This site is hosting a nice recording of a recent Wave Pictures gig, in Vienna – a city close to the Wave Pics’ hearts, as they make clear during the show. As you might expect of a band whose live performances are so reliably perfect, and whose recording method so closely resembles their live show, it’s essentially as good as a studio album (and possibly better than the last two, great though they were). As always, there’s a new studio record just around the corner (and a solo Tattersal LP, too, I gather), and this recording suggests the next LP will be a bit louder and faster than recent efforts. To my delight, there are more lead vocals from Jonny ‘Huddersfield’ Helm, too, although whether that’s a way of mixing things up live or a permanent step, I dunno. Either way, get yourself over to Niko’s blog and download the live set – you won’t regret it. Tracklist below.
Setlist:
01 Strange Fruit For David
02 Seagulls
03 Stay This Way A Little While
04 Canary Wharf
05 Pale Thin Lips
06 Eskimo Kiss
07 Little Surprise
08 Cinnamon Baby
09 A Second Chance (New Song)
10 Strawberry Cables
11 Leave That Scene Behind
12 Jump Through (New Song)
13 Stay Here And Take Care Of The Chickens
14 Intro ….
15 Sleepy Eye
16 We Can Never Go Home Again
17 My Head Got Screwed On Tighter Every Year
18 Encore
19 Roller Coaster By The Sea
20 Walk The Back Stairs Quiet
21 You Ask Too Many Questions
A little late flagging this one up, but The Guardian published a lovely feature at the start of last week titled ‘Top artists reveal how to find creative inspiration’, which was exactly that – a number of people from the creative arts sharing tips on how to be more productive, thoughtful and free in the pursuit of creativity. I found pretty much all of them fascinating, but I was particularly interested in the tips presented by Lucy Prebble, who as a playwright and scriptwriter presented a series of very basic tips which I wish I had read before I wrote my first screenplay last year. But most of all I liked her tips because they resonated. I’m not sure which tips I’d pen if I had to try to share insights from my own attempts at creative stuff – perhaps I’ll see if there’s anything worth sharing when I get a bit of time.
In the meantime, here are Lucy’s suggestions – do click through to read the whole piece, though; with contributions from the likes of Lucy, Guy Garvey, Martin Parr, Martha Wainwright and Olivia Williams, there’s loads of valuable stuff.
• Act it out yourself. Draw the curtains.
• If ever a character asks another character, "What do you mean?", the scene needs a rewrite.
• Feeling intimidated is a good sign. Writing from a place of safety produces stuff that is at best dull and at worst dishonest.
• It’s OK to use friends and lovers in your work. They are curiously flattered.
• Imagine the stage, not the location.
• Write backwards. Start from the feeling you want the audience to have at the end and then ask "How might that happen?" continually, until you have a beginning.
• Reveal yourself in your writing, especially the bits you don’t like.
• Accept that, as a result, people you don’t know won’t like you.
• Try not to give characters jobs that really only appear in plays; the deliberately idiosyncratic (eg "the guy who changes the posters on huge billboards at night") or the solipsistic (eg "writer").
• Write about what you don’t know. If you know what you think about something, you can say so in a sentence – it doesn’t take a play.
• An apparently intractable narrative problem is often its own solution if you dramatise the conflict it contains.
• Surround yourself with people who don’t mind you being a bit absent and a bit flakey.
• Be nice to them. They put up with a lot.
• Break any rule if you know deep inside that it is important.
Lucy Prebble taking the applause at a performance of her Enron, The Play.
Posted 05 Jan 2012 — by Jonathan Category General, Travel
A quick aside for the visually curious; I have a huge affection for hand-drawn maps, and this illustrated, easy to navigate map of Reykjavik is absolutely lovely. As if I didn’t want to go to Iceland’s capital city enough! This is a lovely bit of illustration. Do click through.
1. Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring For My Halo
A downright amazing record brimming with bruised, tender emotion, Kurt Vile’s wonderful ‘Smoke Ring For My Halo’ was my fave record of 2011 – delicate and heartfelt and constructed around dense patterns of fingerpicking, recalling J Mascis and Neil Young. He’s previously hidden his talent behind effects and layers of sludge, but Smoke Ring For My Halo exposes him as a marvellously gifted and effecting songwriter. Unlike some recent years, I didn’t know immediately, clearly, which LP I’d place in the number one slot – but decided on this and couldn’t have picked a better record.
2. Lykke Li – Wounded Rhymes
Probably the record I was most excited about hearing this year, and it’s fair to say that I was a bit disappointed at first; I love the darker imagery but I initially preferred the slightly more minimal, forward-looking sound of her debut to these rather more traditional songs, which draw heavily on 60s girl groups. But it all came together at her jaw-dropping headline slot at End of The Road, and it’s hard to look past this now. If it isn’t the best LP, quite, then Lykke Li is certainly 2011′s best pop star.
3. Veronica Falls – s/t
Constructed by scientists at a top London University to appeal directly to me, Veronica Falls’ debut LP is predictably right down my street; fuzzy guitars, immediate hooks, ramshackle charm – but Veronica Falls managed to be slightly more interesting than the likes of The Vivian Girls, Best Coast and Warpaint by way of aligning their sound with darker, more interesting imagery – not a million miles away, in effectiveness, from Lykke Li’s dark updating of beat-pop. In other words, they had me the moment I saw the title of the first song (“Found Love In A Graveyard”).
4. Stricken City – Losing Colours
Easily the best record by a now-defunct group released this year – Stricken City released some amazing indie pop singles over the last few years, but their debut LP was light years more mature and interesting, and the title track was for my money the best single released this year. A sudden, sad and maddening loss that they announced their splitting up at the exact moment the LP came out. For late starters, the band’s blending of art-pop, post-punk and snatches of electronica briefly marked them out as one of the best bands in the country. Ah well.
5. Destroyer – Kapput
I wasn’t taken with Destroyer on the evidence of prior records, but the fact that on Kapput they distill a set of hitherto impossible to identify influences like Steely Dan, Scritti Politti, the Associates and Blue Nile is not only a stunning fact but the ingredients of a really terrific album. In fact, if I decided this list purely by virtue of which album I’d listened to the most, this would probably be the number one. Great record.
6. Nick Lowe – The Old Magic
I’ll admit to bringing a bit of prejudice to bear on this one; sometimes an album comes out that you just decide you’re going to love. I adore Nick Lowe’s records, and have long held him up a perfect example of a musician who has done the near-impossible – made records of increasing quality over several decades, rather than following the traditional route of diminishing returns. But this album is legitimately brilliant – just listen to the jaw-dropping ‘I Read A Lot’ for evidence.
7. Gorillaz – The Fall
Actually released via the Gorillaz website on the 25th December last year, but this one squeezes in by virtue of a proper release in the Spring, the critical reception for this rather outweighed the reaction of fans, from what I could see, but their judgement needn’t concern us. By Damon Albarn’s standards, this is very weak indeed. By anyone else’s, it’s 40 minutes of fascinating audio experiments, ideas and sketches. ‘Revolving Doors’ is up there with his best, ‘Detroit’ is a blissful bit of electro-trance and ‘Bobby In Phoenix’ finds Bobby Womack in the form of his life. The fact that it was recorded on an iPad is an interesting sidenote – but the truth is that the fourth (and final?) Gorillaz album is a great record in its own right.
8. Real Estate – Days
Read on and you’ll encounter me dismissing the strain of US indie rock which, in recent years, has glorified reverb-drenched, blissed-out indie rock at the expense of decent songs, but I’ve always regarded Real Estate as a bit of an exception to the rule. Their first LP was hazy and adorable, and this is even better – clearer, more confident, and more beautiful. A lovely, roundabout delight.
9. Little Dragon – Ritual Union
I have a nagging feeling that this should be placed a lot higher, but I shouldn’t pretend that when I make these lists I’m coming up with some scientific, perfect representation of my preferences; I’m never entirely happy with the make-up of my end-of-lists, but at least I love everything on them. And I love this; Yukimi Nagano has made an even better record second time around – just odd and just even enough – a brilliant, modern, unconventional soul record.
10. The Fall – Ersatz G.B
The heaviest Fall album I’ve heard, Smith’s band on rollicking, furious form. The Fall are The Fall. I absolutely love them. At times, on this record, they’re at their very best – ‘Taking Off’ is brilliantly melodic and ‘Greenway’ is downright terrifying. Meanwhile, ‘Nate Will Not Return’ is about, amazingly, Gossip Girl. “The Russian maid revealed that she was not a citizen of New York State”, MES snarls, “but had slipped in on an Ukrainian crate”.
11. Rotifer – The Hosting Couple
Robert Rottifer first left his native Austria to visit the UK in 1982, where he spent a month with the Hosting Couple of this LP’s title – a couple in Essex’s Canvey Island, and this brilliant concept album concerns that month, recalling harrier jump jets, sta-prests and English football of the early 80s. It’s a genius record – sounding at times like a dry, clever blend of The Kinks and Luke Haines.
12. British Sea Power -Valhalla Dancehall
Another year where I place a BSP LP in my albums of the year list and another where I speculate that if each album had been comprised purely of Hamilton’s songs, they’d be top of my list year after year. As it is, his songs are always balanced out with (decent) efforts from Yan and so again the band make an album I like, not love. For me, Hamilton is a totally underrated pop genius, but – and this isn’t a complaint – BSP are a proper band, with all the variety that should imply. So, another valiant effort.
13. Girls – Father Son, Holy Ghost
A sheer pleasure because I was so surprised by it; I’d avoided Girls assuming they replicated the faded-polaroid, reverb drenched and directionless American indie-noise so fashionable at the moment, but I was amazed to discover a focused, tuneful record as well-produced as anything I’ve heard since the mid-90s. Ambitious, poised guitar rock. Great stuff.
14. Sea of Bees – Songs For The Ravens
An unfair casualty of early-release syndrome; this was probably the 2011 LP I played the most during the first three months of the year, and while time hasn’t made me revise my opinion of this lovely piece of sincere, eccentric country folk, others have supplanted it in my affections. But Julie Ann Bee is a really great songwriter and I’ve high hopes for a 2012 follow up.
15. Nicola Roberts – Cindarella’s Eyes
If the second half of this LP was as good as the first, it could reasonably stake a claim to be in the top five; up until her cover of ‘Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime’, this record is unfailingly brilliant – bright, exciting and cheeky. And ‘i’ is one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.
This is an extraordinary story, although one that doesn’t need a narrative to tell it, so evocative of the pictures. Here they are sans explanation – although one follows the jump. For context, we’re in Aceh, the only province in Indonesia to have imposed Islamic laws. The people pictured are punk rockers.
Here’s the detail.
Mohawks shaved and noses free of piercings, dozens of youths march in military style for hours beneath Indonesia’s tropical sun – part of efforts by the authorities to restore moral values and bring the “deviants” back into the mainstream.
But the young men and women have shown no signs of bending. When commanders turn their backs, the shouts ring out: “Punk will never die!” Fists are thrown in the air and peace signs flashed. A few have managed briefly to escape, heads held high as they are dragged back.
Sixty-five young punk rockers arrived at the police detention centre last week after baton-wielding police raided a concert in Aceh – the only province in the predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million to have imposed Islamic laws.
They will be released on Friday, after completing 10 days of “rehabilitation” – from classes on good behaviour and religion to military-style drills aimed at instilling discipline.
“Bella at the table with her labels and her hangover,
Bella’s eyes all smudged out as the memories take over”.
There was a TV programme I remember watching a teenager, but I can’t remember which – I think it may have been something by Dennis Potter – Lipstick On Your Collar, perhaps – or the rather saucy BBC adaptation of The Camomile Lawn. There was a scene when a beautiful, made-up woman sat at a wooden table. I can remember nothing more about it, save for that – and that’s what came into my head when I was writing this song.
This is one of the most dazzling things I’ve ever seen, I think. Watch this explosion of shapes and sides – magic before your eyes; it’s a chastening reminder of all we do not know.
Posted 30 Sep 2011 — by Jonathan Category Daft, General
This is really quite amazing; no matter how long I look at this picture, I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that what I am looking at is one cat, not two. There’s one brain. One personality. Two working eyes, one working mouth (although two working noses). But this glorious, strange, janus-cat is still alive at 12, spectacularly defying his life expectancy.
Diprosopus (Greek διπρόσωπος, “two-faced”, from δι-, di-, “two” and πρόσωπον, prósopon [neuter], “face”, “person”; with Latin ending), also known as craniofacial duplication (cranio- from Greek κρανίον, “skull”, the other parts Latin), is an extremely rare congenital disorder whereby part or all of the face is duplicated on the head.
This is rather lovely. Over on Quora someone asked, ‘What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?’. Sean Hood, the professional screenwriter who wrote the last iteration of the Conan The Barbarian franchise, is well placed to answer. So he does.
In the days before the release, you get all sorts of enthusiastic congratulations from friends and family. Everyone seems to believe it will go well, and everyone has something positive to say, so you allow yourself to get swept up in it.
You tell yourself to just enjoy the process. That whether you succeed or fail, win or lose, it will be fine. You pretend to be Zen. You adopt detachment, and ironic humor, while secretly praying for a miracle.
The Friday night of the release is like the Tuesday night of an election. “Exit polls”are taken of people leaving the theater, and estimated box office numbers start leaking out in the afternoon, like early ballot returns. You are glued to your computer, clicking wildly over websites, chatting nonstop with peers, and calling anyone and everyone to find out what they’ve heard. Have any numbers come back yet? That’s when your stomach starts to drop.
It’s a great read – click here to access the whole thing.
Meanwhile – that’s not the only difficult question the internet can answer.
These people are legends; below is just one of the many teams of volunteers – many of whom organised using Twitter – who have been tidying up London. They, along with the police and fire officers who have risked their lives over the last few days, are real heroes.
Tonight, the people of London need to do more. People were talking earlier about a curfew, but better would be a kind of anti-curfew; everyone, when they get home from work tonight, needs to go and sit on their doorstep, congregate by a local pub, make their presence felt. For the last few days the streets have been run by kids. But it’s not kids who run the streets, it’s the rest of us. Obviously people must be mindful of their own safety, but I’d like to see the normal, law-abiding, decent people of London reclaiming the streets tonight.
And here are some more heroes; I’ve been reading report after report of people standing up to the thugs these last few days; from Dan Snow apprehending a looter to this awesome West Indian woman berating the idiots rioting through Tottenham, to the group of 400 Asian kids who chased off rioters in Shipley. And I love the awesome sight of a line of hard-as-nails Turkish shop-owners in Dalston protecting their community. Brilliant.
A quick run-through of some of the things I’ve been reading over the last week or two;
First off, I’ve been reading – in the offline world – the latest installment in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic series; Century 1969 is a fascinating, intoxicating romp through beatnik fashion, free love, occult experimentalism and the criminal underworld of ‘Performance’-era London (if you’ve not seen that, seek it out). It strikes me as a nice, centuries-out counterbalance to Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee, which has the same preoccupation with sex and magick, and which was conceived, incidentally, with assistance from Alan Moore. So far I’m reading Century 1969 as slowly as possible, with the pleasure of knowing there are a bunch more books in this series which I’ve not yet read.
Elsewhere, staying with comics, this is worth a look, I think – “The creation of a polite word always signifies a major fucking.” – a fascinating comic recommendation from @peteashton, who is consistently reliable on this stuff. The book is Kyle Baker’s Why I Hate Saturn, and the post was inspired by his frustration with collective terms for groups of people.
And staying with Pete, he’s always worth reading on blogging and social media, and this post is very thought-provoking for those of us earnestly and fruitlessly carving our time between a multitude of social platforms (in my case, Twitter, obsessively, Google+, enthusiastically, WordPress, neglectfully, and Facebook, resentfully). He’s rightly wanting to seek control of all the various bits of content he’s slicing and dicing, and has started a new blog which will serve as the control centre for all his activity. The blog is called FYPA.net and started out as a reference to the fact that 95% – as any fool knows – of everything is shit. FYPA is a kind of bastardisation of FivePer, the 5% left which is worth reading. It also stands, of course, for Fuck Yeah Pete Ashton. Bookmark it and use often.
There was an advert on TV in the mid 1980s which demonstrated with dazzling effectiveness the brilliance of the Milton Bradley toy BigTrak, a kind of programmable toy tank which you could send clattering through your house after the cat. I wanted one desperately, but I recall my chief motivation very clearly. In the advert the lucky boy who owned a BigTrak attached the optional trailer and ordered the vehicle to scoot off to the kitchen. When it got there, his doting mother loaded it up with an impressive cargo – a big glass of coca cola – which was duly delivered to the somnolent kid, who hadn’t had to leave the living room sofa.
From the moment I started badgering my parents to get me a BigTrak, this function was basically the only thing I had in mind. I would sit at one end of the house and my new toy would fetch me endless glasses of coke. When I finally got one for Christmas, I was utterly delighted. When I realised that the route to the kitchen was obstructed by an un-navigable step, I threw a tantrum and lost interest in the toy forever.
Saw this in the window of a charity shop the other day. It’s a mini BigTrak! Since when did they start making smaller versions? Cool. I must have been sulking about the step too much to notice.
Posted 08 Jul 2011 — by Jonathan Category Daft, General
In a deal illustrative of Liverpool’s slightly confusing transfer policy (which seems to be to overpay for players with Premiership experience, even if they’re as yet unproven at higher levels), they have just signed Blackpool’s impressive (but not world-beating) central midfielder Charlie Adam, for about £7.5m. Charlie Adam is a pretty decent player, in the box-to-box midfielder style, and is surely the latest in a long line of okayish players who get overhyped and overpaid because they make people nostalgic for a certain type of British player we see less and less of (cf. Lee Bowyer, Danny Murphy, Kevin Nolan, Scott Parker). Anyway, like I said, I don’t know much about him, so it’s possible I’m underrating him. But at least Liverpool have placed some handy facts about him on their website, for those of us trying to keep up. This is my favourite by some distance:
3. Adam then returned to Ibrox in the summer of 2006 and was handed his opportunity to shine by gaffer Paul Le Guen. He admits to changing his diet on the advice of the Frenchman. “I’d never really thought of eating salads before,” he said during an interview in 2010.
Everyone is linking to this, but that’s no reason not to do the same. Everyone’s linking to it because it’s rather terrific; something about the voice, the rhythmic ease, and the sheer pleasure the protagonist seems to take in singing. I’m a big fan, in principle, of YouTube as a way of discovering new talent. In some ways it’s the most democratic way of breaking through, being entirely unrestricted by geographical factors. It’s as easy to impress from your bedroom in the suburbs as it is your studio loft in New York. Of course, we still need the push of someone sharing our work. That’s what the internet does so well.
Probably a thousand equally great videos created by kids on Youtube; doesn’t stop this being good though.
I don’t mean to be smug about living in Brighton, but I derive great pleasure from the knowledge that I live somewhere where the unexpected can always be, er, expected, just around the corner. As our much admired yearly Arts Festival kicked off in this beautiful Sussex city a couple of weeks ago, Brighton celebrated by setting one of its most beautiful parks on fire.
Or rather, St Anne’s Well Gardens hosted Jardin Flambeau, a fire installation created by French outdoor alchemists Compagnie Carabosse. It was a pretty amazing sight; hundreds of gas lamps threaded like baubles through the arms of the trees, steam-punk flame sculptures which clamped and yawned, breathing fire into the hot sky. The whole park shimmered with heat-haze and good humour – I thought to take two bottles of beer but not a bottle opener; so I begged use of one from some nearby teenagers, who laughed cheerfully at the notion I’d need one, springing open my bottles effortlessly by clamping their lighters under the caps.
All the fire meant there were hundreds of us sat out ’til late, taking in the warmth from the flames and musing: there’s a lot of crap talked about hell; it really can’t be so bad.
Quick sidenote: I’ve changed my comments settings a bit; you’ll now be asked to register when you leave a comment. Sorry, I realise this is a pain in the arse, but I’m getting an unmanageable amount of spam at the moment. Hope this extra layer of security won’t stop anyone from leaving a note or a comment. Ta!
I don’t suppose that anyone will be in the least bit surprised to read that I have absolutely no interest in the impending Royal Wedding, or anything at all to do with the Royal family unless it involves their ploughing some of their obscene wealth back into the country and/or abdicating, but it’s really quite distressing to note the feverish interest from other quarters. The Guardian – a newspaper which could once be counted on to either ignore or critique the monarchy – claimed earlier this month to have renounced its republicanism. That was, happily, an April Fool’s joke, but it might as well not have been. Today the paper boasts an article which does two things; first points out that Prince William has been cautious to keep himself private, remaining a ‘great unknown’, and second add to the endless tiresome speculation about his supposed ‘normality’.
There was a bit of mild intrigue in the press this week about the fact that William had invited a bunch of Tories – including John Major – to his wedding at the expense of Labour politicians; not even Tony Blair is on the guestlist. But today’s article includes one really irritating sentence, which suggests that William is a child of Blair rather than Major, inheriting the tendency towards the same infuriating – and largely patronising – fetishisation of football which blighted New Labour. According to the article, Wills still plays!
Only last week a team turning up for a kickabout in Battersea Park were surprised to see him on the other side.
Oh for god’s sake! Are we really supposed to believe this inane PR? What, Prince William just spontaneously decided to go and play football down the park the other day, lining up against a bunch of local lads? That The Guardian believes this is symptomatic of the fact that it’s stopped looking critically at the Royal Circus.
My television, needless to say, will be turned off on Friday.
Posted 08 Feb 2011 — by Jonathan Category General, Photos
This first image was taken just off Chichester canal at lunch time – moments after I pressed the shutter I was rocking back on my heels, attempting to prevent my camera from a comprehensive slobbering. Luckily the animal diverted his attention to my face at the last minute. The second image – the ducks laid off. Luckily.
I am strangely pleased that my football club failed to join in the mass scramble for transfers at the end of January’s transfer window. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because they took a moral high ground and refused to join in the repulsive carnival of avarice which transfer-day spending has turned into. It was rather that they made several insane bids of their own but luck conspired against them and they didn’t get accepted. Well, good. I’d rather come sixth and miss out on Europe than join this ludicrous rush for overpriced, overpaid players. (To be clear, I’d have been very happy if the club paid a reasonable fee for an excellent player – just not £35m, even for a handsome Geordie).
Meanwhile, the club I supported as a child – as much out of deference to geography as anything – are planning to move East and abandon their own neighborhood, which is one of the poorest and least well invested-in in London, desperately needing the club’s ongoing presence.
Sometimes football is shit because the commentators can be such imbeciles. Sometimes it’s shit because the players are neanderthals. Sometimes it’s shit because you’ve been beaten at home by Arsenal. And sometimes it’s just shit. I don’t want my club to win at any cost, to sell out their own community, to pay exorbitant fees and wages for players who don’t merit it. The lamentable stadium plans aside, I don’t even think my club is particularly bad; our players are generally a comparatively likable bunch, our manager is dependably comical, and the director seems to do his job well – but for a modern football club to be competitive it must play this awful game – this money go round. It’s the game that’s ruining the game.
"Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right."
David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
