Warp Factor 20

This week I've been writing about the financial problems of Nicolas Cage and been wholly unsettled by Paranormal Activity. So it was something of a relief to immerse myself in the world of Warp Records this morning, in preparation for speaking to George Evelyn, he of Nightmares On Wax fame, about the worldwide Warp20 celebrations.

Warp is no longer a Sheffield label of course, but I can clearly remember going into their record shop in Sheffield in my early 20s and being utterly terrified by a) the records they were playing and b) the cool people looking at the floppy fringed indie kid (ie, me - I really hope I wasn't wearing my Kingmaker T-Shirt) nervously flicking through the vinyl.

Anyway, seeing as everyone is doing end of year/decade lists, here are my Top 5 Warp tunes from the past 20 years, in no particular order. Most of them are on the Warp20 boxset, which, ahem, would be a rather good Christmas present for a once inquisitive indie kid who's now very much in his thirties...

1. Nightmares On Wax: Nights Interlude/Les Nuits

My memory of the mid 1990s is, er, hazy. But I'm pretty sure I came home from Sheffield that time with Smokers Delight tucked under my arm. This was the fantastically chilled out first track from that record, destined to soundtrack a million holiday programmes featuring desert islands. It was also on his follow up album as Les Nuits, too. I never quite understood that, but Evelyn told me this afternoon that Les Nuits is with a full live orchestra. Record DNA fans will be interested to learn Nights Interlude is based around a sample of a Quincy Jones track, which is in itself a cover of Summer In The City by The Loving Spoonfuls.

2. LFO: LFO

Again, this takes me back to my days as a student in Yorkshire. Not least because the possibly more famous remix (no video, sadly) is called the Leeds Warehouse mix, and I used to frequent that very club. Fantastically Kraftwerkian synths give way to a properly mean, deep bass breakdown. Perhaps all dubstep comes from here.

3. Aphex Twin: Windowlicker (video not safe for work!)

No Warp list would be complete without an Aphex Twin track. I've always filed him under 'easy to admire, difficult to love' and he is often wilfully unlistenable. But Windowlicker is intriguing beyond the headline-grabbing and unsettling Chris Cunningham video (I didn't realise until today it had a four-minute spoken word intro - without it you can see why its take-off of hip hop bling was misconstrued as being misogynistic). Back then it sounded like nothing else on earth, now it sounds like it could the backing to a pop song Justin Timberlake might sing over. So much of The Neptunes' sound surely came from this song.

4. Maximo Park: Apply Some Pressure

Walking into the Warp shop, my 20-year old indie kid self would have loved this. So there's something very satisfying about this bouncy pop song ending up being massively out of place on the Warp label. I know, I could have included Boards Of Canada or Squarepusher, or Autechre. But for a while at least, Maximo Park were a great indie-rock band. They're still a great live band. And this is them at their best.

5. Battles: Atlas

And finally, a song that seems to sum up where Warp are at now. What sounds a little like the Windowlicker vocals laid upon a thumping post-rock freak out, it somehow contains a little bit of everything Warp throughout its 20 years: the electronics, the strange sounds, the tribal percussion and most importantly, the sense that this is something completely new. I can't wait to see them live in Manchester in a few weeks.

Hooting And Howling in Suffolk

Seeing as this blog is called East Angles, so it would be a dereliction of duty if I didn't feature East Anglia at least once. I was back in Norfolk for, well, not long actually - but it was odd to see the Subversive Spaces exhibition I really enjoyed at The Whitworth in Manchester take pride of place at the Sainsbury Centre.

The real reason for being back in the land of milk and honey was to usher at my cousin Richard and his new wife Jess' beautiful wedding in Suffolk. This is supposed to be a culture blog so I won't go all Country Living on you, but I was really impressed by the way the idyllic country manor they had their reception in had not only beautifully refurbished rooms but a really sympathetic modern extension. No horrid mock Tudorness here (it's slide 36).

Anyway, we spent the best part of the rest of the week in a tiny village called Dallinghoo. A proper country retreat, where I read Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger in prep for an interview. What a fantastic ghost story/social commentary/thriller - and it got me thinking that perhaps where you read a book impacts on your enjoyment of the story. Usually, I'm sitting on a comfy leather bucket seat (no, I'm not wearing a smoking jacket at the same time) but this time I was in a 400 year-old thatched cottage in the middle of nowhere. The Little Stranger is set in a mysterious old hall, and Dallinghoo Hall was just across the field.

So for a few days we were living amongst incredibly shy wild deer, with snowy owls hooting and much howling from garrulous pheasants (that's one for the Wild Beasts fans). Fantastic stuff, made all the more interesting by the discovery of a cute gallery in Debenham down a back alley. Some lovely work in there, which if they'd been part of the Own Art scheme I might have signed up for. And now I can't find the card I picked up, so it'll forever be a lost opportunity.

And it was most serendipitous to come back to Manchester and get a commission within hours of my return to write about... a Suffolk artist. Let's say I was in the zone for this one. But going to see Maggi Hambling's work at The Lowry was a pleasure and an eye opener: as she suggests herself, she's the Constable of the sea, but there's something more modern and less twee about her work than that. I loved it. And, despite Ipswich Town, I love Suffolk, too.

An afternoon with Jarvis

Back from London/Bath/Swindon now, and what a fantastic few days it was too. I spent an afternoon in a freezing old warehouse watching Jarvis Make An Exhibition Of Himself - which involved pole dancing - for The National (see below). I played Wii Sports Resort until ungodly hours. I renewed a love for 808 State's ex:el after happening across it in my brother's CD collection. I spent a lovely hour with Samantha Harvey in Bath talking about her beautiful book The Wilderness - and then ended up wandering around my old haunts. I completely agree with Jonathan Glancey about the mock Georgian streets they've dropped onto the admittedly knackered old bus station. And finally, I landed in another old haunt - Swindon! - for the Johnstone's Paint Trophy Area Quarter Final. Blimey, what a rubbish game. But it didn't matter, we are the famous Norwich City and we're going to Wemberleee (maybe... the JPT site had Swindon winning. There wasn't that much fog...).

Anyway, hope some of you enjoy the Jarvis piece. It was a very bizarre afternoon...

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Uncommon man

Arts & Life
11 Nov 2009

A deserted, half-derelict side street on the fringes of the City of London at lunchtime. The kind of unremarkable road people pass by every day without a second glance. But today, there’s something different in the air. There’s music coming from behind...read more...

Tech Tags: Arts & Life newspaper Front Page

Sweet Billy Pilgrim + Portico Quartet, Manchester

There's a famous quote from Louis Armstrong that goes along the lines of 'if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.' And certainly you could have scratched your head last night at this Sweet Billy Pilgrim and Portico Quartet gig and wondered, 'is this jazz?'. And moments later, you probably would have answered, 'does it actually matter?'

First, Sweet Billy Pilgrim. They were the token band no-one had ever heard of on the Mercury shortlist this year, but as usual with these things, completely deserved their nomination for Twice Born Men. It's a lovely record which I reviewed for Metro at the time: a bit folky, a bit proggy, a lot Elbow and, yes a bit jazzy in the switching time signatures.

The acoustics of the RNCM Theatre are incredible, which can sometimes do bands with a more traditional rock set-up a major disservice - every craggy vocal is amplified - but Sweet Billy Pilgrim rose to the occasion: There Will It End in particular sounding almost hymnal in its harmonic grace.

As they spoke of being their own roadies, getting stuck on the motorway on the way to the gig, of how their first record was annoyingly hard to get hold of, you wished that EMI would perhaps back them with a bit more cash - they deserve it. But then, they're not exactly youthful popstars with a huge hit waiting in the wings. Maybe, it's better this way.

Portico Quartet are definitely youthful. Scarily, brilliantly so. Surely it's only the inquisitive nature of youth which would encourage Nick Mulvey to buy a hang (like a mixture between a steel drum and a gamelan) at a festival, and make its uniquely mournful but somehow uplifting sound the centrepiece of his quartet.

Are they a jazz crossover band? They certainly look like they should be in a hip indie band, but anyone who grew up with indie music will have deep seated suspicion of the clattering saxophone solos on some of the tracks. This was definitely jazz. But it was never a show-off jam session: frequently, Portico Quartet sounded absolutely incredible - John Leckie has produced their new album Isla, and there's definitely an element of Radiohead to their sound, a beauty, depth and balls that means they steer well clear of the chin stroking brigade. The drumming is astonishing - you can see why the blogosphere buzz was as much from DJs as jazz fans.

Essentially, if you like Pyramid Song, and can imagine that without vocals, extended to a hypnotic eight minutes of hyperactive instrumental music, you've got Portico Quartet. And maybe, without knowing it, you've 'got' jazz, too.

Ok, this was just a test, right?

Yes, I know, I'm shamelessly self-promoting here. But I just wanted to see if it worked (you can publish on your blog from The National website direct, one click, without any html nonsense). And it clearly does. So next time I do a really long boring piece which is impenetrable online, I'll can link to the actual, more readable, paper view. Bet you can't wait, eh?

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Arts & Life
04 Nov 2009

Too old for clubbing, I am

I think I may have reached that point of no return. The point where I have to give up and say, 'yes, from now on I fear the only clubs I go to will be ones which play slightly tragic old music which remind me of my childhood and will probably be related to stag dos or leaving parties.'

I say this after going to see DJ Yoda at Club Academy in Manchester yesterday. I was interviewing him for The National (he plays in Dubai later this month), and it seemed like a good idea: I haven't been to see a DJ for ages and if you're going to reintroduce yourself, it may as well be someone who is entertaining, who does video mixing as well, and generally puts on a bit of a show.

Yoda's USP is basically classic hip hop cut up with kids TV samples, bits of the Apprentice, even footage from Champions League games (although he told me he knows nothing about football). But he's diversifying a bit and there was a fair amount of dubstep in his set too: thrilling for me because as much as I like Burial and so on, I've never actually heard it much louder or bassier than on iPod headphones.

And, well, as much as it was enjoyable, it felt like a young person's game. I listen to this music at home, but the whole night seemed slightly odd in that watching someone playing other people's records loud wasn't actually that impressive or, really, lasting beyond being entertaining at the specific moment Yoda dropped the Tetris music over a breakbeat.

Perhaps we live in a post-clubbing world, where the era of the superstar DJ is actually over. Or perhaps the days of getting a whole group of friends together to dance to music they possibly won't know are long gone for me.

All I do know is that the biggest cheer of the night came when Yoda played Step On by Happy Mondays. And most of the crowd there - honestly - probably weren't even born when that was first released.

McSweeney's 2 Granta 1

I've been reading and researching McSweeney's this week in preparation for a story in The National about its 10th anniversary. For those of you that haven't come across McSweeney's, you're likely to know about Dave Eggers. And McSweeney's was started by Eggers as a quarterly magazine packed with new writing. The packaging is frequently lovely - in fact, as Nick Hornby says in the introduction to The United States Of McSweeney's: Ten Years Of Accidental Classics, "I hadn't actually read many of the actual, you know, stories themselves. I had merely oohed and aahed at the extraordinary and elaborate constructions which illuminated and, on occasions, imprisoned them."

Hornby goes on to admit that it does McSweeney's a massive disservice to concentrate on how it looks - and a beautiful story by Roddy Doyle two pages later confirms that. It's not just established writers that make McSweeney's so important though: it's the sense that it's a great place to talent spot. Philipp Meyer - who I've just spoken to and cannot underestimate how important McSweeney's has been to him - was first published here, and it gave him the impetus to write one of my favourite books of 2009: American Rust. Here's a review, by, er, me!

Anyway, my real point is that McSweeney's is not always brilliant, but it's always interesting. I've been trying to make a UK comparison, and really all I can think of is Granta. I subscribe to Granta and have done for two years, but it often gathers dust on my shelves. There is some great work inside - more Robert Macfarlane please - but it seems constricted by its format: A5 book. The last McSweeney's I had came as eight mini books containing short stories, which when you put them together made a big picture. Twice. As I said at the time, it looked better than it read, but still. There was a real desire to push the envelope. An oddly shaped envelope.

Meanwhile, Granta has been through at least three editors in the last two years (McSweeney's is still put together by the same people who founded it - for fun - ten years ago) and seems to be drifting. I don't know if I'll re-subscribe next year. But I do know that I want McSweeney's Issue 32, where all the stories are set in 2024. Sums it up really: they're forward thinking.

The Pay Model

Welcome to my blog. Not going to bang on about what it will try and achieve, but hopefully it'll be a nice one-stop shop for my general thoughts about culture alongside links to the stuff I've actually been paid to do! Anyway, let's get stuck in straight away...

So, now my cosseted life at Metro is nothing but a distant dream, I now have to - shock horror - actually buy music, wait a week for the next instalment of television series, and consider exactly what gigs I want to go to.

Sounds pathetic, and I'm sure your heart bleeds. Welcome to the real world, eh? But it does change your relationship to culture almost immediately - and I think for the better. I was actually excited when news broke of a new Vampire Weekend song to download, a new LCD Soundsystem tune available whereas before I might have been mildly interested (or more likely, already received it on CDR or on e-mail from a kindly PR person).

And before you tell me those two songs were free anyway, I have actually taken a deep breath and bought a record: Florence And The Machine for a full £5 on download from Amazon. I have listened to that album far more than I would otherwise have done (unless I was directly reviewing it). The verdict: £5 seems about right, but when you own something rather than just get it for free - which is a point that stands from illegal downloading too - you do have a different, perhaps more intense relationship with it.

The tickets thing is the most interesting: I can now understand why safe-ish middle of the road bands sell so many tickets. Because I don't know whether I'm prepared to take a £10 punt on a a band I don't know much about, any more. But I do want to go and see Arctic Monkeys or Lisa Hannigan because I know they won't let me down.

And as for television series: in the past I would have got a couple of preview discs for the likes of Heroes. But actively waiting a week for an episode of Flash Forward, only to find it's like a bad version of House meets Grey's Anatomy, is very irritating.

My point? I think I prefer not having to know about what The Twang are doing because there might be a preview that needs writing. There's a lot less clutter in my house. And I haven't been to Vinyl Exchange for a while...