Donny Hathaway – I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry (Pts. I & II)

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By this point you’re likely as bored as I with all the veiled references to the COVID pandemic bubbling throughout the media. It’s become a deeply unhelpful prism with which we will ever have to view our experience of 2020. A lingering, disconsolate pain tied to each and every song heard, and text read. I’m hardly one to talk, much of this year’s blog has been fuelled by that same numbing “well what else is there to do?” question that confronts me daily. These words will never exist separate from their Corona context, just as media published between mid-November and late-December will never exist separate from Christmas. Oh yeah, that’s a festive segue if ever I saw one! Christmas is upon us once again as somehow, despite life having been suspended since March, this weird year has flown by. It’s taken me by surprise, if I’m honest, I’m mentally still in mid-August. So as this is a music blog, tradition dictates that I pluck one of the legions of Christmas songs and offer some thoughts. It’s what you expect, and given the year we’ve had, it’s the least I could offer. But I dunno, don’t you want a change? I know I do, desperately. I’m so tired of the mundane and expected. So frustrated at the lazy, inarticulate dumbing down of our cultural actions and so annoyed at content culture in general. Yet, my business hat, the one that is overly concerned with SEO and marketing, always tells me that by writing about one of the greatest Christmas songs will tap into the festive zeitgeist in a way that can only be beneficial for my future economic standing. It whispers the promise of click rates and conversion percentages if only I produce 700 words on Donny Hathaway’s soul epic ‘This Christmas’. I mean, as far as songs go, ‘This Christmas’ is one of the greats regardless of the season, but I’m reticent. Giving people what they want (or more specifically, what you tell them they want) kinda got us into this mess of a year. The people wanted to burn the international order and destroy their livelihoods in the process. The people wanted the freedom to infect their nearest and dearest without consequence. The people, as presented by the media-savvy, are wrong in the head, frankly. On the other hand, the community, those that you engage with on a regular basis, can be daaaaamn smart if our trust lets them. My community is you guys, so I trust you’ll forgive me for wanting to buck the system a little. Donny Hathaway wrote a masterpiece that eclipses ‘This Christmas’, and I want to talk about it.

‘I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry (Pts. I & II)’ is not what you’d expect from a soul artist, regardless of whether you knew Hathaway’s instrumental upbringing or not. Soul conjures images of rhythm sections locked in a groove as keys and a tight horn section offer their passionate replies to a silky vocal. So, goes much of what we would consider Soul, and so goes much of Hathaway’s incredible output. Why mess with the formula? Just give people what they want, right? Nope. Whether by accident or design, Hathaway chose to begin his final album, Extension of a Man (1973), with the piece in question and, I mean, wow! This is a work that condenses all the joy and strength of belief inherent in soul music into a 5-minute Classical odyssey. The tight sax section replaced with sforzando brass, the bass guitar replaced with contrabassoon and pizzicato strings, the voice replaced entirely by lilting ostinatos in the winds. I first heard this a few days ago after my Spotify did one of its annoying auto-plays into the “insert-artist-you-were-just-listening-to” radio, moments after I’d reacquainted myself with Hathaway’s debut, Everything is Everything (1970). I genuinely thought that the algorithm had finally broken, collapsing into obscurity and heralding the final death of technological mediation. It was a wild second, that. One of the year’s highlights for sure. But I checked my phone only to find that this heir to the Appalachian classical tradition, nudged into life by the great Aaron Copland, was the very same soulful genius I’d spent the previous 45 grooving to. That’s where I placed it, next to Copland and next to Gershwin (who, admittedly, Hathaway references). That’s where this work could easily belong, amongst the classical pantheon. But it’s not, it exists at the head of an incredible album, living with each and every rotation of the vinyl.

That’s not to say classical music doesn’t live when listened to, of course it does! But the fact remains that you likely knew who Donny Hathaway was but had to look up Aaron Copland. When it comes to raw numbers, Pop wins hands down, and therein lies the true wonder of ‘I Love the Lord, He Heard My Cry (Pts. I & II)’. This piece, with its deeply classical, Hathaway penned arrangement, would have been heard by a soul audience likely unaccustomed to the form. This makes Hathaway one of those incredibly rare cultural gatekeepers who actually use their skills and knowledge for communal good instead of the people’s greed. He didn’t use the form in order to widen his market share or appeal to a new demographic, but to instead offer something fresh and fulfilling to his community. Likewise he specifically chose, through it’s placement in the track listing, to delay giving the people what they want in order to make an artistic point. He trusted his audience, his community, to understand this music, despite it’s sonic irregularities. But all this is secondary to the fact that in this music Hathaway built a world that shocked me, musical misanthrope such as I am, in its beauty. I always thought I was pretty dang good at arranging, now I realise I know nothing and I love it! See, this piece came to me right at the end of this odd period, at a time when I normally tot up the year behind and build the energy required to forge forward into the one ahead. This year, dampened this energy somewhat, as it has for all of us. But I dunno, I’m starting to feel it again. Deep in my bones. That tingle of excitement and belief that next year could be good, it could be very good. Who knows? Life is there for the taking if we just trust in ourselves and look out for our own communities. This a feeling that no number of epic Christmas songs could have ever wrought from me. This required something special.

Thank you, Donny.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Adam & The Ants – Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios

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It was my birthday yesterday and I finally, after this very weird year, get to move back from a boring, roundly-even age to one with edges and excitement. 35, man! Love it. I’ve never had a problem with age or, more specifically, aging. An entitled position, sure; men don’t get as vilified for letting themselves go as women do. There is less judgement for the silver fox than the cougar. But anxieties about wasting your prior years, coupled with that hated nostalgia for youthful promise, can cause all sexes to worry that their particular peak has passed. I never really bought it, but maybe that’s because I only really started living once I’d hit 25. The achievements gained, friends made, and places travelled in those 10 years equal, if not surpass, those of the previous quarter-century; so it stands to reason that I’d hardly be concerned about what could happen in my next 10. Of course, I don’t doubt for a second that I’m a lucky one, creating new experiences (both in this blog and musically) is kinda my whole identity. It’s easy for me to look back and qualify what I have produced with my time. That said, I’d argue that my relaxed approach to aging is not because I produce media, but because I consume it. I am just a fan. A simple fan of music. A fact you know intimately. This means that the meaning and purpose I derive from life is found in my appreciation of new music, or at least music that is new to me. It’s an important distinction; many bloggers and music commentators focus on literal new music, music that has been created recently by contemporary artists, and this is no bad thing. The difference with my outlook is that I am fully aware of the deep, gaping holes in my musical knowledge, which means huge swathes of music, while not new in the temporal sense, are at least new to me. To my ears. Case in point, Adam & the Ants.

Up to a point, I already knew of Adam. It’s hard not to grow up during the 80s hangover and not recognise that white streak in a line-up. ‘Prince Charming‘ and ‘Stand and Deliver‘ had been on enough adverts over the years to become frustratingly quotable. But you know how it only takes one minor transgression to forever shade your opinion of a thing? That little stone in your shoe preventing the full enjoyment of an otherwise perfect autumnal walk? For me, and for Adam, it was his performance at Live Aid, the only artist to use the platform to plug their new single. Much of my early introductions to 80s music came from Live Aid and the excellent DVD released many years later, but his performance was always on my skip list. I’d even sit through Bob Geldof being a prick over giving Adam a chance. Idiot me. A few weeks ago I finally got around to actually listening to the bonkers art-pop that this man and this group has produced and, gods-dammit, it’s AMAZING! Full of off kilter structures and non-conformative harmonies that break down any sense of pop acceptability before repurposing it as sheer primal kinship. The mind required to arrange music like this. The restraint in the guitarmanship coupled with atypical bass interjections making space for the pulse. I now get what Adam & the Ants are about, and I like it.

I must have an affinity for songs about Pablo Picasso. There’s just something in the rhythm of his name that lends itself perfectly to catchy, sing-along pop. Take the cover of ‘Pablo Picasso‘ that appeared on Bowie’s 2003 Reality album, a song that caused me to add ‘Pablo Picasso was never called an assh*le’ to my never-ending pool of self-referential slang. 17 years later and it happens again. Perhaps it is no surprise that I have so much love for ‘Picasso Visita El Planeta De Los Simios’, not least for the “Pablo Picasso! Oh oh. Pablo Picasso! Oh oh” refrain. I just find it so fresh, a type of song that I genuinely have never heard before. I’m sure there are myriad groups that have taken elements from the Ants and filtered them into music I know, but it feels like they may have missed the point. The soul of this music, gritty as it is, can only be found here, at the source. To think that I have literally spent 34 whole years without hearing this incredible experience, only for it to grab me here and now is heartening! This is why I don’t fear age, who knows what future joys wait just around the corner.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

rryrry – We Will Meet Again In More Normal Times i-iii (Care-Clarion-Intent)

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So, 8 months in, how’s the pandemic been for you? One long unending slog where nothing ever changes and any concept of a ‘future’ withers and fades? Yeah, me too. It’s a good thing I guess, the knowledge that, while there are unquestionably those that have suffered more than most, we all at least share in a common dread and frustration. A life on pause an’ all that. For a time I thought that I should probably just write this year off, declare it a clerical error and live as a 34 year old once more. But then again, I hate being an even numbered age and find the ease of their divisibility deeply arrogant and suspect. Age may just be a number, but sharp numbers are always better. Now I come to think of it, as rubbish as it’s been, I don’t think I’d want to write this year off anyways. With all this pressure and stress I think that I’ve finally, finally realised that I’ve got to be kinder to myself. I’ve finally realised that there is little point doing anything if it doesn’t spark joy or allow you to look back at the experience with workmanlike pride. This blog doesn’t always spark joy and as you will have noticed, has gradually become a bit more sporadic, simply because when I sit down to write it of a Thursday, I often don’t have anything worth saying. Throw into the mix my slightly illogical approach to writing, whereby I treat random songs as a vessel with which to unpack my thoughts, and you end up with just another creator staring at the blank page, desperate to create content to satiate the machine. I had decided to write a blog today, but nothing sparked my interest. So I decided to start a remix, but my tentative edits were dull and boring. So I decided to work on a classical piece for my PhD, but the few notes I placed were shallow and expected. Pre-COVID, I would travelled this circle of self-loathing for hours until it came to the point, often around 4pm, where I would shamefully cancel the day before sulking long into the evening. It’s not exactly my most attractive side, so just as today’s particular merry-go-round started to reveal itself, I decided that it’s time to be kind. I would write a blog. “But Harry, you literally just said you don’t have a song that sparks joy enough to write about!”. Well f*ck that for a giggle. This is my music blog, sometimes I’m allowed to write about myself. Being kind to yourself occasionally allows for mindless self-promotion. So clear 10 minutes of your schedule and feast your ears on this.

I had a meeting with my PhD supervisor last week, one day after I had presented a short overview of my research in front of my peers. For those who aren’t in the know, my PhD basically concerns itself with interrogating our use of genre categories, with the aim of developing a complementary method of understanding cultural artifacts within an increasingly digital cultural space. I propose that the number of genre transgressive artists and works will increase exponentially now that the modes of cultural transmission are no longer localised. We therefore require a method with which to understand them that doesn’t rely solely on outdated genre connotations, as these connotations are often used as justification for in-group/out-group power imbalances which, in the end, benefit no one. Like, there are those who write within a genre specifically because it gives them a perceived power over those who don’t. You know, the classicists who scoff at pop music or the Camden punks who deride anyone who uses more than three chords. That leadened thinking does my head in. Music is expression, all culture is expression, it could do without peeps trying to claim their tiny part of it as objective truth. Anyways, having explained all that during the research seminar I was asked a question by my supervisor, a simple question that has stuck with me since like a thorn in my paw while I scrabble around for the correct pair of tweezers: Within all my poly-stylistic genre-hopping, where do I see my voice?

The artistic voice is one of those loathsome, pretentious terms that lesser composers dedicate entire PhDs to, as if defining something so personal is worthy of mass human interest. It’s the signature sound, or familiar instrumentation, or unique chord structures that sets one composer apart from another. Unfortunately, as pretentious and reductive as the term is, it does have roots in truth. It’s Thomas Newman’s piano-marimba-strings, it’s Tim Smith’s Cardiacs-cadence, and it’s Blink-182’s frat-boy subject matter. But being confronted so bluntly with a request for mine shook me a little. The arrogant iconoclast within wanted to stand proudly against the tide and dismiss the question as irrelevant; my lack of voice is my voice. Problem is, you can only have a voice if you have something to say, something which COVID and its ripples of banality is stripping from me each and every day. The nearest I can point to is, unsurprisingly, We Will Meet Again In More Normal Times, a major work through which I am trying to make peace with both myself and the current situation. As much as I can have a voice, I use it to converse with myself. To debate the anxieties and comment on my artistic frailty. WWMAIMNT is as close as I can see to how those conversations play out in real time. Contrary elements somehow complimenting each other when presented in sequence.

I can’t explain my creative voice any more than I can describe my own speaking voice. I can point out common markers like accent, tone, and intonation, but I wouldn’t be able to properly describe it in any detail. Likewise, I can point to the gleeful collage and embrace of rhythms that reveal themselves in my music, but I couldn’t with any certainty claim them as my sonic signature. I dunno, today I just wanted to work through that a little bit. Chew it over. Come to some kind of resolution. The fact that I didn’t says volumes about where I’m at right now. But hey, it’s not about the destination, or the voice, or any of these definitions-as-prison that exist solely to pressure us to conform. It’s about the journey and what we learned along the way.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Britney Spears – Womanizer

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Sometimes I feel that Britney Spears is the nearest my generation will ever come to claiming our own Grande Dame. You know, like one of those unquestionable forces of musical personality that you find cropping up all over the soul and country landscapes. Your Aretha Franklins, Dolly Partons, Diana Ross’, real women who transcended difficult beginnings to emerge fuller and greater by the process. These aren’t broken women by any stretch, but each one has had to contend with the patriarchic practices of the industry in ways that left them stronger and more vital to music than had they not. My generation, well growing up the patriarchy was (and is) still very much a thing, even though we’d begun gaslighting ourselves that it wasn’t. The boy band craze of the early 90s had been strong-armed to the side by the force of nature that was the Spice Girls. Boys were dull, girls, especially strong, independent girls, were in vogue. Then, 3 years after Wannabe, a former Mouseketeer known as Britney Spears stormed the world and catapulted herself into the cultural zeitgeist with …Baby One More Time; a weirdly minor, weirdly aggressive pop song by an artist who didn’t so much sing the notes as announce the words. There is a melody, sure, a melody that goes fairly high, but the intonation and weird staccato delivery sounded genuinely unlike anything else in the charts. It was enough to propel her to the upper rungs of pop-stardom and, having provided the archetype for the next decade or so of music, it’s not surprising they eventually labelled her the “princess of pop”. Now that Britney is back in the spotlight due to the literal overreach of the patriarchy, I think want to talk about Womanizer.

Ok, full disclosure, I don’t really want to talk about Womanizer, I want to talk about the absolute banger that is Scream & Shout. However, as that’s technically a will.i.am track (even though his additions are, for the most part, rubbish) I don’t think it’s really appropriate for what I’m trying to say. Britney’s always been viewed through the prism of men, whether it’s the mystery businessman offering £7.5 million for her virginity, the endless speculation over her relationship to Justin Timberlake, or now, with her father maintaining the 11-year conservatorship of her career. She was mocked for her breakdowns and criticised for her artistic choices while we gave (and continue to give) the men in her life a free pass. Why exactly did we let Justin to get away with utterly d*cking on her in his Cry Me A River video? Why did we humour Kevin Federline’s nascent rap career given his lack of, for want of a better word, talent? It’s properly morally suspect. Britney is not the men in her life, she is beyond them.

Womanizer. Man, this song. I completely forgot how awesome it is until a few days ago when, in solidarity I guess, I had a delve into her back catalogue. The lead single of her 6th album, Circus, Womanizer was apparently seen as a sequel of sorts to Toxic (which is top 10 greatest pop-songs of all time, FYI) and therefore hits all those minimal-electropop vibes that I dig. What sets it apart is the vision Britney had for the song, a kind of retort to her ex-husband that publicly acknowledges his infidelity through the belittling of his status. Nobody wants to be known as a womanizer, not really. They may want to womanize, sure, but they’d raise hell to be described as such. It’s because they know that the term minimises them, it reducing their entire nature into a term that remains, despite its prevalence, culturally abhorred. Britney flipped the script, she’d spent her whole career trying to escape the reductive terms that had been applied to her and now she owned her moment with a firey retribution. As it should always have been.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. I mean, I don’t fully sign up to the whole #freebritney thing mostly because there are whiffs of conspiracy and, as with everything, it is likely way more complex a situation as we will ever know. But we can at least agree that there is a distinct pattern of men controlling the musical destinies of women, and that it is something worth fighting against. Ke$ha is the primest of examples, though the cursory sale of Taylor Swift’s catalogue against her will (and the relish in which these women are pulled down because of it) also strikes a melancholy chord. And no matter what happens with these disputes, it always starts with some d*ck guy in a position of power taking advantage. Always. So whatever the truth, can we all just agree to give Britney space to just be her? Yeah? That’d be cool.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Mew – Silas the Magic Car

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I have this theory. Well, maybe not a theory per se, more a way of understanding culture and the various ‘things’ (songs, pictures, clothes etc.) that accrue because of it. For me, these ‘things’ don’t necessarily gain an inherent place or purpose purely by dint of existing, and as such can’t (or, indeed, shouldn’t) be immediately lumped into amorphous categories. It’s not a petulantly artistic cry of “don’t put me in a box, man!”, it’s just an awareness that there can be no self-sustaining “Art for Art’s sake” as each creative action exists as the result of an impetus acting upon the productive individual. If you’ll permit my academic cap for a moment, the two terms I use to illustrate this are the personal aesthetic and external influencers. The former is you, all of you, both known and unknown. It is the totality of your lived experience and manifests itself in all those cultural ticks and sympathies that define your personality. The latter term describes all that relentless buffeting and nudging by the world beyond the self; those situations in which we eke out our livings, little events constructing the frame with which our personal aesthetics expand. A cultural ‘thing’, be it a piece of music, method of cooking, style of dressing, is seen as the product of PA/EI interaction. The easiest way to explain it is to think of a pair of identical twins who share an identical upbringing apart from one key difference; Terry learned the ‘cello while Martin opted for the drums. If both are then asked to write a piece of music, any piece of music, chances are high that Terry would lean towards the classical and Martin the pop simply because these are the modes with which they have learned to express themselves. That difference, a misaligned external influence affecting ostensibly similar personal aesthetics, can create wildly differing results. Needlessly dry terminology aside (for which I apologise profusely for, blame this PhD…), I believe that everything you do can be understood as the reaction between who you truly are and to the situation you find yourself in. It’s why this blog doesn’t follow the bleeding edge in musical developments, most of my musical discoveries come from cack-handed link clicking and I’m therefore as likely to be as vocally effusive about music of the past as I am the future. It’s just the situation I find myself in. But occasionally external influencers beyond my control lead me down a path towards the comfort of nostalgia. In these I pick the songs which give me that most complex of emotions, restrained happiness. You’ll hear what I mean soon enough. This is ‘Silas the Magic Car’ by Mew.

I guess you noticed that my recent writing has been mostly about my deepening love of all musics Japanese. But would you believe me if I told you that Japan is relatively new to the party? Take a bit of time to go back through this blog’s earliest days, you’ll find that it was Denmark whose sounds cradled my heart. I can’t quite remember exactly what drew me to this scene, but I do know that my knowledge of it was guided and trimmed by RHR, a Dane (and one of my dearest friends) whom I met in University halls. Through her I deepened my love of Kashmir, Oh No Ono, and VETO until I found myself in the enviable position of knowing unequivocally that the Danish alternative scene was superior in all forms to my own scuzzy London. Man, London in 2012 was the business. All the political wrangling of the impending Olympics melted away as the event drew nearer, filling the city with a confidence to finally project it’s true character, one filled with welcoming happiness and joy. I’d finally got my feet steady and was sharing my room (and my life) with Wes, my closest friends were only a tube away, and I’d finally decided to quite my numbing job. It was one of the best times of my life. Then came ‘Silas the Magic Car’, an external influence expanding an exceptionally satisfied and content personal aesthetic, forever melding my memory of the song with positive feelings of security and purpose.

Mew are one of those reaching bands. Each release is seen as an opportunity to lean just a little further outside of the comfort zone, making small tweaks here and additions there in a way that always keeps their music fresh and vibrant. Mind you, it’s always worth treating reachers with at least some modicum of suspicion, I mean, it’s hardly uncommon for reaching bands to get greedy and stumble wholesale into the pretensions of ‘sound art’. But what I love about Mew is that regardless of their artistic sympathies, they always maintain that underneath all the production and noise, a real song exists behind the layers. Something tangible that can be performed without any audio trickery or studio edits. The studio recording of ‘Silas’ is amazing, a beautifully woozy concoction of drones enveloping the guitar line as a stuttering beat drives the whole forward. Even better is this live rendition which strips it right back, focusing our attention on the beautiful melody and ever so slightly wonky chord structure. It’s those wonks that drag you along and keep you engaged, whether it’s an extra beat here or a conspicuously delayed tom hit there. Enough to make the experience an experience and not just a demarcation of time. I love this song, man. After the couple of weeks I’ve just had I’m sure you wouldn’t mind me a bit of a wallow. ‘Silas the Magic Car’, my ultimate comfort.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Yellow Magic Orchestra – Cue

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At some point this slow but steady sand blast will abate and we’ll be able to finally take stock of the enormity of what has happened. Hugging our loved ones we’ll look back and slowly tot up how much each and every one of us has grown. Picture it big; a whole generation of sourdough masters flooding the legislatures of the world, enacting change decades in the making and finally marking a sense of identity befitting our epoch. More importantly, picture it small; we will never go a week without calling our parents again. I mean, this corona barrage has continued for so long that, personally, I can already see a great many picture-it-smalls, those teeny but significant changes to my behaviour and temperament that will ever divide the me of now from the me of then, a mere 8 months ago. But I was lucky, from the start I realised that for the sake of my sanity I would need a routine, a way to order the expanding chaos. This routine went on to breed habit, and habit is a mighty hard thing to shake. The me of the future will look back to now as the moment I finally understood why MumDad like to ring all the time. He’ll see the seeds of my future sartorial creations in my recent obsession with cross-stitch. Most importantly, this future-me, standing in lobby of Shibuya Tower Records with yen in the left and smaller hands in the right, will remember this dark time not as a sadness but as the moment I threw all inhibitions aside and lost myself in the music of Japan. Poetic introduction aside, the aim of this blog was always to write about variety of music, otherwise it would fast devolve into and endless stream of gushing think pieces about Bowie. I mean, I listen widely enough, it’s not like I ever find myself scrabbling about for music worth talking about. It’s just very rare to find myself sitting down to write this blog with the burning desire to write about Tropicalia, or Zamrock, or Soviet New Wave. Sometimes I just want to be honest and write about the music I am loving at this time, in this place. To that end, I am breaking the habit of a lifetime by writing about two songs from the same scene in succession. Akiko Yano, the QOL-giving focus of my last entry, has lead me through marriage and membership to Yellow Magic Orchestra. They have become an obsession and there is nothing on this earth that I want to write about today more than ‘Cue’, because at this time, in this place, it is my everything.

Of course, the hindsight game can also be played now, I can look back at my youth and realise YMO have been part of it, albeit subtly, for a very, very long time. For those that don’t know, YMO are the third of the grand electronica pioneers, starting just a smidgen behind Giorgio Moroder and Kraftwerk. However I would argue that their legacy, if not their name, is far more prevalent, setting the standard for decades of synth-pop, electro, and techno alongside providing an aesthetic framework for early video game soundtracks. What’s more, they’ve not been shy of the odd international hit, ‘Behind The Mask’ having particular importance to a younger me, that idiot dressed all in black and strawpedo-ing 70p Bacardi Breezers in the alternative clubs of Kent, dancing to Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s ‘Your Mother’s Got A Penis’. I have no shame, it’s a fun track, but I realise now that it’s as much for the infectious YMO sample as it is the rap. But regardless of any prior experience, it is only now that I fully understand their magnificence. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kraftwerk and have endless respect for their work, but YMO took the austerity of electronica and breathed an irreverent pop sensibility into it. The joy of the future an’ all that, something it is particularly hard to conceive of right now. After writing about Akiko Yano, a former touring member of YMO and former wife of Ryuichi Sakamoto (one third, alongside Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, of the band proper), I fell hard for everything and anything YMO and YMO adjacent. In particular, I fell hard for ‘Cue’.

I get that it’s not the most complex music, but since when did complexity matter? This is a balm, caressing the burns of the mind and bringing aid to soreness and fatigue. A pulsing, moving, sonic warmth that provides the base for one of the loveliest couplets ever to open a song:

Give me a cue / I think I’ve nearly found you

Isn’t it a heartening thought? The knowledge that that which you search for is just within your grasp, with everything pointing towards your eventual meeting, mere moments away. I’m a soppy bugger, me. Stuff like that gets me. Two children playing hide and seek, knowing they’re close but waiting for the other to signal their location. Giggling, no doubt. This couplet sustains a joy in me that I can’t properly be put into words. The smile is real, it is deep. Then YMO do it again at the chorus, encapsulating the sheer tumult of feels I get from this song with the euphoric:

The sound of music / the crying of the air

Like I said, I’m a sop. My understanding of music is deeply personal and something which I have never fully been able to put into words. It’s like a source of limitless power fuelling me to become better. A superlative force that I would gladly dedicate my life towards bringing to others less fortunate than myself. This couplet gets it. It gets the contradictions and ambivalences that this force brings out. You see, crying doesn’t denote sadness, it denotes an overwhelming of emotion. Sure, mostly this emotion is pain and sadness, but happy tears are a thing, you all know happy tears are a thing. Music is this, for me. The overwhelming happy tears of the air.

It’s a continual roller-coaster, this whole pandemic experience. Ups and downs coming towards you at a terrifying velocity and without warning. But like those quiet moments of calm experienced between the hairpins , I am glad ‘Cue’ came into my life when it did. I am better for it, outgrowing my pre-COVID shell and emerging anew. Of such things memories are made. Jolly good show.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

矢野顕子 (Akiko Yano) – Coloured Water

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I have been told that my understanding of karma is a little … idiosyncratic. Wes tends to remind me of this whenever I am in what I perceive as a karmic lull, that space between good times and bad. To be honest, I don’t think I’d ever really put too much thought into my accidental appropriation until we met and she firmly, kindly corrected me. Like, I’ve read the (admittedly, condensed, anglified) Mahabharata and made multiple stabs at the Ramayana (a work so beautifically, poetically dense that I need perfect conditions in order to get through it), yet somehow karma’s true semantic meaning managed to melt along the away. Technically, at its base foundation, karma is the philosophical concept of moral cause and effect: do good and good will come to you, but do bad and face the consequences etc. It is tied very closely to the belief in reincarnation, whereby the spiritual purpose in life is to act as ‘good’ as possible in order to reach the karmic threshold that allows ascension to the next, better plain of existence. It’s a very simple concept, with ripples felt in other, less forgiving philosophies. That kind, middle-class, C of E exultation to “be good or you won’t get to heaven”? Karma by implication. Quite how I missed this reading, I’ll never know. But somewhere along the line I developed (and more importantly, believed) my own slightly skewed reading of karmic functionality. To me, karma represents the ever-cycle between good times and bad. When things suck and everything feels ashes, know that the circle still spins, the good times are just around the corner. I am as certain in this as I am that the sun will rise. Likewise, when in a good phase, those golden moments when I can seemingly pluck joy out from the ether, I’ll always have an eye half-cocked on the eventual, inevitable descent. This past year has seen longer bad phases than good, seen clearly in the sporadic nature of this blog, but that is not to say that the good times have been any less magnificent because of it. If anything, they have shined that little bit harder, as if to rage against this endless twilight Sunday we’re being forced to live through. Likewise, the music I am falling for glistens much brighter to me because I know that when the low times spin back round, I can re-listen and in and instantly be transported back to here, to now. I don’t care about likes or views or giving the people what they want. I want to talk about what I like, because I am on a small high. This is ‘Coloured Water’ by Akiko Yano.

Now that we have established my slightly depressing perspective of karmic inevitability; I should probably bring up the signs I look for that diminish the dark yin times against bright yang. Wins, basically. I look for wins in my life. They need not be large and unwieldy, like a lottery or competition, just big enough to enhance my being in some way. For example, two days ago I went to our local second-hand emporium, a ginormous palace of trinkets which never lives up to my expectations, only to discover the most gorgeous blue, woollen pullover in my size for a really good price. That’s a win. Likewise, the time last week where I designed my latest Bowie inpired cross-stitch pattern in a flurry of productivity that up until that point had evaded me. That was a good win. There have been so many losses these past 4 years, I’ll take a win where I can get it. But of all of these, it is the win experienced from discovering new music that sticks with me the most. It’s because deep at my core, I am just a fan. I may write music, I may write about music, there are rare days where if you squint your ears you may even find me playing music. But listening and loving is where I am happiest. At the mo, I am very happy, for I have come across Akiko Yano, the Yellow Magic Orchestra-adjacent songwriter and her bonkers yet heart-warming musics. Very recently too, I might add. Last week, filling this space with petals of adoration for my Wes, I had no knowledge Akiko even existed. Even this morning, having finally decided that ‘Coloured Water’ was my topic and karma my frame, having even begun the very act of writing these damn words, I’ve discovered her INSANELY good 1981 album Tadaima and now I feel like starting over, such is her talent. But the thing about wins is, you can’t get greedy. My karma swings erratically, so when these moments come, I endeavour to savour each and every moment as if it were my last. ‘Coloured Water’ hit me hard, it deserves a few words.

After all that build up and hype you’d be forgiven in expecting ‘Coloured Water’ to be some anarchic, upbeat declaration of positivity and optimism. No. No, Coloured Water is sedate, sombre even, dripping in restraint and poise. Traditional singer/songwriter fare, the voice backed for the most part by the most intimate of arrangements, electric piano bathed in strings. But then notice the slightly wonky chord structure, the subtle rhythmic interjections in the low strings, the fragile vocal, through them the song rises above the dross. Then suddenly, dragging you screaming to your feet, the drums, the climax. I can’t shake my memories of similar feelings brought by Kate Bush’s anthemic ‘Breathing‘ (and I am far from the first to compare these two icons of womanhood). It’s the musical equivalent of standing on some lonesome mountain, saturated by the elements, screaming at the pure, unbridled joy of life. There is primacy in the emotions it brings out in me, a catch in my breath and a heightened clarity in my surroundings. I love it. I love it so much. An earned, desperately needed win.

Sure, this could be the karmic peak of my current spin around the merry-go-round, it could all be downhill from here on out. I don’t care. The small wins linger, they last. Binding together into an amorphous concept which I guess, if you had to give it a name, we’d call optimism. I’ve had many a small win throughout my life, more than enough. I have optimism in spades. The low times don’t worry me, the good times are ever ahead of us.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Bo Kaspers Orkester – I samma bil

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Well that was a fortnight’s worth of personal and existential anguish leaking its slow poison into this blog. Sorry ‘bout that. Blame it on the Corona fatigue. It’s just that everything seems so pointless at the moment, doesn’t it? You can’t plan, you can’t dream, it takes every ounce of your being to hope and every action beyond the years-end lay conditional on a litany of unknowns. We exist in a nothing time. The days flying by without consequence beyond scratches on the wall. Considering this it’s really not surprised to hear reports, both written and whispered, of strong, stable relationships built on long, shared histories crumbling under the pressure. I don’t judge them. How could I? I know there are parts of me broken by this, parts crushed and beaten by the news cycle. I’m just lucky that they’re lesser things, things that I know can be rebuilt, things like ‘productivity’ and ‘purpose’, entitled things that highlight my station. I don’t know why (and trust me, this isn’t a brag) but when it comes to the important, future things, well if anything Wes and I have grown closer during Corona-times. There is no secret, no magic formula. I can’t sit here and dictate why after 10 years I still laugh like an idiot at all her bizarre idiosyncrasies. Likewise, I barely understand why she tolerates let alone encourages my surreal interjections into everything. But she does and I do. Frankly, without her, isolated as we are from both our British and Swedish families, I would fade away. I dunno, man, I’m bored of letting this pandemic crap bring out my bitchy side. I want to write about all the light and love and friendship and joy keeps me going behind the mask. So, with an abrupt shift and only the most tangential of build-up (as is my wont), let’s talk around ‘I samma bil’.

I see you, anglophone. I know you. We were once one and the same, enjoying the fruits of our cultural dominance and feeding greedily on the productive nature of our Limey/Yankee/Canuck hegemony. A place where linguistic crossover was ever controlled and permitted only in specific, marketable exceptions. I remember it well, they were my grey times. Luckily I managed to get out, discovering the colours beyond through inquisitive luck, mostly. Wes is Swedish, you see, ergo I got to be introduced to a great variety of Swedish language music in a very short amount of time. This is how it goes with music, every contact you meet holds the doorway to their own subjective passions and tips. I swear, this cultural exchange is half the reason I make friends. As time went on I managed to gain first a cursory, then passable understanding of the language, further revealing the music of this land. Timbuktu, Veronica Maggio, Laleh, I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again, Sweden keeps the best music for itself. These early Sweden times were littered with numerous groups and artists experienced once before forgotton to time, but Bo Kasper’s Orkester always stuck with me as requiring further attention. I don’t really know why, but I guess the appellation of ‘Orkester’ in their name drew immediate parallels with my beloved Kaizers Orchestra, an irrational that heightened my interest. Yet BKO’s music remained a mystery until deep, deep into this pandemic. Wes and I sitting on the sofa cross-stitching (I’ve got really into cross-stitch), Laleh radio playing on the Spotify, happily contented, and then that bass riff kicked in. You know when a song comes on that, for whatever reason, grabs your ears and forces you to pay attention? Yeah, that. That hard. Whack it in the ‘Best of..’ playlist. Job done.

Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not some naïve poptimist, I know that there is little harmonically or structurally unique to set this work apart from the majority. It’s not iconoclastic or world-defining, but why should it be? It’s not about form, it’s about feeling. To me, the subjective I, this song is warmth, joy, and happiness. The audible equivalent of when your technophobic Dad manages to call you via WhatsApp for no reason other than to say hello. It’s not the grandest gesture, but it holds a worth that expands far beyond its humble smallness. The [translated] lyrics:

För vi har varann, för vi har varan / Å det finns dom som säger, jag tror det är sant. / Å det finns ingenting, det finns ingenting vi inte kan.

[Because we have each other, because we have each other / Oh, there are those who say, I think that’s true. / Oh, there is nothing, there is nothing we cannot do.]

Yup, that’s my Wes. That’s her support put into words and wrapped in the most warming, driving groove. An sonic trip befitting the title and befitting the times. My life revealed in the hills and trees passing by as I recline in the passenger seat, relaxed and secure. We have each other, a living steel forged over a decade. These are tough times, to be sure, likely the toughest we will ever face. But I dunno, man, she ups my QOL. This song ups my QOL. That’s how I’m getting through, how we’re getting through, finding QOL in the little things to support those that are bigger. Happiness in a cloud and joy in a goose. After all, life was cool before, it will be cool again.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Crosby, Stills & Nash – Shadow Captain

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People don’t want news, they want olds.

For the life of me, I have no idea where that quote comes from and despite a few cursory Google searches, can find no source to attribute. It could have been from some powerful print baron interviewed by Parkinson or, more likely, it could have been some classic stealth-philosophy from the works of Terry Pratchett. Regardless, as far as statements go it is one that has stuck with me these past few years. ‘New’, the authentic ‘new’ that is, doesn’t sell, it doesn’t resonate. Place any genuinely new idea in front of people (such as universal income, reusable energy, genuine equality for all etc.) and they’ll likely raise their hackles in objection, admonishing you for even contemplating changes to the status quo. “We do things our way here, keep your foreign ideas to yourself!”. But spin a ‘new’ through the prism of an ‘old’ and people become surprisingly malleable. Unfortunately that prism is so often ‘naked capital’ with the spinning better understood as ‘washing’. Greenwashing, pinkwashing, purplewashing, you name an authentic ‘new’ and I could point to its co-opting by the old in the name of profit, because that’s what people want. Allegedly. I mean, that’s what we’re repeatedly told, right? Personally, I don’t buy it. I mean, maybe it’s a generational thing but I’m getting pretty bored of ‘olds’ calling all the shots. I want to embrace the future for my own generation, not live in a stagnant present that refuses to renew itself. It’s why I get so goddamn annoyed about nostalgia bands, you know, the ones that take one artist or stylistic genre from the past and repurpose them (‘wash’ them if you will) for a contemporary audience. Eurythmics to La Roux, Lennon to Oasis, Prince/Peter Gabriel to Jacob Collier *shudder*, that kind of thing. I mean, I try not to be a snob, I really do, but the source is always so, so much better. So, after that clearly unrelated ramble, let’s talk about Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Crosby, Stills & Nash (or CSN for short) are one of those acts you hear about constantly once you enter your teens and begin snooping around the musics of the popular past in earnest. That said, for years the full extent of CSN my knowledge began and ended with 3 points, on which I based my entire (mildly cynical) opinion of them. These were as follows: 1) David Crosby had been in a relationship with the superlative Joni Mitchell, 2) Graham Nash was part of the British invasion era Hollies, and 3) CSN performed at Live Aid. This last one became the be all and end all of my subjective opinion because, basically, I was underwhelmed. The song in question, Teach Your Children, was perfectly fine an’ all but to my ears there was just nothing to write home about. On such early subjective thoughts had I based my entire opinion of a seminal band. Not cool. Fast-forward through years and years of music discovery, creation, and appreciation to now, a point where I can finally admit that I was wrong. CSN are not perfectly fine, more-so, they are vital. Mordo sent me a song from their fifth album CSN and I dunno why but, at this time, in this place, it sounded innately fresh and giving, as if all the dross of the repackaged old stripped away the closer I moved to the source. In short, I got it. I finally got it. I got the melancholy within those West coast harmonies, I got the intimate power within their acoustic (for the most part) arrangements, I got it all.

“Ok, so we get that I love this album, but why Shadow Captain?”. Beyond the fact it’s an incredible song, you mean? Remember that this blog is merely a vessel with which to share the music I love. The songs on CSN are exceptional one and all, so if I have to pick one I might as well pick the first in sequence, if only so to increase the possibility of your continued listening. You see, the problem with the ‘old’ when ‘washed’ is that it isn’t real, not tangibly, so can only hold truth insofar as we believe it. An ‘old’ presented is always filtered through opinion and agenda, thereby causing any reverence of them to only exist because that is what we are told. It’s how it has always been. History’s shackles. An oppression by tradition. Cultures of old as dictated by the politic newsmen, I hate it. But the glory of the now, the true benefit of internet, is that the sources are there if only we choose to find them. We can discover true history and form our own opinions based purely on the raw, tangible facts. This is what I’ve come to realise with each incremental pass of time. But I guess that’s what time is for. Listening, reading, understanding the facts and the contexts in order to build a world view that is intrinsically ‘new’ whilst respecting, but not slavishly following, the ‘old’. Better, newer times are possible if we treat ‘olds’ for what they are, a past behind us. Do that and who knows, maybe change is possible after all.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.

Wooze – Hello Can You Go

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It should be noted for the record that I have just spent the best part of an hour trying to explain why, in all of history and of all mankind, it the musician’s musician with whom I reserve the most loathing. I made some very illustrative points outlining the idiocy of believing in ‘culture war’ and my particular hatred of holding those musician’s musicians as archetypal ‘cultural warriors’. It was alright as far as prose goes, but you know when you can tell that people are grinding axes over problems that don’t really exists? Yeah, it read a bit like that. Long story short: Jacob Collier popped into my feed and, as Jacob Collier is the worst thing to happen to the progress, accessibility, and appreciation of music since, well, ever, I went all grindy. If you want a TL:DR of my perspective; Jacob Collier, talented as he is, has a purely academic understanding of the creative process. Because of this his music, while satisfying to the pop afficionado/academic, remains hollow, lazy, and predictable to my ears. It is also overproduced, devoid of personality, without focus, and so on, and so on. I mean, if I wanted to hear Prince but written by an upper-middle class English child then, well, I simply wouldn’t. Music is more than chord structures and theory. It is more than pedagogy and tradition. Music is a lived force of expression, thickened by personal experience and location. But this boy, cursed with prodigy, expresses nothing beyond his intellect. This chosen warrior, lauded by the middle folk beneath him, has nothing to say. Such is the lot of the musician’s musician, deified by the few who understand without providing any cultural empathy for the rest of us to latch on to. We countless number who know, who feel that at the end of it all, music is simply something we listen to in order to feel good. It is something we make in order to express the dark and light within us, be it formal or otherwise. My name is Harry, a composition PhD research student, and I own this opinion, come at me haters. But now that’s off my chest, let’s get to the matter at hand, a music that is whole, crafted, and gloriously contrarian in its delivery despite deep roots in pop iconography. A tune, pure and simple. This is WOOZE.

Considering what I have just said, I should not like this song. After all, just one tiny step below by dislike of musician’s musicians (and for many of the same reasons) is my distaste for the trendy cool. A ‘trendy cool’, distinct from true cool, built on preconception and manipulation. It’s that “I am cool because of course I am, I must be, I hit all the boxes” mentality, with everything carefully manicured so as to maximise an illusion of who we want to be. This is in opposition to true cool which only reveals itself when we present who we really are. ‘Trendy cool’ is as hollow, academically constructed, and lazy as the work of a musician’s musician. In both instances knowledge is used as a cultural cudgel with which to bludgeon the lesser and impose a conformity of order. The only real difference between these two hated concepts is that ‘trendy cool’, with as little energy as it can be bothered to expend, at least makes an attempt at accessibility. Anyone can in theory be ‘trendy cool’ with just a little more artifice and little less scruples. Yet WOOZE, despite illusions to the contrary, are true cool through and through, the cool that never needs stated.

‘Hello Can You Go’, this slab of guitar-led, visually splendid, art-pop-funk, knows the power of convention. But what sets it apart from the guff coming from Collier is that, this time, WOOZE actually play with the formula instead of slavishly following the expected teachings of an acceptable standard. Case in point, that shameless rewrite/repurpose of the classic “how low can you go?” refrain from the Sha-na-na classic, Born To Hand Jive. You know the one, from the ball in Grease, Danny Zuko getting all dancey with someone who isn’t Sandy. It’s quite the scandal. I’m digressing, I know, but the point I want to make is that this is thick music, with organic layers and creative choices made at the service of the song, not the artist. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel it in the rhythms and grooves and textures of the thing. Like, picture two sculptors carving into two beautiful logs of wood. One commits to following the grain, allowing the sculpture to reveal itself organically, truthfully. The other, slave to convention as they are, cuts the log into planks before assembling the remains into an accepted, expected box. They are both acceptable methods of construction, sure, but while one is kinda disappointing (considering the starting material), the other, more natural, more organic carving breathes life. It’s like this with ‘Hello Can You Go’; umami for the ears, cotton for the soul. That’s how this makes me feel.

Too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing, this much is understood. Yet with music criticism there is always this weird desire to justify one’s thoughts through precedent and technical dissection. As if any deconstruction of rhythm and analysis of chord structure has any bearing on how awesome a song can make me feel. The impulse I get from ‘Hello Can You Go’ transcends the academic, it is a pure, unbridled need to move that comes from my naïve, innocent love for music. For here there is joy in the recording, knowing smiles in the text, and a surfeit of ease placed in the delivery. All combined into the most exhilarating package of cool-without-mentioning-it sound. I don’t rate musician’s musicians because they know, deep in their hearts, they’ll never compare to the artist who lives their truth and presents sounds for the many, not the few. Possibly, maybe. I’m probably just jealous. Either way, this is a tune without compare, you’d be a fool to disagree.

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I’ve been writing this blog on and off for a while now, so why not dip back into the halcyon years by having a read of these related posts:

Judge not, lest ye be judged. If you feel the urge to subjectively critique my own musical work you can find it by clicking here.

be my friend. get in touch.