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

Rock n Roll and wearing a bootlace tie in Doncaster

In my line of work you often come across the emerging tribes, the cults and fashions of the young and ridiculous. And I cannot fail to acknowledge the obvious fact that that once was me – all dressed up with nowhere to go – but putting on a show anyway. It transpires that the mid-eighties in Scunthorpe was part of a large scale sociological experiment where by all sub cultures were allowed free reign in schools and on the streets.

I mean I used to go to school in a tweed jacket topped with a quiff – we had a uniform – but it didn’t seem to matter as Patrick jackets collided with Donkey ones and doc marten boots. It was a free for all in the playground. It was a freedom we don’t always get under Gove and his return to the headmaster ritual of the 1950s.

I still look at clothes. I can’t fit in them but I still look at them. I’m no hipster – do you get me? I may have to start dressing like Tad to make up for my inability to sustain a healthy diet. These flirting with fashions fit snugly alongside our falling in love with sounds. I’m not sure whether it’s the clothes that lead to the finds or the songs which dictate the style – which takes me back to those pre-adolescent moments of developing a look to match the eclectic tastes being shaped through radio, film, television, friends and records, an older brother, record shops and market stalls.

I wore a bootlace tie. It was purchased in Scunthorpe Market. It may well have had a skull on it – or something rockabillyesque. I bought it because I liked Showaddywaddy and Matchbox. There was a rock n roll revival taking place – the late seventies a throwback to the fifties. All crepe soles and blue suede. A friend even had a drape made.

He was ten.

He would wear it at our first year disco in Secondary school – I wore pleated trousers and a grey mesh vest. By then the bootlace tie had been discarded and Visage and the new romantics were taking hold – the beginnings of my love affair with the synthesizer carved out in tributes to Bowie and Berlin. I have vivid memories of venturing to Doncaster. A city. It didn’t make Scunthorpe seem quaint or backward. This was not cosmopolitan.

It was larger and just as violent.

We never seemed to turn out the bands like the North West did. There is no equivalent of The Beatles this side of the country. Our ports brought in fish not rock n roll. Doncaster. Like any good city had a shopping precinct. All concrete and glass with punks and that, sat around smelling of glue and cider. I had come with my mum and brother – I am not certain why. I would wear my jacket – it had a Shakin’ Stevens patch and a Stray Cats one on the back. I would wear my bootlace tie too.

I was scared of the punks.

I thought they wouldn’t like the rockabilly clothes that I wore with pride. These names pinned to my back to mark me out as a fan. If I am honest they didn’t even notice me walk by. Those moments of dwelling that blow up but don’t go pop in your (inner) mind (y’all.) As I have said before rock n roll music – which any old way you might choose it – has always been coursing around the fringes throughout my life. And dressing to demonstrate your idols on t-shirts and badges and patches and bags is all part of that allegiance and defiance of youth. I would always buy a t-shirt at gig. Sell the fanzines in my bag and give the loose change to the t-shirt sellers or invariably the members of the band at the beginnings or ends of set filled with shimmers and jangles – feedback and attitude. And my t-shirt said ‘I understand – I get all of this’.

Whilst wearing the patches of rock n roll across the concrete streets of Doncaster and Scunthorpe – I thankfully had not gravitated towards the wearing of my idols on fabric so close to my skin. I did not own a Showaddywaddy t- shirt – although I would wear one now – postmodern maaaan. I think the first t-shirt I bought to ‘rep’ the band was The Smiths. A black Hatful of Hollow one from the Meat is Murder tour – Sheffield City Hall – five pounds well spent.

I wore it till it frayed.

And then came countless other t-shirts – at first mainly Smiths ones – The Queen is Dead, Shelia Take a bow, Shoplifters – the list goes on. And The Primitives ‘Stop Killing me’ black and white number, The Groove Farm, The Cure and and and. I still wear them today – in a nod to the allegiance and cultural belonging that liking pop affords. I have an Edsel Auctioneer one, various Brian Wilson ones, My bloody Valentine ‘Feed me with your Kiss’, a Primal Scream ‘Ivy Ivy Ivy’ one, Public Enemy, the Pistols and the most recent purchase a grey one with Metroplex records emblazoned across the chest. These emblems of safety and tribal belonging have shaped the fan world since they cottoned on you could get the kids to part with more cash if you but a name and face on it. Okay so the The Sidddleys never had a pencil case made but I swear my brother and I contemplated the Brian Wilson dressing gown that was available on the ‘That Lucky Old Sun’ tour. It would have gone nicely with our Smile bags – mine is currently gathering dust in a cupboard.

It is unlikely that I will ever seize the zeitgeist again and rock up a look with patches and badges – not that my rock n roll tributes were ever of the moment. I may occasionally venture out to Sainsbury’s proclaiming my love for the valentines as the young folk busily stay hip to music’s ever changing moods.

They’re wearing the crepe soled shoes again. They are as yet not modelling The Edsel Auctioneer gear.

This is The Edsel Auctioneer – they were/ are from Leeds – I will write about them at some point in the future. I did like them so much that I bought a t-shirt – so they’re worth a listen. Kind of like a northern Buffalo Tom – but much better.

I think I can help you get through your exams

It has been one of those endless swirls of fatigue and the refusal to sleep. Of [high] tension [lines] and mis-directed thoughts as men with suits swamp corridors and judge. It has not been one to relish. And in between all that a daughter growing older with cakes and ponies – so much more real than ideological battles over assessments and attainment.

When I was younger – and was schooled rather than running tings. I rushed heady into the exam period with a fevered joy that Summer lay ahead and I was coming of age – a more positive Kes you could say. I still had an anorak but no bird of prey. There had been a soundtrack to my waking and dreaming hours that had got me through good times and bad – and those periods of indiscriminate nothingness that teenagers have.

I once had a photograph taken with a bootlace tie and my Rock n Roll singles – Paul took one of his Adam and the Ants 45s. A passion he and now my children have today – not taking photographs but Adam Ant. So it will come as no surprise that I had rituals and ways of getting things done.

I would play the same song before every exam. It helped like that. These simple rituals and superstitions. I am an athesist – I have no belief in a God – or an afterlife – but I do get reassured by ritual. It makes no difference – what difference does it make? I had rearranged the ‘dining room’ – sounds grand but it wasn’t – fold out table, sideboard, redundant chairs and nets at the window – into where I would do my revision. I was revising – learning stuff to pass examinations – it’s how you get ahead [I couldn’t get ahead] and I would secrete myself behind the door – fold out table part folded out and work through notes and ideas and thrust myself back into lessons and learning.

Music [and girls] provided the breaks in study. I would let myself play a Sea Urchins song or a Mary Chain screech to satisfy the rebellious spirit I had sort to engender along the final months of the fifth year. I have seen photographs from those final years – it’s as if the teachers felt the weight of the very steel of the town and simply allowed us to be who we wanted – to give us an out. Not regiment and force our compliance – rather let us be – whilst singing words of wisdom from the old wooden desks at the front – let it be. Revision was punctuated by sun and walks and songs and words. It’s what gets me through the day these days. I wasn’t really viewing the revision as a means of acquiring the stuff I needed to answer the papers rather as a reason to treat myself to a tune.

And before each exam I would take the trusted walkman – I think it was a Boots one – it recorded as well -and play Handsome Devil so that Morrissey would ‘help me get through my exams’. Marr direct guitar matching the bursts of knowledge stored in my brain – all ready to come tumbling out in ink and showed workings when I sat at those lonely seats with just me and the paper and pen in my pocket. This tradition continued through my A-levels and most possible my degree – but I was wrapped up in fog and fury by that time.

But I still had my walkman.

There is more to life than books you know – but not much more.

Imaginary sounds of the suburbs

School discos were an essential part of growing up - school discos in bleak northern Britain were and mostly still are the high point of a low year. Actually – i don’t think they have discos anymore – nowadays people want a prom. All borrowed cliché and romance from fatuous films predicated with an inane pop soundtrack and ending on a wonderful high where everybody has their moment. I was always more Carrie than Glee. Do you get me?

I remember the anticipation.

The getting together of the look – the style – the outfit – with as much fondness as the girls in my year did. To be honest I think everybody cared in some way or another – because discos are rituals. We map out our territories, desires, ambitions with the shake of a hip and our sartorial stylings. We cast our net and hope for a catch – of the rough and the smooth, of the slap and the tickle.

I went to many youth discos – they used to hold a regular one down near The Comet public house – it was known – quite catchingly as Comet Disco. There was big disco and little disco – the rites of passage marked by your ascendency to the ‘big’ one. And of course there were intermittent school ones – with gin swigged from miniatures and fags shared between three, four and sometimes five hapless teenagers.

And hopeful dances and embraces in dark corners and empty parts of the school grounds. I was a bit of an idiot looking back – but to be honest I didn’t care. This was heartfelt, passionate – always about the music – on the dance floor to the mix I believed to be authentic and straight off again when I felt I‘d swam into shallow waters of mediocrity and Top 40ness.

Well I almost always stomped off.

I never held back for the ‘smoochers’ – I’d dance to anything then as long I was able to get up close to which ever girl I had fallen headily in love with that week. In fact Wham’s Last Christmas could well have been my song – as I flitted and crossed the floor several times in the space of an evening. Once bitten – twice as likely to show off more. So what has brought this nostalgic rush of school days back? I heard from an old school friend this morning – one I had dreamt about many times [and I fell out of bed twice] and all those heady glances came rushing back sound tracked to the eighties power ballads, ska skankings, electro beats and indie janglings.

And just for the record – i wouldn’t change anything about the now – i can see the real me – but those school days with their musical backdrop formed this Scunthorpe lad – that and the acrid sulphur filled streets and bleak industrial townscape that rattled through my dreams. I could choose a whole heap of tunes for this post – and I need to turn the writing from nostalgia to music again – i’m getting all sentimental [said i wasn’t going but I went still.]

In some ways the post should be about True by Spandau Ballet, or Careless Whisper by George Michael – but I want to delve deeper into those discos and parties and remember why I wanted to get out this place [if it was the last thing I ever did.] I was invited to a party - i was most likely seventeen – spotty and opinionated – bowl headed and wearing a brown anorak as a sign that I had embraced the post C86 scene with abandon. I would take records to parties – they didn’t play my kind of music – i mean I would take sha la la flexis, Sarah records, the Fall and the Pistols to surburban houses where the Top 40 was moving and shaking the masses. I was a fool – but one who thought little shiny pieces of floppy plastic could break the capitalist system – by passing the fact I was part of it by producing and buying into it.

But who said you can’t be naive?

So here at David Ashton’s house party I attempted to play Anorak City by Another Sunny Day [ i would also do this in Rotherham – forcing some hairies to play Pristine Christine on the decks – until he started taking the piss out of its production on the microphone – kind of like an indie battle rhymer – yes – check out the urchins and their jangling sound, this fake piece of psychedelic underground – and all the bowl heads love to shake their stuff to it, but I’m the MC and this song is shit – it kind of went like that. It didn’t because the MCing scene had not yet hit the biking fraternity of Wath upon Dearne - but you can half imagine it]

So I force this smaller than usual flexi on the record deck – that fizzing and popping of cheap production as the drum machine kicks in and the incessant drive of chugging fuzzed up guitars begins – take a ride to anorak city – the singer enthuses – all soft and twee as I danced, fell, awkwardly stumbled in the dining room. As sport billies sized me up with a single glance and then a rush of blood to the head and a push and a shove and the walls came tumbling down and I am involved in a quarrel of epic proportions – can’t anybody see this is the real deal.

This is disposable pop.

And I was preaching to an audience of one. Well perhaps two.

And I still play Anorak City – you don’t hear that on Radio Two – where I can tap into the memories of school fumbles and chances. You don’t hear Another Sunny Day on a regular basis on any radio station and once I dreamed that we would.