Hello Great Unpopular, its late but not never and I have brought the goods.
We're all comfortable ignoring people's niche activities as a point of etiquette, but today I'm asking you go out on a limb and listen to some stuff which is going to trigger all the worst immediate reactions yr brain can come up with.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o37176
OK so last night we got from the dyslexic bearded entrepreneur to his golden egg Tubular Bells. This is the paragon of very English recluse prog folk epics and its particular kind of Englishness is maybe more widespread than its low profile suggests (I mean those sales, jesus). Northumbrian Pipe music is a pretty niche tradition but intensely English, not consciously revived but still part of what goes on in certain parts of the actual north. It seems to share the same kind of slightly provincial dreamy mindset as Oldfield's more nonsense anthems, as well as lots of mandolins and a Warhammer and real-ale-friendly vibe (also see riverdance which expounded from this vibe w/some circus-ready 'celtic' shit which was absolutely poisonous). After rediscovering this album at Ro's house (oh yes you have this) I thought maybe Northumbrian pipes were going to be a big deal for me, some secret bounty, but exposure has dulled this feeling a lot. Other stuff I've heard has sounded rote, kind of kitsch and just isn't up to the challenge of making anyone give a shit. But coming back to this album I have to give it up because These Are The Jams. This is the greatest and least popular album I can think of and belongs here like nothing else.
As well as running over with tunes played by a 16 year old girl, it plays up a lot of more esoteric elements that the other stuff I've heard has flattened a little. This music is reminiscent of a really unusual range of stuff. There's a kind of Indian character to the solo pipe stuff on here, buoyed by those sweet reedy drones the melody is drawn out real slow and gradually beefed up. And then there are these breakdowns, god. The syncopation gets pretty hot and this is probably the first time I ever heard anyone do any sort of really nimble bang-on variation over a tight rhythm. With the guitar backing it gives it a kind of ragtime vibe at points and Blind Blake could totally get over some of these work outs.
Listening to track 6 and realising what pure prog it is made me laugh, some Oldfield-worthy stuff for sure, and a lot of this album would have appeal for fans of any kind of faintly folky prog or even Amon Duul II (maybe). The ideal listening situation is definitely ten years old on an impossibly long and dull car journey to the top of Scotland imagining yourself cartwheeling on fenceposts alongside the car, chopping down and swinging round trees, but you don't need the nostalgia, just the familiar ear that sort of exposure brings. So give it a try and see if you don't kind of start to feel some of these tunes after a couple of weeks. If you do you should definitely invest and subject kids to it on long car journeys. Don't feed the hater in you, bang on the citterns and BOUNCE.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
side track: mini photo essay
Dear The Great Unpopular.
Welcome to the age of Multimedia. With this post I introduce photos to the blog and take us roaring ahead to the future. So far advanced am I, in fact, I might as well be a hologram coming at you in your own house in the future.
The other day I bought Once Upon a Time in
I have recreated the moment with Andy for purposes of illustration. And with him buying something else.
Here we are actually pretending Zavvi is Fopp because Fopp was all the way on the otherside of the Arndale and
Today, then, I bought a sandwich from Katsouri’s for £3.50, which means that it is globally accepted that a sandwich, from Katsouri’s, is worth fifty pence MORE than the film Once Upon a Time in America.
Here Andy is pretending to enjoy eating a Katsouri’s sandwich because we’d actually eaten our sandwiches before I remembered to take the photo of us eating our sandwiches.
My point is are Fopp destroying any artistic viability in music or film, or books or tv, furthering consumer culture and the need for constant information overload and therefore encouraging the mixing of intense, original work and dull and awful shit until you can’t tell the difference because everything that’s being shoved into your face is just a pastiche of something else being shoved in your face?
Or are they bastions of cultural hope in this global recession which has affected me not at all?
trumpet saxophone union
I was listening to this song, Rock Fort Shock, that Bob sent me a while ago.
Here it is one youtube: (it's really fucking loud btw so watch out)
Anyway. The trumpet line works well with the saxophone in unison. The saxophone is way background on it all but you can hear it when the trumpet gets lower and it's subtle and good!
Also the trumpet that comes in at 1:35 is one of the best things ever.
On ritual and trumpets:
When was the last time you heard trumpets in a Fugazi song, or the Clash or Bob Dylan?
Ok so Bob Dylan has some trumpets and I think the Clash do too. But fucking Fugazi?
My point is those big campy rock fest quick fixes, like Live Aid are never going to work, but they're not unecessary gestures.
With a band like Fugazi, maybe you hear them and like their music and listen to their message and you decide to live your life a different way, to walk off the high street and find something new. I'm oversimplifying, but you get the idea. I know this is going off topic and I've planned it out - it never gets back on topic, but bear with me.
Gigs, in their way, a kind of ritualistic. They're a big public gathering of people who have something in common. You don't go to a Fugazi gig, though, to hear a political message. You go to fucking rock. But the message is there; they're trying to reach out to you on a personal level.
The alternative, I suppose, music with no real meaning, is stuff like dance music or the fucking Killers or Razorlight or some shit, although I haven't listened to those bands. Maybe they're fucking prophets. But I think that kind of music that is more about the gathering than the personal.
People like doing stuff together. Does any of this make any sense? It's just a rant I guess.
Here it is one youtube: (it's really fucking loud btw so watch out)
Anyway. The trumpet line works well with the saxophone in unison. The saxophone is way background on it all but you can hear it when the trumpet gets lower and it's subtle and good!
Also the trumpet that comes in at 1:35 is one of the best things ever.
On ritual and trumpets:
When was the last time you heard trumpets in a Fugazi song, or the Clash or Bob Dylan?
Ok so Bob Dylan has some trumpets and I think the Clash do too. But fucking Fugazi?
My point is those big campy rock fest quick fixes, like Live Aid are never going to work, but they're not unecessary gestures.
With a band like Fugazi, maybe you hear them and like their music and listen to their message and you decide to live your life a different way, to walk off the high street and find something new. I'm oversimplifying, but you get the idea. I know this is going off topic and I've planned it out - it never gets back on topic, but bear with me.
Gigs, in their way, a kind of ritualistic. They're a big public gathering of people who have something in common. You don't go to a Fugazi gig, though, to hear a political message. You go to fucking rock. But the message is there; they're trying to reach out to you on a personal level.
The alternative, I suppose, music with no real meaning, is stuff like dance music or the fucking Killers or Razorlight or some shit, although I haven't listened to those bands. Maybe they're fucking prophets. But I think that kind of music that is more about the gathering than the personal.
People like doing stuff together. Does any of this make any sense? It's just a rant I guess.
Monday, 9 February 2009
world cup trumpets
The most striking and key trumpet voice or tongue to use a Meltzerism, is to my mind the Iberian sound, the sound of Nietzsche's 'South' (an ideal and mentality rather than a place, the physical and lighthearted alternative Nietzsche could escape to from his home in hardened rational Germany).
In the ever increasing number of pan-European matters the trumpet sound wins out and provides the musical stamp; its the sound of national anthems (a meaty topic in itself) and the sort of ritualised quadra-party with military overtones that is a big sport event, specifically football. I'm not sure how long trumpets have had this sport tongue in their arsenal, but it was first brought to my attention by this:
This is the sort of genius propaganda as celebration that has made the EU the subtle force it is. If not the originators, Europeans were certainly first to master the sports spectacle as political event. You don't need to fight or argue, merely have yr ideology underpinning a huge festival and summon the people with trumpets.
Without ritual or trumpets, politics and music tend to meet clumsily as gestures born of frustration at epic shitstink rockathons. It's one thing to 'raise consciousness' but its not the stuff people are conscious of that effects them strongest. Make yr agenda explicit and all you do is ruin the party. In the words of drunk Conor Oberst, "Yeah, that last song has just made poverty history, you stupid fuckers."
This World Cup Trumpet deployed by Dario G (from Crewe I think) is all over Eurodance stuff, as well as appearing on Slippi by Animal Collective, which makes sense as they'd totally be down with some liberal hedonistic utopia. I'm always on the look out for this, I think the Young Jeezy track from my previous post is close, but too weighty and lacking carefree sunshine vibes of any sort.
Flutes and strings make things complicated. A lot of solo string stuff I find alters my consciousness, instilling looping brainworm mantras or shifting everything with some searing unbroken drone. Flutes are the maybe the most rapey instruments, used by snake charmers, Pan, Will Ferrell, and other untrustables. Lianne reckons my trumpet/saxophone binary is nonsense as it is, not sure I've got much left to ascribe to flutes and strings here.
Man mostly what this has done is make me go and listen to a lot of stuff with saxophones on. I've chewed through bits of Albert Ayler (late stuff with bonus trumpet from his brother, so heavy), Moondog's Sax Pax For Sax (with some awesome bass sax), John Coltrane's Meditations (opening whinnying call to arms fucking grips the now with no build up or prologue, an absolute THIS IS IT moment where you retroactively anticipate what yr experiencing, like waking up in the middle of the apocalypse) and the Jan Garbarek I mentioned before, which collapses the awful/beautiful gap so completely - there's even some discussion of Icelandic scenery in the liner notes - I really don't think the distinction is going to bother me for a while.
In the ever increasing number of pan-European matters the trumpet sound wins out and provides the musical stamp; its the sound of national anthems (a meaty topic in itself) and the sort of ritualised quadra-party with military overtones that is a big sport event, specifically football. I'm not sure how long trumpets have had this sport tongue in their arsenal, but it was first brought to my attention by this:
This is the sort of genius propaganda as celebration that has made the EU the subtle force it is. If not the originators, Europeans were certainly first to master the sports spectacle as political event. You don't need to fight or argue, merely have yr ideology underpinning a huge festival and summon the people with trumpets.
Without ritual or trumpets, politics and music tend to meet clumsily as gestures born of frustration at epic shitstink rockathons. It's one thing to 'raise consciousness' but its not the stuff people are conscious of that effects them strongest. Make yr agenda explicit and all you do is ruin the party. In the words of drunk Conor Oberst, "Yeah, that last song has just made poverty history, you stupid fuckers."
This World Cup Trumpet deployed by Dario G (from Crewe I think) is all over Eurodance stuff, as well as appearing on Slippi by Animal Collective, which makes sense as they'd totally be down with some liberal hedonistic utopia. I'm always on the look out for this, I think the Young Jeezy track from my previous post is close, but too weighty and lacking carefree sunshine vibes of any sort.
Flutes and strings make things complicated. A lot of solo string stuff I find alters my consciousness, instilling looping brainworm mantras or shifting everything with some searing unbroken drone. Flutes are the maybe the most rapey instruments, used by snake charmers, Pan, Will Ferrell, and other untrustables. Lianne reckons my trumpet/saxophone binary is nonsense as it is, not sure I've got much left to ascribe to flutes and strings here.
Man mostly what this has done is make me go and listen to a lot of stuff with saxophones on. I've chewed through bits of Albert Ayler (late stuff with bonus trumpet from his brother, so heavy), Moondog's Sax Pax For Sax (with some awesome bass sax), John Coltrane's Meditations (opening whinnying call to arms fucking grips the now with no build up or prologue, an absolute THIS IS IT moment where you retroactively anticipate what yr experiencing, like waking up in the middle of the apocalypse) and the Jan Garbarek I mentioned before, which collapses the awful/beautiful gap so completely - there's even some discussion of Icelandic scenery in the liner notes - I really don't think the distinction is going to bother me for a while.
Sunday, 8 February 2009
flute as rabbity sort of a thing
That's probably only because the saxophone hadn't been invented right?
When was that thing even invented?
Flutes make me think of spring a kind of jumpy hoppy annoying rabbit sort of a thing. I bet in different cultures the flute was never thought of as any kind of sexual embodiment.
See also: guitar/jazz. Maybe actually that's why the sax is so sex registered? Because Jazz was kind of this sex thing. I'm oversimplifying because I barely know what I'm talking about here. Anyone?
When was that thing even invented?
Flutes make me think of spring a kind of jumpy hoppy annoying rabbit sort of a thing. I bet in different cultures the flute was never thought of as any kind of sexual embodiment.
See also: guitar/jazz. Maybe actually that's why the sax is so sex registered? Because Jazz was kind of this sex thing. I'm oversimplifying because I barely know what I'm talking about here. Anyone?
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Not that I deliberately set out to derail good discussions...
...but that clip (or at least the first 22 seconds) puts me in mind of arty late-'70s porn: the voyeuristic camera work, which evokes the POV of a peeping tom; the woman (I think woman - this is the late '70s, after all) settling down to listen, and perhaps to be aroused by the music's sensual lilt; the way the men involved aren't obviously attractive...that's three things - enough for a compelling argument, right?
Naturally, saxophones tend to suggest 'eroticism', but that isn't the case here, partially because this one is a baritone; I'm not sure why, but this instrument seems to have escaped the cruel fate of its higher-register brother and sisters. 200 years ago the flute was considered to be the embodiment of male lustfulness...go figure.
Naturally, saxophones tend to suggest 'eroticism', but that isn't the case here, partially because this one is a baritone; I'm not sure why, but this instrument seems to have escaped the cruel fate of its higher-register brother and sisters. 200 years ago the flute was considered to be the embodiment of male lustfulness...go figure.
Trumpets
I don't exactly know what it is about the saxophone but I find it sort of embarassing. I think it's maybe the connotations it has for me of Shit Jazz, just totally overblown middle aged Party Time sassy saxophone misery.
The kind of saxophone I can deal with is how Fela Kuti plays his, or something softer like Festive Minor by Gerry Mulligan. Bob sent me this song a while ago with Chet Baker playing trumpet. I couldn't figure out how to upload songs but here is a youtube video of Mulligan playing that tune with someone else playing trumpet and you get the idea.
Both instruments here sound good, to me, but they are sort of playing the same way; the fact they're different instruments is almost irrelevent except in terms of voice I guess.
But this is more of that conversational tone you're talking about right, Tom?
The trumpets in that Young Jeezy song are pretty epic.
The thing is now, in my mind, recent bands that feature a trumpet, or even a saxophone, prominently do so as a gimmick it seems. Hercules and Love Affair is a good example of a band integrating a horn section in way that is not completely embarassing, but it is sort of a throwback to disco and funk and that, in its own way, is sort a gimmick too. But I really like that band.
So...trumpets?
The kind of saxophone I can deal with is how Fela Kuti plays his, or something softer like Festive Minor by Gerry Mulligan. Bob sent me this song a while ago with Chet Baker playing trumpet. I couldn't figure out how to upload songs but here is a youtube video of Mulligan playing that tune with someone else playing trumpet and you get the idea.
Both instruments here sound good, to me, but they are sort of playing the same way; the fact they're different instruments is almost irrelevent except in terms of voice I guess.
But this is more of that conversational tone you're talking about right, Tom?
The trumpets in that Young Jeezy song are pretty epic.
The thing is now, in my mind, recent bands that feature a trumpet, or even a saxophone, prominently do so as a gimmick it seems. Hercules and Love Affair is a good example of a band integrating a horn section in way that is not completely embarassing, but it is sort of a throwback to disco and funk and that, in its own way, is sort a gimmick too. But I really like that band.
So...trumpets?
Friday, 6 February 2009
String
I guess this is partially to do with the grain of reed instruments - how they're more closely related to the human voice, and consequently more capable of intimate expression. Maybe. Brass instruments have a purer, more strident, more 'elemental' sound (never mind that they're about three times louder).
Bearing that in mind, where the strings at? Are they just too demure for the purposes of hook-hungry samplers? Then again, bowed strings have never featured prominently in African American music; they're too quiet, and the attack of a bow is not conducive to the sort of percussive, heavily syncopated playing that predominates. Then again again, they also have certain European, bourgeouis connotations; chicken/egg?
[End tangent.]
Bearing that in mind, where the strings at? Are they just too demure for the purposes of hook-hungry samplers? Then again, bowed strings have never featured prominently in African American music; they're too quiet, and the attack of a bow is not conducive to the sort of percussive, heavily syncopated playing that predominates. Then again again, they also have certain European, bourgeouis connotations; chicken/egg?
[End tangent.]
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Allegiance
Recently my mind's been occupied with the thought of a peculiar dichotomy, the crucial choice between trumpet and saxophone. The question of allegiance to one of these instruments has consumed me but also opened up virgin space in my thoughts and I'm unable to hear either without it feeding back to the dichotomy. I guess this really stands for a broader brass/woodwind conflict, but this is neater and has greater symbolic value. I'm hoping for insight from somewhere within these newly boosted ranks. Can I get a hell yeah? This is definitely a fake dichotomy, can I get a hell yeah anyway?
As I gradually got used to working with this notion, I came to respect the balance between the two but was soon ready to declare myself for trumpets everywhere. A saxophone was personal and had a distinct power, beauty and truth, but, fuck, a trumpet was bigger, united, it spoke as a we, it was the sound of crowds, of parties, it had a martial, Iberian sound. A saxophone was for conversation but a trumpet was for action, for yes-saying and solidarity. The trumpet blowing means reinforcements; its the sound of the cavalry.
Saxophones, thinking uncharitably using an older Duncanian binary opposition, are at bottom emo. For an enterprising modern romantic, they offer an unlimited scope for whining. Jan Garbarek whined back at a more collected past through the Hilliard Ensemble. Kaoru Abe whined at every other 20th century soul unlucky enough to be alive by blowing it out with the traffic from a motorway bridge. Whine against whichever form of the man best crystallizes your alienation.
But trumpets are totally rock. Young Jeezy knows a trumpet can carry even the most heavyweight voice. The Goldeneye Facility sound! That cold and sinister muffled trumpet, the perfect fucking sound for post-Cold War Russia, the sleeping dragon. Increasingly there's a lot of trumpets in rap that come from outside the jazz idiom, and your mom and I bet computer games have something to do with that. I'm wondering if jazz trumpet fucks up this picture as its sound went from danceable to conversational. Miles Davis had one of the iciest sounds going, but a different kind of cold, the sound of the arsehole-older-brother (Ro yr saying that's copyright now?). Definitely less emo than someone contemplating their humanity on the edge of the abyss though. So come on, if any of you shitheels read this, where's yr allegiance?
As I gradually got used to working with this notion, I came to respect the balance between the two but was soon ready to declare myself for trumpets everywhere. A saxophone was personal and had a distinct power, beauty and truth, but, fuck, a trumpet was bigger, united, it spoke as a we, it was the sound of crowds, of parties, it had a martial, Iberian sound. A saxophone was for conversation but a trumpet was for action, for yes-saying and solidarity. The trumpet blowing means reinforcements; its the sound of the cavalry.
Saxophones, thinking uncharitably using an older Duncanian binary opposition, are at bottom emo. For an enterprising modern romantic, they offer an unlimited scope for whining. Jan Garbarek whined back at a more collected past through the Hilliard Ensemble. Kaoru Abe whined at every other 20th century soul unlucky enough to be alive by blowing it out with the traffic from a motorway bridge. Whine against whichever form of the man best crystallizes your alienation.
But trumpets are totally rock. Young Jeezy knows a trumpet can carry even the most heavyweight voice. The Goldeneye Facility sound! That cold and sinister muffled trumpet, the perfect fucking sound for post-Cold War Russia, the sleeping dragon. Increasingly there's a lot of trumpets in rap that come from outside the jazz idiom, and your mom and I bet computer games have something to do with that. I'm wondering if jazz trumpet fucks up this picture as its sound went from danceable to conversational. Miles Davis had one of the iciest sounds going, but a different kind of cold, the sound of the arsehole-older-brother (Ro yr saying that's copyright now?). Definitely less emo than someone contemplating their humanity on the edge of the abyss though. So come on, if any of you shitheels read this, where's yr allegiance?
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