Buoyed by the success of last years late career highlight, As The Love Continues, their first UK number one album, Mogwai return with triumphant new single, Boltfor.
Initially conceived during the studio sessions for As The Love Continues, Boltfor sees Mogwai at their epic best. Heavily dominated by atmospheric synths and glitchy percussion, the track begins lowkey, before ascending into a glorious crescendo of melodic synths and distorted guitar. The heroic melancholy of the underdog’s triumph.
Check out the fantastic video directed by Sam Wiehl, made up of generative CGI runners shedding light as they run through atmospherically lit environments. One shot might be a field of flowers while the next resembles the surface of the moon. Sam Wiehl says that it is “a visual metaphor for the constant movement in life and the unceasing urge to move forward as individuals.” Visual sentiments which reflect the music beautifully.
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Before hearing Jäh Division’s imaginative deconstructions of classic Joy Division songs, I suppose I was already primed to accept this kind of thing. Due to the success of artists like Easy Star All-Stars & their guest-heavy reinterpretations of classic albums like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, Radiohead’s OK Computer & Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I was already quite receptive to the idea of hearing some of my life’s cultural touchstones rendered in Dub.
The idea of Joy Division’s music rendered as Dub calls to mind something that cultural theorist/political philosopher Mark Fisher wrote about Post-Punk bands like The Fall and Joy Division. He observed how their bass-led songwriting & production provided a white equivalent to Dub Reggae. The salient point here being that it is a white equivalent rather than a white version. Young working class white kids working out their marginalisation in bass-heavy soundscapes in much the same way as the working class black kids, but yielding completely different results.
So before I even listen to it, Jäh Division has pretty big shoes to fill. Does it succeed? Maybe. I don’t know. It’s quite enjoyable as a Dub album but it’s debatable how well the original songs hold up during the transformation. Opening track Transmission is barely recognisable with the tempo reduced to a languid crawl, only the bass line bears any resemblance to the original. It exemplifies how different an element from a song can sound if taken out of its original context. I have similar feelings about Heart And Soul Isolation too. Enjoyable enough Dub, sure, but almost unrecognisable as the Joy Division song.
Transmission, for my money, is a little more successful. The reduction in tempo & energy isn’t quite enough to ground the dizzy heights scaled by the songs gorgeous melody synth. The dubby delays even seem to add buoyancy to these heroically soaring melodies. Love Will Tear Us Apart also works quite well here. No accident that it is their most accessible and radio friendly song. It could fit into almost any genre without diminishing its appeal.
The 2019 rerelease also features four bonus tracks which are actually original compositions rather than Joy Division covers. These are all fine, decent Dub tracks. I have no complaints but they don’t really stand out & they feel a trifle unnecessary so I won’t really dwell on them too much.
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Thanks to Redditor u/XtalHedphelym for uploading this excellent image.
I initially found this fantastic image on a Facebook group dedicated to the excellent Spookypasta known as The Backrooms. For me, this image doesn’t really get at the core characteristics of The Backrooms but it’s still a wonderful example of Radiohead’s satirical take on Capitalist Realism. The original post on Facebook incorrectly gave the date as 1997, potentially due to the font used for the bands name, though careful examination of the image after finding this better version of it on Reddit, confirmed the date to be 2000-2001. Hope you like it.
Here’s (probably) Radiohead’s most Backrooms energy track:
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What follows is a short spoken segment which Mark E Smith, reluctant Working Class Autodidact & erratic frontman of The Fall, recorded for Greenwich Sound Radio in 1983. Smith was already becoming respected for the poetic & eccentric content of his band’s lyrics (see The N.W.R.A below), which he whittled down from huge blocks of prose written with a similar methodology to Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose technique.
Here we hear Smith not only giving an insight into his writing process (about 50/50 chance of being serious) but also some poetry. Please enjoy the audio & the transcript I have provided below. The section which describes the process was taken from here, while the poetry & prose which follows was transcribed by myself.
Hello I’m Mark E. Smith and this is The Mark E. Smith ‘Guide To Writing’ Guide.
Day-by-day breakdown
Day One: Hang around house all day writing bits of useless information on bits of paper.
Day Two: Decide lack of inspiration due to too much isolation and non-fraternisation. Go to pub. Have drinks.
Day Three: Get up and go to pub. Hold on in there a style is on its way. Through sheer boredom and drunkenness, talk to people in pub.
Day Four: By now, people in the pub should be continually getting on your nerves. Write things about them on backs of beer mats.
Day Five: Go to pub. This is where true penmanship stamina comes into its own as by now, guilt, drunkenness, the people in the pub and the fact you’re one of them should combine to enable you to write out of sheer vexation. To write out of sheer vexation.
Day Six: If possible stay home. And write. If not go to pub.
Using this method, this is a poem I wrote called London.
(Mock American Accent) I’d just got over to London, get me a pint of your fine old British ale.
London.
Decadent backbone of former empire.
Spittle chinned Southerner looking forward to next holiday.
Digitale Croydon, fourteen pound per hour.
An immigration backlash type situation here
And there’s an Indian clerk in the backroom with a literature degree,
His boss is a roofed architect over-bathed, intense.
Project Victoriana Punish,
His clothes are flapping United Nations:
Japanese pants, odd boots, Euro shirts.
Is no shirt, his mind is Parisian
Fifties situationist
and ‘neath his designs you have no choice,
Stay where you are.
He is looking down on you from his tech drawing board.
Take the chicken run, run to the bog
You can do it
Do not
Warning! rumours of grey cancer builders greatly exaggerated
Manchester.
Dear TV Times,
Your majesties, I have concocted, through the noble invention and the blarney craft of the humble Northener, a system where by constant annoyance by the telephone can be erased. This entails explosive charges, left to me by a dead sailor from Bury, being wired up under every windowsill, close proximity to my ears. When phones ring and are inconvenient to the ears I just press table lamp-like what next to my bed and they blow up. I got the idea from a book.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Reg Varney.
Please note: all herbs is available from P.O. Box 935 GTV Manchester. Once you get a bit of pain I was splitting myself, them hilly-billies.
When it happened we walked through all the estates, from Manchester right to, er, Newcastle. In Darlington, helped a large man on his own chase off some kids who were chucking bricks and stuff through his flat window. She had a way with people like that. Thanked us and we moved on.
‘Junior Choice’ played one morning. The song was ‘English Scheme.’ Mine. They’d changed it with a grand piano and turned it into a love song. How they did it I don’t know. DJs had worsened since the rising. Elaborating on nothing in praise of the track with words they could hardly pronounce, in telephone voices.
I was mad, and laughed at the same time. The West German government had brought over large yellow trains on Teeside docks. In Edinburgh. I stayed on my own for a few days, wandering about in the, er, pissing rain, before the Queen Mother hit town.
I’m Joe Totale The yet unborn son The North will rise again The North will rise again Not in 10, 000 years Too many people cower to criminals And government crap The estates stick up like stacks The North will rise again X4 Look where you are Look where you are The future death of my father
Shift! Tony was a business friend Of RT XVII And was an opportunist man Come, come hear my story How he set out to corrupt and destroy This future Rising
The business friend came round today With teeth clenched, he grabbed my neck I threw him to the ground His blue shirt stained red The north will rise again. He said you are mistaken, friend I kicked him out of the home
Too many people cower to criminals And that government pap When all it takes is hard slap
But out the window burned the roads There were men with bees on sticks The fall had made them sick A man with butterflies on his face His brother threw acid in his face His tatoos were screwed The streets of Soho did reverberate With drunken Highland men Revenge for Culloden dead The North had rose again But it would turn out wrong The North will rise again
So R. Totale dwells underground Away from sickly grind With ostrich head-dress Face a mess, covered in feathers Orange-red with blue-black lines That draped down to his chest Body are a tentacle mess And light blue plant-heads TV showed Sam Chippendale No conception of what he’d made The Arndale had been razed Shop staff knocked off their ladders Security guards hung from moving escalators
And now that is said Tony seized the control He built his base in Edinburgh Had on his hotel wall A hooded friar on a tractor He took a bluey and he called Totale Who said, “the North has rose again” But it will turn out wrong
When I was in cabaret I vowed to defend All of the English clergy Though they have done wrong And the fall has begun This has got out of hand I will go for foreign aid But he Tony, laughed down the phone Said “Totale go back to bed” The North has rose today And you can stuff your aid! And you can stuff your aid!
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Day 29. The video for this great tune by Björk is sadly age restricted. I do include it below though you’ll have to be logged into YouTube to watch it. The official audio on YouTube is also included below.
It’s one of my favourite tunes by Björk, a sensual downtempo piece which calls to mind the halftime rhythms of Dubstep as much as the murky electronica of Trip Hop. Great video too.
You’ll be given love You’ll be taken care of You’ll be given love You have to trust it
Maybe not from the sources You have poured yours Maybe not from the directions You are staring at
Twist your head around It’s all around you All is full of love All around you
You just ain’t receiving (All is full of love) Your phone is off the hook (All is full of love) Your doors are all shut (All is full of love) And be the little angel (All is full of love)
All is full of love (All is full of love) All is full of love (All is full of love) All (All is full of love) All is full of love (All is full of love) All (All is full of love)
Looking for some great music? Check the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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This entry is as much for the video as it is for the song. The aching nostalgia conveyed by the grainy, stop motion footage is supremely powerful. Especially when paired with the grandiose melancholy of the song.
Due to this song being an instrumental, I decided it might be both amusing & informative to quote the Wikipedia page for the song’s description of its composition:
The song begins with almost inaudible guitar, heavily delayed and reverberated, playing a descending three note melody. At (0:25), a bass riff (based around the chords of D major and B minor) enters. At (1:00), slightly distorted, heavily delayed and reverberated guitars begin playing along to the bass riff, swooping in and out. At (1:34), a relaxed, slow drum beat begins. At (2:50), all of the instruments pause for a brief second, then explode into loud guitar-driven noise, backed by a steady, heavy drumbeat (to which every snare drum beat is accompanied by a tambourine clash). At (4:28), the distorted guitars and drums end, leaving the soft bass riff to close the song, aided by the guitar melody heard at the start of song, all of which gradually fade out.
Live versions of the song are performed at a substantially slower tempo.
Looking for some great music? Check out the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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Psychedelic Indie madness from The Beta Band today. Taken from their excellent second EP, The Patty Patty Sound, Inner Meet Me is a messy, glorious mix of frazzled lo-fi folk, subby bass & bleepy, delayed Dub sirens.
I was reminded about the band because they, & the video for this song, are the subject of a poem I have been writing over the last few days, which should see the light of day on my other blog, Slow News City.
Inner Meet Me, oh you can’t decide (repeated)
Last night I dreamt somebody fell asleep between my knees. I couldn’t help it that the facts were rejected by a boy who called me (repeated 3 times)
She said to me, keep your head up, never show up, keep it all in never dream alone Play on a star Moves too far Say what you feel Speak when you kneel Never dream alone Never dream alone
If you were feeling that the light is on the ceiling then you can’t see past your nose. Cos what you’re seeing is the man underneath the beam she’s a fool below low. I never listen but the people they were christened I wonder who was the one. A better placement for the basement when he’s chasing Mrs Mason when they’re facing on the relation
She said to me, keep your head up, never show up, keep it all in, never dream alone Play on a star Moves too far Say what you feel Speak when you kneel Never dream alone Never dream alone
Last night I dreamt somebody fell asleep between my knees I couldnt help it that the facts were recjected by a boy called me (repeated 3 times)
She said to me, keep your head up, never show up, keep it all in, never dream alone Play on a star Moves too far Say what you feel Speak when you kneel Never dream alone Never dream alone
Looking for some great music? Check out the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist.
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I just love this great tune by múm & was shocked to see it hadn’t made it into any of my previous Song of the Day series. It’s glorious, melancholy, Scandinavian Electronic Pop music par excellence. Skittering percussion, lush melodies & sugar sweet vocals combine to create a warm, inviting atmosphere.
Interestingly, the YouTube video titles the track as ‘Green Grass Of Tunnel’ instead of ‘Green Green Grass Of Tunnel’. A favourite band of mine, British Sea Power, also recorded a cover version of the song & they used the former, shorter title.
Down from the ceiling leaks a great noise
It drips on my head through a hole in the roof
Behind these two hills here there’s a pool
And when I’m swimming in through a tunnel
I shut my eyes inside the cupboard
I make sounds and through the tubes I send this noise
Behind these two hill here I fall asleep
And when I’m floating green grass of tunnel
It flows back down from the ceiling, leaks a great noise
It drips on my head through a hole in the roof
Behind these two hills here there’s a pool
And when I’m swimming in through a tunnel I shut my eyes
Looking for some great music? Why not check out the Song of the Day (Chaotic Neutral) Spotify playlist?
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The Breakmagos Collection Vol.1 comprises of two EP’s I originally released under the Breakmagos moniker in 2014 & 2016: The Lovecode EP (tracks 1-6) & The Brinkmanship EP (tracks 7-11). The tracks on the Lovecode EP were created between 2011-2013, the name came from the artwork (see below). The Brinkmanship EP was created from some some files I found of finished tracks from before my laptop died in 2015. The original files were all lost but I’d uploaded these tracks to Google Drive so that I could play them through a BlueTooth speaker. I named the EP Brinkmanship because I felt that the tracks had been rescued from the brink of being lost. Several songs were in fact lost during this laptop death, though I recently recovered more on an old iPod which eventually made it onto another release, Shit From An Old iPod.
The artwork for the collection is a photograph of a safety sticker on a Low Level Order Picker (LLOP) truck where I work which I have digitally manipulated in a piece of software called Hyperspektiv and layered in another piece of software called SnapSeed. I thought that there was a quasi-religious vibe to the image & therefore named it, before selecting it for the cover of this album, Worship False Idols.
This artwork was created by right clicking on a photo of the Beatles playing All You Need Is Love & opening it in TextEdit. I then took a screenshot of a random selection of code.
This is a photograph of a halloween themed dog toy which my dog, Titch, was playing with. It was inspired by the cover art of two Sonic Youth albums: Bad Moon Rising & Dirty.
Take Up Thy Plasma Caster & Vape
The groundwork for this track was begun in 2011 when I was trying to wrap my head around sidechaining in Logic Pro. Its original title was SidechainExperiment. As such, it is built around rhythmic patterns created by sidechaining kick drums to fuzzy pad sounds. The title is a homage to two disparate influences: Fallout: New Vegas (which I was probably playing at the time) & Pink Floyd (specifically their song Take Up Thy Stethoscope And Walk). I don’t think I was aware of vaping as an alternative to smoking at this point & definitely didn’t use it as a verb. I use the word here as Sci-Fi slang for vaporising someone (usually with an energy weapon).
2. Synaptic Disintegrator
I don’t remember much about the production of this tune except for the fact that the main bass tone is created by running a sampled 808 boom through a VST distortion effect called CamelCrusher. The track is named after a weapon from the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000. Synaptic Disintegrators are the sniper rifle-type weapons wielded by Necron Deathmarks, a kind of sentient robot sniper to the uninitiated. Think Joe Pineapples from A.B.C. Warriors. I remember uploading this track to Soundcloud as a free download/Christmas gift on Christmas Eve 2012.
3. Cyber Analogue Steam Punk
This track begun life as part of a suite of tracks I composed as part of a community music project centred around the concept of journeys. The suite was based on the journey from Earth to Mars in the Alastair Reynolds novel Blue Remembered Earth. This track was originally entitled Martian Railroad & did not include the vocal sample. The vocal sample is taken from a news broadcast about American politicians debating cybersecurity. The snare sound is sampled from the clack of a steam trains runners in motion & the main textures are sampled from the noise of a cassette tape. At one point the working title was Steamtape, but after adding the vocal sample, it became Cyber Analogue Steam Punk to encompass the disparate elements.
4. Reanimation Protocols
Another one I remember very little about, except for playing around with tiny slivers of noises loaded into a drum machine VST. The title comes from a rule for Warhammer 40,000 Necrons which allows them to return to the field after being destroyed, a kind of advanced autorepair. I remember the synths are all made with a VST called Magical 8Bit by YMCK.
5. Space Powder
I believe this was just an attempt to recreate some of the futuristic Hip Hop tunes I was hearing by artists like Flying Lotus & Samiyam. The synth parts are semi-improvised & the beats are intentionally a bit wonky. The title came from a poem I wrote when I was about 17.
6. Guncrawl
Another one with little memory. The title comes from a table top boardgame/RPG which is a kind-of Sci-Fi version of classic dungeon crawlers like HeroQuest & Descent. I thought it was a great title so I stole it.
7. Cyber Swamp
Cyber Swamp is built around a swirling, evolving mess of sound which is created by a simple sine wave (generated by the aforementioned YMCK Magical 8Bit VST) played through a long, complex signal chain of filters & delays. I think I named it Cyber Swamp because it sounded like swarming cybernetic insects. I added a halftime beat and a squelchy bass synth because it just felt right.
8. Disconnect
This tune is a hamfisted first attempt at emulating the ‘phasing’ techniques pioneered by avant-garde composers like Steve Reich. The general concept is that you have multiple versions of the same part, usually a melody, playing on different tape players. The minute differences in speed between the different tapes would cause the parts to drift in and out of phase with each other creating interesting melodic & rhythmic variations. In this instance I created three instances of the same synth part & time stretched one to be a bar shorter than the original & one to be a bar longer. Despite not quite achieving what I set out to, I was still pleased with the result. Originally made for Week 8 of Weekly Beats 2014.
9. Polystyrene
This is another track which began life as part of Weekly Beats 2014. Week 35 this time. This was a last minute experiment where I, with a massive case of writers block, cut up the intro to an older song into small slices & loaded them up into a drum machine. I programmed rhythmic patterns with them & treated each slice independently with delay, distortion etc. It was a satisfying, if random, experiment & I enjoyed it a lot. I was more pleased with the result than I’d anticipated.
10. Enigmatic Hive Mind
This is yet another song from Weekly Beats 2014, Week 21. This is a slightly more successful experiment with the avant-garde phasing technique. In this instance I have multiple versions of the same drum track playing simultaneously with the tiniest variations in speed. The drum tracks drift in & out of time with each other causing some fairly chaotic rhythmic variations. One Weekly Beats user described the sound as like ‘hesitant sandpaper’. I was, & remain, exceedingly proud of this comment.
11. While My Synthesiser Gently Bleeps
This was another experiment with the same wall of randomised, swirling noise as Cyber Swamp. Recorded entirely in one take, this track was just a fun, experimental jam I performed & recorded one night. I never anticipated that it would be good enough to keep. I think you can all guess what I’m satirising with the title.
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Scruffy Theory 