy rock magazines, Kerrang and Metal Hammer, decide to hand out some gongs. Whilst the majority of the awards are the tried and tested 'Best band', 'Best video', 'Best haircut' votefests there seem to be more and more strangely worded and badly defined categories going around. Of the 34 awards given out between each event (once you take out the non music related ones that Kerrang throws in to be hip with the kids) 11 leave me scratching my head.

On the Kerrang side we have the subtle distinction between being an "Inspiration" and an "Icon", as well as "Hall of Fame" or "Legend" (they got rid of the "Devotion" award this year, possibly because someone forgot what it meant). Somewhat curious but not quite as bad as Metal Hammer who have their own "Inspiration" and "Icons categories, a "Legend" and "Golden God" upgrade combo, and the frankly baffling "Metal as Fu*k" (their censoring, not mine, least mumsie finds you using rude words) vis "Spirit of Hammer" duo of dust-collectors. The 'Hammer' in "Spirit of Hammer" award is an abbreviation of the magazines name, which considering that it spends half the time claiming to be "Metal as Fu*k" (seriously guys?! Its almost as bad as buying a FCUK t-shirt at school to impress your mates) means that these are virtually the same exact thing. Although the "Spirit Of Hammer" award went to Brian Blessed this year as so I'm a bit confused as that surely means the spirit of Metal Hammer is guesting on one power-metal track and appearing in a movie that features the music of a band that inspired a number of metal bands to not really produce the same kind of music. Oh, and climbing up really big mountains whilst actually swearing.

Obviously in the alternative-culture world of freedom-loving self-expression there has to be a good reason for all of this (the alternative being that the journalists came up with a whole load of great ideas for names of the awards and they just didn't want to see them going to waste) and that reason is money, in two highly tempting and sellout forms. Firstly the bulk of these weirdly titled, mostly unvoted for, shelf-toppers has a lovely sponsors cheque associated with it. Yes, lifestyle marketing has come to Metal Metal Land and the blackclad disaffected youth are the targets because The Man(tm) is happy to take any ones cash, especially if they can convince you that buying their product is somehow sticking it to the system.

The second reason is that with more money up for grabs the award shows are getting more and more marketable as TV shows, and for that you need content and big names. Whilst you could put in more awards that reflect achievement in the field of contemporary heavy metal what you really want are well known names that look good in a 'soundbite' advert and that will get people watching (often out of pure curiosity to see that the band members are neither dead nor locked up) and for that you need some impressive thing to hand over to them. You also need consistency & predictability on who is going to win what so that more advertisers will buy into the show earlier, which is again why you are not going to get more awards going to new bands that actually could do with the recognition.

So expect more random awards with nearly pointless names to be coming along, the further dilution of such things into being a two-way split between utterly established acts being given "not dead yet" & "we know who sells out stadiums" lumps of fake gold and the latest flash-in-the-pan youth-rocking act that has enough social media savy to get its fans voting. Meanwhile music will carry on regardless, because everyone knows that outside of the carefully crafted worlds of these lifestyle magazines these awards don't carry half as much weight as they think they do.

My Chemical Romance - a personal journey

The recent news that this fine band spilt this week  was terrible news for me as I've loved them since I first heard them back in 2004 with the mighty track "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)". Yes, I'm not cool enough to admit that I didn't hear of them through their outstanding outstanding "I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love" album. (However I am cool enough for the link above to be for the original video, rather than the spiffy school-movie themed one). "I Brought You My Bullets..." and the follow up "Three Cheers For Sweat Revenge" were basically perfect to my ears, doing what emo does best by being blastingly good punk tracks with lyrics based on real emotional content. This wasn't "oh my girl she left me" or "lets get drunk", this was real feelings that you could actually relate to and that they somehow always managed to put an upbeat spin on it, be it through a 'we'll get through this together' cheeriness or a 'fuck 'em in the eye' aggressiveness. It was outsider music but it wasn't exclusive and you didn't have to be "this dark" to join in, you just had to have some bounce in you that they would amplify for you.  They also had the sense to throw in some old school 80's style searing guitar melodies along with a lot of 'pop-punk' hooks and bouncyness. It was fresh, it was unashamed and it was something that blasted its way through my late 20's like a well needed blast of youthful Joie de vivre (plus they did a killer Misfits cover that I think I was the only one to recognise when they played it live at Brixton). 

Then they went and did "The Black Parade", which I basically through was a bad attempt at trying to rip-off Queen and I hated quite a lot for it. The emo-kids went mental, the album went flying up the charts, The Daily Mail called them a "Suicide Cult", and I was a bit miffed about them going very pants indeed. These days I think I was being harsh and just selfishly looking for more of the same whilst they wanted to be musically creative and thematically different (they had changed their image with each album so the new threads weren't a problem for me). I've now chilled out and found that I actually like the last track on the album (though it might just have been the relief of it all being over).

After that they went kinda quite for 4 years, other than touring the world and reaping their much deserved  rewards. There was talk of a new album around 2008 (sticking to their two year release cycle) and then there wasn't, then on a bit more and a cracking Bob Dylan cover for the Watchmen soundtrack that showed a turn back to form and then nothing. Finally in 2010 they got around to releasing "Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys" and it was bloody amazing! Easily their best work, utterly nut-bag in its neo-cyberpunk concept-album, and full of so much colour and excitement that I was so eager to get it that it became my first digital album purchase as I couldn't wait long enough to go down the shops to get a copy. It had highs ("Planetary GO!"), it had lows ("Kids of Yesterday"), it had bloody stupid song titles (Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na))and it had optimism combined with arsekicking rock-out tracks ("Sing"). They were back and better than, I liked it a lot and I was looking forward to see what they would do next.

Throwing a curve-ball they decided that like all great things, it has come time for it to end. I was upset, I was a little disappointed, but after 12 years and 3 perfect album all I can really feel (along with a lot of their other fans) is happy that they came into my life. Now I just sit hear looking forward to whatever they will be doing next, either as a group or as individuals. Project outside of music are already turning up and some of their side-bands are gathering new steam. Whatever it'll be I'm sure it'll be exciting, and who can really ask for anything more?

Set List from Noise Bastard

So my latest music project was an industrial night that was part awesome event and part art project aimed at trying to produce a hostile marketing campaign & dehumanise the DJ's. Some of it worked, some of it didn't, but a lot of people had fun and the music went down well so here is what I played.

Navicon Torture Technologies - Mind Is a Prison
Apparatus - Ministry of Rage
Throbbing Gristle - Discipline (Manchester)
Industrial - Relief 
Big Black - Passing Complexion
The Chaos Engine - Me and My Army
Rabbit Junk - In Your Head No One Can Hear You Scream
Steve Aoki - The Kids Will Have Their Say (Feat Sick Boy with former members of The Exploited and Die Kreuzen)
Atari Teenage Riot - Speed
Revolting Cocks - Let's Get Physical
Ministry - Land of Rape and Honey
VNV Nation - Joy
Front 242 - Headhunter (V2.0)
Icon of Coil - Access and Amplify
Apoptygma Berzerk - Starsign
Project Pitchfork - Timekiller
Rotersand - Exterminate, Annihilate, Destroy
Front 242 - Happiness
Combichrist - Electrohead
Assemblage 23 - I am the Rain
Front Line Assembly - Dead Planet
Genitorturers - Touch Myself (Dave Ogilvie and Scott Humphrie mix)
Orgy - Blue Monday
Ultraviolence - Hardcore Motherfucker
Zodiac Youth - Atoms (angel fish mix)
Ministry - Jesus Built My Hotrod
KMFDM - Stray Bullet
Flesh Eating Foundation - So Yeah
Funker Vogt - This World
God Module - Afraid of the Light
Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy (pappy mix)