identity theft
This is getting ridiculous. Firstly there was Kent dwelling fellow musician Dave House who's snapped up www.davehouse.co.uk. Now theres UK based fellow web designer David House with www.davidhouse.net.
Its daylight name, occupation, art and URL robbery.
more time
The thing I find most interesting in music is the use of time. You have, of course, the time signature - does the rhythm pound or ebb or flow or scatter? Then you have the recorded versus the live - the past or the present. Music drawing its authenticity from rock roots favours live delivery - the present counts. Music drawing from more electronic roots favours the prerecorded, i.e the past - samples, remixes, and playback of records (as literal a noun as you can get).
The thing I find most thrilling and inspirational in music is the combination of such approaches to time. There are some musicians and performers around at the moment who are, if you care to search for such things, nurturing a rather fresh, forward thinking musical subculture. One that fuses the live with the recorded, the recorded with the live, and ends up making such distinctions rather redundant.
In its more philosophical guises, hip hop has long sported a mindset that turntablism, beatboxing and sampling are remixers of history. You can take what went before and present it now, recontextualised (or not), the past becoming the present with the passage of time pitch shifted to a squeek of vinyl. Hip hop, and many subsequent musical styles, have also demonstrated the mirror of this phenomenon. Using cutting edge noise making equipment (instruments, then) and by creating new ways of communicating through music, these styles have had a distinctly futuristic vibe (e.g., techno and IDM) – so suddenly we're whisked into the future.
Artists like Matthew Herbert and Jamie Lidell take it a stage further, recording a traditionally live performance as it happens and applying traditionally electronic, pre-recorded effects to the sound. Jamie Lidell, for instance, records and loops his own beatboxing and vocal diversity to layer complicated rhythms with a raw, energetic, very present and very funky vibe. During his Big Band's stage show, Matthew Herbert got the umpteen-person jazz band to tear up copies of the Daily Mail. He recorded the sounds of shredding paper, tweaked them in several black boxes, and resequenced them into a beat, over which the band played. Indeed, Herbert has a fascinating manifesto by which he makes his music which forbids, amongst other things, the use of prerecorded anything – sampling must be done on the fly and in the now. Using the destruction of a hateful newspaper as an instrument also incorporates an element of politics, albeit rather ambiguously and artistically. The tune is constructed from the ground up with a statement of political belief. I think that’s a different post though…
With the addition of multimedia elements such as interactivity and visuals (see post, below, on last nights Coldcut gig), this time-scrambling approach to music making and performing is heading in even more exciting directions. The past, present and future, the live and recorded, the electronic and acoustic, the song and the tune, all becoming one big, happy, boundless union of sound. How very healthy.
Journeys By Intergalactic Party Seekers
Went to see Coldcut last night at the Corn Exchange. They were as entertaining and tight as you'd expect a band at the top of their game to be. The styles ranged from trip hop to hip hop, house to D&B, garage to bollywood stylee ragga! (featuring the inimitable Roots Manuva). The two Coldcut dudes performed behind a myriad of screens and computers with two visual artists and alongside a few guest vocalists.
The visuals at Coldcut gigs (and many other acts on Ninja Tune) are always pretty amazing, too. I've heard some people complain that VJing never really took off and became what it promised to be, but I'd argue that, while it took some time to get there, the modern capabilities of live audiovisual crossover technology are quite incredible. For instance, we were presented with good ol' Tony Blair in parliament during Coldcuts D&B political statement, 'Re:volution'. As well as his voice being scratched to shit with the according scratchy noises you'd expect, the accompanying visual was glitching and jumping back and forth in perfect synch. No more of the clunky, out of time synchronisations that VJing was hindered by a few years back.
The gig started with a visual of the solar system, the 'camera' whizzing past the huge outer planets via little moons and through the rings of Saturn. As it approached Earth, the view switched to the new Google world map device, which allows you to zoom in on any part of the planet. So there was Earth, and the camera honed in on the Northern hemisphere, then Europe, then the UK, and then Brighton. As it closed in on Brighton, the view changed from relatively indistinct topography to a birds eye, photographic town plan. It continued to zoom in - there was the beach, there was the pier, and there was the Corn Exchange! By this time the crowd were cheering in the way crowds have always cheered when their beloved home town and venue is namechecked at a gig. Maintaining the modern take on this old staple, the camera whizzed straight in to the domed roof of the Corn Exchange and suddenly the view changed to that of the audience! Coldcut had a camera trained on us and the preceeding sequence had been as if our little party had been selected and pinpointed from the outer reaches of the solar system. Fantastic!
piste off my head
Last week I went skiing in Risoul, Southern France. It's the second time I've been skiing and I think I might be somewhat hooked! The alpine vistas, the tranquility and stillness of the mountains (especially higher up) mixed with the exhilleration of whizzing down the piste is wonderful. Just being away for a week has made my already itchy feet even itchier - I'm gagging to go travelling again!
Other than the skiing itself the week kept me amused in a variety of ways. I went with a school trip, thankfully I had little to do with the hoard though. The kids were mostly lovely, except for one (an 8 year old girl) who was a spoilt little madam and I made an enemy of her. The difference between boys and girls of the same age became apparent through a 14 year old boy latching on to me and spewing forth non-stop inanities, curses and 'hilarious' plans for pranks and a 14 year old girl, far more mature in outlook and vocally conservative, but who rather awkwardly had the hots for me!
As seems to be the case wherever I go, peoples obsession with alcohol amazed me. It must be the second most common passtime after skiing or boarding. Every time there was a window of opportunity, most of the group quaffed alcoholic beverages. At night, drunkeness could ensue (drunken skiing is not recommended, it would appear!) Well, fair enough, I just don't get it. I'm sure most of the heavy drinkers would scoff at the intake of any other kind of drug, even if taken occasionally and in moderation. But saturating yourself in booze every night is different, it would seem. Infact, its almost required - I got funny looks indeed when I retired early to read. "Tsk! You're on holiday, enjoy yourself, have a beer!" I know, I am, and I don't like beer.
