The Dark Knight Rises mini-review

Mild spoliers ahead. 

We went to see it at a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises on Saturday and I have to say, I was very impressed. I've not been the biggest fan of Nolan's take on the Batman legacy, but by this, the third instalment, I was willing to let go of my reservations and just go with his vision.

The fundamental flaws I perceived in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight were these: firstly, trying to turn the Batman mythos into a reality-based, completely believable, The Wire-type universe was too limiting, and secondly that Christian Bale didn't convince me as he was neither a charming Bruce Wayne nor a threatening Batman. Maybe it's the silly voice?

By now Nolan has a very firm grasp on the material, and is able to execute his own take on the mythos with great ease. It's maybe taken his three attempts to get there, but he has arrived, and it was worth the wait. There's an ease and a fluidity in the story-telling now that wasn't there before.

Other elements that annoyed me before are neatly taken care of here. Take Michael Caine for instance. I'm sorry, but Michael Caine is NOT Alfred, he is simply Michael Caine with a serving dish, and acts as a constant reminder that this is no ordinary superhero franchise, it's serious. Thankfully, Caine disappears pretty early on in TDKR, and his purpose is simply to be an emotional cypher, something he does very well.

In fact, the entire cast are on top form here. Even Morgan Freeman has more to do than being just another reminder, like Caine, of how serious this franchise is. Even Bale delivers, despite the silly voice, and his Bruce Wayne-as-reclusive-loner is much more convincing than Bruce Wayne-as-charmless-playboy.

But biggest props of all go to the other "heroes". Tom Hardy is excellent as Bane, emoting with merely his eyes and his neck muscles, and despite the constant comparisons to Heath Ledger's Joker (a wildly different character) comfortably holds his own. He'd also whip the Joker's ass, easy.

However, the whole show was stolen for me by Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, who thankfully is NEVER refered to as "Catwoman", though the word "cat:" is mentioned a couple of times. I have to admit I was very doubtful about the casting choice of Hathaway. Not that I dislike her as an actress, but that I doubted her suitability for the role. I am glad to say I was proven very wrong, and Hathaway delivers in spades. She is slinky and feline, without ever resorting to linking the back of her hand and uttering "meow", and physically a presence to be reckoned with.

I'll definitely be going to see this again, probably in the IMAX to see the stunts in glorious large-screen format, and if there is any kind of a follow up to this film, I hope Hathaway as Selina Kyle has a key role.

Soundblab "Silverclub" review

"You see, Manchester has a very mixed relationship to its own musical history. While it's a city that has produced countless excellent bands over the years, it's also a place where the celebration and incessant revivalism of these 'classic' acts makes it harder for new talent to break through, causing a backlash against the scenes that made the city so popular. While there's a few key promoters and venue owners in the city who are guilty of this, much of the blame also needs to be laid squarely at the feet of the music press, who can't seem to cover a Manc band without having to mention (at least once if not more) desolate industrial landscapes and trench coat existentialism, or alternately Spike Island, 'avin' it and baggy beats. 

I mean, I GET IT. I understand the frustration of trying to throw off the musical shackles of a previous generation only to have them dumped on your shoulders again by an extremely lazy press. But in the rush to forge ahead and leave the past far, far behind, aren't we in danger of also throwing the baby out with the bath water? Cos, at the end of the day, I LOVED Madchester! I loved (and still love) the Happy Mondays, The (early) Stone Roses, New Order, yeah, all that cliched old Manc shit. 

Now, I'm not saying that Silverclub sound like any of these bands, but they do fit in this lineage of smart, funky, sexy 'indie-dance' (or whatever you want to cal lit this month). Take album opener 'Like Cats Eyes', which starts with a circular guitar part and a barely audible, spaced-out vocal which lulls you into a sense of familiarity, before being interrupted by a funky drum break and an electro bassline which pushes the tune into 5am post-club euphoric bliss. THIS is what I love about Manchester and its music - risk, adventure, a desire to push things forward backed with a true appreciation of how opposing genres work best together."

Read the full review here.

'Purple Naked Ladies' review on Soundblab

I was blown away by 'Purple Naked Ladies', the debut album by The Internet (part of the OFWGKTA fam and featuring Syd Tha Kid, the openly gay female dj for Tyler The Creator). So much so that I wrote this review for Soundblab mag, mentioneing Stereolab, Martine Topley-Byrd, Organized Noize, Erykah Badu and more:

Don't you just hate it when your opinions are proved wrong? I mean you thought about them for like, an hour. Or maybe even less, say ten seconds. Even if you just read that shit somewhere else and thought "that'll do", it doesn't matter because those opinions are YOURS and define who YOU ARE and having them contradicted can be painful and confusing.

Well, I'll let you in on a little secret: I love that shit. I love feeling that confusion of "NOW what am I supposed to think?" Because you know what, when things are uncertain, unsure, when you feel like your mind is free-falling at great speed - that's when you feel most alive.

Being brutally honest: I had no great burning desire to hear The Internet, I just went into the Soundblab back room to grab a certain release for review and noticed that this album hadn't been claimed yet. The album I wanted as already gone (seconds after we were told it had come in!) so I grabbed PNL as it was just there and I thought "I can do a quick enough hack job on this, get some anti-OFWGKTA angst off my chest".

Holy shit.

Yep I gave the album a 9/10. I wasn't expecting to like this record, my reasons having a lot to do with my preconceptions of Tyler and OFWGKTA, and the process of mentalyl unpacking those presumptions is a big part of the review. Here's the video for band's "She DGAF":

Niallist @ Tranarchy v Bollox, live review by Soundblab

A live review of my mixtape launch at Tranarchy v Bollox the other week courtesy of Soundblab magazine, featuring a very funny photo of one Louise Woodcock!

"AKA" reviewed on Soundblab

Wow, the first review of my new album is in, and it's a good one! I'm not one for reading my own reviews to be honest, but thought I would share this here as the reviewer really got it.

It is fantastic to hear gay artists march into 'enemy' territory and produce much better hip hop than many of those who deride them, even though homophobia seems to be ebbing out of at least mainstream hip hop. But has The Niallist made new music? The sound and lyrics are not particularly original, even if the fact that it is delivered by these artists is. That said, they're a talented bunch and have made some great music which all fans of old-school hip hop should download - you will enjoy it and it is a lot better than many past and present mainstream efforts. Niallist has firmly made his point.

Read the whole review here.

Damon Albarn's Dr Dee: An English Opera reviewed

Last Thursday evening I attended a performance at the Palace Theatre, Manchester, of Damon Albarn's new opera "Dr Dee: An English Opera". I was planning on writing a review of the opera for Dangerous Minds but have decided to put it here instead because, in all honesty, it is just not interesting enough.

"Dr Dee" concerns the story of Dr John Dee, an obscure but legendary English mathematician, cartographer and supposed mystic. Dee was a central figure in the court of Queen Elizabeth, was influential on the formation of the British navy, drew maps to the New World (America) that helped the navy become kings of the seas, and ended his life in destitute exile in Manchester trying to convene with angels after sharing his wife in a bizarre love triangle.

Sounds exciting, eh? Well, this is where the problem lies. Albarn's opera strips all the excitement out of this incredible story. What should have been a story with a global reach and truly epic proportions just ended up being a dragged out tale of a man going mad in a room. With no real explanation as to why. There was no real mention of the navy or his role in it, and you would never have known that Dee's lifetime saw some incredible changes to science and man's knowledge of the world in which we live.

Though some of the stage direction was impressive (Queen Elizabeth, attached to huge golden capes, was raised in the air and floated above the stage) it was also aimless and added little to the story (and there Liz hung for the best part of half an hour, not moving, uttering a word, adding to the story or having any real relevance).
Sets were blocked off by large, moving scrolls of paper, which was a nice touch, and some projected animations worked well, especially at the one point in which we were given a peak inside Dee's magick-obsessed brain. But it just wasn't enough to save the deep flaws in the production.

My main problem was the story. A disjointed, impressionistic look at Dee's life is not really what is called for when most of the audience does not know the main protagonist and the incredible things that happened to him. A tighter narrative focus would have helped this production no end - if I did not know who Dee was before attending I would not have left any the wiser. And that's not a good thing, considering the material Albarn had to work with. And an interesting point brought up by a friend of mine is that Dee didn't sing. In an opera about his own life?

The music, while not bad, is also not particularly great, and belies the fact that apparently this opera only went into production two weeks before it opened. Most follows a ploddingly predictable folk-based structure, with not enough use made of the choir or the orchestra, and in fairness Albarn's voice is just not strong enough for this kind of thing. A good pop star he may be, but Nick Drake he ain't. In all I felt like "Dr Dee: An English Opera" was a massively missed opportunity, and I still await definitive re-telling of this fascinating character's life.

Bjork Biophilia review

So I managed to get a ticket for Bjork's Biophilia show (part of the Manchester International Festival and rare as hen's teeth) and even though it was expensive it was worth every penny. The show was phenomenal, beautiful and lots of other hyperbolic words. I left feeling very inspired. Here's the review I posted on Dangerous Minds:



Some live shows are great, some live shows are awesome, and then there are the live shows that are so good they feel like genuine magickal occurrences - a culmination of sound, vision, venue, performance and atmosphere. Bjork’s Biophilia, which is currently making its international debut with a sold out run at the Manchester International Festival, is definitely one of those. Clichéd terms like “elf-like” have haunted Bjork for years, but when an artist can pull together a show that is this all consuming, this transformative and powerful, there is definitely some truth to those clichés.

Everything about this show is unique. On a baking hot July afternoon we are ushered into a blacked out, cavernous Victorian warehouse space - in the middle sits a round stage, flanked by instruments, and overhead hangs a neat circle of 8 large screens. At one corner of the stage sits a pipe organ, a harpsichord and new instrument called a “gameleste” (a cross between a gamelan and a celeste). These instruments have been programmed to play themselves, a fact which is relayed to the audience by webcams projecting live onto the screens. In another corner sits a huge, manually operated music box, amplified through two very large gramophone trumpets, and beside it stands two new, purposely built, pendulum operated harps, The thudding bass line for the opening track “Thunderbolt” is provided by a large Tesla coil, which spits sparks of electricity over the crowd’s heads.

Still obsessed with the sounds and textures of modern electronica, Bjork underpins all this bizarre musical automata with sub-bass and electronic drums, played live by percussionist Manu Delago and music director Matt Robertson. Plucked chamber music collides with sliced-and-diced breakbeats, booming 808 bass lines accompany delicate organ pieces. It’s a perfect combination of the past and the future (and which is which is hard to tell). The sound world Bjork has created for this show is extraordinary, but it is the choir that really tips this performance over into something otherworldly. Featuring 26 female Icelandic singers, moments of harmony and discordance float from the stage that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Quite simply, this is a new kind of sacred music.

The much-trumpeted visuals are gorgeous. Animated cells sing and coo while spitting out cuddly-looking viruses. Mushrooms grow and expand in stop-motion, a seal carcass is consumed by underwater worms and starfish, and we zoom through veins and arteries while triggering musical notation á la Audiosurf. Bjork has taken a bit of flack for her use of an iPad in Biophilia, but if this is what the actual apps look like, well that’s fine with me. We keep returning to images of the solar system, of galaxies floating in space. There seems to be a theme of circular motion and symmetry here, a music of the spheres if you will, but for Bjork this works on a microbiological scale, as well as the cosmological. At one point she informs us that the rate at which our fingernails grow is the same as the Mid Altantic Ridge drifts. It’s psychedelic without being druggy. In fact, with the heat, the darkness and the spectacle, this is a show where no extra stimulus is needed.

The music itself is largely new and very good too, but there are some classics from her back catalogue thrown in (namely “Unravel”, “A Hidden Place” and a gorgeous choral version of “Isobel”). The new songs are each prefaced by a voice-over by natural historian David Attenborough, which manages the trick of both commenting on the music and unifying it. The show ends with a rousing, triumphant version of “Earth Intruders”, Bjork in a massive orange wig flanked by the choir who are wearing matching gold and blue tunics. We seem to be inundated with crazily-dressed lady pop at this point in time, but we shouldn’t forget that Bjork is a true pioneer of this, and on this showing she still does it the best. Biophilia is set to tour later this year, and I urge anyone with an interest in music to go to a show - it really is that good. 2011 is only half over but I seriously doubt I’ll see another show to equal it. There is no footage of Biophilia yet, as the audience had been asked not to take pictures or make video recordings of the performance. It is a mark of the kind of respect the crowd has for Bjork that they comply to this request - well for the most part , anyway.

Beyonce Is Not Your Enemy

Speaking of Queen B, here's a piece I wrote about her excellent performance at Glastonbury, and the rockist reaction on sites like the guardian and YouTube. It was published on the wicked Collapse Board - yowsah!!



Beyonce killed it last night at Glastonbury, and this morning the world woke up to a swarm of positive reviews all over the interwebs. However, some people are not happy with this situation, and have taken to leaving comments on sites like The Guardian (where the gig received a 5 star rating) and YouTube (where a clip of Lauren Laverne and Zane Lowe talking about the gig for the BBC has received critical attention), slamming Beyonce for being talentless, boring, pop shite, etc. Don't worry though, they're wrong and I will show you why. Beyonce's been my girl since Destiny's Child first broke through in the late 90s. That of course makes me biased, but I'm still going to approach this article in as subjective a manner as possible. If I fail... well, you can fucking sue me.

The first thing that struck me about the gig was listening to the crowd singing back Beyonce's own music, and realising how many women were there. Glastonbury is a massive (and truly diverse) festival, but it's easy to forget just how much of the musical coverage we see on the TV is male-orientated and how this skews our view of who exactly goes there. Who would have thought that the headliner on the final night could attract a capacity crowd that was majority female? And who would have thought that those women went there not because of sexual attraction or seeing naked flesh (though undoubtedly there were a few) but because they actually wanted to see a good show by an artist they like and respect?

You wouldn't know this by reading the comments on the Guardian website, which seems to be the new place where Mr £50 Rock Bore hangs out online, spouting off opinions about how rubbish Beyonce and pop music in general is. There are three main assumptions being touted by Mr Bore there, and in a nutshell they are: 1) Beyonce makes pop music, thus has no talent 2) Beyonce's stage show was had dancers thus it was the X-Factor, and 3) having pop performers at Glastonbury is going to kill the festival. Although comments like these come from a place of ignorance, they are to an extent understandable, as we are living in the X Factor age where mediocre talents receive huge media hype they do not deserve. What is less understandable is how Mr Bore is willing to overlook the vast discrepencies in talent between, say, Cheryl Cole and Beyonce, in order to make his own world view work. So, let's analyse them, shall we?

Read the rest here.

"Witch-House" guest reviews on Lo-Quality

I co-reviewed the new compilation of "witch-house" music from the label Disaro with Alex over on Lo-Quality. The album is called "ISVOLT" and there are a few good tracks on there - though be warned they really are not house tracks, more like a cross between noisey shoe-gaze and southern hip-hop. With a gothic sensibility. Read the article here.



The big witch-house band of the moment is Salem. To do some preliminary research I looked them up on YouTube and was flabbergasted at how bad they sounded. However, they played their first Manchester show the other week at the Islington Mill and according to this review by Graham Dunning at Clogged Machinery, it was actually pretty good!

More "I Came" reviews.

Couple of goodyins here, from Mixmag and Bent, though there still seems to be confusion over how to spell my name:

That's nice dear.

But please spell my name right the next time.

Raymond Scott: Music, Machines & Mystery

I went to a great event here on Sunday evening - the Manchester premiere of a new documentary on the American composer/inventor Raymond Scott, directed by his son Stan Warnow. On the bill, along with the film itself, were special Scott-themed live sets by local acts Demdike Stare, Illum Sphere v Kidkanevil and the one-off supergroup The Manhattan Research Transfer Project.



Continued here.

Bestival Part 2

SOme more of me at Bestival, some pics and that. I got in on the blag as I volunteered for the "Enough is Enough! Action Against Homophobia" stall, but that was pretty fun anyway and we were done by 5 every day. The stall was right next to the Women's Institute tent which sold coffee and cakes at only 60p a pop. Win! Here's pics, also featuring Emma, Mike and Joe:









I saw some great bands (LCD, Flaming Lips, Chrome Hoof, Chic, Caribou), ran into some friends and had a good time, but I still have mixed feelings about the festival. I posted my ever-so-slightly sarky review of Bestival over at Shallow Rave.

OK, as much as I bitched on about Bestival this year, there was some good stuff too. One of the highlights was seeing Chrome Hoof playing avant disco-metal on the fire spitting, spider-shaped retro-futurist Archadia stage. SERIOUS Thunderdome vibes in the area!

Bestival 2010 Review

My somewhat scathing review of Bestival, originally posted on Shallow Rave.



I just got back from Bestival on the Isle of Wight. It's a nice wee festival with some great bands playing in a pretty valley, and thankfully the rain held off (mostly). Unfortunately, there was one major problem - the audience. 95% of the crowd was made up of middle-class, white, trust-fund hipsters who came from either East London or Brighton. I know this because we were working gathering names for a good cause.

For a festival that's all about dressing up and acting like a freak for a few days, there was a surprising lack of communal atmosphere. In fact, any kind of "this is a special moment" atmosphere at all.

Where were the older folks? Where were the scallies? The Northerners? The people of colour? The trannies (Giles, wearing a dress on the Saturday doesn't count)? I know there's nothing the organisers can do about it, but now I have been I have no major desire to return and have to mingle with lots of pampered, privileged kids who have never been to festival before. People like this:



FESTIVAL TIPS FOR HIPSTER NOOBS:

1) Don't wear your "loik totally wacky" (and very large) hat into a crowd who are trying to watch a band. Obstruction of view will cause permanent wacky hat removal.

2) If leading a conga line of people through a large tent which is rammed shoulder to shoulder with folk, DON'T be Facebooking on iPhone at the same time. It's not about the danger of injury - it's about not looking like a twat.

3) Don't speak on your iPhone ALL THE WAY THROUGH a set by a legendary 70's glam-pop/art-rock band and then heckle them with shouts of "Oh hurry up and play Virginia Plain! We're waiting for the Flaming Lips". If Wayne Coyne heard you say that he would punch you in the face.

4) Don't sit on the ground while in the middle of the mosh pit, or anywhere within the vacinity of the first 150 rows of people. If you get trodden on, it's your own fault!

5) The point of a mosh pit is to, yes, mosh, but also to look out for your fellow moshers and PICK THEM UP if they fall over. Also, you can expect to get your clothes and hair dirty at an outdoor festival, so shut up and stop moaning about it.

6) Go to T In The Park and THEN tell us Bestival isn't a very posh festival. You'd be lucky to come out of Scotland with your teeth/hair/glasses/trainers/iPhones/Macbooks/dignity/horsey accents intact.

7) Don't be called Tarquin/Imogen/Pheobe/Tamsin/Jeremy.

8) Don't be a Tory.

Toy Story 3

Xpost from Shallow Rave.



I went to see Toy story 3 yesterday - suffice to say that I loved it, even the evil Lots-O'Huggin' Bear. All he really needed was somebody to love. Awww. Fans of the first two films will definitely like it, and there's quite a few genuinely moving moments among the stunning animation.

What makes me write this post however, is the work of the NY Press film critic Armond White. Mr White is taking a lot of pelters online at the moment for writing deliberately "contrarian" reviews where he hates films that everyone else loves, and vice versa. So much so, that there is a campaign to get his reviews banned form the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. He also gets quite ranty about non-professional online film criticism and how it cheapens his work.

Personally I don't think he should be banned from Rotten Tomatoes - opinions should be allowed to be expressed on the internet, contrarian or not. I think a quick read of some of Mr White's very badly written (and thought out) reviews should be enough to discredit him from the film review community, whether online or in print. Case in point:

Armond White reviews Toy Story 3

Cracked.com critiques Armond White's review of TS3

Case closed.

When You're Strainge - A film about the Doors

I went to see "When You're Strange" last night, the documentary about the rise and fall of the Doors by director Tom DiCillo. It's an odd film, not so much for content or tone, but just for general purpose. And here's my review. First some background...

The Doors were my first true musical love. Sure, other things pricked my ears as a child, like Prince, The Stone Roses, PSB, G'n'R, and S'Express, but at the time of the release of Oliver Stone's "The Doors" biopic I became obsessed. I guess the timing was right - puberty had just hit, I had developed an interest in 60's culture thanks to the rave scene, I wanted to expand my musical horizons, and no-one else seemed to know who they were. I guess having a sudden access to this treasure trove of music and myth through magazine features, TV spots and the film itself helped. I bought all their albums, two live sets and even An American Prayer (Morrison's solo album of spoken-word/poetry). I had posters on my wall, t-shirts, I scribbled the distinctive logo everywhere I could, I even visited Morrison's grave at the Pere Lachaise cemetary in Paris while on a language exchange.

Of course, it goes without saying that the Doors, and Morrison in particular, are one of the archtypal "adolescent" bands. Get in to them as a teen, give them a few years, and then cringe at the poor quality of some of his supposed "poetry" and attitudes once you have grown up and learned a little. At the tail end of my obsession I discovered a ratty, falling apart copy of Danny Sugerman's book "No One Here Gets Out Alive" in one of my school's classrooms. It's an amazing read, filled as it is with true life tales of Morrison's genuinely reprehensible behaviour, but it leaves a bad taste, particularly about Morrison the man as opposed to the myth. Then of course there's Stone's film - pretty mind blowing when you're thirteen but an absolute crock once you enter your twenties. So, what about "When You're Strange"?



At it's core the film is admirable, using as it does only archive footage from the period with no re-enactments and no extraneous narrative elements imposed, save for Johnny Depp's spare voice over. But the main problem is: what exactly does this film have to offer? And who is it aimed at? There is absolutely no new knowledge to be had here for fans of the band - in fact, there's even less than what I was expecting, with practically no mention of Morrison's legendary libido and the scrapes it got him in (in fact his wife Pamela is mentioned twice in 90 minutes!), and precious little of the mystic side of the man that made him so attractive to the hippie generation and beyond.

Personally, I get the feeling this was only made as a riposte to Stone's Doors movie, as the band themselves very famously and publically hated that 1991 picture. And I guess it may serve that purpose well, it might become the official starting point or beginers guide for anyone interested in getting into the Doors. Unfortunately though that means that it never really transcends its made-for-TV roots (even with the world's highest paid actor doing the voice-over) and even then, VH1 or MTV would insert interviews with some of the key band members/personnel. Large gaps appear in the story, and bizarrely the chronolgy skips back and forth for no reason. One minute the band have released "Touch Me" (December 68), the next it's the "Miami incident" (March 68) - later on the band have just released the "Morrison Hotel" LP (1970), and the next man is walking on the moon. Hunh?!





This film is not completely without merit though. Some of the archive footage is immense, and yes, there is lots of footage here that I had never previously seen on any of the videos I trawled through in the early 90s. Of course, the soundtrack is amazing (reminding the viewer that behind the sometimes embarassing Morrison were three of the best players pop has ever known, who managed to fuse their different styles into an exciting, fresh, and coherent whole), and the live performance footage is stunning, particularly the first time the band play "The End" at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, and when they play it again as an elongated blues jam at the Isle Of White Festival. Mick Jagger may have been the first "front-man" of the 60's, but Jim Morrison was better, perhaps the best of all time, and the mid Sixites footage reminds the viewer how stunningly beautiful he was in his prime. But even with all this great footage, it just got me thinking how many damn cameras were around this band all of the time? And how much of Morrison's act was simply to play up to those cameras? He was originally a film student, after all.

This film is worth watching if you don't know anything about the band at all (watch this before you watch Oliver Stone's film, and after you have seen that go read "No One Here Gets Out Alive" to see what he left out) but for the hardcore fan there's not much to learn here. Except maybe to have the fires of youth rekindled again - yeah I haven't really listened to the Doors much since I was about 18, but I think I sense a revival coming right back on my stereo...

Fuc51 guest article.

Xpost from Shallow Rave.



I've just had a guest article published on the Manchester blog Fuc51, about the differences between the music scenes in Manchester and Glasgow (as I see them).

Fuc is a great blog, ruthlessly taking the piss out of the current "The Hacienda was amazing!"/"Aren't The Stone Roses brilliant?"/"We love Joy Division we do!"-type revivalism prevalent in the city, and in particular the London-based media. Suffice to say that Peter Hook is NOT a fan.

The article is here: http://fuc51.blogspot.com/2010/07/manchester-versus-glasgow.html and you gotta love that pic they've put with it!

Manchester Calling Part 1

Being new to the Manchester area it's good to get out and experience some local culture. That's what the doctors keep telling me anyway. So here's a little run down of the gigs I have caught while I have been here.



On Saturday May 8th I went to a gig at a great venue called the Islington Mill. It's an artist's collective-type space akin to the Chateau or the Glasgow Social Center that lies pretty much bang on the border of Manchester city center and Salford. For those who don't know, Salford is a separate city to Manchester and has been for a very long time - expansion of the towns during the industrial revolution has brought them right to each others' doorstep.



There were three bands on the bill - Kingfishers Catch Fire, Suzuki Method and The Arch Nazards, and while I saw all of them (in part anyway) there was only one I cared about, and that was The Arch Nazards. The band is fronted by one Adrian Flanagan from Sheffield. Fans of modern electro-pop might recognise the name - Adrian also records under the moniker Kings Have Long Arms. I have been a big fan of his work for a while now, since we randomly got sent some KHLA promos at Discopia back in about 2005. What really sealed the deal was the awesome video for the equally awesome track "All Hail Satan" (a modern classic IMO). Weirdly the video is not on Youtube (wtf guys?), so instead here's a link to KHLA's "Rock'N'Roll Is Dead" featuring some bloke called Phil Oakey.



I'd been dying to catch one of Adrian's shows for a while, as he has never played in Glasgow (again wtf guys?) so it seemed like synchronicity that they'd be playing on my first Saturday night in town. His new(ish) band has a more full sound than his KHLA output, with not one but two synth players (crazy!), drums, guitar, bass, backing loops, and the dulcet tones of Mr Flanagan himself. So uptempo disco-pop rubs up against John Barry-esque strings (such as their cover of Olivia Neutron Bomb's Let's Get Physical), classic 60's-style pop hooks are interupted by stabs of brass, and everything has that wry northern twinkle in its eye. You might not be sure if he's going to kiss you or hit you, but in the end Mr Nazard made sure it all turned out right. Check this actual clip of the gig for proof:





The following Thursday I went to see the African band Konono Numer One playing at the Manchester Academy (part of the Manchester Uni students union), accompanied by Lee Mann, the bass player from the Arch Nazards. Konono Number One were ably supported by Little Rock favourite Bass Clef. I shouldn't need to tell you about the Clef, as we have featured him more than once on the blog and radio show. All I need say is that he's wicked, and I am glad to have caught him live finally.



Konono No. 1 were great too - having read about them but not heard them, I wasn't sure what to expect, but they rocked it. With an unusual musical set-up of snare.hi-hat drummer, congas and three amped-up thumb pianos, their style can definitely be described as unique. What started off as a slow crowd gradually got moving, and by the end everyone was havng a great time, dancing to a sound that may have been strangely staccato, but was none-the-less full of life. And their epic tracks (10 min, 15 min and 20 minute numbers!) actually performed the rare feat of getting better the longer they played them. Usually it's the other way round, right?



Interesting discussions of the Manchester scene abounded during the night - according to Lee (below) it's getting harder and harder for small, independant nights to get off the ground here. The kind of nights where people really care about music, and not just about haircuts or expensive jeans. Sounds a bit like Glasgow then. Ho-hum. Lee should know, for the last 10 years he has been running the Manc clubbing institution Chips With Everything (now weekly Saturdays at the Deaf Institute). Thay've put on practically everyone at that club - so many that there's no point trying to list them, instead, head over to their myspace to see the list.



The Deaf Institute was where I found myself on Saturday, in the company of another Little Rock fave, Ali Renault, who was playing as part of the Future Everything festival. Future Everything is a rebrainding of Future Sonic, which has been on the go every year in Manchester for the last fifteen years. Granted, they manage to put some impressive bills together, but I have heard grumblings that the bills nowadays aren't as forward looking as they could be, which is a shame considering that Future Everything is one of the most heavily council-funded festivals in the city.



As ever, Ali played a blinder, ably backed up by the DJing skills of Peter Mangalore of Human Shield records. He dropped a couple of new tracks in there too, including the very evil Cat's Penis, inspired by the sounds of his two kitties fighting and which apparently never fails to make his human partner spin out. Next up was live act Cosmic Force from Utrecht. Though a bit too techy for my liking at times (where were the basslines?) he played a good set of 80's funk-inflected raw electro, ramping up the tempo as it progressed and ending on some very nice acid house. Most impressively he had a vintage Korg synth with him, and and quite a lot of other kit that left us wondering what it was for. Cosmic Force was followed up by a laptop DJ set by Skam Records' Rob Hall, which ranged across the spectrum from brutal to even-more-brutal. It was not my cup of tea (though it had its moments) so I migrated downstairs to the Chips With Everything room and danced to some P-Funk and Northern Soul.



My vague initial impressions of the current Manchester music scene is that it is very polished. almost corporate. Clubbing and gigging are an everyday part of life here and the live music scene feels very institutionalised and fairly regimented. It's not suprising really, as 20 years ago it was THE city for music in the UK (seeing so many Happy Mondays and Factory records in the shops here remind me how much of an influence it has been on me personally too) - but that also means that its reputation is now so well established that it has been hugely assimilated into the mainstream UK music industry, for better and for worse. Access to that kind of industry infrastructure is something I have always felt that Glasgow lacks, but living amongst it now I can see how hard it can be for things to flourish of their own accord in that atmosphere. While there are venues like the Islington Mill here, there doesn't seem to be that many - I keep hearing that people here are dying for something new and original to come up from the underground again. Perhaps the Tories will drive everything back there where, without the glare of the media, it will have a chance to thrive?

ZOMBIE ZOMBIE play JOHN CARPENTER

Zombie Zombie play the music of John Carpenter (live), Mono, Glasgow Thurs Feb 18th.



Well, that was massively underwhelming. I don't know the music of Zombie Zombie that much (and I would be tempted to check it out), but tonight's show was pretty disappointing. I'd been looking forward to this gig all week, and I had asked myself the question "how could you go wrong playing the music of John Carpenter? So simple, so effective, how can you mess it up?". Well tonight I got the answer. By being really dull.

Of course, a huge part of this I guess is the fact that we do a Carpenter medley every Halloween, and I must say I think we do it better. I was prepared to be shown up by Zombie Zombie, but it didn't happen. The set felt sloppy and loose in a bad way, like they hadn't properly rehearsed it before. The keyboard player only played one note synth lines and didn't bother embellishing with chords or leads. And the drummer, while good, just felt a bit out of place. Surely by now anyone can tell that Halloween is in 5/4, so why bother playing a 4/4 beat underneath it? I see now that the show was "commissioned" by the Glasgow film festival, which makes sense. I thought this might be a passionate side project for the band; instead it feels like something they were offered too much money to do to refuse.

On a brighter note though the support act were excellent! It was Findo Gask doing a special tribute to the music of Yellow Magic Orchestra. I think their performance might have added to my disappointment with the headliners. They came as five, they had matching outfits, and they were tight - all of which can't be said of ZZ. We were most impressed by their range of synths too - upon arrival we assumed they were Zombie Zombie's. We should have known better.

But then who the fuck am I to judge? Make up your own minds! Both of the sets from the night are now up on Sub City radio to listen to and enjoyed/loathed.

Zombie Zombie play John Carpenter:
http://subcity.org/podcasts.php?id=419

Findo Gask play Yellow Magic Orchestra
http://subcity.org/podcasts.php?id=413

Sex'n'Drugs'n'Rock'n'Roll

I went to see Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll, the Ian Dury biopic last week. What shall follow is my critical interpretation of the aforementioned film, my deconstruction of the central performance and my views on the socio-political implications of said film in a wider cultural context.





First let me emphasise - I fuckin love Ian Dury. He is a huge inspiration and influence on me. As a person and a performer he represents the kind of complex, unique character we just don't get in pop music these days. Would he get through the opening round of X-Factor? Would he fuck. Is this a good thing? Absolutely. He did it his way and he took it to number one. Literally - check out "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" (one of my all time favourite tracks, like, ever) live on TOTP below. The character of Ian Dury was defined by no-one but Ian Dury himself (and some unfortunate mitigating circumstances).





Unlike the never-ending piss stream of crap pop muppets we are served up in modern times, there's no whiff of stylising-by-commitee to Dury. In fact, those corporate pop-commitees would have rejected him outright simply because he lived with a disability. Cos nobody finds cripples attractive, yeah? Ian fought against all kinds of odds to make it, which made his success all the sweeter, and offers hope to anyone whose talent outweighs their desire to conform.



As for the Blockheads, where can you start? In my humble opinion, this is the closest the UK has ever gotten to the big band funk all-star groups of the states, like the JBs or Parliament. Yes they really are that funky. And while it's obvious they are influenced by American funk, soul, jazz and disco, they could only possibly have come from one place, that being North London of the mid-to-late 70's. Ian didn't try to ape his American peers, and that made him even stronger. Here's "What A Waste" for proof:





OK, onto the film. I felt drained when when the lights came up and we left the cinema, and it took a few days to process the film. It's fast-moving, funny and incorporates elements of spoken word, musical hall performance, animation, and live concert footage. But even though I enjoyed it a lot, I had my reservations and it took me a while to work out. Looking back Matt nailed it on the head when he mentioned that Ian Dury was much better looking than Andy Serkis. So, at the risk of sounding shallow, why should that matter?



Well, Ian Dury was a complex, self-created character. He took a set of random factors that effected his life and moulded the image of "Ian Dury" out of them. He HAD to create his own image, his own niche, because he was subject to disabilities that should have excluded him from being a successful pop music performer. And those disabilites, and his overcoming of them, have defined his character ever since (while also making him an inspiration to lots of other performers). But they weren't ALL there was to the man - he had talent of course, but he had charisma to burn and he just outright looked iconic.



Unfortunately for Serkis the character of Ian Dury is now so well defined that it feels a bit too much like caricature to me. Andy Serkis' Ian Dury doesn't feel like someone to whom shite happens and whose fight against that shite defines him. Andy Serkis' take on Ian Dury feels like a retrospectively-approached "that's-how-the-character-was" performance, which strips the danger, difference and (most importantly) the self-definition from Ian Dury's "Ian Dury". For me this was one of the major failings of the film. We were never shown much of a "struggle" for Ian within the music industry (which must have seemed huge), his success seemed pre-determined. Of course, the audience knows he WAS a success even before we went in, but the cinema experience is all about suspension of disbelief.



And unfortunately for Serkis he just doesn't look as good as Ian did - he has the clothes, the make-up and the stance right but he lacks the handsome face that cemented Ian Dury as an icon. I know this is a pretty subjective point, that says more about me than the film, but I have to make it. And I know it makes me sound shallow, but it's got less to do with attraction and more to do with recognition and empathy. Like I said above, Ian Dury is one of my idols. However, one strange after-effect of S&D&RnR is that every time I think of a scene now I see Ian's face magically CGI'd onto Serkis' body, - I don't think Serkis would have a problem with that, and in my own strange way it is in fact high praise for his performance. In effect what I have problems with in the film are typical of any bipic made about anyone's favourite artist/performer/etc.



I don't wanna be too down on the film! It is very well produced and directed, making the most of the obviously limited budget, and at no point does the pace let up enough to get bored or distracted. The music is fantastic (of course) though it could have done with showcasing more of the funky disco pops (of course). And Serkis IS good - so good in fact that he's a shoe in for a Bafta. He will get nominated for an Oscar too I reckon, though he will lose out to Jeff Bridges for best male actor. He's destined for a best supporting actor Oscar someday though. I would highly recommend this film for the folks who know nowt about Ian Dury, and for the fans as well, but with reservation.





Writing in the Guardian Peter Bradshaw mentioned the possibility of this film getting turned into a stage musical, which would be great - it would let lots of other actors give their intrepetations of "Ian Dury" and of course it would be a great context for the man's excellent music to live on and inspire future generations.

And on a related note, there is currently a campaign on Facebook to get Ian's banned 1981 anthem "Spasticus Autisticus" the number one spot it rightly deserves. To see something which was comissioned for a cause so close to his heart get banned (by the non-disabled, overly cautious BBC) must have been crushing. In many ways the song is his masterpiece and I for one will be buying it in the week leading up to March 27th. Here's a clip which even features the chairman of the Spastics Society (the people who commissioned the song and chipped in to have it banned) saying he regrets his decision and wishes that somehow it could get to number one in the future. It can be done. We call that pop justice!