Lyrics like these are the reason I never bother

Of Montreal
The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
(Polyvinyl)

Lyrics by Kevin Barnes

the past is a grotesque animal
and in its eyes you see
how completely wrong you can be
how completely wrong you can be

the sun is out
it melts the snow that fell yesterday
makes you wonder
why it bothered
i fell in love
with the first cute girl that i met
who could appreciate Georges Bataille
standing at a Swedish festival
discussing "story of the eye"
discussing "story of the eye"

it's so embarrassing to need someone like i do you
how can i explain?
i need you here
and not here too..
how can i explain
i need you here
and not here too

i'm flunking out, i'm flunking out
i'm gone, i'm just gone
but at least i author my own disaster
at least i author my own disaster
performance breakdown
and i don't wanna hear it
i'm just not available

things could be different
but they're not...
things could be different
but they're not

the mousy girl screams "violence, violence!"
the mousy girl screams "violence, violence!"
she gets hysterical
cause they're both so mean
and it's my favorite scene
the cruelty's so predictable
makes you sad on the stage
though our love project has so much potential
but it's like we weren't made for this world
though i wouldn't really wanna meet someone who was

do i have to scream in your face?
i've been dodging lamps and vegetables
throw it all in my face
i don't care-
let's just have some fun
let's tear the shit apart
let's tear the fucking house apart


let's tear our fucking bodies apart,
let's just have some fun

somehow you've red-rovered
the Gestapo circling my heart
and nothing can defeat you
no death, no ugly world
you've lived so brightly
you've altered everything

i find myself
searching for old selves
while speeding forward
through the plate-glass of maturing cells

i fed the unraveller
the paw hellion
but even apocalypse is fleeting
there's no death, no ugly world
sometimes i wonder if you're mythologizing me
like i do you
apologizing me like i do you

we want our film to be beautiful
not realistic
see me in the radiance of terror dreams
you can betray me
you can, you can betray me
teach me something wonderful
crown my head crown my head
with your lilting effects
project your fears onto me
i need to view them,
see there's nothing to them
i promise you there's nothing to them

i'm so touched by your goodness
you make me feel so criminal
how do you keep it together?
i'm all, all unravelled
but'cha know
no matter where we are
we're always touching by underground wires

i've explored you with the detachment
of an analyst
but most nights
we've raided the same kingdoms
and none of our secrets are physical
none of our secrets, are physical
none of our secrets, are physical now

Meat + NFR on the BBC

I'm on BBC 6 Music radio tonight - this Sunday - from 8pm. They'll be broadcasting an interview with me and playing my 1 hour mix of electro-indie and Brighton bands, either 8-9 or 9-10pm. Not For Resale has been entered into a competition. There's 2 dj's every Sunday for 4 weeks battling for a prize of a DJ set at Summer Sundae in Leicester or Indian Summer in Glasgow, then I guess 4 in the final in July with people voting again and the top 2 winning. I think I could do a lot of damage with a set at a festival so I’m kind of wanting to win now – at least the first round any way – I’m up against someone from Cambridge. I’m not sure what would happen to the world order if Brighton lost to Cambridge in a DJing competition, but it can’t be good.

Here's the URL to the BBC 6 website so you can stream it if needs be: http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/listener_6mix/

It is a competition, so I am requesting your votes. Out of pity for my terrible interview probably - I don't imagine negative mono-syllabic answers translate well on air, but I’m sure it will be funny if not simply humiliating.

You can text on 64046, or email them at 6mix@bbc.co.uk, or leave comments on their website. Maybe I’ll give a prize to the person who rips me apart the best. Or is the nicest, obviously.

You can stream it all week and vote until next Friday

I guess it's should be for good this time

This pain is getting extrememly tedious now. It's slightly concerning when the Dr tells me that at 25, I shouldn't be getting gout and am too young, but then does not seem especially mostivated to find out why I might be getting it. 2 years later, as a 27 year old, I am still considered too young to be getting it, but attack it does and today is especially painful. Maybe it was the coffee I had at the weekend. Surely not though, really. Despite my intense regime of healthy eating and drinking having slipped away to almost 0% of my lifestyle nowadays, compared to this time last year when it was all soya milk, no wheat, endless fruit and veg juices and careful eating, I still rarely ever drink alcohol or eat meat - the two traditional ingredients of causation.

So, what the fuck, yeah? Maybe it takes about a year for all the acid to build back up in my system enough to cripple me like this. Pain has been hovering round my feet for the best part of a month now, on and off, and this time it is ON!

Back on the intense regime again I guess, and I guess it's should be for good this time, since giving it 16 months didn't permanently purge it. Looks like this is how it's going to be.

Rock and fuckin' roll.

Hair Raising

Since this is still by far and away the greatest album i heard from last year, here's my review of it again for anyone who needs something new and exciting in their lives.

Wolves In The Throne Room
Diadem Of 12 Stars
Vendlus Records

Living in a self sufficient commune outside Washington USA, eschewing pantomime corpse paints and the distracting regalia of weaponry and spikes, Wolves In The Throne Room are not your regular black metal band. Perfect black metal in fact and their music is no less rebellious towards the genre.

Whilst there are many bands honing the form, creating equally masterful and progressive recordings (see USA’s Leviathan, Sweden’s Watain and Woods Of Infinity, UK’s Anaal Nathrakh and Axis Of Perdition, France’s Blut Aus Nord and Deathspell Omega for examples of how to push the limits of a genre), the continual adherence, even amongst most of these aforementioned bands, to sartorial and musical codes needed a radical shift in attention. For a genre so concerned with rebellion, adherence of any kind should be strictly outlawed, but such is the way of things that the scenes within black metal increasingly constrict themselves and disregard too much which they consider ‘untrue’. This is where Wolves In The Throne Room come in.

With two equally mesmerizing demos behind them, it was with great anticipation that I awaited the album proper, to see what this band could achieve in such a formal setting. From the highly atmospheric, misty forested cover and the scenes depicted on the sleeve, it was clear that this would be something else entirely, including as it does, ‘The Queen Of Borrowed Light’ from the second demo. The shortest song on here is 13 minutes, dead on, which tells you how grand a scale this band work on; cinematic, operatic but deadly serious and not prone to posturing theatrics, this album covers a huge amount of musical ground, seamlessly incorporating Norwegian droning, flights of technical fancy and grinding segments into songs that undulate like rivers, ghosting through the misty forests of the cover art. The album, whilst tense, nervy and aggressive, conjures a pagan, earth-worshipping atmosphere that is being slowly eroded from the black metal field to be replaced with head down violence of the likes of Black Witchery and Revenge and the necrotic filth churned out by the Finnish hordes of bleakness. More akin to Negura Bunget and Drudkh in spirit – the eastern European forms – where spiritual, naturalistic elements are the higher concerns. The force of Gaia is represented on this album through the presence of female vocals from Jamie (this band only ever use first names, real ones at that, not stage names – Aaron on drums, Rick and Nathan on guitars and vocals). Female vocalists are becoming popular in the more Death-oriented forms of metal, much rarer in black metal and their presence here is striking. Not only does the sound of them – ethereal, ephemeral, sleepily intoned, rising high over the surging motorik riffing – contrast with the caustic shrieking of Nathan and the more guttural vocals of Rick, but they represent the harmony of the earth, echoing the cyclical, sexual nature of the world, of birth, nurturing and creation. They are beautiful. A word rarely used with this form of music, and not in a sexual as in lusting, fucking beauty either, for they are too innocent, too pure and they don’t convey a human sexuality, more an angelic presence watching over the maelstroms of noise beneath, occasionally being smothered as happens in life, then returning wings unfurling, majestic, exuding femininity amongst the masculine energy as she sings of her “Heart beating against the soft rush of the river”. A section of acoustic guitar breaks up In A Night Time Mirror Part 1melting away Jamie’s vocals before being consumed by a violent storm as the electrics strike up and the drums come thundering in.

Nathan and Rick’s vocals are not excessively harsh, not high in the mix, not overbearing. Instead they sit gently amongst the guitars and drums, themselves not overly intrusive, so that the whole thing drifts along, dreamlike. They are strong and forceful, especially in Face In A Night Time Mirror Part 2 where after a suitably entrancing drone accompanied by a grave vocal undercurrent from guest singer Dino, the drums pick up into a forced march and the rhythm quickens; guitars clang and reverberate, panning out into a blissful vista where Nathan slowly screams through gritted teeth “Death was my angel”; a wraith like entity already dead, thanking its’ maker for putting it at peace with itself.

This album is elemental; conjuring spirits and evolving scenes of wilderness, the effect being to make the listener small and insignificant in its presence as if staring up from the foot of a mountain, yet the blood surging through the epic choruses embolden and energise. A return to the ancient sounding BM of old, quite unlike the current breed of destructive misanthropic bands seeking to annihilate and bludgeon everything in their path. Diadem Of 12 Stars is a life spirit, not a death spirit, astral and regal, as the title suggests, not of the earth, the bowels, fire and horror. With no blastbeats and no evilness, what makes this Black Metal at all? It is good to remind oneself that is while listening to this, as there is nothing quite like it around. It may be that with genrefication so acute nowadays, that this band can be considered Post-Black Metal, in the same way that Slint and Mogwai helped forge the term Post-Rock out of the shogazery noise bands.

The title track – (A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem Of 12 Stars – begins with guitars softly intertwining, shrouded in distortion, breaking into gulps of drum beats as crushing guitars crash in and out, the air in between adding weight. Slowly the density drifts apart, a shimmering guitar line slicing through the space, increasing in intensity before bursting into hammering lunges careening towards a thundering section where Jamie and Nathan sing together, one shining light, the other sucking it away. Drums roll turbulently across the churning guitars with the pressure increasing and dispersing like wind, the tone lowering into minor keys and the atonality veering off into soaring near-melodic passages. The lead guitar picks up for a brief moment as the rhythm gets choppy; crunching and biting into the drums, peaking with a sole high note then instantly descending into a funereal stomp with Nathan gradually increasing the strength of his guttural noises until real words gush out, space opening up in the music to allow him through. The drums gather pace as Jamie comes in, effortlessly shifting the album into the realms of spirituality with her softly gliding vocals, then slowly recedes into the shadows. The drums strike up again, cantering forward and the guitars give chase, thrashing and lashing out, though the ambience has shifted and a rising melancholy begins to creep in, sensing an end to things. Harsh screaming vocals bear down on the music, sweeping it aside as the track slowly fades out to the end. It is an exhausting and exhilarating piece of music, not unlike a Godspeed You! Black Emperor movement.

Which brings us neatly to the point where I started. The essence of Black Metal has always been a rejection of wasteful peripheral materialism and distracting influences, of rejecting normalities and dogmatic instruction, of free spirits and the value of individual expression. The old order has been deposed. The wolves are in the throne room

www.myspace.com/wolvesinthethroneroom

www.vendlus.com

Grizzle Yo Nizzle

Here's another interview from the end of last year. Since Grizzly Giant are now reformed and rollicking round Brighton again I'm putting this up to spread the word. Not because they need all the help they can get. That's what alcohol's for.

Grizzly Giant

I’m at the Engine Rooms, and it’s swathed in dark red light, bodies sticking together on contact in the sweaty summer heat. Onstage there is a band of three people. Solid framed, bearded guitarist George is holding a video camera and filming the crowd for the benefit of member Lee, who is on holiday in Scotland. He is getting the crowd to shout jibes about his absence into the lens. Behind him Ryan, bearded and diminutive in comparison is shouting harsh insults in a thick Welsh accent and fumbling around, eventually producing a large hard-backed book. George puts the camera down and they ask the audience to pick a number between 1 and 74. ‘24!’ yells a voice clearly. As Ryan turns to the page, Rich starts a drum machine beating and releases glitchy noises into action as George hammers his guitar – Ryan begins singing from the book about myelination and greater specialization of function of neurological pathways, magically phrasing the lines so they fit with the music.

Meet Brighton’s art-punk terrorists Grizzly Giant.

I joined them in a pub before a rehearsal to understand how a band like theirs comes about.

“We’re like a cross between a bad punk band and The Price Is Right” says Ryan, animated band poet, surreal lyricist and Welshman, who was once described by a woman in a pub as “an ugly Elvis, but good looking Johnny Cash”. “We’d never be the kind of band to walk coolly onstage and take ourselves seriously as people” says Lee, the band’s founding mastermind.

So how did it all start?

Lee says that he’ll “Miss out the relationship bit” but found himself “Living in a shed with a desire to get on stage. I said to Ryan, ‘We’ve got a gig at the Albert tomorrow’ and got him to come. I said ‘Right, I’m going to play guitar and you say one of your poems’ and that bit went o.k., so I said ‘Right, now we’re both going to moan like zombies and when we stop moaning, I’ll play guitar for a bit’” Ryan interjects “I’d just like to point out that at the time I was playing a turntable with a plank of wood coming from it and an elastic band strapped to it” “Yeah, a Technics record deck guitar” confirms Lee matter-of-factly. “I’d wired a microphone under the stylus so it sort of went BOOWAAUUUNNNG”. Ryan says “The idea was sprung when we crashed that open mic night. It was at The Farm and we were pissed as fuckers, just invaded on the hippies and did a fucking screaming, howling fucking punk poem. Then there was the Rock Rave where we did the werewolf song, which is a bit like the Zombie song but with howling instead of moaning, and this dog came and sat right in front of me and went AWROOO! Fucking mental”

Do you rehearse or plan for this kind of audience interaction?

“No, we rehearse a really tight set, then on the night we play we just get shitfaced – it’s just nervousness” says Ryan “And these two have microphones trying to get some validation from the audience” says George, indicating Ryan and Lee “but we’ve played as a 1, 2, 3 and 4 piece, depending on who’s here, and we never play the same songs again, not even if we’ve got two gigs in one week.”

Ryan stresses he has “No emotional attachment to any of the songs. I don’t get precious about them, just use them at a later date if they’re any good”, so I ask how this transient approach to songwriting affect their recorded output, the band, formed under a year ago, having not actually recorded anything other than live shows.

“We’re doing an album” says Rich excitably. “We’re going to treat the studio very differently” asserts Lee. “Still raw, but layers of instruments that we couldn’t do live on stage – and we’ll probably learn from it stuff to take on stage.” Ryan’s vision of the band’s recording process is somewhat more apocalyptic “We want to hole up somewhere, treat it with a real bunker mentality, lock ourselves away with whatever we need and it will turn into Project Zombie. We’ll convince ourselves that the whole world has turned to zombies and the only way of getting out will be to produce an album that it so good it will hypnotize them. We’ll have intricate ways of smashing their heads in. Oh, and we’re bringing out our own liquor as well.” He says, becoming increasingly enthusiastic “The Grizzly Giant Project Zombie – we’re buying a still and worked out we could knock out about a litre of vodka every four hours.”

Expect to get shitfaced, expect to have your head caved in in any number of unimaginable ways, but most of all, as Lee says “”Expect the unexpected”. Grizzly Giant are coming for you. Prepare yourselves.

www.myspace.com/grizzlygiant

“The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood”

This is an interview I conducted with Brighton band The Flesh happening last Summer. Thought I'd stick it up here in case anyone wanders through.

The Flesh Happening

With a feverish lust like a fire in your chest / You drug and you fuck till there’s no fucking left / Your mind is a mire of hunger and hate / Your body’s the temple that you desecrate

The Flesh Happening create music full of thrusting imagery and surreal unpleasantness, amped-up, irresistibly catchy, infectious hooks and surges contrasted with introspection and mortal humility. They are in many regards the most exciting band in Brighton with a volatile nature that extends to their relationships with each other as well as in the music.

I meet up with them at Bassist Ben Sumner’s flat as they prepared for their Brighton Live gig at the end of the month.

The name is perfect for your band. Where did it come from?

Oliva Spleen – front-man, lyricist, homosexual explorer, undisputed focal point of the band and owner of an incredible soporific pan-European accent says the origin is “A cheesy pulp novel about gay wrestling. It’s really funny. I only just managed to get hold of a copy because they won’t send it to England so when we stayed in America I got a copy sent to the people we were staying with.”

Can you describe your sound?

“I don’t know. It’s sort of a naff, lame version of David Bowie” says Rich (Leppard, the bands guitarist) belligerently in a mood which will both entertain and intimidate throughout the course of the interview. “We’ve been compared to loads – Roxy Music, Sonic Youth, fucking Queen” says Glaswegian Ben, sounding flattered yet unconvinced. “No don’t put Queen” snaps Rich.

Oli: “I just feel like I can’t say anything, I can’t be bothered to say anything with Rich around”

Well tell me about your lyrics Oli, and where they come from.

“Oh God, shall we go down the pub and come back in a few hours” sighs Rich. Tim Fearless, band drummer and partisan peace-keeper halts him “No Rich, let him talk, just let him ask the question”

“What was the question?” asks Oli, distracted, then laughs “A shit Roxy Music?”

The frankness and shocking quality in some of the sepulchral acts depicted in his lyrics are extreme, even by the Marquis De Sade’s standards, though Oli’s actions onstage go someway to convincing us that they are all true. “Mostly all are very autobiographical” he begins. “Some use character based stuff to communicate stuff that might be harder to talk about in the first person. The Jacques Brel thing of talking through characters that David Bowie ripped off and we’ve ripped off – Like Waste – everyone assumes that song is about me getting fucked up the arse and passing on the disease, but some of the stuff like Hitler and Jesus is just about nothing, it’s like a nursery rhyme and Shit On Me…I’ve never had anyone shit on me…..intentionally.”

Is that because you’ve never met the right person?

Oli: “No! Ha ha ha No! It’s more about the idea of giving yourself up to depravity. I don’t know, I don’t want to intellectualise it too much. It’s very lowest common denominator stuff. Shit On Me’s got a very good message about nature and about…the environment.”

Ben: “Has it?!”

Oli: “Yeah, about recycling”

Rich: “Generally, we’re a very ecological band.”

Oli: “Most of the songs come from lyrics that sound good or stupid, then I add them to more lines that sound stupid to make a big thing that sounds stupid. Useless Pumping…I didn’t even know that was about wanking…”

Rich warms to the subject: “The only lyrics I like are Rent Boy, Shit On Me and Hitler and Jesus”

Ben: “No, that’s complete rubbish Rich”

Oli: “You don’t like Waste?”

Rich: “I like the bit about ‘Fuck me up the arse’ it’s the only bit I ever remember”

Oli: “You know, when we first got this band together he said that ‘Everything you write is shit, why do you bother, everything you write is shit’, then I went home and just wanted to kill myself. Then people told me that Rich is just like that”

So how collaborative are you as a band?

Rich: “Generally, if it’s kind of subtle and clever, Tim probably wrote it, if it’s slightly poppy and thematic Ben probably wrote it, if it’s punky, I wrote it and if it’s just a standard crappy chord progression Oli wrote it”

Oli: “People say those are our strongest songs.”

Tim: “They’re beautiful lovely simple tunes”

“Simplicity Kendall….” says Oli dreamily “What was the question?”

A lot of your songs are quite aggressive sounding, musically and lyrically…

“I don’t think they’re aggressive at all” says Rich, cutting me off. “No, I don’t think they are” agrees Ben. “I’d never rape anyone” says Oli flatly.

“We’re too fucking tuneful to be aggressive” continues Rich, “There’s only one song that people said was aggressive and that’s Will To Kill because…”

Ben: “…It’s got Kill in the title…”

Rich: “…No, because it’s so off kilter”

Tim: “It’s also to do with the energy”

Oli: “And the screeching”

Ben: “Yeah, I think it’s the energy and the fact that Oli is quite full-on when he performs”.

“You can look a little bit scary Oli” confirms Tim.

“I don’t know why people say I’m scary I have no desire to dominate other people” Oli replies, exasperated.

Tim: “When you’re 6 foot 2, got 6 inch heels and you’ve got a gimp mask on, you can cut quite an imposing figure.”

Oli: “Well I’m sorry”

Tim: “His passion and his honesty is probably very intimidating”

Oli: “That’s very kind of you”

Rich: “Are you going to stand by that?”

Ben: “I know people who refuse to come to our gigs because they’ve never been before and they’ve heard this stuff”

Rich: What about the girl that read the lyrics and was too scared to listen to the CD?! You’ve read them! How can you be afraid to hear them sung?! I think people are just wankers”

Where does the inspiration come for your outfits?

Rich: “Crisp packets”

Ben: “No, just ignore everything he says”

Oli: “I like fisting gloves because they’re good for fisting and I like leather ‘cos it’s made of dead things, so I try and combine it all but make it feminine. My Grandmother was a big influence – she was the person who I used to dress up with when I was four and put make up on and then go back home and my dad would be like ‘Oh, I see the boy’s been wearing make-up again’ and he’d growl, he would never talk to me or look me in the eye and I thought I’d done something really bad but I never found it a perversion…I did find it a perversion when I put on my fathers clothes and got an erection. But the weird thing was that it was a normal thing like a suit and I though he’d get really stressed and growl at me like he had when I’d been wearing my grandmother’s make-up and find it offensive because I’d found it so sexually ‘Eeeeurgh’…oh I was only four like, but he actually went ‘Oh, the lad wants to be like his dad’ and gave me a pat on the head, whereas I’d found it more normal to be dressing in my grandmothers clothes, fur and make-up. Masculine stuff felt more like a perversion. I feel more normal in extravagant clothing and the gay wear like fisting gloves, bondage cuffs and gimp masks and all that other stuff, but it’s essentially…..My grandmother in a gimp mask.”

Would you play any cover songs?

Rich: “None of us could agree and anyway, it’s a waste of time. If you want to play covers join a covers band.”

Tim: We’ve got 26 of our own, we shouldn’t need to”

Oli: “‘He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss’ by the Crystals, written by Carol King, ‘Send Me To The Electric Chair’ by Betty Smith, I don’t know the author, they were the first two songs we did. We were going to do ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat. I’ve seen Jimmy - he’s given us his seal of approval and said ‘When are you playing next?’ and got really excited. I did want to do a video. I want to do Anal Joy as a duet with Jimmy Somerville dressed as a hamster and have him running up a tube to my anus.”

Tim: “Well he’s not going to do it now! Scratch that from the record.”

Rich: “I think Jimmy Somerville might agree to being a hamster swimming up someone’s arse.”

Oli: “Scurrying! Not swimming”

Rich: “I think with your arse it would have to be swimming”

Oli: “I just had this idea in mind. He does like us but I don’t know if he’s that far into it.”

Any plans on releasing a single?

“Yes, we are” says Ben, pleased to be back on musical concrete.

And have you decided on the songs to include?

Tim: “We’ve decided, we’ve agreed.”

Rich: “Useless Pumping, Waste, Kamikaze, just because we know Oli can’t fuck those ones up and we can do the complicated ones later. I never really liked Useless Pumping. It was me that held that one up – everyone like Useless Pumping.”

Oli: “Tim was like, ‘Let’s go la la la on the backing vocals’ and the song came alive.”

Rich: “No, he just did it.”

Oli: “Oh yes, that’s right and I had to force you into doing it again.”

Rich: “We had to spit in his face continuously.”

Tim: “We’ve got the studio booked and we’ll have something out by the end of the year.”

Rich: “Your last question should be ‘How long will the Flesh Happening actually last?’ – 2 years.”

Oli: “That’s quite good.”

Ben: “Haha, no, I’d just like to have an album out to leave a legacy.”

Rich: “Well obviously, ‘cos Tim’s a hippy, Oli’s got a deathwish and Ben’s frugal but despondent with his own mentality…”

Ben: “Blimey, I get a whole sentence, the rest of you got a word and I got a sentence.”

Rich: “I don’t give a shit right now, I just know it’s only going to end in tears.”

The Flesh Happening are all about decadence and excess and also tragedy to a degree, so I wonder about their potential to fit into the Rock and Roll cliché hall of fame.

Rich: “We’re a hideous rock and roll cliché, the rock and roll standard – one drum, guitar, bass, singer with the personalities – we are it. Oli will kill himself and the last ten years of his life people will say he’s the most talentless person on the planet. One day I’m going to write a horrible acoustic folk album that will probably get completely ignored, Ben’s going to despondently disappear into an anal job, Tim will probably open a school for African kids to learn drums.”

Tim: “Rock drums…none of that fucking…..Rock drums!”

Rich: “Tim’s going to single handedly ruin all the rhythm cultures that have existed around the globe for millions of years.”

Tim: “4/4. You can’t beat a kick drum on the first beat and a snare on the third – it’s just something magic.”

Oli: “I’ve already done the sex one…”

Ben: “I haven’t – for me it would be the sex one”

Oli: “…and the drugs one almost killed me a few years back”

Ben: “For me it would be loads of groupies throwing themselves at my feet. Oli, you’ve got the coolest cliché of all”

Oli: “What, having AIDS? I want to die of a mystery disease that no-one’s heard of.”

Rich: “I’m going to fucking die before Oli, I’ll make sure of it.”

And with that, it’s time for them to all go separate ways for previously arranged engagements.

www.thefleshhappening.com

www.myspace.com/thefleshhappening

After the Silence......

Why Hidden, Secret or Ghost tracks, should captivate the imagination so much struck me whilst compiling January’s mixtape for the International Mixtape Project. As I collected more songs together, I began wondering exactly what it was that all these bands and artists wanted to achieve with these pieces. What is it about hiding tracks that bands find so appealing and what purpose do they serve? Why would The Beatles put some infinitely repeating chatter in the inner groove of Sgt. Peppers’? Was the Super Furry Animals’ decision to hide live favourite ‘Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ in front of the first song of their Outspaced B Sides & Rarities compilation just another in their long line of stunts? And why did Jarvis’ comeback single ‘Running the World’ find itself languishing in all its glory after 25 minutes of silence? We can only hope that it was not because it contains a naughty word and Mr Cocker feared for his chart placing. Some tracks find themselves hidden due to legal reasons: The Ramones were forced to put ‘Carbona Not Glue’ at the end of live album Loco Live after a lawsuit from the Carbona corporation banned it from appearing on its intended album Leave Home, after taking offence to it’s opinion on their company.

But why should the idea of hiding things in records be such a persistent theme? From The Beatles, through the 80’s hysteria of Satanic messages hidden in heavy metal records, up to Radiohead tucking another booklet under the cd tray of Kid A (it had a secret track on it too, naturally). Far less common in hip-hop and non-existant in any other genre, it seems the true home of hiding things is in the world of rock and pop.

The Beatles, in another shocking first for pop music, are credited with conceiving the first hidden track, putting it in the run-out groove of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band shortly after the end of ‘A Day in the Life’. The clamoring collage of voices continue to repeat the phrase “Couldn’t do it any other way”, amongst other less audible chatter as the record keeps spinning. It is possibly hard to imagine how that was such a terrifying innovation today, but the album format had only truly been around since Frank Sinatra created the first concept record, about relationships, with 1955’s In the Wee Small Hours. Just twelve years later, the Beatles turned up with the highest concept album ever made, so it is hardly surprising they should make such a small but significant invention.

Discovering these tracks can be a joyous exciting event - a friend told me that on recently buying Nirvana’s In Utero on cd, having had it for so many years on cassette, the revelation of ‘Gallons Of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through The Strip’ nearly reduced her to tears - or a terrifying ordeal – the time in university halls when my blissful narcotic stupor was violently disrupted by the slaughterhouse squealing at the end of Marilyn Manson’s Smells like Children remains deeply embedded.

Just like different artists and albums themselves, these songs are wildly different, but it is the idea that they can differ wildly from the rest of the album that seems to hold appeal for many. The brief, rough, almost demo like untitled track at the end of Electrelane’s Rock It To The Moon is a brittle paean to a lover that counters the motorik instrumentals that make up the rest of the album. Likewise, the cacophonous burst of overdriven guitar and drums at the end of I Am Kloot’s Natural History is diametrically placed against the gentle witticisms of the preceeding songs. Of those that are sympathetic to the sound of the album, ‘J.L.H. Outro’ at the end of Godspeed’s F#A#∞ reprises the themes, quickly building into humanity’s final push for survival after gathering it’s strength in the intervening 12 minutes of silence. Indeed, this silence sounds almost integral to the album, like a deliberately placed respite after the apocalyptic climax, so that it seems not quite like a hidden track after all, despite not being listed on the sleeve. Islands’ ‘Bucky Little Wing’ from Return To The Sea appears linked to the rest of the album by the 10 minutes of rainfall that lead up to it. Many of these tracks are spoken words, dialogue or the sound of a room with a microphone left recording. Ash’s 1977 has the sound of one member vomiting while the others laugh around him, Mastodon’s Blood Mountain has Josh Homme reading a fan letter he is supposed to have written to the band and The Pixies Surfer Rosa & Come On Pilgrim contains a short piece entitled ‘You Fucking Die!...I Said’ in which you can feel the tension between Kim Deal and Black Francis as he claims to be, somewhat unconvincingly, merely finishing off a sentence for her. If it’s a lyrical contrast a band wishes to fulfill, Mansun achieved just that with ‘An Open Letter To The Lyrical Trainspotter’ at the end of Attack Of The Grey Lantern, which, like a punch-line to the album, posits that lyrics do not mean a thing and are the reserve of lazy musicians attempting to cover up weak tunes, as Paul Draper explains; “‘Lyrical Trainspotter’ was just a pisstake really, saying don’t take too seriously all the lyrical content.”

Vinyl hides sound in it’s run-out groove allowing the loop to repeat forever, jumping back to the beginning every rotation. CD’s stow pieces away at the end of the album after an interlude of silence from the end of the final track, after maxing out the track limit to 99 or rewinding from the first track – a more recent and possibly craftier way to hide songs on an album. Perhaps simply hiding songs at the beginning and end is just one way musicians have discovered to further utilise the formats they release their work on. Some bands have found artistic uses for the CD through the various digital functions of players. Antichrist Superstar – the album that could conceivably by considered Marilyn Manson’s own Sgt. Peppers in terms of concept - finishes with ‘Empty Sounds Of Hate’, a noisy, distorted vocal loop at track 99 that flows smoothly into the beginning of track 1 when played on repeat. Asunder’s recent Works Will Come Undone is an album consisting of two monolithic slabs of brooding grey drone that continuously merge together, creating an infinite soundscape, unrelenting yet constantly shifting with each circuit blurring the cusp, obscuring beginning and end. Gescom’s Minidisc was the first album written specifically for Minidisc players back in 1998, taking advantage of the seamless shuffle mode the format could exclusively offer (though now available on CD since they caught up with that particular technological challenge). The 88 tracks on the album were designed to be played at random offering an ever evolving pattern and texture over repeated listens and with the repeat and shuffle functions combined this album comes across as some mind warping parallel universe of sounds, collaging together, refracting, imploding in on itself, mirroring and intertwining, completely deconstructing the concept of the linear album and challenging the traditional format to offer a new method of presenting music.

The future of the hidden track in the MP3 era may be in doubt with no pregap before the first track to rewind through and the file sizes of final tracks giving the game away. However, new albums show no signs of abating the tradition. Klaxons stormed the singles charts on the strength of downloads, appealing to the digital demographic, yet their album contains one of its most interesting moments – an industrial, Eraserhead-like instrumental – right at the end, so the idea of people downloading has certainly not dimmed bands’ passions for playing hide and seek with their listeners.

Pete Jobson of I Am Kloot gives an explanation as to how these tracks come about, and drops clues in the process as to why bands will always be in thrall to adding stuff at the ends of albums that they could not get away with in the middle: “Our debut album Natural History was recorded on the Isle of Mull in a church on an eight track mini disc machine with producer/engineer and friend Guy Garvey from Elbow at the controls. It took a week to record; the budget was £500 of which £430 was spent on chicken and Guinness. The album ends with a spacious atmospheric lament entitled ‘Because’ and if the CD is left to run another 5 minutes there is a mood change in the form of a hidden track. This track remains nameless; but considering John (Bramwell, Singer) screams “Gimme love” at the top of his compass I reckon we can call it ‘Gimme Love’. The days were relatively structured as far as we played and recorded a track at a time. Live band takes in the morning and overdubs in the afternoon - evenings were food and booze and listening. The night of a particularly beguiling full moon and a drunken swim in the loch down from the church we sat down to play. What came spontaneously was a fifteen minute din that was later edited by Mr. Garvey into a 40 second slap in the face which we were delighted to hide at the back of the LP. The plan took its inspiration from an old Chinese proverb: “Get all your enemies gathered together and when they are laughing free from any care run up behind them with large sticks of bamboo and batter them”. It has come back to us on the odd occasion where listeners have relaxed into a slumber during ‘Because’ only to be thoroughly disturbed by the barbed hidden track that secretly follows. This says as much about Kloot as anything I could tell you here.”

It also tells us a lot about the recording processes of an album, and why stowing these tracks is so attractive to bands who find themselves with material imbued with so much of their spirit of the recording sessions that it seems a waste to leave it on the cutting room floor.

Maybe this essay is as effective as musing on the songs bands choose to open their albums with. It certainly seems that some consider it as important a place for music and the freedom it gives them is something which they will not relinquish lightly. So let us cease with the questioning and continue to revel in this nether world of mystery and secrecy for a long time to come.