The little known desk-as-cave-under-bed-while-surrounded-by-clothes thing
I'm probably going to be very busy with other writing work between now and Christmas, so even by my usual low key rate of blogging, I probably won't be blogging too much.
I have 2 book proposals, 1 book chapter, and other related bits and bobs to be getting on with and the time has come to tear myself away from the internet and get on with it.
What you may or may not be aware of is that the book, which has the working title of Independent Spirits, has it's own Spotify playlist of what I've been listening to while working on it. It's very long... and it doesn't have an awful lot of punk on it actually because I have that weird thing of not being able to really listen to what I'm writing about as I'm writing about it. I think it's to do with having a day job - you can't get immersed in the same way as if you write full time, you have to regularly dis-engage from what you're writing about to go off and do things like go to work. Anyway, it will be what I'll be listening to, in one form or another, between now and (probably) February 2017 as I get my head down. If you'd like to listen to it too, you can do so.
Although I still like 'Talk' the best, I am really enjoying the new Tacocat video for 'The Internet', which skilfully pastiches much of the online mores of today.
It's a more complex message than that of Le Tigre, but that's probably because 'Get Off The Internet' was released sixteen years ago now. When apathy and lethargy were the main perils of online life...
Friday marked the final instalment of the British Library's 40 Years of Punk season, Punky Reggae Party: The Story of Rock Against Racism.
From watching people file into the auditorium, I could see that the majority of the audience appeared to be the right sort of age to have lived through punk and RAR. There were a smattering of twenties and thirtysomethings, but very much the minority.
After a brief introduction by a member of staff from the British Library, Daniel Rachel (author of new book Walls Come Tumbling Down: Rock Against Racism, Two Tone, Red Wedge) introduced the panel, including the empty chair where Dennis Bovell was meant to be, had he not been unavoidably delayed by Aswad. Next to the empty chair were Kate Webb (Irate Kate, RAR/Temporary Hoarding), Lucy Whitman (Lucy Toothpaste, JOLT fanzine, RAR/Temporary Hoarding, Rock Against Sexism) and Tom Robinson (Tom Robinson Band).
The discussion began with the catalyst for RAR: Eric Clapton's infamous speech at a gig in Birmingham in 1976, sections of which were read out by Tom Robinson. As a speech, it is brutally shocking in terms of it's choice of language, and appears to have been equally shocking at the time. Clapton the bluesman, Clapton with his cover of Bob Marley's 'I Shot The Sheriff', Clapton the rock colonialist... Clapton who thought Enoch Powell was right.
We then moved on to gig attendee and photographer Red Saunders' open letter decrying Clapton's speech and actions, which was published in the music press and Socialist Worker, which called for a "Rock Against Racism".
This was oral history at it's best; the relating of the history of Rock Against Racism, from four different perspectives (Dennis Bovell did arrive, not too late), with Daniel Rachel steering what became an increasingly multimedia discussion: We saw clips of the carnivals and marches, of the Clash playing, of Steel Pulse... The story took a number of twists and turns, with inevitable digressions.
There was Temporary Hoarding (the RAR newspaper), mass communication in a pre internet age, Rock Against Sexism, women in punk, the birth of lovers rock, Dennis Bovell's work with The Slits, Sham 69 and their fans, the difficulties of bands who acquired NF/Skinhead followers (Rhoda Dakar, from the audience during the Q&A, was very quick to point out that all the 2Tone bands acquired these kind of fans. It just happened, and the bands had no control over the fans they attracted). There was a lot of really interesting detail on the logistics of RAR, of organising the carnivals, the impact of the carnivals and, really, the whole event succeeded in really bringing RAR, and that period of time, alive in a way that was vivid, colourful, and inspiring.
Aftermath:
In the Q&A someone asked (as I knew they would) whether we need a new RAR now, if it's even more relevant in a post Brexit vote world with hate crime reporting increasing on a daily basis. I think the answer given was a good one: That RAR was right for it's moment in time, but not necessarily for now. That said, as Kate Webb mentioned, RAR did go global and events do still occur all around the world. There was also Love Music, Hate Racism, which seemed to be the natural heir to RAR. The return to this question encouraged an incredibly forthright heckle at the very end, vis a vis the question of whether society is in worse shape in 2016 than it was in 1976. The panel said no, pointing out that there are at least laws in place now that there weren't then. The heckler, a middle aged white guy, yelled "BOLLOCKS!", adding "WE'RE IN THE WEIMAR PERIOD!!" (now there's a cheerful thought...) A woman on the other side of the auditorium of a similar age called back "I AGREE WITH YOU MATE!"
There wasn't a lot that anyone could say to that, and the event ended at that point anyway as we were out of time.
Thoughts:
I have to say, I'm glad that no one on the panel, or in the audience, fell into the trap of saying that the current generation aren't stroppy/proactive enough. It looked like that was about to happen at one point, during which I had Georgia on my mind, specifically 'Move Systems', along with Hope Not Hate's #moreincommon campaign.
I don't think RAR could exist now because, as Dorian Lynskey concluded in his history of the protest song, 33 Revolutions Per Minute, what started as a celebration became a requiem. As I see it myself, protest and youth protest do occur, but they don't have a soundtrack. You can find angry music, angry music about specific issues in fact, but the protest and the angry music increasingly feel divorced from each other.
We have songs about Donald Trump and the refugee crisis (Will Varley's 'To Build A Wall'), songs about austerity (Doyle and the Four Fathers 'Welcome To Austerity'), youth unemployment (Poppy and the Jezebels 'Sign In, Dream On, Drop Out'), and good old marching songs (Pretty Girls Make Graves' 'Parade') but the student protests of 2010 produced no anthem, there was no Ballad of Milbank, there was no Occupy anthem (unless you count the marching chant of 'Whose streets? Our streets!'), there is no musical lament for the EU (unless you count that absolutely inspired take on Paloma Faith's 'Only Love Can Hurt Like This' on Dead Ringers on June 24th, where it became 'Only Leave Can Hurt Like This').
Similarly, in around 2003, there were a number of songs catching the anti-Iraq War mood, but none became anthemic enough to stick. Green Day's 'American Idiot' is fingered by Lynskey as a contender, but Broadcast's 'America's Boy' and Biffy Clyro's 'Stars and Shites' are similarly eloquent.
This diverging of protest and music is why I think there couldn't be a RAR now. That doesn't mean something shouldn't happen to address the increasing hell that is post-Brexit vote Britain, but it probably won't be rooted in music. I have started an audio diary on Spotify, post Brexit, using songs to mark my reactions/moods to events as they unfold, but it makes for very random listening and, ultimately, probably only makes sense to me. Unlike the one I did of post-2000 marching songs, which was inspired by the TUC march last year, and what I felt was a woeful playlist along the PA system as we marched. Or, to put it bluntly: I really, really resented having to march the last leg of the march to 'Don't Look Back In Anger'.
It will be interesting to see what this years TUC march will bring in the way of banners, chants and iconography. Maybe something will happen. We can't do the pig banners again, that's for sure.
There will, hopefully, be other Florence + The Machine albums, other tours, but for now, I want to take a journey through a series of singular musical moments for the band, namely the four songs that the band have contributed to film soundtracks over the years.
We begin in 2010 with 'Heavy In Your Arms', which was written for the film adaptation of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Eclipse.
A year after the release of debut album Lungs, the band were touring extensively while working on what was to become 2011's follow up, Ceremonials. While Lungs has a fierce emotional intensity and makes use of a certain amount of gothic imagery, it was very much a summer album, both in terms of it's release period (July 2009) and it's overall sound. Ceremonials, which was released in October 2011, was much darker, both sonically and lyrically, and, at the time, didn't seem to get the same level of critical acclaim as the bands debut. Which is a shame because it is an album you can keep coming back to, discovering and re-discovering different elements of, and features many of the bands most prized live moments, such as 'Spectrum' and 'Shake It Out'.
'Heavy In Your Arms', a surging slice of full on goth rock is, along with 'No Light, No Light' a good bridge between the two albums. Lyrically, it is a pretty straight forward murder ballad, which suits the themes of the Twilight Saga well. It was used within the film as the second song of the closing credits, and was widely performed by the band during the 2010 festival season, as well as on TV shows such as Letterman in the US. Watching the clip of 'Heavy In Your Arms' on Letterman is odd because, while the band are clearly giving it their all, the song comes across as much too big and loud for that kind of enclosed studio environment. It seems to have gone down better at festivals, where the full goth rock splendour and intensity of the song could be absorbed into the overall ambience of the festival in question.
This performance, from Oxygen festival, has a sort of emo Jefferson Airplane feel to it.
Whereas the bands performance of the songat that years Glastonbury had more of Bowie esque theatricality about it. Two years later, in 2012 the band were asked to contribute a song to the epic fantasy re-working of the Snow White story, Snow White and the Huntsman, a script that had had a long wait to reach the big screen. Fittingly, Florence + The Machine's 'Breath Of Life', an intense, charging, multi layered piece, evokes everything right about fantasy fiction soundtracks: Drama, suspense, big drums, orchestral swoops and swirls, choirs... If 'Heavy In Your Arms' was brooding, 'Breath of Life' was a chariot at full charge.
In preparation for the song, Welch was given access to some of the scenes from the film, and found herself being inspired by Charlize Theron's evil queen Ravenna.
Due to it's complexities as a song, 'Breath of Life' doesn't appear to have been performed live much, though I did locate a clip of the band performing it live at Lollapalooza in 2012, which I would have included had there been less crowd noise on the recording. At the time of the songs release, the band were touring the Ceremonials album, and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful was still three years away.
2013 wasn't the first time that the book had been adapted for the big screen: Much like Emily Brontë'sWuthering Heights (the source material for the Twilight Saga) The Great Gatsby can be seen to have been adapted frequently, almost excessively. But in stamping his mark on the text, Luhrmann deployed his usual audacious take on the soundtrack, with hip-hop replacing jazz as the hedonists music of choice. This appears to have upset a number of people at the time, but was perfectly consistent for a man who had Mercutio crash the Capulet's ball to an amped up Kym Mazelle version of 'Young Hearts, Run Free' in Romeo + Juliet, and who soundtracked an immensely brooding and sexually charged tango sequence with a version of The Police's 'Roxanne' in Moulin Rouge.
Luhrmann's musical executive controller on the soundtrack was Jay Z, a credible choice given the hip hop centred nature of the piece, and the soundtrack overall comes across as better than you expect it to, albeit slightly disjointed at times.
Florence + The Machine contributed 'Over The Love' a mournfully atmospheric ballad. As a highly literate woman, Welch was au fait with the original text, and the literary references within the songs lyrics reflect this. The Great Gatsby was also one of the choices for the Florence + The Machine book club, Between Two Books, at the time, taking the bands relationship with the text full circle.
While I do like the recorded version of 'Over The Love', I really, really love the acoustic version of the song the band performed as part of the Chime For Change concert in 2013. The acoustic nature lends the song a whole different feel and character, while Welch really gives it her all, to the joy of fans in the crowd.
While 'Heavy In Your Arms' stands alone, it also serves as a sonic bridge between Lungs and Ceremonials. 'Breath of Life' could be seen to take some of the themes of Ceremonials further, and to infuse those themes with the all out velocity of epic fantasy, whereas the sheer heartbreak of 'Over The Love', while structurally very different to the songs that were to follow in 2015 on the How Big How Blue How Beautiful album, does feel as though it's coming from a similar place as songs such as 'Various Storms & Saints' which, while very different lyrically and musically, is ultimately a song about love and heartbreak.
As if to confirm this, there has been little pause between the end of the How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful tour and the release of three songs from the Final Fantasy XV soundtrack, (Too Much Is Never Enough, a cover of Ben E. King's Stand By Me, and I Will Be), and and on Friday 26th August there came the release of film soundtrack song number four: The epic, majestic, and utterly heartbreaking 'Wish That You Were Here', which appears on the soundtrack to Tim Burton's forthcoming new film Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children. The film is released on 30th September 2016.
As with both Twilight and The Great Gatsby, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children is a literary adaptation. In this case, it is adapted from the young adult novel by Ransom Riggs, a New York Times bestseller, which has been translated into 40 languages. There have been two sequels (Hollow City and Library of Souls), and a related book, Tales of the Peculiar, that might be described as either a tie in or a prequel which arrives on 3rd September.
I haven't read the book, but I definitely will be doing as it sounds like a riveting mixture of fantasy, time travel, gothic fairytale and bildungsroman, all of which I love. Descriptions of the plot reminded me of both Helen Cresswell's classic Moondial and Harry Potter, but I suspect I'm being a bit simplistic there.
The trailers for the film are very atmospheric (as you would expect from Tim Burton) and matching the gothic and charmingly off kilter cinematography of Tim Burton with the equally gothic and charmingly off kilter music of Florence + The Machine does feel like something of an obvious match.
This is the man who commissioned Siouxsie and the Banshees back in 1992 to write 'Face To Face' as the soundtrack to an encounter between Batman and Catwoman in Batman Returns.
When discussing the collaboration with Burton, Welch has said that she had wanted to work with him for a long time.
The resulting song, 'Wish That You Were Here' is epic in both scale and length, complex, heartbreakingly sad, and overall full on beautiful. This sounds somewhat over the top, but it really is lovely. How indicative it will be of future Florence + The Machine songs, only time will tell, but in subject matter it appears to have been firmly rooted not just in Riggs novel, but in the isolation from friends and family endured by the touring artist. As such, it is equally as much a product of the 2015-2016 How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful tour as of Riggs and Burton's work.
Florence + The Machine have come a long way from Welch's drunken debut in Kings Cross, acoustic gigs in lifts and parks to full on stadium art rock. But, from a fan point of view, it's been a great journey, and continues to be. What will happen next? Only time will tell...
Note: This blog post was originally published on 14th August 2016 and discussed 'Heavy In Your Arms', 'Breath of Life' and 'Over The Love'. It was updated on 29th August 2016 to include discussion of the recently released 'Wish That You Were Here'
She writes great, stylish, pop music with brains Chaleur Humaine, an Anglo-French re-working of Letissier's 2014 French album of the same name, mixes endearingly glitchy electro with insanely catchy riffs & hooks and an understated pop intimacy that reflects her intelligence and creativity. Opening track 'iT' is one of the angriest, yet danceable to, album openers I've ever heard. Talking about 'iT' to Dazed earlier this year, Letissier spoke of a sense of "wanting to have a dick just to have an easier life". She clarified this by adding:
The song reflects the sense of sexual fluidity that runs through Letissier's work in her persona of Christine, the name Christine and the Queens being a nod to the drag queens who looked after a fragile and heartbroken Letissier on a three week trip to London from her native France. She has variously described herself as bisexual and pansexual, but seems at pains to present a studied androgyny in her image as Christine. This is both intriguing and refreshing.
Sonically, the album ranges from the ferocity of 'iT' to the stripped down simplicity and poignancy of 'Night 52', via the almost Tom Tom Club esque 'Tilted' (think 'Genius of Love' rather than 'Wordy Rappinghood') and urban glitch of 'No Harm Is Done', a collaboration with Tunji Ige.
Despite parts of the album originally appearing in 2014, it feels like a very contemporary album, with a strong sense of urban unease reflected in it's conflicting sense of strength and fragility. Chaleur Humaine (which babel fish translates as 'Warmth') if there is any justice, should already be on it's way to becoming a modern pop classic (the album was released in the UK in March) and, I hope, a strong contender for album of the year.
Ben Chatwin is a Scottish composer, based in Edinburgh, whose album Heat & Entropy, has just been released on Ba Da Bing records.
A mixture of organic, acoustic composition and electronica, it has a distinctly filmic quality to it, and a brooding undertone of menace at certain points.
Taster track 'Euclidean Plane' is a lighter listen, and none the worse for that, gliding along with a delicacy that belies its intricacies.
I freely confess to ignorance so far as composition processes and techniques are achieved, but I am enjoying listening to this album, and to trying to understand it's mysteries.
On Friday 8th July, Nils Frahm and Woodkid released the score to French artist JR's film Ellis. A hymn to Ellis Island and its role in the story of migration to the US throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the film tales the story through the eyes of one migrant, voiced by Robert De Niro. The soundtrack itself is a haunting melange of delicate piano, strings and harmonium that combine into something that is both sad and beautiful. In creating the work, Frahm and Woodkid were haunted and preoccupied not just by Ellis Island and it's history, but by current events in Europe. As Nils Frahm says in the press release to promote the release of this mini album:
The opportunity to work on JR´s fantastic short film ELLIS came through my good friend Yoann aka Woodkid. We agreed on recording the piano parts in my studio in Berlin and so it happened that JR and Woodkid were guests at Durton studio on a wonderful late summers day in 2015. We managed to record all the crucial elements that day. The music fell into our laps and melted with the images: a wonderful experience. The film has stuck in my head ever since; it moved my heart and changed my soul.A couple of weeks later I had to cancel a trip to Brussels because of a terror warning; all events got cancelled and I stayed home, having an unexpected day off. I felt rather depressed that day, thinking that the Europe I knew was already gone. I sat down at the harmonium, listened to Robert De Niro’s voice and played for the rest of the day. The result is ‘Winter Morning II,’ the B-side of the ELLIS soundtrack release.Robert says it all in 17 minutes. We are not facing a refugee crisis. We are facing a crisis because we do not embrace, we do not sympathise and we cannot give up fear. Art can encourage so I hope this project will help fight the fear in all of us.
You can listen to the soundtrack on Soundcloud, and I highly recommend you do. Not only does this feel like a very timely, oddly contemporary, release, I have also found it to be an oddly cathartic listen, post Brexit. All proceeds go to the Sea Watch Initiative, a non profit charity dedicated to the protection and rescue of civilian refugees
