Screaming in Eloquence

Since the demise of Busted, McFly’s continued existence has been under increasing scrutiny. It is with this in mind that the lads have sagely decided to expand their musical range and thus new album Wonderland sees a marked change in direction encompassing a staggering glut of influences from 60s uptown soul to psychedelia-tinged rockabilly. Closing track Memory Lane even includes a jazzy improv saxophone solo by McFly’s token “punk” member Danny. Sure it does. In OPPOSITE WORLD. No, this is PAP of the highest order. Utterly lacking in anything even approaching a soul it’s impossible to believe that any human has had a hand in its creation. Filled with putrid nonsense so saccharine and anodyne your 12-year old sister would shy from it, McFly indulge in a level of recycling that would make Aberdeenshire council proud. I tried hard to find something nice to say, honest I did, but this is a record bereft of any redeeming features and I guarantee its corporate-phallus sucking creators are sitting in Hell laughing their dollar-stuffed faces off.

The past is a foreign country? Bullshit. The past is just like now but with less convenience foods and more plagues (figures accurate at time of writing). Japan: Now that’s a foreign country. Books read from right to left; cars drive on the wrong side of the road, washing machines turn the opposite way and girls put lipstick on their bottom lip first. One need look no further for evidence of Japan’s alternative outlook on life than Manglobe’s latest anime, Ergo Proxy. Also responsible for another iconoclastic piece of TV eye-candy in Samurai Champloo this time round the concept is Blade Runner gone cyberpunk in a piece of breathtaking cinema with not a little existential anxiety. It’s been called “CSI meets GitS” and is getting the full  high-definition treatment which speaks 5.1 surround sound volumes for the level of backing behind it. Even by the standing Ghost in the Shell: SAC benchmark for blow-your-brains-out-your-nose visuals Ergo Proxy is a beautiful vision of our computer-generated future. Pretty looks might have got Jezza Lopez where she is but it did not a great anime make so the prudent  connoisseur must sniff beneath the seductive surface for the true nose.

Unfortunately the opening gambit doesn’t bode well for this bunch of writers with some wearily familiar themes propping up the schema. The plot of a Brave New World where androids and humans co-exist in a robotised, inhuman future has been done to SF-death. Yes, there’s been another of those pesky global environmental apocalypses (apocali?) and in the resulting aftermath has been forged a giant dome city called Romdeau (possibly an allegory for Ancient Rome - over-analysis ed?). As a premise it’s akin to running onto the stage with a handlebar moustache and shouting “Hello, Cleveland!” At first glance, it’s a future culled shamelessly from Blade Runner with some 1984-esque subordination and cyberpunk elements thrown into the mix in a rather try-hard snatch at ‘hip and trendydom’. Those who stay jacked-in, however, will learn that director Shuko Murase’s child is not the cynical blockbuster all admitted evidence suggests.

The question: Is anime serious? People who make a living writing about such stuff have recently been denouncing the Western canard that cartoons are ‘kids stuff’. Critics such as Dr Susan Napier have argued that anime should be approached critically with the same serious hat on as other more established media (film, literature). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Whilst masterpieces such as Ghost in the Shell or Neon Genesis Evangelion may compete admirably against the cinematic heavyweights they are hardly representative of most. I mean, Cowboy Bebop is cool and all but you wouldn’t want to write your thesis on it. Like the best in pretentious referencing, when a ‘cartoon’ states its intentions with a quote from Michaelangelo and closes with an explanatory biography of several 19^th and 20^th century philosophers you can be sure we’re not talking Acme Hour here. In a market saturated with either exploding mecha-bots and schoolgirl romance fantasies this makes Ergo Proxy stand out like a shaved weiner. But while in-jokes about Battleship Potemkin and a pseudo-philosophical sounding title show admirable ambition they are obvious.  Certainly, Ergo Proxy has haughty pretensions, but then so does David Lynch and it doesn’t make him any more likeable. This is no re-telling of the ‘beware the rise of the machines’ storyline. Ergo Proxy’s take on the replicant - the ‘autoraves’ – betrays there’s more than a few brain cells kicking against the cliché-mongers. In Romdeau citizens leave meticulously controlled, almost stupifyingly dull lives: “what a boring utopia”. Their robotic slaves, the autoraves, serve as guardians, companions, substitute children and even lovers by their human overlords. These are not the 2-dimensional ‘droids of traditional sci-fi, though; futuristic wallpaper to compliment the cool cyberpunk mantlepiece. As the story develops a bubbling subculture is revealed under the surface of doting subservience. The autoraves are installed with a Turing Application (as in Alan Turing’s test for machine intelligence) which may be switched on and off allowing for apparently human communication. Trouble brews when renegade machines begin contracting the Cogito Virus (another philosophical ref Descartes’ fans) threatening to de-stabalise the whole humans-and-robots setup. When infected, the robots become aware of their own existence. Thusly, the former servants of man embark on a mission to discover whether the virus created their identity or whether it was gained through their travels. It’s a parable for our own quest to discover if our nature is created by our environment or inherent. Naturally, they are all named after similarly perturbed humans of our world: Hegel, Husserl, Derrida,  Lacan. Meanwhile, the government is conducting covert experiments on a humanoid lifeform known as the Proxy which they believe to hold the key to the survival of mankind.

One thing Ergo Proxy is not going to do is make it easy for the casual viewer. Hard sci-fiers will be in technological heaven picking apart the meticulously crafted and confusing future-vision. In a deliberate attempt to foment this confuddliness, a different writer is contracted in for each episode leaving an oftimes ambigous and foggy path. For those of us unfamiliar with the comi-tragic meanderings of traditional Japanese theatre may find the gargantuan leaps from existential despair to flippant japery boggling. Episodes swing like a lonely housewife from murder mystery to theology; from political machinations to introverted psychology; from dark suspense to cute kookiness; from rabbit deities of Aztec mythology to the Classical philosophy of Rousseau and Heraclitus. Much of how this will be interpreted depends as much on the viewers affinity for rabid conspiracy and obsessive over-analysis as anything spelt out by the script. One must read between the frames, as it were.

Kirsteva, Deleuze, Gattari, the name-drops come flying in. A Rome-like Senate exists and the two statures in Regent Donov Mayar’s chamber is based on Michaelangelo’s Night and Day stature in the Medici Chapel in Florence. The voices of Night and Day represent those of Lacan and Husserl. The Twilight and Dawn simulacra representing Derrida and Berkeley. Characters recite [surrealist poet] Joe Bousquet like they read it in the funnies and weighty philosophical musings are never to far from the gun-totting Matrix-like face-offs. Those who’ve recently been enjoying the slightly absent desolation of Hitsuji no Uta or Serial Experiments Lain will know the feeling. Those of us who’ve woken up on a gloomy Monday morning to watch their alphabet cereal spell out ‘misfit’ in the milky murk may start to believe the developers have an inside channel straight to their innermost thoughts.

Want more? No better evidence exists of both Ergo Proxy’s intended demographic and its status as a prime example of how the best anime manages to embrace European thought and Western film whilst giving it a uniquely Japanese air plays out as Radiohead’s Paranoid Android closes the credit-sequence. A fitting, if a little obvious, choice unusual in anime which usually prefer to pen their own cheesy theme-tunes (although Paradise Kiss did use Franz Ferdinand to close out their episodes last year). An English version should be heading our way in November. Ergo Proxy? Accept no substitute.

Strapped for funds? Not talented enough to write your own music? Why not cash in on the success of others with a tribute album? It is, dear readers, the sure-fire marketable gimmick. To be sold alongside the single-use cameras, lifestyle magazines and Dan Brown novels at airport duty-free. Relying mostly on its sales pitch, they rarely require any actual talent on behalf of the creators. There are exceptions, however. Eureka moments when opposite poles of musics rich diversity are combined breathing new life into familiar songs. Here we examine the many tributes to one of this generations most profitable brands: Radiohead.

Quick disclaimer: Excluded from assessment are compilation tributes like the Plastic Mutations electronic tribute, the Anyone Can Play Radiohead comp or the recent Exit Music: Songs for Radio Heads as these are really just a bunch of covers by different artists packaged together (although Mark Ronsons Just on the latter almost justifies their inclusion). Neither will we be considering remix/versus albums like Panzah Zandahzs Me & This Army or the Greenhouse Effect versus Radiohead. They are both crap anyway so we neednt mourn their exclusion too much. Clearly, youre noone in Indie if you havent butchered one or two head classics and more pop artists than you can count on the NASA mainframe have sought saleable credibility with the alternative crowd with the obligatory cover. But were looking for artists that have taken it that bit further devoting an entire album to appropriating everyones favourite gloom-mongers.

NB: Worth mentioning here is the only (yes only) one-off Radiohead cover version worth your time: John Mayers acoustic reworking of Kid A turns an already paranoid beast into a stripped-down schizophrenic.

Otherwise its abundant, if not always rich, pickings.

Christopher ORiley - True Love Waits and Hold Me To This

Generally regarded as the king of the Radiohead tribute, OReily realised early that being a pianist these days is about as lucrative as selling Jonathan King Pez-heads (with detachable jock-strap). Theres only one of you in the orchestra and nobody goes to recitals anymore. Piano-playing, no matter how accomplished, does not put bread on the keyboard, and thus the savvy ivory-tinkler must saddle a more lucrative bandwagon. Cynicism aside, however, OReily clearly has genuine love for his source material. Brad Mehldau has arguably done Piano-head better with his Exit Music (For a Film) but failed to go for the whole hog concept album in the way OReily has; twice. Of course, many of these tunes being first composed on Yorkes own grand, they are reducible back to this singular instrumentation relatively painlessly (think of the beautiful Like Spinning Plates version from I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings). Reilys interpretations are not mere Satie-esque wallpaper, however. He demonstrates his knowledge of the band with faithful but not simple carbon copies of a well-selected bunch.

Richard Dodd, The Section, Enigmatic: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead:

By far the most overt capitalisation comes from this orchestral Radiohead-by-numbers production. Play it backwards and you can hear Drink Coke and Just Do It whispered in demonic tones. Like Metallicas infamous orchestral switch the totality of what is achieved is a part-for-part duplication on strings. Thus, the very life of the original records spirit is wholly drained of the merest morsel of humanity like a Kodak image of Boticellis Venus. In faithfully replicating the originals note-for-note, they mathematically gloss over that which made the songs so affecting in the first place. Enigmatic, in other words, omits the enigma. The translators (because that is the sum total of what their contribution amounts to) just flat-out miss the point. Ask them to clone a sheep and they would, no doubt, make one that was inedible and bald. Useless. There is a great classical-crossover album to be made out of Radioheads musically astute back catalogue. This, sadly, is not it.

Various Artists - Strung Out on OK Computer: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead

Once again, the orchestral mimic is in full-effect here with another phonographic transcription of some perfectly decent Rock. Using a formula about as original as Newtons 3^rd Law of Motion (is there any even middling successful stadium rock band that hasnt been subjected to the string quartet treatment), this still tops Enigmatic if only for its attention to the little details and more coherent whole. Turning its bows and horsehair to any rock band with a following greater than the Andorran elephant polo team, the String Quartet tributes have been pouring in like stone soup. Nevertheless, fans seem to lap it up. More devoted than most, fanatic heads crave anything connected with their idols like pregnant ladies and are usually about as rational and discerning as if they were in the 3^rd trimester. Truth be told, you probably know if you are going to like this or not already. Its tasteful, but then so is Martha Stewart. The Guardian Guide no doubt loved it and you cant get a more damming indictment than that.

Corporate Love Breakdown - A Bluegrass Tribute to Radiohead:

Tributes live or die by the concept. At first glance, Bluegrass and Prog Rock seem as incompatible a couple as George Bush and Naomi Klein. Wouldve thunk it then, that this actually works. The arrangements are simple but affectionate. Unconcerned with perfect translations, the originals are re-imagined as classic blues records of a time that probably only exists in your grandfathers cloudy memory. Corporate Love Breakdown succeeds because it isolates a specific element of Radioheads music - the harrowing, gloaming-wandering melody; neurotic post-silicon age menace - and re-imagines it, often on little more than a mandolin and acoustic geetar, yosemite.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, given its walking bass, Myxomatosis is a highlight - a good example of the tribute working well by virtue of the fact that both it and the original share a common heritage - but generally the tracks are carefully constructed and original. You and Whose Army? is also imaginatively re-examined as a Dirty Three-esque lament. The cotton-pick of the bunch, then. There’s enough electricity in this, if not to light up a whole city at least a sizeable ant hamlet whose government recently passed a series of stringent energy cut-backs.

Easy Star All-Stars - Radiodread:

The All-Stars reached international status with their mildly amusing Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae-fied simulacrum of Pink Floyds 1973 classic. Given that OK Computer is another Prog-Rock behemoth, youd forgive the All-Stars for thinking they could repeat the success again. Like all good tribute albums, this smacks so strongly of a 2am closing time Hey, Ive an idea! moment you can practically see the hazy lightbulb forming over their dreadlocked noggins. In reality, some tracks work, some dont. Paranoid Android and Kharma Police are probably immune to re-imagination anyway (ORiley sagely avoids the former) being so infused with their creators. But whether its because the originals are still quite fresh in our minds or that the music just doesnt fit with the reggae beat the album comes across as a valiant but misguided attempt. Some stellar guest appearances from luminaries such as Horace Andy and Toots & the Maytals lively up proceedings for a speel and drag it into the worth checking out category. As does the hilarious Jamaicanised Fitter Happier replacing the dystopian Speak & Spell of the original for a Lilt-advert style parable. Theres another dub/reggae Radiohead mutant out there (Im Not the Only Record For You) but its an elusive beast so I cant vouch for its quality, bad or good. Seemingly onto something fairly popular, the Stars will, no doubt, try and blow out this soap bubble for as long as the balance sheet lets them but eventually it has to burst. Too often, they find themselves having scraped through the barrel to be now scratching their nails along the barren undergrowth.

DJ Gyngyvytus - Skeet Spirit: A Crunk Tribute to Radiohead

2 + 2 = 5? Crunk = Crazy + Drunk. Radiohead have always thrived on equations and the ingredients in any experiment have to be well-measured if you dont want the whole concoction to boil over. The Crunk version of Radiohead eschews chemical formulations, for full-on funky-assed fun Of all the tributes on show this is the one with the least pretensions to be anything other than a damn good party and thats not something you can say about a Radiohead record very often. In fact, booty-shaking Radiohead are a surprisingly amusing lot. Criticising this on a musical level would be an exercise in futility. Like criticising Timothy Leary for failing to provide adequate drug advice to youngsters: Why bother when youll only be faced with a third-eyed, grinning smile as wide as the punch bowl simultaneously extended. At its low its a trivial slice of turntablism that youll listen to once and probably never again. At its peak it causes everyone to cut rug more franticly than Santa’s upholstery elves on Christmas Eve.

Muse - Showbiz

They may have since transcended the initial accusations that greeted their introduction to the music world but theres no denying Matt Bellamy and co. had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Complete Works of Yorke and were determined to put it to use. Not so much a doff of the cap, Showbiz was a bent-double donation of the cap and all future cap-doffing services. But to quote another great master, a good artist borrows, a great artist steals. A great artist also turns an already genre-defying masterpiece into a brooding, elegiac monster of a record. Half the tracks easily equal any from their inspiration making it one of the most mind-bendingly brilliant debuts of the 90s.

The Neo-Beat Generation - Early Demos:

Lacking any individual song-writing skills, the Eric K-featuring Neo-Beat Generation (thats right, kiddos, I was in a band) produced some of the most disturbing Radiohead doppelgangers this side of Madame Tussauds. Much of our previously discussed titles have been born out of the spark of an idea. A moment of, alcohol-inspired foolishness that actually made it past the brainstorming session. None embody this spirit of thoughtlessness than these works bracketed intriguingly as Early Demos Neither have they equalled the sheer audacity of the flamenco re-styling of Paranoid Android (for five guitars) or the post-grunge screamo Pyramid Song. Unfortunately (read: thankfully), none of these new-and-improved recordings survive after the master copies were burned in the great Quality fire of 2001 but their legacy lives on in bad cover versions the world over. An insult to music.

And the winner is

Its invariably hard for any die-hard fan to stomach the (mis-)appropriation of their beloved but sometimes you have to let your elitist scruples go and embrace change. ORileys efforts are as painless an execution as one could hope for but my tribute rosary goes to Corporate Love Breakdown for re-awakening my love of the originals and giving me some relief for the come-down when I tire again.

One hates to eulogise about foreign film-makers (you invariably sound like a pubescent teenager rebelling against his parents traditions) but South Korea has been consistently producing the most challenging films for the last few decades. Chang-dong Lee’s Peppermint Candy and Hae-sung Song’s Failan are as fine examples of this blooming movement as any. What is with this obsession with messing with chronology in your movies anyway? Is every film director some kind of A.N. Whitehead time-sceptic? Ever since Memento popularised the idea, its never quite been enough to just run a plot from beginning to end. Peppermint Candy gives the game away from the offset as an apparently well-balanced pillar of society, following a particularly bombastic karaoke recital (NB: Korea loves its karaoke, bless them) inexplicably offs himself by jumping in front of a train. Initially disorientating, it then proceeds through its tale backwards which makes for a compelling explanatory device of the unavoidable forces of Karma that loom over all our lives. How some seriously well-worn clichéd emotional symbolism (the train journey as life; the titular sweeties as physical representations of emotion) do not, as would no doubt be the case in most Western hands, descend sentimentalism and nostalgia but attain a true poignancy that isnt fully revealed until the very end (the beginning, that is) is Lees most remarkable achievement. This lack of slushy drippiness is in part achieved by a combination of some memorably undrippy violence with a couple of brilliant performances, but also by the peculiar (at least to my Hollywood-engineered eyes) approach to storytelling that runs through so much Eastern cinema.

As with any strongly politicised nation, the machinations of successive governments have been absorbed into its artists consciousness like a particularly acidic sponge. Like Japans nuclear holocaust fixation, Korean films have been, more often than not, overlaid with a mindful examination of (il)legitimate authority and power structures, both political and personal. This idée fix is, of course, a common device (our protagonists travails serve as an allegory for the past few decades of national history) but it is rarely done this well. And Korea is certainly a region with a history to tell. Quick South Korean history 101: After some seriously nasty subjugation by a colonially ambitious Japan, the Korean people have been the target of relentless attacks on their freedom and culture. WWII, the Cold War, a schizophrenia-inducing Korean War, its a region defined by successive dictatorships.

Our lead also appears to be a character worthy of special antipathy: A vindictive man who gets his kicks from beating his pets and general feats of unpleasantness. Gradually, as the film rewinds, though, we see the outside influences beyond his control that have created this monster, a perfect mirror for the Korean peoples loss of innocence through systematic oppression. By the end, we come to realise that this angry, evil man was not always such but has been made so by a sadistic state and police force, unrelenting in its brutality. Violence has become commonplace; an ordinary, quotidian part of daily life to the extent that its hardly noticed.

It makes for an unsettling - but much more revelatory by its novelty - examination of the results of our actions that none of us may avoid. Here we see cause follow effect, only subsequently realising the external forces that shape the future. Violence breeds further violence in a degenerative quagmire as our anti-hero has his hope and ambition sucked from him like anti-matter from a black hole rented out as a cheap whore (ie. It really sucks hard).

The man we see beating his pet dog at the beginning travels back in time to the ugly police beatings he deals out like a 1950s public schoolmaster whos read too much yakuza literature. Contrast this with the naïve, idealistic student lost amid the kind of tense, fearsome army scene that Spielberg would sell his mother, granny, dog and right testicle for and the unpleasant nature of his character becomes understandable if not any more palatable. A man that incites only disgust in us at the start now we feel pity for. Its a remarkable and disturbing transformation that hammers home with poignancy how even the most good-hearted soul can and will become corrupted by The System. Like the Korean people, he is stripped of his humanity by a government and police force that relentlessly brutalises and oppresses its subjects. Power, and who has it, is key. The victims of its subjugation only go on to search out weaker creatures to vent their subordinate frustration.

Failan similarly has a food chain fuelling its mechanics. Regular movie-buffs will recognise Choi Min-Sik from other excellent Korean exports such as Oldboy, Taegukgi and, recently, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. His appearance alone is probably enough to seal the deal for many film-goers but Chois performance here is every bit as powerful as anything else on his CV. Cool is like acne: You either have it or you dont and despite the repulsiveness of the man he plays, Choi is still coming out in a rash like an oily teenager during a Clearasil shortage. Here looms the ghost of Travis Bickle, Leon or even Lolitas Humbert Humbert: An almost ugly lack of personal sensibilities. Pathetic but all the more pitiful for it. He is lifes toilet duck: condemned forver to lick under the rim of society. The first half hour concentrates on Chois criminal, porn-peddling slob. But, like an abused dog, his violence stems only from that he experiences at the hands of his social highers-and-betters.

Just as Peppermint Candys young student photographer with a penchant for humbugs could never have foreseen the cruel incarnation he would later become, the transformation that our hate-worthy mafia dogsbody undergoes is equally astonishing. If film is an escapist journey, no traveller could foresee this destination as, by the final climactic scene (which is, perhaps, the most tragic committed to film in the last decade so I wont ruin it with spoilers), heart-renderingly plays out our disgust for the degenerate wasteroid is reversed sharper than an Italian tuxedo cut with a metal-vapour laser.

The plot: In need of a quick buck, an organised criminal enters into a marriage of convenience with a Korean immigrant he has never seen nor wants to. His new wife, Failan, gets to stay and work like a slave; he covers a Mafioso debt. An unpromising romantic premise you might think? Not after this delicate portrayal of two star-crossed lovers has run its delicate course through your innards you wont. Now, Im not the type to get sentimental over overt romanticism (believe me, I just drowned a bag of puppies on the way here). However, Failan had me reduced to the kind of blubbering wreck you only find in group therapy sessions for acting-like-a-blubbering-wreck addicts.

Cecilia Cheung gives the performance of her life as Failan: quite simply, an angel. The most harrowing embodiment of purity, innocence, love and other girly things committed (barely) to the flicker of moving pictures. An ethereal seraph, more enchanting than a Cocteau beauty, her naïve love for a man she does not know would wrench the heart-strings of the most embittered of us (and Im proud to rank myself pretty highly on that list). If this doesnt have you reduced to a blubbering mess you need to be in a grave.

Bladder Flask once released an album entitled One Day I Was So Sad the Corners of My Mouth Met and Everybody Thought I Was Whistling (surely the greatest title ever) and that is how this film made me feel. A bittersweet tragedy that one could easily come away from with a somewhat sickly taste, but this is an illusion of cynicism over an underlying belief in the power of (cue strings) Love. Like sweet marmalade masking a potentially bitter, but nevertheless real zest.

As honestly as an embittered, 23-year old philosophy undergraduate can be about suspension of belief and emotional empathy with fictional characters I say this intimate, immeasurably subtle tale would reduce Michelangelos David to torrents of gushing tears (and thats not easy. I once told him about the time my ex sat on my hamster - not a flicker). As with so much recent Korean cinema, the poignancy of the script is matched only by the beauty of the direction. With a colour-palette so clear and vibrant it makes Pollock look positively monochromatic, each shot seems picked from the dreams of Aphrodite. Truly awesome (in the biblical, not the surfer-dude sense) and with the ability to evoke feelings that will persist in the mind long after the individual landscapes have dissipated. All this from a tale of two people who never even meet! A revolution in the Romance genre. Stick that on your adverts and smoke em.

Korea has had a tough time of late, but if anything positive has come out of decades of oppression it is the artistic fuel it has given its film-makers. Not just Politics with a big ‘P’ but in the expression and examination of the very personal affairs that communicate universally across all national and political boundaries. Political unrest has often been a catalyst for the arts but fascist government too often prohibits its dissemination. Eventually, though, film of this power cannot be suppressed. Ideas, as Alan Moore’s V proclaimed, are bulletproof.

Regular readers (humour me and pretend you exist, please) will recall that, having been availed of my usual listening device by some wealth-redistributing ideologue (read: thieving toothless bastard), I have been forced to engage somewhat more than I generally like to with what others have described to me variously as us here in the real world and outside your precious ivory tower you pretentious, anti-social freak. Gratefully, I can recount that it was not an altogether unpleasant experience which has got me a-thinking about the listening experience and just how we reviewers go about talking about it. We all listen to whatever gloop gets plopped on our laptops and wax lyrical about the noises within but are we ever talking about the same record? I dont mean some sort of conspiratorial organisation distributing fake Radiohead cds (although remember all those authentic tracks that flooded the web pre-Kid As much-anticipated release). I mean that each one of us brings so much of our own personal experiences and attitudes when we crank the record up, that, in a sense, were actually reviewing a different product. And the most easily overlooked aspect of this is whats going on outside while were listening and what were actually doing at the time. I cant speak for my colleagues, but I dont sit down in an echo chamber with a pair of headphones and listen attentively to a new record from track 1. More often than not, Im just wandering about doing my business (Oh, grow up. Not that kind of business) with the music soundtracking. I listen to a couple of tracks on the way to work. A couple more while I have my lunch. Give the whole thing a spin on the bus home. The unforgiving Aberdonian climate doesnt usually admit of frequent fresh-air venturing but as were currently enjoying what is generously referred to as the Summer season, these listening experiences have, more often than not, involved a background scenery of the elemenal variety rather than umbarella-clad spurts between various man-made fabrications and this has got to have a different effect on my experience of the music. Listening to Sisters of Mercy is a very different ride when youre constantly assailed by little babies with ice-cream cones and sandbuckets.

Everyone knows that theres a particular kind of record that does well this time of year: the Soundtrack-to-your-Summer record. It encapsulates the warm, fuzzy feeling we all have in these skin-cancer-spreading months: Beach-towel-clad, worry-free bundles of pop portraying the kind of over-excitable individuals that only really exist in Sunny D commercials with lyrics limited to the monosyllabic la-la, na-na variety rather than despairing odes to the inherent alienation of the human condition. We also know that this kind of music sucks harder than a 5-year old on a squishy binge so we all have to dig that bit deeper to unearth the hibernating sun-avoiders making the musical gems that make up the Overlooked Collections in these days. This, then, is your Summer guide Indiecult-style.

Feu Therese - Feu Therese

I brace the elements, hands covering my light-deprived eyes, high-UV shades protecting my dilating pupils, accompanied first by the genre-dodging Feu Therese and their self-titled debut. Heres a theory about why record sales for innovative, experimental, genre-defying music such as this enjoys the commercial prospects of an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Osama Bin Laden charity record for the BNP: In todays oft-maligned MTV-generation, you cant keep the kids attention for more longer than it takes to say Buy this record before theyre diverted by some other shiny trinket. It all depends on those 30 seconds chosen by the Sample Guy at Amazon (surely the most powerful man in music). And if you had to choose 30 seconds to sum up the output of Feu Therese what would you choose? Parts of this record sound like a free-wheeling fairground carousel careering down an Amsterdam red light strip and others like the plodding menace of some evil marching band. Tu nAvais Quune Oreille is Joy Divisions Atmosphere sung in slo-motion by a drowning Chris Rea. In French. But in a world where you are eclectic if you own a Chili Peppers record, anyone can do weird. The trick is making the music you want and others want to listen to it again despite this. A trick Feu Therese seem to have nailed.

Sucioperro - Random Acts of Intimacy

As I round the corner Im greeted by my buddy Duncan and his overbearing optimism in the face of such dangerous global-warming effects as we are currently experiencing. Hes keen-to-bursting to tell me a joke: How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb? I reply that I dont know and try to focus on whether my shoelaces are tied to indicate indifference towards an answer. None. He wails, almost in tears with anticipation of the ensuing hilarity, They just sit there in the dark crying. At which point he collapses into some awful epileptic spasm and struggles to stay on his feet. Noticing, like the empathetic soul that I am, his disappointment that I am not also convulsing on the floor, I try to assure him I did find the joke amusing, but my sickness for any conversation involving the recollection of emo is the kind of thing I am in need of a prescription for.

Thank Rao, then, for Ayr’s Sucioperro: very much the emo-antidote. Erstwhile collaborators and tour-buddies of Biffy Clyro, Hell Is For Heroes, Aereogramme and other post-grunge Scots, they harness the menacing spirit of Kurt Cobain if hed been brought up listening to King Crimson rather than Half Japanese. Although they lack the intricate prog-cleverness of da Biffy, they do possess their ability to seamlessly segue bone-crushing, lyrically-ferocious, RATM speaker-destroyers (The Crushing of the Little People) and sweetly emotive lullabies; often within the same song (Random Acts of Intimacy). Post-hardcore, emocore, metalcore: theres so many cores around these days I could start an orchard. But however you try to pigeonhole these boys, make sure you keep a tag on their wings to track their next directions.

The Caretaker - The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia:

Now, feeling as out of my depth as a Nigerian Olympic swimmer, I come to one of the most staggeringly powerful pieces of music Ive heard for some time. All that Ive said about environment affecting experience seems redundant as listening to the Caretakers music appears to render invisible to me everything but the music itself. Surely the most effective conversation-stopping record since Come On Die Young. As the almost unbelievably self-aware and omniscient human being that I am, I recognise that I am somewhat prone to hyperbole from time to time so Ill try and reign myself in but Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia will be the single most compelling and demanding record you will hear in 2006. If you feel like youve been trapped in a sensory-deprivation chamber with a blue whale after listening to this then I empathise. Trying to relate the noise harnessed within is probably an impossible task but its my job so Ill do my best. As I round the corner for home onto the desolate side-street where my flat resides, I am accompanied by a cavernous wailing from within some deep barrier reef, slowly swelling like the tides above, creating an ominous sense that the whole creaking structure is about to collapse in on itself. As recognisable man-made music is gradually leaked into the cave, its the ghostly presence of some ballroom dance-band swinging into action, slowed by its submersion as it sinks into the deep ocean ready to be added to the sedimentary non-Rock formed on the seabed. Its a wonder how the Caretaker is able to hold your attention for the entire length of the record when change is so gradual and reluctant.

Fat Worm Of Error - Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies

I turn the keys and begin to climb the steps of our terraced abode. You can probably gauge whether or not to keep reading this review now when I tell you that here we have another release from the Load Records stable. Whats more this is probably the weirdest thing the aforementioned none-more-weird label have put out. What that doesnt tell you is anything about what kind of music this is but it will weed out those of us unsympathetic to the fine line between mind-bending innovation and a bunch of art-school drop-outs clattering about in their mums kitchen. Pregnant Babies falls into the former. Just. If it counts for anything, Fat Worm will provoke a reaction. This album will split a room like marmite sandwiches at a Jaffa Cakes: Cake or Biscuit? conference, and in a world where most of the music-makers out there couldnt provoke a reaction between sulphuric acid and a voodoo doll of Ben Eltons face (its not hard, believe me) we should be thankful. Its a familiar oeuvre of cut-and-paste field recordings, the aforementioned utensil-bashing, squeel-little-piggy vocals, the new-weirds oh-so-post-modern in-jokes and archly affected antics. Accompanied energetically by the unintelligible sqwaking of a frenzied (possibly sectionable) siren, Fat Worm do set themselves apart by infusing their music with a humourous and richly-developed multiverse that you have to really give yourself to if you want to get any enjoyment. Suspend your cynical disbelief for a second and pretend this is the first time youve heard a Load band creating a racket like this and become absorbed in Fat Worms disturbed and disturbing parallel world. Once you do this (admittedly an easier prospect if witnessing one of their manic, bizarrely-costumed live performances) then the freaky fun takes over. Try and analyse it; try and evaluate it; put it in a social context of post-pop faux-art and, sure, it looks like Cirque de Soleil rejects masquerading as knowing savants, but pretend its the first time you ever heard anyone do this and its a hella-fun show. Theres a line (albeit a somewhat squiggly-drawn one) running through American Rock of weirdo noise-niks reaching back into Beefheartian territory through the Residents and their modern disciples. Most of it is, as its moping detractors are so eager to point out, silly nonsense. But as this record is finally brought to a halt spasming (like myself as I finally make it home) on the floor like a swarm of electrocuted wasps I spy my university lecturer out the window gloomily exiting the department office and I realise you take this kind of joyousness where you can get it.

Thats your lot. Now stop browsing the web and enjoy the sun while its here, dammit.

Silence is suspicious. So wrote Michel Foucault and so thought I as I was faced with the terror of completing my journey to work sans-iPod following its removal from my person by a drooling troglodyte with the kind of face Im used to seeing on the side of a milk carton or a late-night Panorama special. Subsequently, I was unable to immerse myself in the comforting soundtrack of death-jazz speedcore and became intensely jealous of others (seemingly the entire Aberdonian populace) blissfully unaware of my trauma, lost in the grasp of their own shuffled playlists. Whats so compelling about what theyre listening to that they dont feel the need to engage with the rest of us anyway? What have they got in there thats so great? Well, for one thing, something to talk about should they wish to submit a review to their local music mag. So Ive no new discoveries to share with you, no overlooked finds, no hidden gems from the dark recesses of Fopps second-hand section. Or do I?

Friends, readers, Country fans (actually, you lot can go get some taste first and a decent deodorant), lend me your ears for mine have just been opened to the magical sounds of Stagecoachs Route 59 and I must share with you this experience. Stagecoach have been plugging away at this particular audio-schematic for longer than my pet elephant Babar can remember and those years of experience reach their zenith in the re-release of this comprehensive compilation.

Track 1, Foresterhill Road, begins, unassumingly enough, with the comforting buzz of a bus engine and intermittent bursts and squeals of grinding pistons. The mechanical rustle of what could be some homemade percussion instrument (none of the instruments are listed in the sleeve-notes - a barren strip of paper adorned only by a list of track-titles and the date of purchase) accompanies the unintelligible chatter of childrens voices as the track plays out within 180 seconds.

Rosemount Place takes up where track 1 leaves off, the droning engine-noises gradually giving way to a vast range of found sounds and musique concrete. Recorded on location, the sounds of the local Grampian wildlife (a mishmash of harping seagulls and the yowling grunt of an indigenous creature known as the ned) are captured imaginatively and field recordings are employed and re-employed throughout the audio-journey.

Three tracks (or stops) in and Im beginning to wonder exactly where this whole thing is going, a question duly answered by, Gilcomston Steps which, at over 11 minutes, forms the real meat of the album. The caw-cawing of gulls and neds comes to a halt and is replaced by the exhaust roar of back-firing engines and sub-woofers blaring out a muffled, jungle beat. This combined with a couple of (uncredited) male vocals muttering about local council inadequacies create the curious impression that Radio 4 has set up broadcasting nextdoor to a pirate garage radio station.

The best thing about the whole trip is each time Ive given it a spin (and it does bear repeated listening if you can bear the pungent smell of the packaging) Ive heard something different. Not only do different sounds and noises come to the fore each time but the record is staffed by a constantly revolving cast of musicians all orchestrated by the appropriately-named Conductor. Throughout the album,

The Conductor utters a repeating verse of Where to? in a semi-spoken drawl half way between Tom Waits and James Yorkston, creating an incessantly questioning, searching ambience. The barely discernable answers take the form of a string of names taken from the titles of other tracks on the album.

Briefly interrupting these droning grumbles, a listless female vocal can be heard on Rosemount Viaduct la-la-ing the kind of pop tune that makes me want to cut off my balls just to save future generations from also having to endure it. Its not an unpleasant addition, however. Its the sheer range of these contrasting styles that encapsulates the befuddling ambition of Stagecoach in putting together this collection. Indeed, initially the record is somewhat of an over-indulgence in its attempts to cram so many usually incompatible genres onto one disc. Attempting to fully describe the range of influences covered herein is as overwhelming as arriving at Pompeii with a bucket and spade. Suffice to say its an experience likely to encourage repeated listening for the attentive listener.

The album clocks in at under 30 minutes in all but is put on a Buddha Machine-like continuous loop from 7:04 to 11:30 daily. To sweeten the deal, the whole caboodle is released free of lawyer-bothering copyright restrictions and is available for a measly 8-0 of your silver pennies. To tell those of you who havent yet realised that there isnt going to be an album recommendation at the end of this, I see it as an obligation - nay a duty - to share with you this most wondrous and beguiling of compilations. Go out, my friends open your ears to Stagecoach.

Tracklisting:

1. Foresterhill Road 2:59

2. Rosemount Place, 0:30

3. Skene Square 1:04

4. Gilcomston Steps 11:26

5. St Andrews Street 2:55

6. Blackfriars Street 2:43

7. Rosemount Viaduct 3:00

8. Union Terrace 1:41

9. Bridge Street 2:32

10. Victoria Road 1:50

The last instance of piracy (the swash-buckling, eye-patch-wearing rather than the suing 12-year old Napster-users kind) in the UK was back in the 70s. A crew of wannabe Blackbeards were possessed by the spirit of Davey Jones (no doubt cribbed from too many Captain Blood re-runs films) and mutinied, throwing their captain out to sea and set sail for the high (North) seas. Continuing the traditional pirate flaw of poor future-planning skills, lemon rations ran short after a few weeks and a deflated, scurvified and slightly embarrassed troupe of buccaneers returned to be shipped off to land-lubbers prison. Real-life pirating, then, isnt a lot of fun and these days is more about uzis and drug barons than rum and parrots. Fortunately, the fantastical creations of our Hollywood privateers mean we dont have to bother about real-life too much and the latest glamourisation of the rummy picaroons life and his noble Code comes in the form of Dead Mans Chest, unavoidable sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. But whats a dubloon-spinner like this doing in the hallowed indie pages of your favourite online magazine? Well, for one thing it allows me to fill my 8p-a-word contribution with tired pirate-themed metaphors as well as plug my fictional band The Scrutineers (a motley crew of guitar-swinging, grog-swigging punks on a voyage to finely articulated art-rock). But more importantly, the film hints at (if never fully embodying) the fiercely independent spirit shared by pirate and indie musician alike. I could, of course, make the evident but somewhat facile links between Depps Jack Sparrow and walking pharmacy Keith Richards. In truth, though, this is a Galleon-sized oversimplification of another well-crafted Depp persona. Here lies the shared soul of the pirate and the indie-rocker. Theres the obvious similarities: a barely comprehensible dialect; spend most of time in rum-scented squalor; a penchant for hoop earrings and white satin trims; always short of a few sovereigns but never of a sure-fire map of how to get them (whether it be of the Tortugan seas or the London toilet circuit); short life-expectancy. More importantly though, the two share a deep loathing for absolute authority (many pirate clans operated as limited democracies) and even the all-pervading mentality of the Hollywood machine cant totally divest this from the legend the film plunders.

Any black spots to beware? To the films detriment, Depps performance is allowed to run unrestrained, pillaging much of possibility for character development at the expense of high-camp hamming. The second fault lies in a plot with a greater identity crisis than Guybrush Threepwood. As is the current vogue with American script-writing teams (see Lost, 24, et al), it is believed that, rather than build a single storyline and develop character, itll make a much better rouse if plot-twists occur roughly every eight spins of a rusty compass and characters have more skeletons in their closets than Blackbeards island shack (okay, thats the last metaphor, I swear). Having said all this, the film has the rebel pirate spirit coursing through its veins and manages a feat almost unique in the modern blockbuster: a frequently amusing, slightly subversive feature with some of the most inventive and exciting set-pieces this side of the King Kong remake earlier this year. Even the po-faced, emotionally-sodden performance of Orloomdo Bland doesnt rot the barrel entirely. In the age of the sequel, the makers seem to have hit on a narrative and set of characters with genuine longevity, which bodes well considering a 3^rd was shot at the same time (hey, it worked for Radiohead).

Musically, the film leaves a lot to be desired. A pretty long list of pirate-obsessed rockers could provide adequate backing for Dead Mans Chests skewed White-man-triumphs-over-brown-primitives moralising (are we not beyond this kind of racism yet, Messrs Elliott/Rosso?): folk-punk bands like Flogging Molly and the Corsairs commandeer the pirates disestablishmentarianism and motley dress; Brittish bands like The Coral, infuse scally-pop with rousing sea-shanties. From Keith Moons admiration for the work of Robert Newman to the Sex Pistols Friggin in the Riggin (sadly, neither of whom feature in the official licensed soundtrack to the film) keep Long John Silvers ghost alive in Rock. Pirate-Rock omissions aside, though, Dead Mans Chest is, perhaps, the only film to be squeezed out of the Hollywood meat-grinder this year (or most others) with a genuine sense of individuality and rebellion which we indie-elitists appreciate only too well.

Rating: 5/10

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Self. Devout student of suburban eschatology; haranguing harbinger of the middle-class apocalypse; perennial despairer of General Public opinion (© Rupert Murdoch), Will Self, Englands prize gloommonger returns to dig his cynical claws further under the nailbed of the manicured middle-classes. Coursing through previous you could almost hear the blood vessel in Selfs forehead pumping as he witnesses Modern Mans mindless decent into a future of TV enemas of mind and colon. Like Great Apes and How the Dead Live, The Book of Dave envisages a dystopian future where the lamentable mores of nineties/noughties Britain have broken free of their fraying chains and run rampant about the Circus Maximus of modern society. But there is just the slightest chink of optimism peaking through this bleak vision; Self has found his own Orwellian proles in whom hope lies. So who are these saviours sent to rescue us from 78.54 years of chicken korma pizzas and ketchup-filled fries? None other than the humble, London cabbie: after all, a species, medically proven to have larger brains than the rest of us. Self has his Swiftian satirist cap on again as he rails against modern family structure, street-culture and Ken Livingstones transport policy. More so than Swift though, Self is a master of spoken language, twisting and perverting the careless, lazy slang of today into the Mokni the inhabitants of this Nu London talk. Old London, having been wiped out by a great flood, is now ruled by a cynosure of priests and lawyers taking their cue from a sacred text written pre-flood by schizophrenic and divorce-embittered cab-driver, Dave Rudman.

There are a lot of books in the world: over 370,000 published per year in the US and UK alone. And, although half of these are by Dan Brown, that still makes for a lot of authors and a lot of voices clamouring for individuality. So when I say that there is noone quite like Will Self writing fiction today it should not to be sniffed at. The Newspeak-like language (a dictionary is included) of the future Ingerland-dwellers is a clever and witty creation that of course speaks volumes about Selfs opinion of the txt-msg generation and his hopes for its future if we continue as is. Similar things have been done this year with the yoof culture-aping patois of Gautam Malkanis Londonstani but Selfs novels seem to be getting more moralistic and (somewhat worryingly for those of us seeking further fuel for our cultural anger) optimistic as he ages. The Book of Dave has, at its heart, a moral message of the ultimately triumphant power of the love of a parent for his child and a faith in the common sense Knowledge of the working cabbie. A monstrous postulation for the future, then, but not one we need take up.

Rating: 8.5

There’s something resolutely indie about fan art. It conjures up images of a couple of kids called Linus and Darla cross-legged in their step-dads basement after school, hand-painting brooches to stick on the front cover of their weekly fanzine. With this is mind, Belle & Sebastians decision to release a compilation of comic strips written and drawn by their wooly-mittened followers could be seen as an attempt to return to that naïve winsomeness the band epitomised in their early years. In more recent times, sell-out shows across the US and Canada have morphed the band from twee-hugging introverts to stadium-bloating, star-spangled rock colossi in the vein of Stuart Murdochs guilty idol Rod Stewart (one half expects him to grow his hair out, walk on with a leggy blonde and start kicking footballs into the crowd). The question is, does this publication show the band havent forgotten their roots and those who got them where they are or is it another sprocket in the B&S market leviathan? More pressingly, is it any good? The answer is mixed and probably depends a fair smidge on your feelings about the divisive troubadours themselves.

The strips run the gamut from the schoolyard pretty-ditties of their hey day to the modern Thin Lizzy aperies. Many of the authors and illustrators represented herein are obviously working from the same dictionary as those who compile Hollywood’s “inspired by” soundtracks as half seem more an outlet for the authors teenage desperations with a song-title tagged on than visual adaptations of the music that supposedly birthed it. Nevertheless, the drawings are invariably beautiful (if not much comic enthusiasts wont have seen before) and often capture well the spirit of the music. Fans are tricky beasts, however, and dont easily fall into the one pigeon-hole (just take a cross-section of your beer-and-chips versus feather boa-and-babycham Manics disciples) and so what you get is a mishmash of styles and outlooks that sometimes work (Legal Man, Marx and Engels) and sometimes seem like theyve stumbled in on the wrong party (Dog on Wheels, The Chalet Lines). Even so, a lot of love has gone into all the works on display. The kind of love that spends hours crotcheting little puppet band members and Fimo necklesses. If youre a fan of the band its a worthy addition to the ever-burgeoning B&S-related consumables. If youre a fan of the medium theres still plenty here to divert your attention in a Ghost World/Blankets kind of way. If youre a fan of neither then you need to open your heart a little and stop being such a grumpy stick-in-the-mud.

Rating: 6.5/10

Of late, IndieCult has become somewhat disillusioned by The Rock (thats the musical institution, not the cabbage-faced wrestler-cum-actor). Pile after steaming pile of cd-rs from PR companies peddling their latest “The New Libertines” or worse (and far more frequent than one might imagine) “The New Oasis”. And lets not even get started on that genre we call Post-Rock which has become as bloated and stagnant as John Prescott after a night sampling the vindaloos down Kensington High Street. Instead we’ve been forced to find musical satiety from other sources, thrown out into the scary worlds of the experimental sound-artiste, “World Music” and (whisper it) Free-Jazz. But having spent the last months torn between listening to the processed sound of plastic surgical instruments and beetle activity under a tree in New York (seriously!) there was always the feeling something was missing. This music, conceptually interesting as it may be, was missing the thing that Rock music once, in more innocent times, incited in us. We’ve all known it: the feeling of rebellion, subversion, raw power the feeling that you are young and could change the world if only you turn the amps up loud enough and scream with as much passion as you can muster. But these were distant memories, like some idyllic childhood spent running through fields of daffodils with daisy chains in our hair, now lost to old age and the RIAA. And then, all of a sudden, as we lay face-in-pillow wondering what the point of it all was, the glow of the moonlight peeking through the curtains dropped to a darker hue and an ominous click sounded out from the stereo shuffle-function. A monstrous wrench of guitar squall threatened to blow the Bang & Olufsens clean off the shelf: “I’m an independent motherFUCKER!!” screamed some possessed harpy as we scrabbled to regain balance. And here it was. All the fury of alienated youth that was missing from the prepared-pianos and shortwave radio frequency-manipulations, was now threatening to tear our ears off and force-feed them down the throats of the naysayers. So yes, Be Your Own Pet have something of a spark about them. Never mind the musical lack of sophistication or the 5^th-form poetry and listen to the way Jemina Pearl spews out these lyrics like shed been raised on a diet of red meat and smarties (just the blue ones). At our certain age, we may still have too much cynicism and lethargy to fully embrace a noise we’ve all heard before but to any teenager out there whose pissed off at the hand they and others have been dealt by this cruel world these guys are salvation.

Rating: 8/10