There has been a few occasions this week when i've thought the media (specifically the BBC) has given us ( the general public) more / less credit than we are worth / deserve (delete as appropriate) when it comes to the Wikileaks "revelations".
Apparently many of the articles have revealed nothing new about the machinations of various governments, the sniping of different secret services and the underlying naked thoughts of many of our / it's leaders.
Yes, we already suspect that Russia has some unsavoury connections, we kind of guessed that bags of money were being delivered here, there and everywhere. What was really surprising was the amount of information that came out.
The curveball however was how succinctly and quickly this information was presented, story after story was revealed - it was like the guy/gal who always blurts out what everybody else was thinking in the room, but constantly for days on end.
It was like a trusted source was confirming all of the rumours that had been doing the rounds for years and years.
Either nobody listened, was overwhelmed by the amount of information or more likely didn't give a shit - the BBC went along with the line of "we already knew that anyway so none of the information contained matters that much so we'll just do a story about how a bloke was stuck in traffic for a whole 20 minutes due to the big freeze"
One final point to wrap up this ramble - when we have prime ministerial advisers advising that somebody be assassinated due to some website revealing what are effectively some embarrassing memos that seemingly most people don't give a shit about we know we are in trouble.
Worryingly and very sadly, maybe this says as much about us as the whole freedom of speech debate it will undoubtebly throw up.
There is a argument about protection of military personnel, damage to global stability by banning the Wikileaks btw which at very best lazy. We can have the Korea debate another time.
The End.
Friday, 3 December 2010
Friday, 26 November 2010
Gorecki: The Symphony of Sorrowful Songs
Watched this last night and singulary one of the most affecting, devastating pieces of film i have ever watched. The WWII footage is truly terrifying. The most beautiful music put to the most brutal imagery.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wnmhd/The_Symphony_of_Sorrowful_Songs_Gorecki/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wnmhd/The_Symphony_of_Sorrowful_Songs_Gorecki/
Monday, 22 November 2010
Wolf Eyes
I'm almost embarrassed to say that I think i'm quite an "adventurous" type when it comes to music (feel free to to deride this as a wanky, pretentious comment).
Sometimes though, when you reach your outer limits of "adventurousness" you happen across the most brain numbingly shit example of experimental music ever committed to record.
I must admit to sometimes paying too much attention to the scribblings of Nathan Barley alike critics proclaiming the next art school derivative wankathon.
I read somewhere about being able to distinguish between "good" and "bad" noise in a wanky review about the superb new Emeralds album. One of the crop of these good noise merchants was Wolf Eyes.
Oooh Wolf Eyes. Cool name on a cool underground label, ooh and they also had some self released cassettes, CASSETTES! in 2010 - they must be good i thought. Am i going to be thrust into some kind of life affirming, cathartic, transcendental "noise core" stupour?
Unfortunately not - Wolf Eyes sound like when the Aphex Twin did that gig in Japan with the sandpaper 12"'s and the food blender but without the good bits. They sound like when you flick through a hotel tv but 98 of the 99 channels are just static but not as good. Sometimes when you listen to it on headphones it scares you a bit but not in a good way. Quite likely Wolf Eyes are operating on a completely different plain to me, a plain that is only accessible to the band members, some music critics from Drowned in Sound and mental people.
I obviously don't do this justice so I implore you all to listen to one of their albums, Human Animal is particulary shit.
I tried really hard.
Of course the best music often divides opinion and i quite like the Mars Volta so all of the above is bollocks.
THE END
Sometimes though, when you reach your outer limits of "adventurousness" you happen across the most brain numbingly shit example of experimental music ever committed to record.
I must admit to sometimes paying too much attention to the scribblings of Nathan Barley alike critics proclaiming the next art school derivative wankathon.
I read somewhere about being able to distinguish between "good" and "bad" noise in a wanky review about the superb new Emeralds album. One of the crop of these good noise merchants was Wolf Eyes.
Oooh Wolf Eyes. Cool name on a cool underground label, ooh and they also had some self released cassettes, CASSETTES! in 2010 - they must be good i thought. Am i going to be thrust into some kind of life affirming, cathartic, transcendental "noise core" stupour?
Unfortunately not - Wolf Eyes sound like when the Aphex Twin did that gig in Japan with the sandpaper 12"'s and the food blender but without the good bits. They sound like when you flick through a hotel tv but 98 of the 99 channels are just static but not as good. Sometimes when you listen to it on headphones it scares you a bit but not in a good way. Quite likely Wolf Eyes are operating on a completely different plain to me, a plain that is only accessible to the band members, some music critics from Drowned in Sound and mental people.
I obviously don't do this justice so I implore you all to listen to one of their albums, Human Animal is particulary shit.
I tried really hard.
Of course the best music often divides opinion and i quite like the Mars Volta so all of the above is bollocks.
THE END
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
Nightclubs
Charlie Brooker is a cantankerous bugger, which is why i like this:--
( I can almost feel my feet sticking to the beer / fag / bodily fluid stained carpet)
If he thinks this is bad he should have tried the Buckley Tivoli in 1993
Oh, i wonder if Konnie likes nightclubs?
I went to a fashionable London nightclub on Saturday. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often, because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool. But a glamorous friend of mine was there to "do a PA", and she'd invited me and some curious friends along because we wanted to see precisely what "doing a PA" consists of. Turns out doing a public appearance largely entails sitting around drinking free champagne and generally just "being there".
Obviously, at 36, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as well have been smeared head to toe with pus. People regarded me with a combination of pity and disgust. To complete the circuit, I spent the night wearing the expression of a man waking up to Christmas in a prison cell.
"I'm too old to enjoy this," I thought. And then remembered I've always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don't have to pretend any more.
I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.
Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.
Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they "enjoy" clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.
Drugs render location meaningless. Neck enough ketamine and you could have the best night of your life squatting in a shed rolling corks across the floor. And no one's going to search you on the way in. Why bother with clubs?
"Because you might get a shag," is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs.
Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club.
Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things stuck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I'd still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I've progressed that far.
The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that's all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.
Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can't remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It's not enough to pretend you're having fun in the club any more - you've got to pretend you're having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends' Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other.
Mind you, since in about 20 years' time these same people will be standing waist-deep in skeletons, in an arid post-nuclear wasteland, clubbing each other to death in a fight for the last remaining glass of water, perhaps they're wise to enjoy these carefree moments while they last. Even if they're only pretending.
( I can almost feel my feet sticking to the beer / fag / bodily fluid stained carpet)
If he thinks this is bad he should have tried the Buckley Tivoli in 1993
Oh, i wonder if Konnie likes nightclubs?
I went to a fashionable London nightclub on Saturday. Not the sort of sentence I get to write very often, because I enjoy nightclubs less than I enjoy eating wool. But a glamorous friend of mine was there to "do a PA", and she'd invited me and some curious friends along because we wanted to see precisely what "doing a PA" consists of. Turns out doing a public appearance largely entails sitting around drinking free champagne and generally just "being there".
Obviously, at 36, I was more than a decade older than almost everyone else, and subsequently may as well have been smeared head to toe with pus. People regarded me with a combination of pity and disgust. To complete the circuit, I spent the night wearing the expression of a man waking up to Christmas in a prison cell.
"I'm too old to enjoy this," I thought. And then remembered I've always felt this way about clubs. And I mean all clubs - from the cheesiest downmarket sickbucket to the coolest cutting-edge hark-at-us poncehole. I hated them when I was 19 and I hate them today. I just don't have to pretend any more.
I'm convinced no one actually likes clubs. It's a conspiracy. We've been told they're cool and fun; that only "saddoes" dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled "sad" - it's like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.
Clubs are despicable. Cramped, overpriced furnaces with sticky walls and the latest idiot theme tunes thumping through the humid air so loud you can't hold a conversation, just bellow inanities at megaphone-level. And since the smoking ban, the masking aroma of cigarette smoke has been replaced by the overbearing stench of crotch sweat and hair wax.
Clubs are such insufferable dungeons of misery, the inmates have to take mood-altering substances to make their ordeal seem halfway tolerable. This leads them to believe they "enjoy" clubbing. They don't. No one does. They just enjoy drugs.
Drugs render location meaningless. Neck enough ketamine and you could have the best night of your life squatting in a shed rolling corks across the floor. And no one's going to search you on the way in. Why bother with clubs?
"Because you might get a shag," is the usual response. Really? If that's the only way you can find a partner - preening and jigging about like a desperate animal - you shouldn't be attempting to breed in the first place. What's your next trick? Inventing fire? People like you are going to spin civilisation into reverse. You're a moron, and so is that haircut you're trying to impress. Any offspring you eventually blast out should be drowned in a pan before they can do any harm. Or open any more nightclubs.
Even if you somehow avoid reproducing, isn't it a lot of hard work for very little reward? Seven hours hopping about in a hellish, reverberating bunker in exchange for sharing 64 febrile, panting pelvic thrusts with someone who'll snore and dribble into your pillow till 11 o'clock in the morning, before waking up beside you with their hair in a mess, blinking like a dizzy cat and smelling vaguely like a ham baguette? Really, why bother? Why not just stay at home punching yourself in the face? Invite a few friends round and make a night of it. It'll be more fun than a club.
Anyway, back to Saturday night, and apart from the age gap, two other things stuck me. Firstly, everyone had clearly spent far too long perfecting their appearance. I used to feel intimidated by people like this; now I see them as walking insecurity beacons, slaves to the perceived judgment of others, trapped within a self- perpetuating circle of crushing status anxiety. I'd still secretly like to be them, of course, but at least these days I can temporarily erect a veneer of defensive, sneering superiority. I've progressed that far.
The second thing that struck me was frightening. They were all photographing themselves. In fact, that's all they seemed to be doing. Standing around in expensive clothes, snapping away with phones and cameras. One pose after another, as though they needed to prove their own existence, right there, in the moment. Crucially, this seemed to be the reason they were there in the first place. There was very little dancing. Just pouting and flashbulbs.
Surely this is a new development. Clubs have always been vapid and awful and boring and blah - but I can't remember clubbers documenting their every moment before. Not to this demented extent. It's not enough to pretend you're having fun in the club any more - you've got to pretend you're having fun in your Flickr gallery, and your friends' Flickr galleries. An unending exhibition in which a million terrified, try-too-hard imbeciles attempt to out-cool each other.
Mind you, since in about 20 years' time these same people will be standing waist-deep in skeletons, in an arid post-nuclear wasteland, clubbing each other to death in a fight for the last remaining glass of water, perhaps they're wise to enjoy these carefree moments while they last. Even if they're only pretending.
Friday, 22 October 2010
I have mixed feelings when I hear about the so called "death of physical media" that we hear so much about in the erm.. media.
As a cd collector and an ex record shop guy , when i first started considering this i was firmly on the physical media side - i thought there is definitely got to be an emotional attachment to buying records, tapes, cd's, whatever.
Of course the experience starts or started long before the purchasing of the cd.
I remember as a teenager growing up in a shitty North Wales town avidly reading the Kerrang review section ( i always used to read the reviews section first, the interviews and stuff were always bypassed) reading about the latest Meathook Seed album and getting excited about taking the bus to Probe records in Chester on Saturday to collect said album that i'd ordered over the electric telephone a week or so before (our nearest, sorry only, "record store" in shittty North Wales town was Woolies, which was, of course, shite).
Now, the fact that that the shop assistant had put the wrong cd in the case the first time around (Meat Loaf) or the fact that the cd wasn't that good wasn't really the point - it was the whole act of the buying of the record, the bus journey, the handing over of my hard earned paper round money, the reading of the sleeve notes on the bus back to Chester which is the thing I remember. Aside from the albums that i've ordered online, each physically purchased album reminds me of something. Going through my record collection i can sometimes remember where it was bought, how i felt at the time, what the weather was like, the gig that i'd been to that prompted the purchase, how great it sounded with a few beers on a friday night etc etc.
But then i started thinking about the other sort, the none physical music that we listen to. The stuff that we buy online and download, Spotify, Last fm etc etc. Although there is no physical media to hold, no sleeve notes, no lyrics to read, the biggest advantage of downloading music (legally of coure) is the joy of discovery. Although not quite there with the visceral excitement of finding a long lost deleted copy of your favourite Dr Octagon record whilst crate digging how else would I have discovered the joys of French pop via Jacques Dutronc or wishing I had taken more notice of my dad's Billy Fury records years before ( and all without setting a virtual foot in the itunes store)
Sure, some may argue that downloads are killing the art of the album and im sure time will tell as sales of physical media dwindle whether more and more artists output become a complilation of singles rather than a fully realised albums ( i dont think so). Music execs extoling the virtues of the £1 album is more worrying but that's a different argument.
I think the point I'm trying to make is each format has it's own place, sure there are some downsides of both but let's hope that they can learn to play nice together.
Phil
But then i started thinking about the other sort, the none physical music that we listen to. The stuff that we buy online and download, Spotify, Last fm etc etc. Although there is no physical media to hold, no sleeve notes, no lyrics to read, the biggest advantage of downloading music (legally of coure) is the joy of discovery. Although not quite there with the visceral excitement of finding a long lost deleted copy of your favourite Dr Octagon record whilst crate digging how else would I have discovered the joys of French pop via Jacques Dutronc or wishing I had taken more notice of my dad's Billy Fury records years before ( and all without setting a virtual foot in the itunes store)
Sure, some may argue that downloads are killing the art of the album and im sure time will tell as sales of physical media dwindle whether more and more artists output become a complilation of singles rather than a fully realised albums ( i dont think so). Music execs extoling the virtues of the £1 album is more worrying but that's a different argument.
I think the point I'm trying to make is each format has it's own place, sure there are some downsides of both but let's hope that they can learn to play nice together.
Phil
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