Lucky dip: compilations

A last post rounding up some recent compilations before a few weeks of belated summer holidays. And fear not, Cabeza de Vaca is coming, only once I get back. The technicians were away on vacation, so the final fixing of the first show has been delayed, but we will be on air soon.

 

Various – Jerome Derradji Presents: 122 BPM - The Birth of House Music [Still Music, 2012]

 

Another retro-house compilation to sit alongside Rush Hour’s “Gene Hunt presents…” from last year and the recent “This Aint Chicago” on Strut (see below). Don’t need another one? Well maybe this one is worth it, especially for the history buffs. Collecting together the prime cuts from the catalogues of Mitchbal Records and Chicago Connection Records, it tells the story of Nemiah Mitchell Jr. and his son Vince Lawrence and their contribution to the genesis of house. The rather quaint liner notes tell the story of Mitchell acquiring a PA and recording a New Wave track under the name Mitchbal, half for Mitchell and half for [Dave] Baldwin, one of Mitchell’s label signing and fellow musical contributor. While the track was a moderate success for his fledgling label, it was his son who really bridged the gap to the clubs like the Warehouse, Power Plant and Music Box where the seed of house would germinate. Lawrence, recording as Z-factor, followed up the also-New Wave track “(I like to do it in) fast cars” with “Fantasy”, made with the help of Jesse Saunders who’s subsequent “On and on” is widely considered the first house track. However, if the notes be believed, “Fantasy” was recorded earlier and its release only delayed, but nonetheless the two tracks appeared at around the same time in 1984 and the rest is history. An important feature of the compilation is that it gives a more practical insight into the shift from New Wave electronic pop, to the more austere and functional dance floor sound that we now know, something that not many compilations have managed to do. The vinyl version has only 8 tracks, whereas the triple CD has 32 tracks, but even on the vinyl there are plenty of gems beside the aforementioned tracks, though “On and On” is not included, presumably because it came out on the Jes Say Records label and wasn’t licenced. Mitchbal and Larry Williams “Do dat stuff” is a cracker, Jeanette Thomas’s “Shake your body” easily seduces whereas the mythical track “The Jackin Zone” by Risque Rhythum Team adds an air of mystery and essentialness.

 

Various – Richard Sen presents This aint Chicago: The underground sound of house and acid 1987-1991 [Strut, 2012]

 

While the house sound on this set does stray more towards acid, there is still not a whole lot of difference between the music here and the other Chicago-esque compilations around (see also above). That is not to say it is derivative or without interest historically, but perhaps it arguably reflects a less critical moment in the genesis of dance music, while still being essential for capturing the broader changes in dance culture and importantly the view from within the clubs. Indeed, the excellent liner notes by Dave Swindells give an enlightening first hand impression of the historical context and an inside view of the clubs themselves, working as a nice companion to several of the early acid house documentaries.

 

Music wise, the CD/digital version has the peculiarity of actually being a bit too long. There are one or two tracks in there that could probably be stripped out as they don’t really add much except quantity. This is perhaps the first occasion where I am happier that the vinyl has less tracks than the CD. This is one of my gripes about buying vinyl, as well as different run orders between vinyl and CD scuppering any idea of artistic “work” in a fixed sense. In any case, your entry fee for the vinyl will get you the acid mix of SLF’s “Show me what you got”, which is easily the stand-out track, Julian Jonah’s “Jealousy and lies” and Julie Stapleton’s “Where’s the love gone” are refreshingly down beat and decorated with elegant and catchy vocals. Ability II’s “Pressure dub” is also another killer, almost a nascent IDM sound and spread over 10 minutes it’s a languid, hypnotic bomb. The compilation also sees the welcome return of Baby Ford’s “Crashing”, a bona fide classic.

 

 

Tangent: New Order’s “Blue Monday”

 

One of the CD/digital only tracks of this selection is Jail Break’s “Mentality” originally released on the Catt Records label in 1989. While not a particularly outstanding track, it does nonetheless have the distinction of being a late 80s house take of New Order’s “Blue Monday”, originally released in 1983. This version lacks something of the dynamism of the original, but is a curious side show.

 

 

 

This of course isn’t the only version of “Blue Monday” doing the rounds. This week a choir version of the track was recorded by the Brythoniaid Male Voice as part of a commission for Festival No.6. The video is set in the Portmeirion, in wales, location for Festival No.6 and once the site were the mythical TV show The Prisoner was filmed. Another festival might not be exactly what the world needs, after the recent disaster of the Bloc Weekend  at London’s Pleasure Gardens and the restructuring of All Tomorrow’s Parties (ATP).

 

 

The rock/pop line-up looks decent enough, with New Order (of course), Spiritualized, Jessie Ware and Primal Scream, but the electronic side of things seems a bit old fashioned with Derrick Carter, Andrew Weatherall and Francois K.

 

The other day I also heard one of those awful café versions of the track, done in one of those now ubiquitous hipster jazz styles. God knows how many of those CDs there are now, your whole record collection turned into lame cocktail jazz for the ironic and bored youth. The novelty wore off a long time ago.

 

 

I am also reminded of a story from many years ago. I was on my summer vacation in the sleepy fishing town of Jurien Bay, about 300km north of Perth in Western Australia. We used to go there several times a year as my mother’s partner was living there at the time. The beaches are nice, but the wind comes in too early, earlier even than the Fremantle Doctor that comes knocking like clockwork every afternoon in Perth. It’s always windy and the drinking water came from a huge rainwater tank on a nearby hill and tasted disgusting. I was in my teens and there with my sisters and mother. Probably it was 1988, maybe 1987. The local hall next to the pub had been converted into a teenage Blue Light Disco, essentially a soft-drinks only police-run daytime disco. They used to hold them in the suburbs of Perth as well, but for country kids like these, where there was not much contact outside town and still only four TV channels, limited or no internet and no mobile phones, they were probably the only chance to experience anything remotely connected with dancing and popular music in a group setting. The pub there was not even putting cover bands on.

 

There had been a strange little buzz around the town before the disco started. All the kids you met riding around on your bike would ask each other if they were going. Everyone was. Apparently.

 

My sisters and I cycled there sometime after it was half over. We had chickened out of going inside in the end, like most of the kids, and we remained on our bikes out the front, parked with some other kids and grandparents. Most of the people inside seemed no more than 13 years old, many younger still jumping around with their parents. The DJ was playing some kind of standard 80s rock or pop track and at the end of one track he started to fade in New Order’s “Blue Monday” or the “Beach” as many of us also knew it by, in reference to the remix.

 

As soon as the squelchy synth and drilling kick drum intro began the kids began to boo. We watched them walk away from the dance floor. The DJ tried pumping and raising his arms to lift the crowd, but they weren’t having it. “Blue Monday” had cleared the floor. Barely was the introduction over and the DJ wisely slipped over to something else, probably something like Poison or Cheap Trick. My sisters asked what the song was.

 

“The Beach” I said. I thought of my school chums who had started to play it alongside Joy Division. What were they doing for their holiday back in the city? I wondered. “Let’s go to the beach,” I said to my sisters and we rode off leaving the kids to dance again.

 

Various - Fame: Jon Savage's Secret History of Post-Punk 78-81 [Caroline True Records, 2012]

 

This release, alongside Trevor Jackson’s “Metal Dance” set of industrial and EBM classics (see below) is another essential release for 2012. There are plenty of obvious artists here, like Wire, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and the like, but the choice of lesser known tracks alongside more obscure gems make it a less predictable journey than it would seem. In addition, the jumps in fidelity between tracks and the wide shift in instrumentation add to the thrills. Thus, despite being a diverse compilation, it somehow feels more like a manifesto whose message has not dimmed with the passage of years. Stand out tracks are all-women Swiss group Kleenex and their simple, but thrilling angular punk hit “Aint you”, A.C. Marias’ atmospheric “Drop” resembles the music of current starlets Lucrecia Dalt and Julia Holter and Maria Minerva. The Method Actors “Do the method” is also a classic early indie guitar gem. The presence of Pere Ubu and their magnificent “Heart of Darkness” and Chrome who had a recent run of re-releases on Russian label Lilith is always welcome.

 

 

 

 

Caroline True have generously provided a mix by none other than Jon Savage himself.

 

It is also worth checking out your news stand for the latest issue of Mojo which features a Jon Savage penned article about the influence of electronic music, in particular Krautrock, in the development of David Bowie’s sound from “Low” to retirement. The issue also comes with a CD of tracks selected by Mute label boss Daniel Miller. While as always with commercial magazine samplers, there is a certain bias towards the more palatable side of the things (LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing my edge” and Moby’s “Honey”, for example), you also get early Photek drum n bass (see my last post!), Pan Sonic, DAF and the incredible last track, the confronting and dangerous “Total War” by Boyd Rice’s NON.

 

 

By coincidence I am also reading Jon Savage’s exceptional “England’s Dreaming” history of Punk music. I was struck by one description of the conditions in England at the time:

 

“The postwar economic boom that had provided the foundation for this fantasy had ground to a halt as early as July 1966, when a six-month wages freeze was instituted and the pound devalued. The economy began its long decline: by 1972 inflation was running at thirteen per cent, and in January of that year unemployment went of the 1 million mark for the first time since the 1930s.”

 

It sounds very familiar to now and one wonders when society will at last start to produce our punk music.

 

 

Various – Trevor Jackson Presents Metal Dance - Classics & Rarities 80-88 [Strut, 2012]

 

Like Jon Savage’s set above, this one also crosses some pretty rough and bumpy ground, but it’s a ride that’s well worth it.

 

Even though the two time periods cross over, there is clearly a bigger bias for electronic sounds on this compilation, compared to Savage’s more pop and protest collection. The influence of disco and dance music can clearly be heard on classics like Severed Heads' “Dead eyes opened”, Cabaret Voltaire (again), Jah Wobble and Alien Sex Fiend who’s “Under the thunder (ignore the dub)” samples from Australian entertaining legend Rolf Harris and a track that also had some influence on Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom as it was included on the "Space Lines" compilation. If anything, the sound of Metal Dance is not quite as Industrial as you might like it to be, in that there is less approaching the heavier sound of the Wax Trax label, for example. The biggest gripe of the compilation is again the difference between the vinyl and the CD versions. The double CD is definitely the way to go as the vinyl misses key tracks, while to get John Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s disco excerpt from the “Escape from new York” soundtrack you also have to fork out for an additional 12”.

 

 

Recent gigs – In-Edit : Festival Internacional de Cine Documental Musical de Barcelona

Not quite a gig in the usual sense, but close enough. Now in its 9^th year in Barcelona, the annual Festival of Music Documentary Cinema feels as big a part of the festival circuit as Sonar, Primavera Sound, The Mercè and the Jazz Festival. The cues tell their own story: around the block half an hour before entry in the pouring rain. I didn’t attend a single session that didn’t seem full and that is saying something for big cinemas like the Aribau Multisalas that pack in plenty. The concept is addictive even for many who would be more passive “users” of music. With a subscription you can go to a session for as little as €4, so why not see something a little more periphery or go on a whim with a friend? As it happens, the festival seems to highlight just how fertile the music documentary field is, showcasing an extremely broad range of themes, styles and of course characters. Record companies looking for new revenue streams might think more carefully about this aspect of the business in the future.

Queen: Days of Our Lives (2011. Dir: Matt O’Casey)

This film actually started life as a two part BBC TV series in the UK and was spliced together to make a full length film. It is not the made-for-TV aspect as such that facilitates the rushed feel to the film, but rather the number of details that must be addressed in the allotted time. Aiming for the global view necessitates a certain amount of skimming across the surface and while fascinating, it all feels slightly superficial by the end. Perhaps if aiming for a cinema release or DVD they can afford to add in a few more minutes, because at times the film skips from myth to incident to anecdote without indulging details and in rapid fire succession. For example, in 1982 around the time of the “Hot Space” recordings in Munich, Freddie Mercury came under supposed “bad influences” but no more is said of this or the real impact. Albums and tours come and go. There is also the slight sense of bias since bass player John Deacon does not appear in the film, and at times the voices of Brian May (still the worst hair in music) and drummer Roger Taylor seem a little too cosy. Space for a little more analysis wouldn’t go astray. Nevertheless, some new footage for die-hard fans and a fascinating story for the neutrals makes it a great primer of the band.

Two highlights were seeing some of the videos for the solo work that the members did during their bad tempered hiatus in 1983. Brian May’s “Star Fleet Project” featuring Eddie van Halen is totally hilarious, the video somewhere between Battlestar Gallactica, Transformers and Thunderbirds all rolled into one.

Freddie Mercury’s solo career was marginally more successful, better when it was remixed as this 1992 version of his 1985 solo track “Living on my own” from the “Mr Bad Guy” album shows.

Tangent: Lost in translation.

All of the films shown at the festival are subtitled in Spanish. An unusual, but useful side of this is that they also translate the song lyrics into subtitles, when it does not interfere with dialogue. So you get Bowie singing “Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still” coming up as “Aunque he pasado 160 000 kilometros, me siento muy tranquilo” with the joke being the imperial to metric conversion.

But there was also more trouble with Queen. How do you translate “We will rock you” into Spanish? I have seen the verb “to rock” conjugated as “rockear” and it does exist on the internet and was indeed used in one of the films I saw in a similar context. But “Os rockeraemos” or “vamos a rockearos” doesn´t sound right. The subtitle used was “Vamos a estremeceros”. Google translator would interpret this as “Let’s shake” bizarrely, but a more literal translation would be “We will shake you”. I asked my work colleague today how he would translate the phrase and he replied “But what does rock you mean?” He suggested another possibility which is “Vamos a sacudiros” which is a similar verb to “estremecer”, to shake, but with more connotations of physically violence.

Returning to the previous post of La Balanguera: I cut the original poem at four lines, but after discussing with my colleagues in a similar vein of translation issues of rock lyrics I thought it worth to expand on that. The entire first verse is:

“La Balanguera misteriosa,

com una aranya d'art subtil,

buida que buida sa filosa,

de nostra vida treu lo fil.

Com una parca bé caviŀla

teixint la tela per demà

La Balanguera fila, fila,

la Balanguera filarà.”

The full translation would then be:

“The mysterious Balanguera

Like a spider of subtle art,

Emptying to empty her wheel,

Removing the thread from our lives.

Like a brooding Parca

Weaving the fabric for tomorrow.

Spin, Balangura, spin.

The Balanguera will spin on.”

The fascination here is Parca, which in modern Spanish would also be as in English, a parker jacket, but actually refers to the Parcae, the three women of fate. As Wikipedia puts it “They controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal and immortal from birth to death. Even the gods feared the Parcae.” The three are (from Wikipedia):

Nona (Greek equivalent Clotho), who spun the thread of life from her distaff onto her spindle

Decima (Greek Lachesis), who measured the thread of life with her rod;

Morta (Greek Atropos), who cut the thread of life and chose the manner of a person's death.

Note also the mathematical aspect to the names.

 

Not surprisingly given the description, one can also literally and figuratively substitute “Parca” with the Grim Reaper. The emphasis here is also on “distaff” which is also the literal translation of the Mallorquin word “filosa” in the third stanza ("rueca" or “wheel” in Spanish). While distaff would have been the most accurate selection, “loom” has a much more visual context in English, like “rueca” does in Spanish. Besides, who really knows what a distaff is these days anyway, whereas a loom at least comes to mind?

The Parcae are clearly identifiable with the three witches or three fates of Macbeth:

“I will drain him dry as hay:

Sleep shall neither night nor day

Hang upon his pent-house lid;

He shall live a man forbid:”

Here in Roman Polanski’s version of the opening scene starting at 1:10.

Macbeth forever struggles for his goodness and will to power, only to lament at the end “I bear a charmed life, which must not yield/To one of woman born”, but all too late. The emphasis on fate is played out throughout the tragedy whereas in Hamlet for instance, the ghost plays a different more eternal role. Macbeth’s refrain at the end seems to highlight is acceptance of outside influence, of the Parcae reclaiming his thread, and he is never drawn to Hamlet’s existential queries nor concerned with the haunting within. Akira Kurosawa reinterprets the three witches as a single entity in his samurai adaptation of Macbeth, “Throne of Blood” from 1957 with Toshiro Mifuni as the ill-fated Macbeth character Taketoki Washizu. Here the witch symbolically uses a loom (but not a distaff) to maintain the connection.

High on hope (2009; Dir: Piers Sanderson)

They call it acid (2009; Dir: Gordon Mason)

Piers Sanderson’s film of Blackburn warehouse parties won a prize at last year’s festival and for this reason was shown again this year where it worked well alongside Gordon Mason’s “They call it acid. The latter’s global view and galaxy of celebrity interviewees (narrated by none other than Robert Owens) complemented the more local and down to earth reality and characters of “High on hope” and yet both champion the same history.

“They call it acid” opens the story in Chicago, Detroit and New York, with only a teasingly short insight into the local cultures that fractured the original homogenous electronic disco sound into its three first schools of style. The story here is not the music anyway, but the culture surrounding it. The gay black and Latino discos of the US become the warehouses and clubs of England via their most tropical seed in Ibiza in the late 80s. There is a tip of the hat to Manchester’s Haçienda and far too much interview time with Noel Gallagher, while the Blackburn parties are mentioned in passing.

Sanderson film works then like a budding off of the main story, where the parties and the planning are shown in detail, courtesy of the archival footage of Preston Bob. The highlight of the film comes in the middle. Tommy and his colleagues describe how it all worked: finding the venue, heading off as both decoy and convey, breaking in, connecting the power, setting up the decks and letting in as many as possible before the police came so they couldn’t close it down. The frenzy of images and the clear enthusiasm from the various narrators as they retell their version of the story builds to a crescendo. Suddenly the lights drop and the music kicks in with Age of Love (I think). The collective sigh in the cinema was almost as big as it was in Blackburn up on screen. “They call it acid” then ends the show with the Freedom to Party demonstration in London, January 1990 as Margaret Thatcher’s years were coming to a close.

Age of love: proto-trance from 1990

Hardcore Uproar’s 1990 track “High on hope” features a sample of an angry Tommy saying “I’m not on anything I’m high on hope” in response to a mindless and obviously socially primed TV commentator during a live debate on the phenomenon back in the day.

The importance of both films is their reinforcing of the strong cultural significance at the roots of acid house and also the precursor sounds in the US and what it meant for minority people of race and sexuality. Tommy in “High on hope” in particular seemed hell bent on a revolution which in some ways bore fruit, although perhaps not as he expected it. But the importance is the climate of the time, with poor economy, unemployment and repressive social tactics from the government. There are several parallels that could be made with the recent “Indignado” movements in Spain, and similar protests elsewhere, including the protests against the London Stock Exchange  and the blockade of the Port of Oakland and the Stock Exchange on Wall Street.

Of related interest are two recent or upcoming releases. First up is Strut Music’s collection of dance remixes and assorted 12” obscurities from the Factory label called “Fac. Dance”. While historically interesting and collecting together some legends of the time, the collection somehow misses its own point. The dance in the title is the biggest problem. Many of the tracks here are arguably not entirely dance floor, like X-O-Dus’s 100% dynamite reggae track “See them a’come”. The following track is The Durutti Column’s dreamy “For Belgian Friends” which is more come down or wake up than “dance”. The confusion is compounded by the liner notes which say in the opening line “This is the story of how Factory Records shook off post-punk sobriety and found its dancing feet” as if you were about to enter an electronic compilation. And after listening to Section 25’s staggering opening, the megamix of “Looking from a hilltop”, you wouldn’t be a surprised if it was. That most of the compilation is actually “sober” post-punk funk or fringe dance floor then feels slightly strange, especially after reading the veiled barbs against this type of music in the notes. Royal Family and the Poor’s “Art On” is one of the better examples of this, with its toxic cut-up poetry intoned monotonously over funk bass and distance drum machine. Conceptually not clear, but a great collection of diverse tracks.

This year I have been a bit anti to the retro house craze that seemed endemic at times (see a great pair of recent posts  by Josh Meggitt on his blog about the interpretation of house in 2011). Not least when Steve Bug made a Resident Advisor podcast  in May (Mick Huckaby’s mix soon after wasn’t quite as bad). Before delivering a set of retro house Steve Bug (SB) had this to say:

“RA: Is house music revivalism here to stay?

SB: I don't know, it is around since a while now and it seems to become bigger, but usually every little hype is over after some time. The good thing about this is that these are the roots and somehow they will always be a part of modern dance music. Sometimes more, sometimes less.”

Steve Bug’s Poker Flat label will release a follow up to “Forward to the past”, called “Forward To The Past 2 - The Acid Flashback”. As the name suggests, the new volume pays tribute to Acid House whereas the first volume was a tribute album of sorts to Chicago house. Despite the derivative concept, the results are actually pleasing.

Various Artists - Forward To The Past 2.1 - The Acid Flashback by Poker Flat Recordings

Cracked Actor (1974; Dir: Alan Yentob)

The Sacred Triangle (Bowie, Iggy and Lou 1971-1973) (2010; Dir: Alec Lindsell)

Famed Bowie documentary “Cracked actor” also started life as a BBC TV show and captures the actor between the under recorded “Diamond Dogs” tour and the plastic soul of “Young Americans”. Bowie is clearly paranoid and suffering from cocaine-fuelled delusions and over work, being little more than a well-dressed bag of bones. The infamous scenes in the back of his limousine as Bowie was driven around LA and the US were a direct inspiration for Nicolas Roeg’s film “The man who fell to earth” that stared Bowie and even his driver as they sought to recreate the same alienation (see the mythical scene of Bowie high and drinking low fat milk starting around 4:30 in the video below). Apart from the uncomfortable proximity to Bowie that the film offers, the footage affords an impressive comparison between the Ziggy Stardust years and his newest stage incarnation which are remarkably different in visual aspect, but also in how they add layers of interpretation to the music.

"The Sacred Triangle" is potentially a critical film for fans of music as its subject is one of the most important stories of cross-influences and cataclysm in modern music. However, Alan Yentob’s film is somehow too starstruck and reverential to deliver a compelling argument and several conceptual leaps are not addressed at all. The focus of the film is essentially David Bowie, which is historically true as he was the centre of the relationship as, in the end, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop had precious little to do with each other. However, Bowie is made to look a mere copyist, incorporating The Velvet Underground’s street lyricism and Iggy Pop’s savage stage presence into his Ziggy Stardust character. But the reverse influence of Bowie on Reed and Pop is poorly addressed. For example, while Bowie’s and Spiders From Mar’s guitarist Mick Ronson are shown correctly to play a big role in the production of Lou Reed’s “Transformer” album, there is little mention of Reed’s somewhat discomfort at adopting glam’s tropes of eyeliner and bisexuality during this period.

Mick Rock’s famous album cover (and the related shot of the hammed up “Rock n Roll animal” live album) come from somewhere. Similarly, the cover of the Stooges "Raw Power" was shot at the same time in the same style. Bowie’s influence on Pop, who seems rather peripheral to the film at times, is left at his mix of “Raw Power” with no critical comment about its merits versus the final mix and, more surprisingly, there is no follow up to the Berlin period where Pop and Bowie worked so closely together. Moreover, Yentob’s reluctance to enter into this later period leaves Bowie seeming to be the imitator as his most influential and original albums per se are from this period and not from the two years addressed in the film. Worse is the short shift shown to Marc Bolan who could easily replace Iggy in the title since his rivalry with and influence on Bowie during the same period was critical. Finally, the film presents the often told story of Bowie being the first in the UK to hear the Velvet Underground’s first album and immediately copy its influence, most notably in the track “Little Toy Soldier” which literally lifts lines from Reed’s “Venus in furs”. But surprisingly, during all the talk of Reed, Warhol and the Factory influence on Bowie’s early work, there is never once use of his track “Andy Warhol” from “Hunky Dory”. One last criticism which is unlikely to be the fault of the director, but rather the triumvirate of stars, is that none of the three are newly interviewed for the film and only appear in archival footage. The narration and storytelling is left to knowledgeable journalists and managers which limits the primary source material of the film.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2010; Dir: Marie Losier)

This biographical film is at face value a simple love story between Throbbing Gristle’s Genesis P Orridge and Lady Jaye (Jacqueline Breyer) as they attempt to become each other physically through surgery and performance. But once the film is over and the images and the ideas start to coalesce inside it becomes something more than the sum of its parts. The story telling has a lot to do with this. There is little recourse to names and dates and the whole story could be days or weeks when in fact is years. Sound from one scene is often overlaid with alternative scenes to create a sense of disorientation as a composite memory is generated. While the focus is on Genesis, Lady Jaye becomes more mysterious and mystical by her absence. Her death in the end almost elevates her to the status of phantom or spirit as well as muse and lover. The genius of the film is however, its tender portrayal of what are potentially brutal events: scenes of COUM Transmission shows become the violent force of TG live and then the intensity of elective cosmetic surgery. Add on to this buried ideas of pandrogyny, sexual fetishism and the potential stigma of social prejudice and it is a miracle at all that Losier is so easily able to suggest a path for your intuitions to so freely embrace all the possibilities proffered in the film

Miles Davis: A different kind of blue (2004; Dir: Murray Lerner).

Murray Lerner’s celebrated footage of the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival was the focus of the homage section of the festival this year. I only saw the concert footage of the famed Miles Davis show given on August 29^th 1970, but also on offer was The Who, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Jimmy Hendrix as well as the festival overview “Message to Love”. What makes “A different kind of Blue” stand out is that the concert footage of around 40 minutes has essentially been doubled with archival and contemporary interview footage from all the players from the show and the different groups Miles used at the time. The story is fascinating and shows again the creative genius of Miles as well as the deeply ingrained prejudism against change inherent in jazz critics at the time, especially Stanley Crouch. Indeed, parallels should be made to the same problems facing Dylan at the time and Joni Mitchell is shown on stage earlier during the Isle of Wight festival remonstrating with the audience for their reluctance to embrace the new electric sound. “Isle of Wight is a masterpiece” says guitarist Carols Santana and indeed it is.

Check around 2 mins for percussionist Airto Moreira’s humorous and impressive homage to Miles Davis.

High on hope vs music synchronisation

Last post I introduced famed pianist Liberace’s popularisation of the phrase “Crying all the way to the bank”. The context may have been different, but the usefulness in relation to the modern music industry is the same.  This week Lost in Musik published the second part of their essay on the state of the economy in the electronic music scene. Amidst tales of Ghost Writers, engineering jobs and making money from touring as a DJ was the other possibility for making money by “music synchronisation”, or the licencing of tracks to video games, films and advertising uses. Apparently lucrative, but obviously a somewhat rare event for a producer overall. Selling out in such instances is always viewed as a problem, but there is another dark side to this practice that also deserves discussion.

Now that producers and their publishing companies know there is money to be made from music synchronisation there is a tendency to try and milk it for all its worth. The one off licencing of a track could relieve financial pressure for a long time to come. While there will be little sympathy for product advertisers or mainstream commercial projects trying to siphon the potential of a track to effectively make themselves more money, the  cost of licencing can be high for artistic ventures seeking the right to use a track in a film. A case in point is “High on Hope” a film by Piers Sanderson.

High On Hope - documentary trailer from Piers Sanderson on Vimeo.

The film is a documental history of the burgeoning rave scene in Blackburn, Lancashire in the early 90s and features some extraordinary footage of the warehouse parties taken on a home video by Preston Bob. Shown at several festivals to much acclaim, including the Barcelona In-Edit Festival where it will screen again this year after having won a prize. However, the larger distribution of the film has been impeded by the publishing company’s financial demands to licence the music. While within their rights to command a price, it is arguably questionable to restrict exposure to their music which could potentially increase sales and interest. Furthermore, one of the major criticisms of the music industry in the times of piracy and MP3s has been their lack of foresight and flexibility of business model in dealing with new ideas and potentials for spreading and listening to music.

“High on hope” is currently seeking donations and/or additional financing to officially licence the soundtrack to enable broader release of the film. Donations of £10 will receive a DVD and a link to the film when officially available and can be made at the films official website.

I talked briefly with director Piers Sanderson about some of these issues this week, though more details about the making of the film and problems can be found at the above link.

Floatinghead: Despite winning numerous prizes, you have still found it difficult to find funding for the film. Is this down to the crisis you think or perhaps a certain malaise amongst investors to fund documentary films?

Piers Saunderson: “The problem is that there is a cost to clearing the music and distributers of low budget, niche films are not able to take the risk on paying any money upfront. If the music was cleared I have 3 really good distributers who all want the film. They just don't have £30,000 to lay out for it.”

Floatinghead: You mentioned in one interview that one of the reasons for the (relatively) high price of licencing the music was that the publishing companies want to recoup as much money from tracks as possible to offset the losses of filesharing, for example. Can you comment a bit more on that maybe and do you think they are in a sense working against their own interest by penalising a smaller artistic project such as yours compared to say, a larger or more commercial venture like advertising or gaming etc?

Piers Saunderson: “Yes that is my theory. The music business has lost a huge slice of its income in an area it can’t control - file sharing and who listens to their music - so they are making sure they get maximum revenue from areas that they can control like syncing music in films. As a producer of a film I cannot hide if I use someone's music, I have to pay. I understand this mentality to a point but I have another way of looking at it. There has never been so many films made as there are at the moment, digital technology has meant that it is easier and cheaper to make visual content. Why don’t the publishers open up their back catalogues and allow film makers to use the tracks that haven't had any interest in for years. They could charge a small fee say £50 instead of £1000 and allow them to sell the film through selected distribution film sites (like I-tunes) and have an agreement with the producers and distribution platform to account to the publishers just how much income it’s made and they get a % of total revenue. Surely that is better than making it prohibitively expensive for small independents like myself to use the music. Just think of all the old house music that they still control that isn’t being used. Next year the International Music Seminar in Ibiza have invited me to do a panel with the publishers where I will challenge them over their current business model. It will be interesting to hear what they say.”

Floatinghead: You already have agreements for all the tracks used in the films, but there is no track list yet. Is this intentional to keep the audience in suspense or a legal issue? Is there any plans to try and release the soundtrack as a CD for example?

Piers Saunderson: “No there is no mystery, there is a track listing somewhere on the Facebook page. If I don't get the required funds needed to clear the music I will go and find 15 tracks that don't have a publishing deal anymore and re do the soundtrack of the film. I don't want to do this as I think what is there works really well at the moment. However I have used the biggest warehouse tunes of the time so perhaps it would be cool to do it with more obscure records. Yes I would like to do a Cd as well but my fear is that will just put the costs of licensing up even more.”

Floatinghead: “You did a secret warehouse screening of the film in Moscow. was that because of legal issues or was it a kind of "marketing" ploy to capture the spirit of the film?”

Piers Saunderson: “It was something that the festival organised. It was a brilliant idea. People phoned a number on the night and got directions to the location just like back in the day. It’s something I would like to do myself  when I release the film. I don’t think they have the same concerns about music licenses in Russia ;-)"

Floatinghead: What next for the film? Will there be more screenings or is the next step dependent on the last funding step? What will you be doing afterwards? Are there any plans for making other films?

Piers Saunderson: “I am still hoping that enough individuals will get behind the donation scheme to raise the money to clear the music. With very little publicity I have had nearly 100 people donate over £1500. What has been really lovely is that it’s come in from all over the world - Japan, USA, Europe, Russia, South America, Australia and New Zealand. I am sure that if enough people find out about this I will get the required donations. People can give just £3 and they will get a free download when the film comes out. That would mean I need £10,000 people to donate to hit the target. When you think about how many people this scene touched worldwide it’s an attainable figure. What has been nice though is that the average donation has been £15 which means that we could do it with just 2000 people. Now all of a sudden that doesn't seem too big a number at all. As you can see I am an optimist, I would never have tried to make this film if I wasn't. I believe in the story, I believe in the ethos of the time. I believe it will happen.

Yes I am trying to make other films. I have been in development with a UK broadcaster for a year on an idea about video games and I hope to do another music documentary at some point, I just need to get the publishers onside before I start it.”

Scuba vs Trax Records

Now I am going to be a bit harsh here. I am going to have it both ways and praise and criticise in the same breath.

I have finally spent more than a cursory listen to the new Hot Flush label compilation “Back and 4^th”. Without paying attention to the artist or title, the track that caught my attention most was Scuba’s “Feel it”. What stands out here (in a positive sense) is essentially the composition, a standard 4-4 house track that can suddenly switch into different plateaus of tension with the flick of a high hat or the retraction of the bass  or a big drum roll.





However, on going back to visit the track again it suddenly struck me that I was essentially listening to Chicago House and another piece of music in the growing line of Trax Records-inspired tunes. This is no bad thing in a way, but it suddenly seems that the sycophantism for Chicago House has gone a little too far and that the saturation point has long been reached. After all, this is Paul Rose, Hot Flush label boss and renowned curator of the Sub:stance dubstep night at Berlin’s Berghain. Scuba or anyone shouldn’t be criticised for making house if they want to, but as a figurehead for alternative genres, it is seems more of a let down to feel he might be on a blitzkrieging bandwagon and not piloting the cart. That remains to be seen, but when I saw him back in January he played a whole set of house and techno and barely dropped a dubstep track, which seems somehow surprising. UK Funky’s proximity to dubstep and its flirtation with house is perhaps already a warning sign, not to mention dubsteps voracious assimilation of influences into its changing shape should not make this a surprise, but one wonders if it is the start of a decline in the innovation of dubstep or a new golden age of house?

But just to put Chicago and Scuba’s track in context, here is Adonis’s “No way back” from Trax Records in 1988. Even techno don Marcel Dettmann played this in a recent show. There are plenty of similarities with Scuba’s work: the rigidity of the drums and the flourishes and the the analogue colours on the production that eschews the more smoother contours of deep house, for example.





But of course it’s not just Scuba who’s in on the act. Trax Records have just released their entire catalogue as digital downloads for the first time just after releasing a poorly received remix collection. Meanwhile, in Amsterdam the genuinely great label Rush Hour Recordings has been re-releasing out-of-print albums and demo tracks by Virgo (Virgo Four) to great acclaim, including a monster box set.





Not to mention the just-released mix of Chicago House by Gene Hunt, apparently salvaged from rell-to-reel tape that must have been a nightmare to play out back in the day. The labels roster of newer artists also raid the Trax Records sound at times, with artists like Tom Trago




and BNJMN plundering for inspiration, though in both cases there is more to the artist than blind homage and if the music is good, one shouldnt complain even if it seems something of a fad.





Meanwhile drum n bass group Icicle have recruited seminal Trax Records vocalist Robert Owens for two tracks, “Step forward” and “Redemption” from their recent “Under the ice” album.




This has of course raised uncomfortable parallels with Photek’s “Solaris” album from 2000 which also featured Owen on two tracks, including the tender “Can’t come down”




Owen of course is THE voice of Chicago House and has released countless classics like “Bring down the walls”



And “Can you feel it” with Larry Heard, one of the most important house tracks of all time. Sample spotters will recognise some of the vocals from this signle were later sampled by the Revolting Cocks for the long version of “Beers, steers and queers” on Wax Trax.




But one big question that still remains is where is DJ International Records, the OTHER Chicago House label from the first golden age? While Trax Records have endlessly plundered their own catalogue for a host of compilations, rereleases and the like, DJ International have remained dead silent all this time.

It was 20 years ago today - Part 2

While we have already seen that some of the periphery indie bands from the early 90s have been relegated to the budget price second hand bins, others are arriving at their 20^th anniversary celebrations in style. Two of these bands are Primal Scream and Ride, who have seen deluxe reissues of their classic albums, “Screamadelica” and “Nowehere”, respectively. The Primals in particular have gone all out with a special tin box, whereas Ride have gone for a remastering and a bonus live CD thrown in.

It is a shame that the footage has been removed for copyright reasons, but there exists some amazing footage of Primal Scream performin “Loaded” on Top of the Pops in 1991. The footage is interesting for two reasons. One, it features a wired band falling all over the stage without even the vaguest intention of miming, while secondly, the nonplussed keyboard player is none other than Ride’s Mark Gardner, roped into the appearance by Creation Record bosses. He too makes no attempt to look authentic and merely stabs at his instrument with a frown.

Two of the standout tracks from the albums are the Primal’s immortal “Higher than sun” consistently praised as the greatest ecstasy song ever written and who could argue, even if Bobby Gillespie does look like Liv Tyler in the video.

… and Ride’s Jonathan Livingstone Seagull-inspired opening track “Seagull” for which sadly there is no proper video.

Those keen for more nostalgia should look out for the recently released documentary about Creation Records called “Upsidedown” which is great on the big screen with a massive sound system, even if it is a bit linear. Sadly the story is a simple one, musicians and managers experimenting with music and dabbling in drugs, become drug addicts experimenting with drugs and dabbling in music, especially by the time Oasis come along. Nonethless, the story is interesting as it parallels the clash of guitar culture with the nascent acid house scene (cue Primal Scream again) and there are also many parallels with the Madchester scene and the Factory Records story told so well in “Control” and “24 Hour Party People”