Summer is here

It’s that hot part of the year. That hazy wind down time and feeling on your knees as summer finally arrives in this profession of pace and progression. I’ve found myself turning to the sounds of nature to calm and revive me. I was listening to a youtube film of a thunderstorm yesterday – there was ten hours of it.

I mixed Satie and Eno in there too in some sort of attempt to create an ambient super group – or was that System 7?

I’ve always listened to these sounds. Melting brain and mind moments. Today it’s the Aphex Twin – seeking refreshment in layered tones and liquid rhythms. When radio was FM – actually when it was AM – you could scan the airwaves and happen across tones and sounds and tests and trials. I have a cassette tape somewhere of birdsong – just endlessly going on and on – channelled through the airwaves – saying that  - I might just have taped the outside world rather than the sounds I thought were coming from my radio. You’re head gets like that when you’re young.

But laying restless in the night – all hot and bothered – I become ever more aware of those patterns and rhythms – screeches and squelches – distant engines and drifting conversations taking place in space. I’m enthralled to the sound of the city. And in the heat all that is solid melts into air. It may be the fact I work in a school – those drifting lessons – science lectures and shouts – open doors and the ever present gated reverb of corridors built in concrete.

It’s like a Joe Meek and Spector soundclash.It’s a sound I like.

I used to make ambient tapes – way back when I couldn’t (still can’t) mix. I’d use tones and stretches of sound to meld into something else. A tape loop or a found sound merging with a Beaumont Hannant track or Autechre (first album folks – on vinyl too) and make my super friend Daryl listen to it in post comedown revelry on drives from Venus (the club – not the planet) as we wound back to our communal town of shite and steel. Just listening as lights went out and the sun came up. Heady – easy days – my friend. That late eighties early nineties explosion of sound. It seems an age ago. Do you know what I mean?

It is – in fact twenty four years ago.

Nineteen ninety four was twenty four years after The Beatles – they  seemed ancient then – so I guess me blethering on about The Orb and all sorts of sonic business – must sound like that old lag in the bar – harping on about the ‘real’ stuff. Richard (composer – one part Pale Blue Dot) and I once met a guy in a local public house reminiscing about the festival circuit – we named him ‘Tone Henge’ – we all know an ‘Anthony Henge’. I’m becoming one – except I’m talking about sequencers, samples and psychedelia.

I haven’t ever seen the Aphex Twin. I don’t want to really. I also don’t know that much about him. Every now again an interview will surface and revere the sounds and add to the status. Which is fine by me. They’ll be an allusion to his time in a bank vault – or when he played sandpaper at a concert – it’s all fine by me. Because Richard James has made some incredibly interesting – non conformist electronic music over the decades. I was listening to Daft Punk – at home – they hadn’t come to play at my house – it was just a CD. And I was lazily invoking Kraftwerk and Adonis and DJ Pierre and Master at Work. They have made something of this ‘electronic music’ lark and then suddenly – I’m switching from Daft Punk to the true pioneers and I’m mining the Richard James back catalogue – and here you see that uncompromising approach to electronica – there is no sympathy for the modern world. This is a Kraftwerk feeling that a future full of robots is actually quite a daunting prospect – Kafawerk – see what I did there?

Or on the other hand it might just be that the Aphex Twin likes a minor key. I dunno.

Caution: failed artist attempt sentence approaching. I once made a sound installation with a wonderful artist – it was just someone walking up the stairs – just walking around – played over a projection of a room – I hid the speakers in the ceiling. There were no stairs in the room. It was unnerving. In my mind anyway – Aphex seems to tap directly in to that feeling – Xtal wheezys and gasps for breathe and beats pound relentlessly as your chest tightens – ambient sounds for the asthma generation. Wave your inhalers in the air. It combines that Vicks loosening congestant with rave culture capital.

It suits that state of mind here at the start of summer.

Richard D James has released so much music under so many monikers it would be impossible to document the scale of electronic manipulation and creation that has come from his mind to yours (ours) but I often find myself returning to those early ambient works. Those moments of genuine freedom when he wasn’t necessarily thinking of careers  - there’s that wonderful feeling of possibility when you’re young. You’ve yet to reference Stockhausen, you didn’t have immediate access to the back catalogue Kraftwerk or Transmat Records or Metroplex Records – you’re just trying to make sounds that exist in your mind a reality so you can play them to someone else – well even play them to yourself. You just let time disappear as you endlessly change an LFO modulation or move the VCO to change the frequency.  Days ran into weeks when I became wrapped in the micro manipulation of wav forms that emitted squeaks and bleeps from my Roland Juno 6.

You just make music.

The Juno 6 sits in the garage now. Alongside sequencers and old drum machines, tape reverb systems and blown speakers. But it’s not me I’m concerned for -  with the start of the holidays that Gove wants to snatch away from children – you worry for the future Aphex Twins – in bedrooms with time on their hands and sounds in their minds. You need to lose time as well as sleep to commit sounds to tape.

You need to have no other distractions. Let the summer begin. 

And here is Xtal from Selected Ambient Works 82 - 95

There’s a howling coming from that there room

In adolescent times you could kick over the statutes by turning up the volume and raging at the world from the comfort of your bedroom – safe in the knowledge that you were in your room and no one was going to know whether you were playing The Birthday Party or Showaddywaddy. What now sounds like a confessional session but merely is thinking is that those rooms saved our lives many a time.

If I think what went on in my bedroom – it was the carving out of this.

There is a sense of unbridled energy lurking in the walls of teenage rooms. I was watching the classic albums programme about Screamadelica and there in those photographs of McGee, Innes and Gillespie was that energy – that building of confidence through shared understandings and mis-timed joking. Of microphone posing and record jockeying.

Bedrooms are the catalyst to action.

Once Paul and I recorded a feedback fuelled tribute to the death of Shep in minutes of Noake’s announcement that his trusty dog had left his side or hit record on the Amstrad Studio 100 as we attempted to out do the Butthole Surfers with a one stringed kazoo version of Hurdy Gurdy Man – that simply revolved around the speakers on playback all muffled and sat on.

Or forming a hip hop group as we sampled and scratched our ways through the beastie madness .And the list goes on, the T-Rex salute to She Sells Sanctuary or the pulsating drones of the Juno 6 as I tried to recreate Pink Allen’s Rising High ambient ‘sounds’. The tribute acts to Mud and the hyponotic tremors of Spiritualised meets David Essex – all happened in rooms with beds in.

Time and imagination fuels production.

When I had moved out and then returned it was with a different set of records in my bag – but it was still about getting your tunes played – as tapes were placed in decks and records spun in an attempt to get to the root of  it all. I guess I should have been taking more time to actually learn things – find out stuff that mattered but playing Ill Communication followed by The Beach Boys, Denim an old funk 45 and the Dust Brothers Chemical Beats [purchased from Danny in Record Village that morning] was shaping the sounds and ideas in our heads. Ideas of escape for the most part.

I remember up in a loft in Brockley – sat with Richard as we listened, tipsy and smoke ridden, to demos of his band on portable tape recorders – all these moments of beauty locked into tiny spaces or staring out the top windows of grand houses on Granville Park as The Pixies or Teenage Fanclub provided a soundtrack to new living. Or cramped in Lee’s room as he played the solo from I am the resurrection by the Roses and we all sat in awe. Or seeing how far our Alba systems could go with young continentals and hard jazz sounds. In those rooms – you took risks and you were always looking to nudge that volume up – just that little bit more.

As I get older – and spaces become mine – not borrowed from others. Not that I resented my parents having a front room. A record player of their own. But now I am that adult – that responsible being with a record player in my front room – the bedroom is just that now – a bedroom. I don’t think I make the same racket as I used to – I know I don’t - the volume is louder in the car than in my front room – well only room. Open plan – maaaaan.

I think the responsibility of age is a good thing – it’s not endless late nights and german acid tracks making the walls bounce or atonal post punk rock that communicates with cats – it’s different now. At times I will seek to enlighten the family with an obscure gem pulled from the racks. But my selector days are quieter now. Currently the Jonny album is in the CD tray, it replaced Beethoven who slid in after the Aphex Twin Ambient Works Vol.1. The Minus records album is in the car, alongside Justin Robertson’s Art of Acid or Weatherall’s Fabric Mix [Number 19 if you want to buy it]

Still the thrill of hitting start and letting the music course through speakers whether tiny or woofing never really leaves you. Before we moved to this house – we had a place in Lewisham all Victorian stories and that and I put the record player up in the top loft rooms alongside the vinyl haul – and in part it felt like those early days in rooms with others letting sounds ring out and making us all scream and shout and talk about that production and this bass line and that snare and this sample. I have always been fun to live with. I listened to Smile for the first time – when Wilson had deigned to redo it – up there – up in that room – in my room. Blew my mind.

This weekend I will play a record in my front room.

Not loud. But just let it play in salute of all the bedroom revolutions taking place. And I am racking my brains and trying to tap into memories to decide on what it should be – so many times I stepped up to the record player and pulled a tune from a sleeve and waited with anticipation for it to begin. From the sha la la flexis to records that arrived through the post or were discovered in charity shops and caught my eye or cadged of friends to take home and tape. There are simply too many of them to choose from.

Perhaps it should be the first single I ever bought – XTC Sergeant Rock – a staccato psychedelic exploration of ‘manning up’ as John Terry would say – a Top of the Pops glimspse, a 7inch from Boots and descent into music autism for the rest of my life. Thanks Andy Partridge – thanks. Although now I’m not certain whether that was the first 45 I bought – it may have been Motorhead and Girlschool ‘Please don’t Touch’ that garage chug with a glint in its eye. No, I’m sticking with Sgt Rock – and so will you.

There isn’t a great deal to say about XTC – I was never really a fan. And then Paul got hold of the Dukes of Stratosphere albums and clearly there is a great deal to XTC.

Born out bedrooms see – it’s where it all begins.

XTC Sgt Rock – purchased one month before Motorhead [I googled it]

Hit the North

The North can sometimes turn out the coolest sounds – amidst the humdrum towns that drag you down – there’s something in the constant mither and moans – rains and winds that has us all running to music to soothe our ills.

Because everybody’s got to live their live.

However, it was and never will be fashionable the North that is – you can add a touch of gloss here and there and often northern souls are hip in a way that can’t be recorded or documented with the lens of the capital cameras. But fashionable it is not. I guess anyone thinking that the Beatles had it, or The Buzzcocks started it, The Smiths lived it and the Mondays partied with it would think that the North was awash with glamour and excitement. But that means you negate the existence of:

Doncaster

Rotherham

Grimbsy

Hull

Preston,

York,

Skipton,

Scunthorpe,

Scarborough-on-Sea,

Chester,

Chorley,

Cheedle Hulme,

Ormskirk,

Accrington Stanley,

and Leigh,

Ossett,

Otley,

Ikley Moor,

Sheffield

These places are all in the north, filled with fury and futility as kids kick cats and hit each other with baseball bats. And growing up you would wrestle with the ‘big’ kids or find alternative routes home to avoid a kicking through ten foots and alleys, over railings and walls to retreat to the sounds that filled you with hope and security. And as I grew older I fell in love with it all – a romance with the bleak outlook and frustrated faces – the furnaces and the smoke. And we would play records and dream of escape but a little part of me reels around the [central park] fountain and is forever wedded to cheap pies and ale and those discos with deejays who talked over seven inches and scraps with your chips. Holed up in the council house streets – in our shared bedrooms we played tunes to soothe our troubles and growing pains.

I remember the revolving 45s and 33s – the wait as the needle hit the record and the drumbeat went like that. This was our heaven up here, up the stairs and away from the folks – we would roar through The Birthday Party EPs, rock to the Spector sounds of Rock n Roll by Lennon, immerse ourselves in the electric jangles of bands from foreign places and sunny climes and discuss lost albums by the Beach Boys or how we could track down Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed. It’s all at a touch of a button these days – a sharp hit on the return key and you can hear it – find out what others think – study the style [and go wild]. Back then it was a [mystery] it was trips to the library to seek out books on music – and leaf through back issues of NME – perfectly stored in boxes under tables. And you could even take records out – take them home under your arm with the books. Now you’d be lucky to get a book out.

Existing on one photograph of Lou Reed or The Byrds to create your [Scunthorpe] style was a challenge – but one we relished and warmed to. Sub-culture the meaning of style – having a look because that’s all you got to distinguish you from the masses [and attract the lasses] And never to be recreated. I know I discussed that this writing should not be about looking back – but it is permeated with loss – it’s the age thing creeping in and the disconnection from the real on a day to day basis. Like an alzhiemer’s waltzer – spinning and glimpsing and then forgetting for no reason other than it pops and springs into the mind.

But amidst the spit on the streets was a mapping out of the attitudes the opinions – it was where friendships sparked with wit and naivety stem from – of getting things wrong and working things out to the backdrop of bass and guitars, thumping drums and screams of alienation – which sounds so death metal – but it wasn’t - it was quite light to be honest – full of fun apart from the occasional thumping – which I often deserved anyway, as oversized kids on ‘peds – confronted you with fucks and fingers because of your hair or this or that. Although,I did own a mustard crimpoline cardigan – an homage to Mancunian miseries – that riled many a person up. I mean a cardigan causing confrontation and consternation – THIS IS THE NORTH.

They take offence at a built up shoe, or a slow queue or a badly pulled ale.

So we thank them for the music and the songs I am singing. I never really subscribed to the North/ South divide – you’re either thick or you’re clever – it don’t make no difference what dialect you speak in or what you call a bread roll. And I haven’t worked it out – no doubt somebody will – an ex-accountant with a penchant for the indie scene of the early 1990s – how many bands have risen from the North as opposed to the South - but i guess i like as many bands from down south as do from up north. You know I own an Airstream box set for christ’s sake.

I haven’t felt excited about a band in a long time – well not in the way I used to as a young man. It was what got you through the week. But a friend I worked with gave me a burnt CD – it had Arctic Monkeys written on it – he said they we’re good – had seen them a couple times in London dives and on small stages and the crowd went wild and everybody sang along. I was worried to be honest – never felt that next big thing really – you know I cock an ear to it – but don’t exactly follow it. I mean Glasvegas or the XX anyone? All that studiedness and Brit[school] pop charm and sensibility. No,no, no – I don’t love that anymore. So it may well have been a while before I could be bothered to listen to it. It was certainly after lots of people had believed the hype. [But Flavor told me to not believe and you tend to do as Flavor says] So it was with a sense of knowing about these lads that I hit play – and I was pleasantly surprised at first. Hadn’t thought that it would appeal – but found myself returning to lines – of sentiments and situations that resonated with realness as I remembered ‘cuddles in the kitchen just to get things off the ground’. Clearly within this cacophony of guitar – all mastered LOUD was a band with a heart –and a band with an attitude you could just about respect. Young lads, making young music for young people. It is not hip to bluster in on someone else’s scene. But that first album – as it was these songs were the authentic ones – the demos you know – the ones given away – at gigs - as the myspace world made bands an all of that – but these songs became that angry Arthur Seaton two fingered salute to all the [my] generations trying to claim them as their own. As I said I don’t want to be part of a [music] scene – heavy on the [music] scene – but the Monkeys [see what I did there] were pretty much creating it with each strum of their guitars.

But whatever people say about that album that is what it is not. It is Northern though. And some tunes just capture that spirit – that bleakness you get from darker nights and cheap lager. I once saw a kid just dragging a curtain rail around – it was like twenty feet and he was about 5 ft – and he was dragging it around – I think he was going to school. But there’s a certain romance with all of that – not sentimental – more brutal. Like Loach’s Kes or Meadow’s England. Of bigger lads and chances and nods and winks and Rugby club dances. There’s a simplicity and a mockery that I love in the lyrics on that album and it reminds me of being there. Of course now ruined by Emma’s brother mentioning George Formby as ‘Bet you look good on the dancefloor’ came on. So all I have in my head on hearing is a ukulele or banjo working class caricature – strumming tunes with wild abandon.

It is clear the North will [not] rise again - not in ten thousand years.

But I do like it.