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Gimme one moment in time

Time is a funny old thing. If you ever get the chance, I thoroughly recommend Pip Pip: A Sideways Look At Time by Jay Griffiths. Very good book. Anyway, I mention this because before I get ready for NYE fun I feel compelled to jot down the things that made this decade the one in which I truly fell head over heels for music. I mean, really, tomorrow is just another day. But then on the other hand, today is the end of the era annoyingly dubbed the ‘noughties’. Which is as good as reason as any to get in a reflective kind of mood. And yeah, I just wanted to drop on the list bandwagon too.

These are the music-related moments/events that made my decade:

Back to Basics, Technique & Bugged Out, various nights: 1998-2004

Jockey Slut

Leeds Student Radio: Summer 2002

Earth Wind & Fire at Hammersmith Apollo: March 2004

Joe Zawinul at Ronnie Scott’s: May 2004

Depeche Mode at Manchester MEN Arena: March 2006

All Tomorrow’s Parties: 2006 & 2009

The end of The End: a sad day in January 2009

Dummy: relaunched February 2009…4eva

Posted on:Words

From where I’m standing

Why do we listen to the music that we do? Does that sound like a silly question? Maybe, but it kept running through my head today. The emotional connections we build to songs, albums, bands, and artists are often helped along by the real life relationships that frame them. The records our parents danced around the living room to, the bands our mates dragged us to see, the album you used to listen to together. Personal moments and memories imbue sounds with deeper meaning.

That’s not to say those emotions weren’t already present in the music, it’s just that the personal introduction meant you were standing close enough to hear them.

And then other music comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the guts. Something so new, so fresh, so alien that it makes you see things differently.

Sometimes I want to remember and sometimes I want to wake up. Different sounds help me find different perspectives, change my world.

If you haven’t already, you should check out our Love Letter series on Dummy Mag. Read Veronica Murtagh on trip-hop, Stephen Kerr on Chicago juke music, and Mark Fisher on collective listening.

Posted on:Words

Don’t read the label

Words are clues we leave ourselves. Signposts to shared understandings. Yesterday I watched a woman on the underground trying to give directions to another woman who didn’t speak English. She kindly ended up walking up to and touching the appropriate sign on wall. This is what you should look for, follow this. 

Sometimes signposts can hinder, not help, though. I have always had a problem putting music in a box. A label is cold, evoking nothing of the intangible emotion contained within. I’m with Paul Morley in his excellent  end of year anti-list when he says it says such means of classification get “in the way of the life and mystery of music before it has a chance to live and mystify”. Or even worse, they can act as a barrier.

As a teenager growing up in Leicestershire and then at university in Leeds, house music was love. There was nothing that couldn’t be solved by a night of healing dancing at Back to Basics. Equally massive on the late ’90s Leeds music scene was drum and bass. Aggressive and insular, I found it impossible to dance to – or relate to. It seemed to be for quiet and moody boys dressed in baggy jeans and hooded padded jackets done up to their chins, even in hot and sweaty clubs. I wanted to smile at people on dance floors, not scowl. I had to have house music, all night long.

That was 10 years ago. I still love house music and a whole heap of other stuff too. Maybe you noticed. But my initial experiences of drum and bass have never left me. So when I saw a Myspace friend request from a drum and bass guy called Mindstorm earlier today, I very nearly pressed delete on autopilot. What a dick, eh? I didn’t though. I had a listen and guess what, it’s really bloody good. ‘Midnight Rush’ has a beautifully simple, cascading melody coiled round that ever-familiar rolling drum beat. He’s probably really famous in drum and bass circles or at least I hope he is because today he reminded me not to be so ruddy narrow-minded.

Posted on:Words

Just there

I say ‘just’ a lot. I just can’t wait, I just think this, I just want that, I just don’t know. Just just just. There is nothing just about the way I feel though. I fall hard and fast. No half measures, all or nothing…all of those clichés. Everything LOUD, BRIGHT, FULL ON. I wear myself out. My heart can’t take it. The xx always make things better though. Listening is like two hands on my shoulders, forcing me to sit and pause. To breathe. Album of the year, hands down.

 

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Music in my head 2

This week I have been heavily into Denver’s Pictureplane. I saw him play before HEALTH at The Garage a couple of weeks ago and he blew me away. I downloaded the Denver mixtape he made for FADER magazine and have been pretty much lost in that ever since. I like getting lost in music. There’s a lot of good stuff around at the minute. This is what is currently filling up the happy bits in my brain. 

Pictureplane ‘Day Glowwed’
MASKS ‘Forever Dancing’
Hounds of Hate ‘I Like Triangles’
HOLLAGRAMZ ‘Tromperz Cycle’
PHASEONE ‘DLY RTN’
Azari & III ‘Hungry For The Power’
ColouringIN ‘Letters’
Milton Melvin Croissant III ‘Books On Tape’

Posted on:Words

Thoughts for the day

It’s 6pm on a Saturday and I am still in my pajamas. I am not hungover. I didn’t get to bed (that) late. I am just revelling in doing a lot of nothing. I’ve made a kind of den on my bed. I have tea at close hand, half-read books by my feet, and a big old baked potato in the oven. Plus lots and lots of music but especially Azari & III and PHASEONE.

These two bits of thinking particularly resonated today:

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.” Italo Calvino

“It’s not a career, it’s a way of life. It’s not product, it’s art. Capturing the moment is more important that having one eye on posterity. The focus group is the root of all evil. The bit players can tell you more than the big stars. Freedom of expression is all important. DO IT YOURSELF.” Jon Savage

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Soul cleansing

There is a lot of good music in the world. Music that flips your head and makes you feel things, see things differently. Or just makes you grin like an idiot. Last night I went to see HEALTH for the first time. Whoah. Their music invades your body, takes over. It’s almost religious. Fuck it, it IS religious. Primal, cleansing, euphoric. Last night I just kept babbling that it was like religious bleeding. It’s akin to an exorcism. Like you’re ridding yourself of something by being there, in the music, cleaning your soul. Some sounds smooth over emotions, calm hearts and soothe heads. HEALTH’s music goes straight for your guts. I am still reeling.

Posted on:Words

Music in my head

It’s impossible to beat live music. Music happening right there in front of you, in the same air. But it’s also a risky business. A thrill that’s part anticipation, part nerves. When you’ve felt every chord, every beat, every word of an album in your head, there’s always a fear it will fall short in the real world. Roland Barthes wrote about death of the author – one very loose interpretation of which being that the reader of a text also becomes author, infusing it with layers of their own meaning. The same can be applied to music. Our experiences shape the way we listen. We all hear things differently. 

Last week I saw The xx at Hoxton Hall. I spent it, hands clasped, on the brink of tears – partly because their music is just so damned beautiful but also because I was relieved it lived up to my own personal experience of it. Man, they’re good.

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I wish I was a polar bear

Skull Juice are freakin’, frickin’, finger lickin’ good DJs. I am still very much addicted to the mix they did for Dummy a couple of weeks back. (You can download the Skull Juice mix here.) It features a remix of Grauzone ‘Eisbar’, which takes me straight back to smoky dance floors at Bugged Out in Liverpool and the Bomb in Nottingham about 10 years ago. Sooooo good. Sooooo young. Sooooo I had to look up the original again, released in 1981. What a song. Eisbar, oooh eisbar…

Posted on:Words

They’re like kisses

I first wrote about The xx back in April last year on my (previously) anonymous super-emo blog when I was too much of a scaredycat to have a proper one. I didn’t write much. Just declared my love. So I was more than just a little bit excited to meet them to chat about their bloody beautiful debut album for Dummy Mag (you can read the interview and get a free download here). They were very lovely indeed – not an ounce of ego – and completely up for getting lost in the dense orange smoke of the the flares that photographer Mikael Gregorsky brought along for the shoot.

The album is called xx. Cos they’ll all be 20 when it’s released on August 17th and also because “they’re like kisses” said The xx’s Romy. It’s a very apt name. My favourites – ‘Islands’, ‘Night Time’ and next single ‘Basic Space’ – have all been adding a layer of melancholic romance to the 133 down Brixton Hill. It’s felt like a long time coming but these four young Londoners have made my album of this year.