DISASSEMBLE OUR ASSIMILATION

Sleater-Kinney - One Beat

“Once. Then no more… ever. But to have been as one, through but the once, with this world, never can be undone.

“So we persevere, attempting to resolve it and contain it in our grasp, in overfilled eyes and within our voiceless heart; attempting to be it, as a gift for whom? For ourselves, forever!”

–Rilke, Ninth Duino Elegy

Sleater-Kinney one time, one beat. And we are never to return. And rock is never to return. Do they want us to march in time, or do we want to move in time? How to distinguish their rock from ours, the emotions we make and the emotions we are given? One beat because any more would be repetition, “and if we let them lead us blindly/the past becomes the future once again“. One beat, one time because we’re e-e-exploding! Because eternity is for losers and “nothing says forever like our very own grave“.

One beat, one time because the album is all openings and endings with no time for in between, no time for the grotto Corin begs to be rescued to while hanging on the verge of suicide in “Light-Rail Coyote”. The riffs are more circular than ever, long melodic swoops interrupted by sharp drum rolls only to repeat — louder, lengthier — “praying that this ride will end/but when it does you go on again“. Self-obsessesed and self-mocking, a torrent of production put-downs and bombast while beneath the love of a parent for a child lingers, afraid to fully express itself. Playing to a moral code which spurns success, spurns the media, begs to be hated, to be controversial, to matter. Polyvoiced, urgent, problematized. Funky as all get-up. Eminem? Sleater-Kinney. One Beat.

One time and never again because Sleater-Kinney thrive on marginality, on out-of-step lockstep on crowds that don’t dance but writhe. No accident that “Dance Song ‘97″ remains their most terrifying to date. No scalpels and femi-franken grotesqueries and junior Kreugerisms but pure desire caught by the rhythmic prison of the dancefloor. They jerked around with fame on their last album (All Hands On The Bad One), the ironies of playing “the girl band” in an era when people dig that sort of thing. After they turned down gate-storming a few times they found that comfortable niche just outside TRL but still in spitting distance of GQ. No surprise that their rootless discontent has now sent them to the barricades again, trying once more to clear that place they don’t want in the world where they refuse to belong.

“One Beat” is the single Lydia Lunch was too chickenshit to write with Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, forgoing simple nihilism in favor of the narcissistic hunger of will to power. “Is real change an illusion/could I turn this place all upside down/And shake you and your fossils out/If I’m to run the future/You’ve got to let the old world go.” The guitars twitch and lurch while Corin gasps high clipped syllables and Janet pounds out broken funk on her toms channeling the Au Pairs’ Jamaica by way of Stax sound that scenesters keep looking for in all the wrong places. Like Tommy always said, “Put in your earplugs/put on your eyeshades/you know where to put the cork.”

One time because “Far Away” is as solidly egotistical a track about 9/11 as can be written, more mixed up and casual than Eminem’s “Square Dance”, telling us in its chorus that “I fall down/no other direction for this to go/so we fall down” while memorializing the workers who rushed in. “Oh!” answers it with the only moments of stability on the album, settling into the tinkertoy nursery-rhyme melodies of All Hands On The Bad One, closing “They don’t know it but I’m here to stay.” The no-new-wavisms reach their turbulent peak on “Combat Rock” which minces around the spirit of a protest song in shrill pantomime invocations well executed enough to make me feel complicit in things which I had nothing to do with. Corin sings something about oil and machines but mainly we get the sense she’s put out because she’s told she can’t dissent. That the new world order provides opportunities for rebellion for the hell of it on a new and broader plane, and she’s damn pissed off she’s gonna have to be the one to write a song about it. Because in the final analysis the political is political and the truth of the matter is the personal should stay the heck out of it. But don’t tell that to Corin, who’ll just sing louder.

One time because that’s what Corin chants on “Step Aside”, the last track they wrote for the album, more naively and gently blackface than Eminem. Three white rock and roll girls with the nerve to pass off a Motown song where “the baby’s fed and the tunes are pure“? A feel good tune for getting nowhere fast. Hard to imagine this music soundtracking a revolution, but it seems just perfect for a historical pageant about one. A giant globe swings onto stage, Sleater-Kinney shimmying on top (not shucking and jiving, but only because they’re not quite sure what that means). Corin howls “TO THE BEAT” as Carrie’s guitar surges in a wall of sound, drowning the absurdity of spectacle in open-ended meaning. Something goes askew backstage and the cables start to resonate sending the sphere careening as the band struggles to keep their balance. On top of a world they still can’t master. But then, what’s more rock and roll than failure?

GLASTONBURY 2002

Highlights and Lowlights, by Freaky Trigger writers

THE BEST

THR33 L10N5

Everyone has a personal moment at Glastonbury. A moment that is their own. In the past for me it has been hearing Blur play “This Is A Low” as the sun goes down, or skipping ridiculously to the Pet Shop Boys. All those times that personal moment was as part of a crowd. This time I know I heard some of the best music and only about ten others were there too. Osymyso in the Rizla Tent at 8pm on Friday. We danced stupidly, the music was stupidly clever - but the smiles on our faces. That was this year’s moment. The glitchcore version of Three Lions capped off the World Cup for me, just the way he can fold records inside other records. We revisited the tent later, it was full - but they all missed the magic. (PB) They played the real thing before the World Cup coverage and it sounded as threadbare as ever, but this was special. Spun on Friday evening at the end of Osymyso’s set of cut-ups, fuck-ups and mash-ups, the familiar chant - “It’s coming home, it’s coming home…” - was sung by cartoon droids, a terrace full of robots. I thought the mix would pull the tune apart but it stays faithful - well, linear anyway - twerking the voices and adding fashionably fuzzy kling-klang beats but that’s all: a useless beery grin meets nu-electro’s chilly smirk, their lips touch and what do you know, it is an anthem after all! “Nobby dancing” came courtesy of your FT correspondents, who stayed put on a suddenly-emptied dancefloor. It had been a great month; it was going to be a great weekend. (TE)

“GLASTONBUH-REEE!”

Mis-Teeq were the best band of the weekend. Why? They had the best voices (R&B glide and London ragga-chat), the best tunes (”One Night Stand”! “All I Want”! “B With Me”!), the best dance routines by a mile (OK, the only dance routines for a square mile), and the best patter. They could have given it attitude, maybe if it was a nightclub PA, if they were a ‘proper’ garage act instead of pop stars, they would have done. But instead they were a little humble, a little nervous, and incredibly excited to be here: if they were faking it, their fake beats your real. They pronounced it “Glastonbuh-REE!”; they apologised for doing a slow one; they kept babbling their thanks and they asked - bizarrely - how many people had brought a tent. It was lovely. And then they started another song and we bounced until our heels were sore. (TE)

THE SHIBUSA-SHIRAZU ORCHESTRA

They played the Jazz/World stage, and are one of those Japanese bands with loads and loads of members. They play big band swing jazz type stuff, apparently mixing in some traditional Japanese tunes played in that style. What really made them the band of the festival was their strong visual element. This came from at least half their number being dancers or non-musical performers of some sort. Dancers add a lot to a band¹s live presence, so the Shibusa-shirazu Orchestra drenched us in them. Nightclub hostesses and air stewardesses were a mundane part of the mix. More striking were the two near naked men painted to look like statues, or the man covered in bandages (with the equally bandaged baby). Or the guy posing in his kecks with a dressing gown. Too few bands remember that live music is a visual as well as auditory experience, but the Shibusa-shirazu Orchestra do not let us forget it. (DV)

GROOVE ARMADA

I hate Jazz-Funk. I hate Acid-Jazz. Those are just funk workouts which go on forever and perhaps beguile you into the odd dance at the beginning until you realise - The Horror - it’s never going to change, it’s never going to end. A lot of dance acts confronted with playing live try to do the drums live, try to do the samples live and hire a big band who end up chunring out Jazz-Funk. It was this spectre that haunted Groove Armada on Sunday night.

Now I’m not a big GA fan but I’ve always thought a few of their tunes have been okay and I fancied a bit of a dance. After the first fifteen minutes of lurching into Jazz-Funk hell I had not danced a bit and was getting rained on. It was a wholly soulless affair. And then up steps the fella with the trombone. That was the moment that everything changed.

The history of trombones in pop is a pretty short one. Yes they tend to rock up as part of horn sections, and odds are that My Life Story had half a hundred of them. This was the moment that made the trombone rock. “Sorry,” the trombonist says. “I’ve got a stinker of a cold, and if I don’t quite make it can you hum or whistle along?”

Finally - humanity, followed by the “If you’re fond of sand-dunes” sample which is their biggest hit. Followed by a remix of it. By the time Superstyling came along the rain no longer mattered. (PB)

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN

The last time I’d seen them they’d seemed at home - too at home - in the Royal Albert Hall, where the whole affair did seem as cloistered and self-satisfied as the Proms. But on a big stage at Glastonbury they would, we thought, be more vulnerable, a little bit lost - and with something (maybe just preconceptions) to overcome they played to their strengths. Of course being Belle And Sebastian they paid attention to detail too, unfurling a Rock Against Racism banner at the start of their set, calling pigtailed audience members up to dance at the end. In between it was almost a greatest hits set: nothing too slow, nothing too new. A band that understands melody and lightness - with Coldplay setting the tone for three days of bombast on the main stages, B & S were a gift. (TE)

BRITISH SEA POWER

I’m sure it all started in a north-west village hall. Somewhere halfway up a hill, slightly sticky wooden floors, rickety tables and youth group meetings. And OWLS hooting outside! And then the ACK ACK ACK of machine guns! No, we’re not in an air-raid shelter with powered egg and spam burgers, but the crazy MIND BRANE of British Sea Power, camouflaged in twigs with psychick protection from herons. Yan “I Went to the Ian Curtis School of Song and Dance” Hamilton twitches and suddenly I can forgive David Byrne for ruining my life with ‘Lazy’ because his younger compadre is getting it RIGHT. The straw haired doctor of low frequencies (wow-ah-wah-ow) hurls his bass about as it were a particularly irritating goblin which had attached himself to his shoulder, and the other guitarist climbs into the rigging. ARR! I take it back, they’re not history obsessed bookists, but PIRATES! An enraptured punter leaning against the front barrier had his little child, about three years old sat on his shoulder, happily staring back at the angular flak-jacket flailings going on in front on him and grins. The past runs slap BANG up against the present! CLASH! They’re stalking us with air-rifles and I want to be on their side. Now, my man, fetch me my gas mask… (SC)

QUEEN ADREENA

Queen Adreena are Daisy Chainsaw under a new name, and they played the New Bands Tent. If you imagine a skeletal half naked mentalist woman fronting a band who LIVE TO ROCK you get a bit of the idea. The musicians beat out a full on racket, but the real focus was the singer, Katie Jane Garside. She is a mentalist or acts convincingly like one. Certainly, I was struck by the combination of her screeching voice and deranged facial expression, her general state of undress being more disturbing than arousing. Her habit of periodically laying into the band¹s guitarist, while again perhaps staged, made great rock theatre, and to me it was like she was channelling some Dionysian spirit of wild excess. The best comment came from the hairy crusty MC: “That was not the Stereophonics”. (DV)

THE LONDON BOOTLEG ORCHESTRA

Perry is a sweet alcoholic drink made from the fermented juice of the pear. The best Perry in the world - this is something that goes beyond verification, so trust me - is served at the Brothers Bar at Glastonbury, in splendidly green paper pint cups. It is nectar. The Brothers Bar is thus a busy place, particularly on the Thursday night when things are only just getting going: to entertain its swarms of punters it busts out a selection of top contemporary pop hits - Kylie, Bextor, Bushwacka, X-Press 2. Great stuff if you’re a pop fan and a booze fan, and as you may know I’m both. The only problem is that Perry is, frankly, loopy juice. It can make you think you can dance. It can make you think you can pole dance. It can make you think you can sing. It can make explicit the hidden connections between pop’s past and pop’s present. And so was born the London Bootleg Orchestra, aka Pete and I - and many others - improvising over slamming contemporary beats. A hint to future mixologists - “Ticket To Ride” goes with anything. What do you mean Stars on 45 got there first?? (TE)

WHO WAS THAT MASKED BAND?

On Saturday night at about 2.00am on the Invisible Circus Stage I saw an amazing band. The lead singer, who looked like an intense mix of Ian Dury and Keith from the Prodigy, was wearing a kangol pork pie hat and a blue slightly Ted style jacket . There was a strong cockney knees-up element to the music even a bit of Brecht/Weill theatre to their character based songs, all combined with a hefty ska beat. I have noted songs called “It Ain’t Very Funny”, “Screaming Mr Ugly”, “Patricia’s Sister”, “Caroline’s Calories” and “Village Idiot” (which they dedicated to George Bush). In fact I spent much of Sunday annoying my mates by singing “It ain’t very funny, no it ain’t very funny, no it ain’t very funny, no it ain’t very funny, HA HA!”. And inevitably I’ve no idea what they were called. It might have been The Something Folk, or then again it might not, I assumed that ‘cos I could remember the song names I could track them down online but no luck so far. Please help. (MW)

THE BETA BAND

Two drummers, a full-time percussionist and a singer-turned-percussionist too - the Beta Band make rhythm absolutely central to their sound, almost unheard of for a rock band these days. They get tagged as whimsical, languid stoners but there’s a tougher core to their music, a feeling that even if you think they’re noodling, they know precisely what they’re doing. The Betas aren’t crowd-pleasers - no “Dry The Rain” (thank goodness, I’m bored silly with it) and they finish with a drum solo - but they certainly pleased me. Vigour, comedy and a functioning bullshit detector - this, I imagine, is what watching Can was like. (TE)

SECKOU KEITA

“Traditional Senegalese music fused with contemporary beats”. Is there anything more frightening than that phrase? Still - we had come down to hear some African music. Malian music to be precise, not Senegalese as it had said in the programme, though at racist Glastonbury all those African countries are the same. More importantly we had a two litre bottle of Perry, a newspaper and the sun. As Dr Pangloss would say, “all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds” - especially as those dreaded contemporary beats never arrived. (PB)

ROLF HARRIS

How eager was I to see Rolf Harris? Well. Imagine how much I wanted to see the Stereophonics. Then halve it. For one thing, I had graduated long ago; for another I’d never thought much of Rolf in the first place - not his hits, not his TV shows, not him. But I went, and he was great. Not all great - there were the songs nobody knew, after all. And trying to remember it now I can’t exactly work out why he was great - words like “showman” and “trouper” rise unbidden to my fingertips - and I certainly wouldn’t go and see him again. Oh, definitely not. But…then again…he was enjoying himself so much. And so were we. And a didgeridoo fed through a system that big does make a fucking terrific noise. And…and… (TE)

DOWN VER FRONT

Wandering down on Saturday morning - the music starts at 11 o’clock so despite a nagging sensation that you shouldn’t be out of the tent yet you go for a quick peek in the New Bands tent. From outside it sounded like someone with too many All About Eve singles doing a pastiche of her heroes. Inside the tent had a few disinterested punters sitting down watching the girl on the keyboard in an overstuffed leather jacket and her thirty year old band. Suddenly it hits me I have not been down the front for anything this Glastonbury - no moshpit action, no proximity points.

The whim takes me, I run - well jog - lightly past a couple rolling a joint and a girl eating a bacon sandwich and touch the barrier. The security girl looks on unimpressed - but I was down ver front for Baby Genius.

After twenty seconds embarrassment kicks in. I slope off back to the tent to bitch about them. (PB)

THE WORST

RADIOHEAD

They weren’t there, but they cast a long and terrible shadow. To be exact, The Bends did. It was during one of Elbow’s endless, formless, protean nothing-ballads that I looked at Steve and said “This sort of thing would have been totally unacceptable ten years ago, right?” Right: but from out of the murk came little reminders of why it’s de rigeur now - that high pained voice, those guitars - so plangent! so pertly plucked! Radiohead aren’t to blame, of course, except that had they been playing this year at least a few of their imitators might have been shamed into staying home. AIRIt’s raining, it’s pouring, the audience is snoring. Well, it wasn’t pouring exactly, but the audience certainly needed a lie down. The organic ganja biscuit sellers had all gone, and maybe if they hadn’t things might have been different, but as it was Air were missing all the textures and subtleties that made their albums interesting. You got the feeling 10,000 Hz Legend had always been meant for this kind of stage, this kind of audience - but now it had arrived it was just a Jean-Michel Jarre show, without even the bloody lasers.

OASIS

They weren’t there, but they cast a long and terrible etc. etc. So too the Stone Roses, particularly Second Coming. Attitude plus big tunes equals superstardom, man! Not in the New Bands tent at 12 noon it doesn’t, mate. Yes, yes, we were camped up the hill so there was no escape, but even so The Maker (two years too late on the free publicity front, lads!) were feeble. Every indie band in Britain since time began has played this set: this single-fast one-slow one-slow one-next single-fast one-long one with feedback, add boasting to taste. “See you on the Pyramid Stage next year!” Yeah, as security. As for The Music, they were interesting because they demonstrated why Second Coming wasn’t a one-off act of famous hubris but is a recurring probability for new bands. Rhythm section who love James Brown plus guitarist who loves heavy rock plus singer who loves himself - none of them enough to sink a band on their own, but a horrible mess when you mix them all up.

BLAK TWANG

Or rather, the shameful treatment of Blak Twang. Glastonbury is not a very hip-hop friendly festival. In fact, if you factor out the Jazz/World stage, Glastonbury is not very big on any kind of black performers. That’s not a huge deal - the organisers know their public and they know what kind of music their public want: rock with a slight alternative tinge, basically. But if a big soul name is available - Isaac Hayes, this year - he will be booked.

The problem is when there’s only one hip-hop act on the entire bill, when he’s got an audience shouting the place down, when he’s just brought on his guest star to perform his new single, and an old longhair takes the mic and tells him he’s got to go because Cornelius needs to set his A/V gear up and there’s a ‘curfew’. So a bunch of rock bands overran with impunity (it’s those long ones with feedback, you know, you can’t cut short the vibe) and Blak Twang got the boot after three and a half tunes. He took it in good grace and we gave him a big cheer before wandering off to find something to dance to. Later on we learned that Cornelius had been allowed to overrun by an hour, curfew be damned. Like I said, not a hip-hop friendly festival.

‘JAZZY’ TRIP-HOP SINGERS SENDING OTHERWISE REASONABLE POP ACTS STRAIGHT DOWN THE DUMPER WITH THEIR MANNERED AD-READY MEWLINGS - GO AWAY NO THANKS SAVE IT FOR THE NINETIES REVIVAL WILL YOU

Come in Telepopmuzik your time is up.

His Wotanic Majesty’s Request

Some Nordic Bands

In the past, whenever I thought of Nordic music, what came to mind were bands like Bathory, Mayhem, Burzum, and the like. You know the score - lunatic pagan Satanists who delight in baiting trendy people and burning down churches, part time musicians who end up killing each other or serving long terms in prison. But lately it seems like there is a whole new spirit to the music of the north, and a whole new slew of surprisingly good-natured Nordic bands. … read on …

C90 Go: Number 6

It May Not Be Hot - But It Sure Is Warm

This tape was made for me in April 1998 by a Dutch music journalist as a prize for coming second in an online pop lyrics quiz held on a mailing list I was on. The top three were all called Graham or Graeme which just goes to show we are magic. … read on …

C90 Go: Number 5

Let’s All Get In The Boat

The title of this CD-R, which I made in Seattle in October 2000 for my girlfriend, comes from one of my favorite quotes. Studs Terkel, writing acerbically (as usual) about Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, was talking about a gross Biblical misquotation Daley had made and suggested some others he might try—for example, when Noah was filling the Ark, Daley might have him shout, “Let’s all get in the boat!” … read on …

Tweet Review – THE THINGS LISTENED TO AND THE THINGS LISTENED FOR

Tweet - Southern Hummingbird

I like to talk about album covers, because they’re usually the most succinct statement of artistic or commercial intent in the course of a work. The cover of Tweet’s Southern Hummingbird is no exception. A modernistic abstract font, twerked into further abstraction, a stylized contour of a pop-art logo. All over an orange background, which was the new-R&B color of choice last year from 3LW to Toya and beyond. But this isn’t garish and sharp so much as suffused from behind by some sort of warm light — the source of the light hidden behind the most visually dominant element of the cover, Tweet herself, rendered in perfect black and white. The black and white isn’t some postmodern appropriative nod to classic roots any more than the logo is a bid for modern currency. Somehow, the art rests in a balance of perfect tension — every element a gimmick but no element superfluous.

It should be evident by now that I’m working to develop a metaphor for the album. But to follow through now on that metaphor would be too cheap. Let’s exercise our brains and step back to the whole context of the rap and R&B world right now — my barber told me today that people were sick of Jay-Z and R. Kelly, that Nas would be coming back because he has things to say. The two most exciting MCs of the moment (Mystikal and Ludacris) are rooted in deep funk. The producers of the moment (Neptunes) have a signature trick of sending electronic keyboards into decay, introducing an element of human frailty into their work. And Tweet’s own first single, “Oops (Oh My)” is backed by an electric organ that might well be a vocodered chorus.

And the most striking feature of this turn from techne is in the Nu-Soul crowd whose songs ooze authenticity. India Arie isn’t the girl in your average video and Alicia Keys knows what a woman’s worth and Jill Scott likes long walks in the park. If that doesn’t help distinguish between them, that’s because the ethos is common — a return to the days when women were treated with respect and men were moral. What Jill Scott really wants is A Walk To Remember. A song which claims restorative justice without admitting emotional hurt isn’t about people and their relations, but reinforcement of social strictures; isn’t about living free, but living right. The singer and the message are estranged and the artist is transformed exactly into the dehumanized corporate message delivery device that their most avid critics rail against.

So now I’ve set up the enemy, so it should be evident by now that I’m planning to proclaim Tweet the savior. But that would be too cheap. She’s the latest avatar in the Missy/Timbaland hit-machine and her hit single is a slinky and seductive assertion of self-love and egotism. I bought this album from a display rack in Tower with 10×10 = 100 identical black and white Tweet faces staring from 100 identical jewel cases. Her prior appearance was as a faceless club diva encouraging everyone to party on Timbaland and Magoo’s “All Y’all”. And if she has a strong personality, it sure doesn’t come across in her interviews.

So who is really responsible for this album? Why does the first track after the intro (”My Place”: “I’ve made you wait so patiently/Now’s the time to come share with me/I’ve teased so those days are gone/Come over it’s on”) remind me of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse? Screw the theory, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Tweet’s a talented singer, with a warm rich voice that’s stuck in the melismatic territory of high octaves. She can’t do cold or aloof; even her kiss-off songs sound like come-ons. More than anything else she’s got the voice of a woman who’s got to stop kissing you and catch her train, and tells you this as she keeps kissing you. Sometimes the voice of a woman who’s doing more than kissing. The album has three seduction songs, two being-seduced songs, three about being in love, one about regret of lost love, one about not regretting lost love, one about betrayal, one about friendship, and one about self-love. Three Timbaland-produced club bangers (one disco), one disco track not produced by him, one country song, and mainly quiet numbers backed by acoustic instrumentation.

The point is that somewhere in this mess, coming from somewhere or else, there’s a fruitful synthesis of historical and contemporary modes rooted so deep that it’s damn near impossible to extricate the two. “Boogie 2Nite”, produced by Jubu and Nisan, rests on kick-snare in four from 1978 while the guitar knocks out a riff syncopated circa 2001 and the backup singers add gospel flourishes in the background. Two thirds of the way in a computer speaks: “Move your hips side to side.” It says it again, and again, in rhythm. Three tracks later, on “Motel” she’s telling a lover who cheated to go to hell. Occasionally the guitar figure skips a note, reminding us she is actually playing this. What’s an R&B or Soul singer doing with solo acoustic guitar anyway? The lines are more Slick Rick than Ani D: “I’ve voided your excuses you can save your song and dance/And furthermore the proof you dummy was laying in your pants” and suddenly, near the end the backup comes in to recite in unison “Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn” just like the Sugarhill Gang did.

Twenty years later and history’s script is flipped around. One of the most liberating, innocent, downright silly stanzas hip-hop ever produced now rendered vicious. Lou Reed once explained the difference between the original and re-recorded versions of “Satellite of Love” — where he once said “I’ve been told baby/you’ve been bold baby/with Harry Dick and Tom/Monday Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday/with Harry Dick and Tom” he substituted “Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod” because the specificity made it too much. Here the Lewis Carroll specificity of nonsense becomes new and ominous, a litany of hurt. She pulls the same trick six tracks earlier on “Smoking Cigarettes” (“Smoking cigarettes at night/Winston, Salem, Marlboro Lights”) and it tells us everything we need about the song while still not telling us a damn thing about Tweet herself. A tinny 808 squelches and rattles below this track, which is too loosely sculpted to subsist on strings alone but too contemplative to rely on synth-texture.

The nearly last track on the album is the second single, “Call Me” with a Timbaland Indian loop and promising to meet her secret lover “at the break of dawn” where she’ll meet him “with no panties on”. If she sees any contradiction here, she doesn’t let it show. And neither would anyone else in the throes of lust. Which brings us to the last track, “Drunk” where she’s either having drunken sex she’ll regret in the morning or simply passing out or perhaps getting in a drunken car accident. Strange howling sounds intrude and build like a haunting by the ghost of Disco Inferno. Her breathing gets heavy. Fear? Arousal? “I shouldn’t have drank a sip” she concludes, but she doesn’t mean it. Her voice still says “yes”. That’s conclusion enough for the questions here.

Sterling Clover

Familiarity Breeds Surprise

I’ve just returned home after spending six weeks in Egypt. I can’t pretend I developed much of a liking for Egyptian pop - it featured voices flying all over the place at complete random with an annoying nasal tone, and songs that were desperately trying to be glossy and Western but that, because of a cultural divide that wasn’t fully understood, just sounded wrong (a bit like me deciding I have a perfect knowledge of the Quran after watching someone attempt to summarise it on Sky News) and also became something of a pointer to how sad and horrid the whole process of Westernisation can be. I was never going to get very far with the stuff, so frankly, I didn’t try. The problem was, it was everywhere. Completely unavoidable. Every shop, every bus, every taxi would have a knackered old tape player constantly turned on and constantly at maximum volume, and if, by some miracle, you somehow got out of range, some hormonal teenage boy would clearly be carrying a ghetto blaster (and proud of it) and be just around the next corner. You couldn’t escape.

But this isn’t travel writing, I know. I don’t want to bang on constantly about travelling around the world in some half-baked search for spiritual enlightenment. It’s just a device to let me talk about something I’ve been noticing for a long time now. In those six weeks, there was one song I kept hearing more than any others (I reason this entirely as it has embedded itself in my memory). Unfortunately, it’s going to be fairly hard to describe this song other than that, yes, it sounded like most of the other Egyptian pop I heard, and that it had a verse and a chorus, the chorus being quicker than the verse, both being repeated several times. It was, if you will, a pop song.

The first time I heard it, it annoyed me intensely, much like everything else I’d been hearing. I walked off, forgetting about it, not caring in the slightest. I’m guessing, however, that said song was a hit, because I kept hearing it, and every time it would become more and more irritatingly familiar. Eventually, our relationship was mutually agreeable - it would play, I would not complain about its existence.

The last time I heard the song I was strolling down the street on a hot day and a group of kids, lolling around outside on holiday, had it playing. At this point, I felt a spring in my step and a joie de vivre that I only seem to have when music somehow really connects with me. The thing was, I didn’t even think I liked this damn song. What (to put it mildly) was going on?

Then I thought - not the first time that this has happened really, now is it? (And I sincerely hope it won’t be the last). As the stereotypical mid-teen indiekid it was almost expected of me to dismiss out of hand anything in the top forty no matter how much I actually liked it, or could have liked it, if only I’d given it a chance. Then last year I spent some time temping at a warehouse. The daily musical accompaniment to my pet food lifting action was provided by ‘Berkshire and North Hampshire’s 210 FM, the best station to listen to at work!’ etc etc. They played about six different songs a day. After a few weeks, the only song I still couldn’t abide was Robbie ‘n’ Nicole. Even Westlife weren’t annoying me, and no one, however much they claim to like pop, likes Westlife. My judgement was completely down the pan, and I kind of liked it. But none of these songs really gave me the same kick as I got in Egypt. Why?

This is the bit that scares me. I’d realised a long time ago, if I listened to something enough, I’d either develop a liking or apathy for what I was listening to. It’s like trying to ‘get into a difficult record’. At least you’d know it backwards even if, at a guess, you never really liked it. It’s the same with the radio. Background music is just that - it provides a hummable, non-interfering, non-offensive background to whatever you happen to be doing, and as such you don’t mind any of it because it’s not as if you cared in the first place. You can sing along and be happy but it doesn’t really affect you in the way good pop should, it’s all such a blur. So…what’s the point in trying to listen to and like everything?

Because, occasionally, as happened to me in Egypt, an odd, surprise moment of connection suddenly occurs and it affects you somehow, like music should. This is why being objective about pop stinks. It’s also why you should listen to everything, but not too hard. I know this sounds cheesy as hell, but let it surprise you, it’s better that way.

QUIET!

THE BETA BAND - Hot Shots II

It’s a fantastic summer day, a Saturday to boot, somewhere between warm and hot on the heat scale. Me, I find myself in the midst of suburban splendor, laying on a deck chair beside the pool. Mom, Dad: Love ya. It is, in fact, the kind of hazy lazy day of summer memorialized in song since the dawn of popular music. … read on …

THEY DON’T WANNA BE COY: Basement Jaxx – Rooty

The eternal quandary: how to follow up a landmark debut album? If you’re Basement Jaxx, the answer is simple: make another one just as spectacular. It’s hard to believe that it’s now two years since Basement Jaxx’s Remedy seemed to revitalise house music, simply by reminding the dance community that — gasp — it was possible to create music that was clever and fun at the same time. Unluckily for us but perhaps luckily for the adventurous duo, it’s a lesson that didn’t appear to sink in. While more cerebral dance producers are finally embracing house’s sensuous beat in numbers previously unheard of, the populist “house revival” that the Jaxx helped instigate has done little but raise the profile of already entrenched musical orthodoxies: tasteful deep house, well-oiled disco cut-ups and sleek Ibiza floorfillers. Where was the revolution? Where was the raft of likeminded producers ready to follow the Jaxx in their quest to — as Armand Van Helden put it — take house music and fuck it in the ass? Notable exceptions such as the mighty Daft Punk aside, the pickings have been decidedly slim.

The sensation of a value gap is forcefully, thrillingly confirmed upon hearing the first single of the Jaxx’s new album Rooty, the delightful ‘Romeo’. A punchy vocal house number that draws equally from contemporary R&B’s robosoul and 2-step’s cheery rhythmic friction - and even surprising bursts of trance-like synth oscillations — ‘Romeo’ packs everything that’s currently missing from the commercial dance landscape into three and a half minutes of gorgeous pop perfection (not to mention confection). With disconcertingly direct vocals courtesy of Kele le Roc and its surprisingly emotional climax, ‘Romeo’ sounds less monolithic and all-embracing than, say ‘Red Alert’, but it’s correspondingly more startling, personal and affecting, not to mention a lot of fun.

It also only hints at the stylistic excesses the duo traipse through on the rest of the album, tapping everything from 2-step to eerie Gainsbourg pop to psychotic jungle-fuelled R&B. In its divergent wanderings, Rooty sounds very much like the colonisation of the alien planet first discovered on Remedy. Where on their debut the duo seemed anxious to fit every possible idea onto each individual song, here they’re content to choose just one or two concepts and take them to their logical conclusions, at times landing closer to pop and at others impossibly far away.

So, on the one hand, there’s the sparkling, euphoric disco of ‘Just One Kiss’ and the belting diva anthemics of ‘Do Your Thing’, both more straightforward and immediate than anything on Remedy. More often though the duo come off as even more schizophrenic and crazed than before, plunging depths of overheated desire rarely touched since Prince’s pioneering work in the eighties — check the fractured funk of ‘Breakaway’, or the album’s centrepiece, the dark porn-house of ‘Get Me Off’. Apparently the track was initially offered to Janet Jackson for her latest album, and you can see why she decided to pass. All dirge-bass, squealing rave riffs and pummelling house beats, “Get Me Off” replaces Janet with a succession of high-pitched, panicky singers pleading for a painful-sounding sexual fulfillment (”don’t wanna be coy/it’s time to get me off!”). Meanwhile a DJ/slavemaster whispers seductive commands: “give your body to the beat…free your body with me.” It’s hardly unsurprising that even the bondage-happy Janet might balk at the uncompromising luridness of it all.

In between these two extremes the duo explore a great deal of uncharted territory — “Where’s Your Head At” is the heavy metal/house hybrid Armand Van Helden has been trying to perfect for years, although he wouldn’t have thought to include the punk hollers and philosophical ragga chants that Basement Jaxx throw in as a matter of course. “I Want U” puts R&B through the ringer, gatecrashing the song with sudden bursts of furious drum & bass pounding, and distorting the curiously British-accented diva to within an inch of her life, her vocal finally reduced to a wordless, psychotic looped tick, like a love-struck alarm bell. At other times the music simply defies description or attempts to pigeonhole: how to define the lascivious, rolling stop-start rhythms of “SFM”? Avant 2-step? Latin Dancehall?

It goes without saying that Rooty is unlikely to match the sort of seismic impact that Remedy created two years ago. The world has grown accustomed to the Basement Jaxx aesthetic, and the blueprint laid down by the first album hasn’t been replaced so much as expanded upon. Still, when you’re so far in front of the competition it takes a while for the rest of the world to catch up, and two years on Basement Jaxx still comfortably outpace everything else on offer when it comes to crafting wildly fun dance music. On the evidence of Rooty they can rest comfortably for another two years. They’ve certainly earned it.

Tim Finney, 21 June 2001

LOOKS 10, ROCK 3

Moulin Rouge and Conservative Chaos 

It’s official. The world-historic death of the musical film is upon us. It’s been said before, but usually followed by some caveat about how (Woody Allen/Lars Von Trier/Rivette/Parker&Stone/etc.) intends to resurrect it. But the musical is no longer a mode of expression, a cultural norm, a form in concert with an era. Rather, it is another tool in a directorial canon, a device to comment with and to comment on. Passed from the realm of the living, it resides in a cultural graveyard of tropes subject to periodic reanimation. To produce a musical film is not a reflex action, but a deliberate semiotic act. … read on …