2/18/2005
To the Doghouse
Accidentally caught Top of the Pops this evening. Increasingly it seems that the boy bands, the established rock acts, the new corporate singer-songwriters [Song-Lite], the M.O.R. Indie acts, etc. all seem to be getting closer to becoming the same band... the cheesey drama-school 'we love you' expressions, the expensive designer-retro wardrobes, the laminated production values... It's seems to get easier and easier to fall into established rolls - whether that be alternative or mainstream, it's easy to slip on the wardrobe, strike the poses...
Things are happening with three of my most favourite bands [and two of Beth's]: Curve have split up, The Cocteau Twins have reformed, and Garbage are about to release a new album. I'm gutted about Curve, they're probably my favourite band of all time and one of few that I've grown up listening to without wanting to give up on for finding out that they owe it all to Led Zepplin or other same-old-influences-as-every-other-band. But their demise is hardly news. It's cliche' but they really were just a little bit ahead of their time; they were doing the dirty beats thing way before the likes of The Prodigy and Garbage [no disrespect meant to either of them].
The Cocteau Twins reforming is a bit of a surprise, and from what they've said in the past it's a little hypocritical. Seeing them live when I was a kid was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. They had a real wall-of-noise type thing going on, with three guitarists and two drummers, and Liz Fraser staring out the crowd and improvizing her way through the entire gig.
Garbage [there's no point talking about the Curve in Garbage is there?] always reminded me of PiL - they're very rock, but they're also a lot of other things. Any music that references all kinds of areas and ideas without being obvious really gets me going. I think I have a real love-hate relationship with rock / pop / dance, but I warmed to Garbage because, as formulaic and contrived as they might seem [and they're only as contrived as any band that gets together and decides 'right, we're going to put our idea of the perfect band together regardless of whether it's going to be seen as cool]. And that's surely not to be confused with a team of marketing executives assembling a group of wanna-be millionaire whores and rent boys and packaging them according to a load of statistics and market research...
[plummy upper-class mid-western drawl:] "Our research has shown that the 7-14 year old consumer is ideally looking for a 'group' that has a distinctly 'yellow' over-tone. They like yellow, they like wearing yellow, and using yellow sounds. They want to see more smiling, and guns, and girl's bottoms. Glittery, transparent objects are also a key element. So what we're looking for here is a 'melange' of Steps and Ice T, with a lady's bottom in there somewhere... in a yellow, transparent material... with a semi-automatic weapon: a 'group' of young people who are glittery yet see-through, who smile, wear yellow, have feminine behinds and carry guns... They should be Nordic in coloring, but with a distinct Afro-Caribbean or Nubian bone structure... "
Anyway - like PiL, and maybe Joy Division and a few others - Garbage are a good example of the way that you can trascend genre, instrumentation, whatever [and anything with an interesting rhythm section and guitars that are smothered in effects gets my vote]. Like the way that The Cocteau Twins were never seen as a guitar band, but they used a massive amount of guitars, virtually no keyboards, transcendeding the limitations of limited instrumentation with an approach that probably owed a lot to the Fripp / Eno in David Bowie [studio = instrument + let's put the guitars through every piece of equipment we can find]. I can also hear a bit of Robert Fripp in the Garbage guitars.
So Garbage seem to be heading down the path of the 'subscriber web site' which I think is a really bad move. The web is at its best when it is concerned with the [free] exchange of information. I do subscribe to one web site - but that subscription keeps that web site in existence, and also allows the subscriber access to gigabites of .mp3's and documents.
It sounds like chances are the general public won't have a chance of getting tickets to Garbage's European / UK gigs unless they are 'fan club members' [ie paying subscribers] and even then there's no guarantee. You get the impression that the best seats in the house have already gone to the press and the execs anyway. How hard would it be to put on the odd extra night? Actually, if our experience is anything to go on, not that easy [but when you have the support of your industry...]
I think the gig thing is really unfair - particularly these days when Media Rules almost as much as Religion and Politics - isn't that clever? Music is supposed to be an escape, a release - a more direct route to the things that religion claims to offer but never seems to deliver, But I won't go into that here. Particularly in Europe / UK the masses know better than to fall into the hands of religion or political power for answers [bitter experience... I mean, "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" but I guess we remember things like that on some level] - but increasingly the media has us all eating out of its sleazy hands.
I understand that it's not easy these days for good bands to earn a living making music, but I remember reading an interview with Robin Guthrie from The Cocteau's - he mentioned the fact that the band didn't make a profit from touring, they did it for the fun of it, because they needed to, because they wanted to.
I'm not the kind of person to say 'we are your fans, we made you, you owe us' but I do think it's a little unfair that the 'real fans' [the people who buy band's music, rather than the press etc. who are more likely to believe that 'we made you'] have to struggle to get to see the band live. So far, it seems like The Cocteau Twins are only playing one show, in America [on a bill that also includes New Order, The Chemical Brothers, NiN, Gang of Four, The Prodigy and Matmos goddammit!]
On the home front: had a really productive session on Saturday. We didn't plan to do any new stuff but we seem to have three new tracks [working titles 'Girl in a Suitcase', 'Skin Too' and, erm [scrambles through hastily scrawled notes] 'Too Tired Too'] that shouldn't require too much tweakage, including one Even / CrockTrack style near-raga beats and rants mashup thing, and one idea that started out as a jazz-funk inspired beat and ended up as a guitary pop tune with a Banshee's style bass-line, that breaks apart half-way and dissolves into an acid-rock meltdown. Like a boiled sweat with a liquid centre.
The 'flute song' [To the Doghouse] has become a bit of a monster and would probably require a sizeable percussion ensemble in order to be 'pulled off' live. 40 tracks of audio is no longer enough, even when you start bouncing things down. It's nearly almost not quite finished, just attempting to tame 12 + new layers of toms and assorted percussion sounds.
Again, I'm having to resist the urge to post .mp3's of the new songs cause they sound huge and fun and, naturally, dirte'. You know what it's like when you hear a new song and you just have to keep playing it over and over and over again.
Neuroticly yours, The Mekano Set
Things are happening with three of my most favourite bands [and two of Beth's]: Curve have split up, The Cocteau Twins have reformed, and Garbage are about to release a new album. I'm gutted about Curve, they're probably my favourite band of all time and one of few that I've grown up listening to without wanting to give up on for finding out that they owe it all to Led Zepplin or other same-old-influences-as-every-other-band. But their demise is hardly news. It's cliche' but they really were just a little bit ahead of their time; they were doing the dirty beats thing way before the likes of The Prodigy and Garbage [no disrespect meant to either of them].
The Cocteau Twins reforming is a bit of a surprise, and from what they've said in the past it's a little hypocritical. Seeing them live when I was a kid was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. They had a real wall-of-noise type thing going on, with three guitarists and two drummers, and Liz Fraser staring out the crowd and improvizing her way through the entire gig.
Garbage [there's no point talking about the Curve in Garbage is there?] always reminded me of PiL - they're very rock, but they're also a lot of other things. Any music that references all kinds of areas and ideas without being obvious really gets me going. I think I have a real love-hate relationship with rock / pop / dance, but I warmed to Garbage because, as formulaic and contrived as they might seem [and they're only as contrived as any band that gets together and decides 'right, we're going to put our idea of the perfect band together regardless of whether it's going to be seen as cool]. And that's surely not to be confused with a team of marketing executives assembling a group of wanna-be millionaire whores and rent boys and packaging them according to a load of statistics and market research...
[plummy upper-class mid-western drawl:] "Our research has shown that the 7-14 year old consumer is ideally looking for a 'group' that has a distinctly 'yellow' over-tone. They like yellow, they like wearing yellow, and using yellow sounds. They want to see more smiling, and guns, and girl's bottoms. Glittery, transparent objects are also a key element. So what we're looking for here is a 'melange' of Steps and Ice T, with a lady's bottom in there somewhere... in a yellow, transparent material... with a semi-automatic weapon: a 'group' of young people who are glittery yet see-through, who smile, wear yellow, have feminine behinds and carry guns... They should be Nordic in coloring, but with a distinct Afro-Caribbean or Nubian bone structure... "
Anyway - like PiL, and maybe Joy Division and a few others - Garbage are a good example of the way that you can trascend genre, instrumentation, whatever [and anything with an interesting rhythm section and guitars that are smothered in effects gets my vote]. Like the way that The Cocteau Twins were never seen as a guitar band, but they used a massive amount of guitars, virtually no keyboards, transcendeding the limitations of limited instrumentation with an approach that probably owed a lot to the Fripp / Eno in David Bowie [studio = instrument + let's put the guitars through every piece of equipment we can find]. I can also hear a bit of Robert Fripp in the Garbage guitars.
So Garbage seem to be heading down the path of the 'subscriber web site' which I think is a really bad move. The web is at its best when it is concerned with the [free] exchange of information. I do subscribe to one web site - but that subscription keeps that web site in existence, and also allows the subscriber access to gigabites of .mp3's and documents.
It sounds like chances are the general public won't have a chance of getting tickets to Garbage's European / UK gigs unless they are 'fan club members' [ie paying subscribers] and even then there's no guarantee. You get the impression that the best seats in the house have already gone to the press and the execs anyway. How hard would it be to put on the odd extra night? Actually, if our experience is anything to go on, not that easy [but when you have the support of your industry...]
I think the gig thing is really unfair - particularly these days when Media Rules almost as much as Religion and Politics - isn't that clever? Music is supposed to be an escape, a release - a more direct route to the things that religion claims to offer but never seems to deliver, But I won't go into that here. Particularly in Europe / UK the masses know better than to fall into the hands of religion or political power for answers [bitter experience... I mean, "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" but I guess we remember things like that on some level] - but increasingly the media has us all eating out of its sleazy hands.
I understand that it's not easy these days for good bands to earn a living making music, but I remember reading an interview with Robin Guthrie from The Cocteau's - he mentioned the fact that the band didn't make a profit from touring, they did it for the fun of it, because they needed to, because they wanted to.
I'm not the kind of person to say 'we are your fans, we made you, you owe us' but I do think it's a little unfair that the 'real fans' [the people who buy band's music, rather than the press etc. who are more likely to believe that 'we made you'] have to struggle to get to see the band live. So far, it seems like The Cocteau Twins are only playing one show, in America [on a bill that also includes New Order, The Chemical Brothers, NiN, Gang of Four, The Prodigy and Matmos goddammit!]
On the home front: had a really productive session on Saturday. We didn't plan to do any new stuff but we seem to have three new tracks [working titles 'Girl in a Suitcase', 'Skin Too' and, erm [scrambles through hastily scrawled notes] 'Too Tired Too'] that shouldn't require too much tweakage, including one Even / CrockTrack style near-raga beats and rants mashup thing, and one idea that started out as a jazz-funk inspired beat and ended up as a guitary pop tune with a Banshee's style bass-line, that breaks apart half-way and dissolves into an acid-rock meltdown. Like a boiled sweat with a liquid centre.
The 'flute song' [To the Doghouse] has become a bit of a monster and would probably require a sizeable percussion ensemble in order to be 'pulled off' live. 40 tracks of audio is no longer enough, even when you start bouncing things down. It's nearly almost not quite finished, just attempting to tame 12 + new layers of toms and assorted percussion sounds.
Again, I'm having to resist the urge to post .mp3's of the new songs cause they sound huge and fun and, naturally, dirte'. You know what it's like when you hear a new song and you just have to keep playing it over and over and over again.
Neuroticly yours, The Mekano Set
// posted by Milk (The Mekano Set) @ 7:57 PM 
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