rebarbarised

Discoveries from the World Music Awards

A quick note to myself about the artists I felt were worth checking out from last night's World Music Awards:

• Hazmat Modine

• Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba

• Sa Dingding

• Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara

• Andy Palacio & The Garifuna Collective

• Mayra Andrade

All collected together at this Last.fm tag.

Don't copy my facial hair or I'll sue

From The Guardian:

The future of a festival in honour of Frank Zappa is under threat following demands by his widow for money for the right to use his name or his trademark moustache.

Apparently Gail Zappa also wanted to have a say in which tribute bands should play at the event. Since when has anyone had control over who pays tribute to them? I'm glad to say there's never been any of that kind of silliness connected to the various Neil Young fan events that I've been too. But Frank was always on the individualist wing of libertarianism -- the kind that believes strongly in private property. Including intellectual property, it seems, and even stretching as far as being a bit of a control-freak libertarian.

So I signed the petition to let fans and tribute-payers retain their freedom. It begins 

We the undersigned petition the Zappa Family Trust (ZFT) to cease and desist from making threats of legal action against FZ tribute bands, FZ fan sites, Zappa music festivals and other related activities that are designed first and foremost to honour and promote Frank’s music, despite not being ‘approved’ by the ZFT.  

Having a small-t trademark moustache is worthy of respect. Trying to capital-T Trademark a moustache is worthy of contempt.

Why it's hard for Burial to stay underground

Burial may have done everything he(?) can to stay out of view and retain his underground 'edge', but that hasn't stopped him getting an approving nod from the editor of The Spectator, everybody's favourite dubstep zine. That editor's favourite musical subversives, the Sex Pistols, never had to contend with the tarred brush of Establishment Embrace so early in their careers. If they had, it would surely have undermined their campaign before it had chance to build a head of steam. Poor old Burial. Poor old underground scene. Everybody's Undead now.

New album from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

He remains prolific from beyond the grave, but I'm not complaining.

Download "Bethe Bethe Kese Kese" (mp3)
from "Dub Qawwali"
by Gaudi + Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Six Degrees Travel Series

More On This Album

It was 20 years ago today

Sgtpepper

When did rock nostalgia begin? Growing up in the early '70s, we didn't listen to the pop music of the '60s -- old stuff was, by definition, passé. I remember being shocked to find that the bloke in Wings was old enough to have been in the Beatles. Nostalgia didn't begin in 1977 when Elvis died because the prevailing spirit of that time still treated the 'old stuff' as worn out old ideas to be superseded.

I first remember noticing nostalgia in 1987 when the media made a big hoo-hah over "It was 20 years ago today"  and saturated us with Sgt Pepper. At the time I found it tedious. Now our heritage-obsessed pop stars are recording an "It was 40 years ago today" version of the album. Lord, please save us from Oasis, The Killers, Razorlight, James Morrison, The Fratellis, Travis and the Kaiser Chiefs. Prize pillocks. Nostalgia isn't as good as it used to be -- and it used to be crap.

Surely something interesting must happen to music in the next 20 years... Please?

Noel Gallagher attacks Blair's 'record'...

... according to this BBC story.

I think Tony Blair should respond with his assessment of Oasis's record since 1997.

I wonder who would be left looking like they'd pissed all over their own legacy.

69 Love Songs book now out

69lsbook

LD Beghtol has written 69 Love Songs — A Field Guide, an illustrated history of the album. LD was a member of The Magnetic Fields for the recording of the album, singing on several of the songs. He has also contributed several comments to the 69 Love Songs wiki that I started a few years ago. So you are warmly encouraged to buy his book (Amazon UK, Amazon US).

Sonic Boom and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop

Daphneoram

I've seen Sonic Boom a few times, playing with Yo La Tengo, Luna, and (back in the '80s) as part of Spacemen 3. But I've never caught on to his approach as well as I did last week at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop event, where he played solo for half an hour or so.

To be honest, I'd assumed that most of the fuss aboutthe most famous Radiophonic Workshop staff, Daphne Oram and Delia Derbyshire, was down to the romantic and slightly kinky idea of these blue-stocking women with horn-rimmed glasses making radically avant-garde music along outlying corridors of the BBC. I still think that's part of it, but now I understand the substance as well. Part of it came out in a panel session before Sonic Boom's set, when someone asked the ex-staff of the Radiophonic Workshop about the arrival of the Fairlight synthesiser in the early '80s. One of the staff suggested that the Fairlight was the beginning of the end for the Workshop, because it marked the point where sound manipulation moved inside the digital black box of the computer. What made the BBC Radiophonic Workshop stand out in its first decades was its work with physical and analogue manipulations of electronic sounds, at a time when this was labour-intensive and there was no other British equivalent to places like IRCAM in France.

It's the analogue approach to electronics that Sonic Boom is continuing, and it makes for a more physical performance style, with more scope for improvisation than you might get with standard digital software. The sequencer programs like Logic Pro encourage you to think in bar lines, but there are no bar lines with the old equipment.

My old friend Jeremy wasn't keen, but I really enjoyed Sonic Boom's performance, and I'll probably be digging out one of the Experimental Audio Research albums of his in the not-too-distant future.

Review of Shhh 'all dayer' gig at the Spitz, 2 December

Shhh

Nancy Wallace opened the evening -- filling in for Last of the Hard Men -- with a mix of two traditional songs, a few originals, and a cover of I Don't Believe in the Sun by The Magnetic Fields. Great to hear it sung with a Northern English accent. Anyone goes up in estimation by acknowledging the genius of The Magnetic Fields, but I was already enjoying Nancy's performance before that. Like Kate Rusby, only better.

Morvern Callar, playing with Larkin Grimm on tambourine and backing vocals, had a real charm to her performance, offset by oblique songs the meaning of which you could spend many entertaining hours trying to fathom. For a while I thought of her as a female Alasdair Roberts, but that's not right (not as much death in them).

I missed Benjamin Wetherill's performance at the Green Man Festival in August, but I overheard many people saying it was good, and the guy who shared my table at the Spitz, he'd seen it and was excited to see Wetherill again. He's from Yorkshire, but is far from the Arctic Monkeys or even Kate Rusby idea of Yorkshire-ness (the closest native of that county might be Jake Thackray, of whom there were hints in closing song, I Would Love To, but even that's quite wide of the mark). Tall and thin and dressed like an Administrative Officer from Jobcentre Plus (their head office is in Sheffield, so for all I know that could be his day job), Wetherill isn't a stereotypical folkie. His voice is thin and high, but hauntingly so. His guitar playing is delicate and fluid. So he needs an attentive audience, and he got one (I imagine the bar at Green Man must have been noisier). His ukulele-backed version of Irving Berlin's Isn't this a Lovely Day? would have won approval from Stephin Merritt too.

It was because Viking Moses was playing that I went to this gig in the first place. I got some of his tracks from eMusic when he was included on the Green Man bill, but then we had to leave before he was on. Then I missed his Pigeon Hole gig in September because I was ill. The tracks were so good, I had to see him, and he didn't disappoint. His voice is even more incredible live than on record. And his playing is both more mannered and more minimal. Being mannered and minimal can be a recipe for falling on your face or pretentiousness, but Viking Moses carries it off brilliantly, like a tightrope walker, so that every moment counts. Some great backing vocals, too, from performers on and off stage.

After that, Songs of the Green Pheasant was a bit of an anti-climax. Nothing wrong with the performance or the music -- I've been loving his song I am Daylights on Last.fm, and he played that -- but any long evening has a lull, and this was it. It was the only time that people started talking during the performance.

I hadn't heard of Larkin Grimm before, but apparently she's a friend of Viking Moses, and her voice is the female counterpart to his. Imagine the pitch of Joni Mitchell with the power of Ian Gillan. She also has the most erotic mouth since Natalie Merchant. Her songs are folk from mixed race folks (she's from Georgia): Appalachian, Scottish, African Spiritual and elemental chants that could be Native American Indian.

I'd heard David Thomas Broughton's name (I'm a big fan of David Thomas, of Pere Ubu, so DTB's name catches my eye) but never heard him and didn't know what to expect. His stage presence was the first hint: back to the audience, jabbing at his effects switches as he started some loops going. And the face, Buster-Keaton-like, completely expressionless. Next there was the voice, which seemed unconnected to the body from which it issued. Half Nashville-Skyline-era Dylan, and half Scott Walker. But none of the hints prepared me for what started about 15-20 minutes in. Describing the details would be difficult and probably ineffective, but many of us were, by turns, genuinely concerned, scared, amused, moved and transfixed for the next I-don't-know-how-long. For some of the time all we heard was a looped vocal, with improvised responses from the back of the venue from Viking Moses and Larkin Grimm (and others? it seemed like there was a loose choir of wailing and chanting around the room, and I guess anyone could have joined in). DTB himself walked into the audience and continued singing unamplified, pausing only to bang a glass on the table behind me. I can't remember seeing anything on (and off) a stage quite like this for the theatre of the performance. The closest comparisons I can think of would be Jarry's Ubu plays, or the best bits of Forced Entertainment.

I don't know how anyone could follow that. Just singing some songs would seem trite. So I'm afraid I didn't hang around to see Tom Brosseau close the evening. (I was very hungry by this time, and also keen to see Paul Collingwood score 200 on the cricket highlights.) But even having missed the supposed headliner, this was the best gig I've been too this year. Well done to the people at KNOM for putting it on.

Painting with Sound: the life and music of Hans-Joachim Roedelius, by Stephen Iliffe

I can't add this to the books section of this blog, because Vox seems so US-centric that it denies the existence of the book, even though you can order it from Amazon.com. Order it from Meridian Music Guides instead.

This is a labour of love, a brilliant book, that has something for the Roedelius novice and for the aficionado. As the subject of the book has produced over 60 albums in a music career that only started in his late 30s, few people can be familiar with it all.  Iliffe draws on several other critics and collaborators who have followed Roedelius's journey. But he also brings to bear a wide range of cultural references in his own in-depth appreciations of each album. Iliffe is openly affectionate towards his subject (and has secured Roedelius's participation and blessing for the book), but he doesn't flinch from saying when the music is below par. His account is rarely pretentious, if occasionally repetitive. The pictures are fantastic too.