The annoyance of perfection has graced me over the years between the constant public flatulence and general slacker behaviour. It has take many forms including pencil cases, food display and collectible items (like my T2 replica bust and a tiny guitar with the dark side of the moon cover on it. The one thing I never seem to get right is looking after the things I should worry about. Big, expensive things with lots of sentimental value like my fucking guitar. Sound annoyed? That's probably because after three years of writing songs and a lifetime of generally not finishing a THING I am heading to the studio tomorrow and record my album. Why am I annoyed, you say? Well...it's not a big problem but my goddamn G string is buzzing. Chords are OK, but I have one song that lets rip on the G string and all I get is BZZZZZ BZZZZZZ motherFUCKING BZZZZZZZZZ.
But, alas, I am not angry. Cos tomorrow I'm recording my album...YAY
It's quite a long story actually. I tend to try and not say those words because you often get to a certain point and stop typing, or atleast want to stop typing and wrap things up pretty sharp-ish. I will try not to in the story of MY album.
OK, so where I am now is about two and half/three years from the beginning. In the beginning, I was Noen Thomas (see below) and I began writing this dark, almost tuneless dirge that went no where. I played a few shows (peaking at my second) and it fell apart as soon as I realised it was crap because I was on my own playing an acoustic guitar with no backing. I wanted a band but no one wanted to play dark, tuneless folk music and no one really cared. So I scrapped that.
Remarkably I wrote a track called 'Tonight Could Mean Forever' and it was a haunting, gothic lullaby that I quite enjoyed. Following this was 'Tell Her I'll Be Coming Home' and 'The Flowergirl Passes Me By'. I thought each one was a highlight of my musicianship and jammed with a cool chick pianist/singer/songwriter called many things and it was cool, however because of uni, it didn't really work out and we called it a day (sort of). By this time I've already written loads of songs really quickly to add on to the previous three and entitled the bunch of new material "Unaccountable Beauty" under the moniker of Aphrodite's Son. I played a show at Lee Ray's Wig and Pen night and it was OK. I was a bit shakey and the lyrics were on a stand in front of me due to them being baby songs that I didn't know too well. Because I didn't feel as if it went too well, my mind went over several other ideas to make music. I thought now would be the perfect time to head back to being in a band. I was listening to a shed load of Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan and the garage sound kept coming back into my mind. So I posted on a local music forum to look for similar minded musicians. I found a drummer, a couple of guitarists and two bassists. One bassist felt he was too old (he later got back to me, but he was more into shoegaze where I was heading into a much more psychedelic headspace) and another was a metalhead jackass. I remember that one guitarist was nice enough to keep getting back in touch, but by that time no one else seemed bothered. The other guitarist didn't want to know anymore and the drummer flaked the morning we were supposed to meet. However, one drummer did get in touch and we jammed a few times before he told me he was no longer bothered. I also played a really weird show with my electric guitar but a couple of people dug it because even though I was noisy and had no rhythm the whole time, I was much more tuneful than anyone else, so it was cool.
Back to square one, I began writing again. A few folky/bluesy things popped out as well as a few random pop songs and ballads. Once I hit 10 I performed them live two or three times as a set (the first time I had ever done that) and agreed they would make a fine first LP. I DID change this grouping though, writing new songs and deleting one or two I felt were copies of other ones. I did like these a lot though and began jammed them with Casey (the pianist from before), Liam (a guitarist dude I knew from school and someone I had a very drunken, very funny night with a few months previously) and a drummer dude from the forum called Tom. The first rehearsal was incredible, the second even more so. Tom couldn't make the third so it was quiet and still awesome.
And tomorrow is the date of recording. The day this story (basically) comes to an end as it will be out my hands and into the hands of the mixer/masterer. Wish me luck now and pray that BZZZZZZZ won't fuck anything up :S
Sunday 30 August 2009
Friday 28 August 2009
Welcome to a Sea of Apathy and nothing more
Today rings a sharp and awkward bell in the face of contemporary popular music. The death knell has fianlly rung for one of the largest British intstituions, Oasis. The news that Noel Gallagher has departed the group has not yet been approached by comment. This sleepy morning has me up particulary early, and the only thing on my mind seems to be the dismantling of this searing and unique rock group.
BUT NOTHING has surprised me. In the slightest. Not even a little bit. Infact, it seems to highlight the fact that no one saw it coming even more. People would NOW say that it had been a long time coming; the rift between siblings growing ever larger, some even suggesting that the newer members (Archer and Bell) and the new identity that has been attached with their particular style has sullied that swaggering, exaggerative balls-to-the-floor 'rocknroll'. But the undeiniable truth is that it has only been apparent over the last week since the band called of a V festival appearance due to illness.
Now, it seems a little bit obvious what REALLY happened, but lets not bother ourselves with that.
What has come out of this, if not lots of different things, is how incredibly redundent NME looks in the face of Noel's departure. If the NME is meant to do one thing and one thing only it is to deliver the news of what is happening in popular music. No one is going to say this hasn't happened, but in the wake of comment taking the place of news as a favourable option to write, I find it hard to believe that in a relatively slow week, most resident bloggers for the NME have been pre-occupied by the twenty best types of way to piss at the Reading and Leeds festivals and how wonderful Alex Turner's hair looks in the new 'Crying Lightning' video. What a crock of shite.
Funnily though, I didn't predict this either. Sure when Liam said he couldn't wait to whack out a new Oasis LP and Noel said he didn't, something didn't seem right. But in truth (a funny thing, really) who the fuck cares? It has been the general popular opinion that in the last 13 years of "Oasis" have achieved nothing but produce a tired formula, half repetetive Beatles-induced sincereness and half Stones-esque pub anthems. Either way, all of it, with very little exception ("Songbird", "Half the World Away", "The Importance of Being Idle"), is completely immeorable and as far as I am concerned, most of it doesn't deserve to be. However it is also the popular consensus that the first two albums have qualified the band to sell-out arena's worldwide since 1994. Not bad going really, but you kind of figured that it would run out sooner or later.
The question NOW is whether or not Oasis would continue. The opinion of this writer seems to be yes, but for not very long. I give it two years, maybe three...but eighteen months (and a new album, or just an EP) seems logical. I have a feeling the group will follow in the paths of their southern counterparts Blur by releasing one great track and one underwhelming album before cutting their losses and/or waiting till the original line-up is reformed (possibly with Bonehead and Guigsy???) and the light is restored. But for now, expect nothing but an endless sea of apathy for a group that has, lets face it, done nothing but do mildly ammusing things to annoy other groups and the press, churn out a couple of sprogs with semi-famous popstars/actresses and back Tony Bliar (no, I didn't spell that wrong). So far I can see this going the way of other mad Mancunian's Morrissey and Ian Brown (I thought of another one, but now I can't remember it) and that Noel will have all the sense his mother gave him and NEVER EVER come back; maybe make a great album of french Jazz or columbian post-rock...who knows, as long as he doesn't pick up with his brother I have no preference.
BUT NOTHING has surprised me. In the slightest. Not even a little bit. Infact, it seems to highlight the fact that no one saw it coming even more. People would NOW say that it had been a long time coming; the rift between siblings growing ever larger, some even suggesting that the newer members (Archer and Bell) and the new identity that has been attached with their particular style has sullied that swaggering, exaggerative balls-to-the-floor 'rocknroll'. But the undeiniable truth is that it has only been apparent over the last week since the band called of a V festival appearance due to illness.
Now, it seems a little bit obvious what REALLY happened, but lets not bother ourselves with that.
What has come out of this, if not lots of different things, is how incredibly redundent NME looks in the face of Noel's departure. If the NME is meant to do one thing and one thing only it is to deliver the news of what is happening in popular music. No one is going to say this hasn't happened, but in the wake of comment taking the place of news as a favourable option to write, I find it hard to believe that in a relatively slow week, most resident bloggers for the NME have been pre-occupied by the twenty best types of way to piss at the Reading and Leeds festivals and how wonderful Alex Turner's hair looks in the new 'Crying Lightning' video. What a crock of shite.
Funnily though, I didn't predict this either. Sure when Liam said he couldn't wait to whack out a new Oasis LP and Noel said he didn't, something didn't seem right. But in truth (a funny thing, really) who the fuck cares? It has been the general popular opinion that in the last 13 years of "Oasis" have achieved nothing but produce a tired formula, half repetetive Beatles-induced sincereness and half Stones-esque pub anthems. Either way, all of it, with very little exception ("Songbird", "Half the World Away", "The Importance of Being Idle"), is completely immeorable and as far as I am concerned, most of it doesn't deserve to be. However it is also the popular consensus that the first two albums have qualified the band to sell-out arena's worldwide since 1994. Not bad going really, but you kind of figured that it would run out sooner or later.
The question NOW is whether or not Oasis would continue. The opinion of this writer seems to be yes, but for not very long. I give it two years, maybe three...but eighteen months (and a new album, or just an EP) seems logical. I have a feeling the group will follow in the paths of their southern counterparts Blur by releasing one great track and one underwhelming album before cutting their losses and/or waiting till the original line-up is reformed (possibly with Bonehead and Guigsy???) and the light is restored. But for now, expect nothing but an endless sea of apathy for a group that has, lets face it, done nothing but do mildly ammusing things to annoy other groups and the press, churn out a couple of sprogs with semi-famous popstars/actresses and back Tony Bliar (no, I didn't spell that wrong). So far I can see this going the way of other mad Mancunian's Morrissey and Ian Brown (I thought of another one, but now I can't remember it) and that Noel will have all the sense his mother gave him and NEVER EVER come back; maybe make a great album of french Jazz or columbian post-rock...who knows, as long as he doesn't pick up with his brother I have no preference.
Fuckin' A Man
It's been a while since I've written on here but, yes, I shall give it one more try.
Firstly there has been a shit load of music (new and old) that has held my very unstable attention over the last few months. To categorize it in time periods: April-May was a Bob Dylan time for me; the release of "Together Through Life" shook me TO MY VERY CORE. Not in any biblical sense, it was just a very, very good album. Because of this I spent the majority of aforementioned months bathing myself in Dylan's entire back catalogue. "Highway 61 Revisited" was declare the GREATEST POP ALBUM OF ALL TIME in hilarious fashion with me attempting to learn every track on the album at least 3 times (except for 'It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry' for no real reason). Attached to that I began to read "Chronicles" written by the man himself and began to listen to his "Theme Time Radio Hour". But enough about Dylan, June was dedicated to Shakey...
Shakey of course being the nickname to the great lonesome Canadian, Neil Young. His set at the Isle of Wight festival 2009 was life-affirming and as such I spent the majority of that month listening to (mainly) "Harvest" and "Harvest Moon". No real reason, I quite like "On The Beach", "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Rust Never Sleeps" too, but those two CDs are everything frail, imaginative, cocky, reassuring and creative that the man has produced. Contradictory, perhaps, but all the while exciting and nevertheless a weird yet wonderful summer soundtrack.
JULY was the month of my birth and a weird concoction of sounds filtered through like an unholy ghost. Because it has been such a long time, I really can't remember much of what I was listening to. However Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds stick out due to me watching them perform (again) at the Latitude Festival. They were phenomenal and probably the best musical act of the weekend; top five being: The Bad Seeds, 1990s, Joe Gideon and the Shark, Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard and Spiritualized although Turin Brakes' midnight set gets a special mention for being the most improved show (from the last time I saw them) and Jarvis Cocker performing with beat-box wunderkind Schlomo was nothing short of awesome. July finished with repeat listening to various Nick Cave albums and a sordid mental affair with the Berlin post-punk scene of which the Bad Seeds inhabited.
Obviously, June and July was not just about festivals and musician philosophers. Two peculiar instances involving wooded areas and lots of walking opened my eyes up to the wonders of the Grateful Dead. Before this, my main connection with the group came from listening to the Dylan & the Dead LP of which I must be one of just a handful of people to claim they enjoyed it, so to listen to their catalogue, especially "American Beauty" and their incredible collection of live music, was incredible. Those days of interest also sparked a healthy obsession with The Band and Janis Joplin. All in the name of music, m'afraid.
On to August; an odd one this. August began as a dipping into uncharted territory (for me), being the world of hip-hop. It started by thinking about different lyrical styles. I have, in the past, enjoyed Run DMC and some rap and various other types of urban sounding music. In this instance, Jay Z's most recent release, 'DOA (Death of Autotune)' sparked a love of hip hop. I begin with two albums; one of which I liked and one that I did not. These were, respectively, "Three Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul and "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa. I enjoyed the playfulness of De La Soul and the really hard drum beats but I felt that Bambaataa's electro styling's had no pulse and it was all show and no tell. On then I delved into Hip Hop with the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Edan's "Beauty and the Beat" (a soulful stand-out if there ever was one). However, this didn't last too long and soon I was back on my way to the 'pioneer', but this time, it was a much younger one, being Jeffrey Lewis.
I had already seen him (twice) at Latitude and thought he was fuckin' a. So I got "It's the ones who've cracked the light shines through" "city & eastern" and the most recent album, "'Em are I". My obsession continued right through till last week when I saw him in Southampton. It was a great show, but the fakes and phoneys at that show made me realise that music is inevitably a fools game and that shows are purely a popularity thing. So I went to a metal gig. This was yesterday, and I say metal but it wasn't really a metal gig. It was a show run by the lovely Hong Kong Gardner's Sarah and Abbie, but it wasn't really 'there's' as much as it was the Demon's who took over proceedings. The first band was a group called Elapse-O and oddly enough I have supported them in the past (I shall be getting on to that in another post) and they were good, but not mind-blowing like the band that went on next. INVASIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN....now THEY were MIND BLOWING. and weirdly, in the conventional sense. I thoroughly loved their EP "Moongazer" so I knew I would like them live, and I did. Lots. Their songs are great for people with no attention span as they take about two minutes to groove up and then pull away, leaving you starved and wanting more. It was also had one those WTF moments. I fazed out and started staring into space for a moment or two and when I turned back to the stage, the drummer (a girl) had taken her top off. Like my friend said, she had a cracking pair of tits and when he did say that I kept giggling everytime I repeated that phrase in my head and had to resort to looking away like a teenage girl at a Blue concert. Horribly by the time they had finished and the final band (the DEMONS!!!) went on stage, I had to leave to get my train. I did see two songs, but that was enough to make me annoyed that I had to leave early. Motherfucking trains.
Anyway, the reason why my title says 'fuckin' A man' is because before the show last night I watched "Burn After Reading". The end credits played a track I vaguely remembered from the last time I saw it (or the time I saw it at the cinema). I had a look to see who it was and it was the FUGS!!! a band that Jeffrey Lewis swears by. Anyway the track is called 'CIA Man' and the chorus line is "fuckin' A man...CIA man"...and it was the last song I listened to before I began writing this but now I'm listening to the Clash...
take it easy
MATTHEW THE HELIUM LORD
Firstly there has been a shit load of music (new and old) that has held my very unstable attention over the last few months. To categorize it in time periods: April-May was a Bob Dylan time for me; the release of "Together Through Life" shook me TO MY VERY CORE. Not in any biblical sense, it was just a very, very good album. Because of this I spent the majority of aforementioned months bathing myself in Dylan's entire back catalogue. "Highway 61 Revisited" was declare the GREATEST POP ALBUM OF ALL TIME in hilarious fashion with me attempting to learn every track on the album at least 3 times (except for 'It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry' for no real reason). Attached to that I began to read "Chronicles" written by the man himself and began to listen to his "Theme Time Radio Hour". But enough about Dylan, June was dedicated to Shakey...
Shakey of course being the nickname to the great lonesome Canadian, Neil Young. His set at the Isle of Wight festival 2009 was life-affirming and as such I spent the majority of that month listening to (mainly) "Harvest" and "Harvest Moon". No real reason, I quite like "On The Beach", "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" and "Rust Never Sleeps" too, but those two CDs are everything frail, imaginative, cocky, reassuring and creative that the man has produced. Contradictory, perhaps, but all the while exciting and nevertheless a weird yet wonderful summer soundtrack.
JULY was the month of my birth and a weird concoction of sounds filtered through like an unholy ghost. Because it has been such a long time, I really can't remember much of what I was listening to. However Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds stick out due to me watching them perform (again) at the Latitude Festival. They were phenomenal and probably the best musical act of the weekend; top five being: The Bad Seeds, 1990s, Joe Gideon and the Shark, Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard and Spiritualized although Turin Brakes' midnight set gets a special mention for being the most improved show (from the last time I saw them) and Jarvis Cocker performing with beat-box wunderkind Schlomo was nothing short of awesome. July finished with repeat listening to various Nick Cave albums and a sordid mental affair with the Berlin post-punk scene of which the Bad Seeds inhabited.
Obviously, June and July was not just about festivals and musician philosophers. Two peculiar instances involving wooded areas and lots of walking opened my eyes up to the wonders of the Grateful Dead. Before this, my main connection with the group came from listening to the Dylan & the Dead LP of which I must be one of just a handful of people to claim they enjoyed it, so to listen to their catalogue, especially "American Beauty" and their incredible collection of live music, was incredible. Those days of interest also sparked a healthy obsession with The Band and Janis Joplin. All in the name of music, m'afraid.
On to August; an odd one this. August began as a dipping into uncharted territory (for me), being the world of hip-hop. It started by thinking about different lyrical styles. I have, in the past, enjoyed Run DMC and some rap and various other types of urban sounding music. In this instance, Jay Z's most recent release, 'DOA (Death of Autotune)' sparked a love of hip hop. I begin with two albums; one of which I liked and one that I did not. These were, respectively, "Three Feet High and Rising" by De La Soul and "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa. I enjoyed the playfulness of De La Soul and the really hard drum beats but I felt that Bambaataa's electro styling's had no pulse and it was all show and no tell. On then I delved into Hip Hop with the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy and Edan's "Beauty and the Beat" (a soulful stand-out if there ever was one). However, this didn't last too long and soon I was back on my way to the 'pioneer', but this time, it was a much younger one, being Jeffrey Lewis.
I had already seen him (twice) at Latitude and thought he was fuckin' a. So I got "It's the ones who've cracked the light shines through" "city & eastern" and the most recent album, "'Em are I". My obsession continued right through till last week when I saw him in Southampton. It was a great show, but the fakes and phoneys at that show made me realise that music is inevitably a fools game and that shows are purely a popularity thing. So I went to a metal gig. This was yesterday, and I say metal but it wasn't really a metal gig. It was a show run by the lovely Hong Kong Gardner's Sarah and Abbie, but it wasn't really 'there's' as much as it was the Demon's who took over proceedings. The first band was a group called Elapse-O and oddly enough I have supported them in the past (I shall be getting on to that in another post) and they were good, but not mind-blowing like the band that went on next. INVASIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN....now THEY were MIND BLOWING. and weirdly, in the conventional sense. I thoroughly loved their EP "Moongazer" so I knew I would like them live, and I did. Lots. Their songs are great for people with no attention span as they take about two minutes to groove up and then pull away, leaving you starved and wanting more. It was also had one those WTF moments. I fazed out and started staring into space for a moment or two and when I turned back to the stage, the drummer (a girl) had taken her top off. Like my friend said, she had a cracking pair of tits and when he did say that I kept giggling everytime I repeated that phrase in my head and had to resort to looking away like a teenage girl at a Blue concert. Horribly by the time they had finished and the final band (the DEMONS!!!) went on stage, I had to leave to get my train. I did see two songs, but that was enough to make me annoyed that I had to leave early. Motherfucking trains.
Anyway, the reason why my title says 'fuckin' A man' is because before the show last night I watched "Burn After Reading". The end credits played a track I vaguely remembered from the last time I saw it (or the time I saw it at the cinema). I had a look to see who it was and it was the FUGS!!! a band that Jeffrey Lewis swears by. Anyway the track is called 'CIA Man' and the chorus line is "fuckin' A man...CIA man"...and it was the last song I listened to before I began writing this but now I'm listening to the Clash...
take it easy
MATTHEW THE HELIUM LORD
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