The Devil is in the Details

I collect music on vinyl. I used to buy CDs - I still do, very occasionally, when someone neglects to do a vinyl edition of whatever release it is of theirs that I fancy - but for the last five or so years I’ve been laying down the big money to have the music I love on the format that I feel does it the most justice. A lot has been said and can be said about the sound quality of a good vinyl pressing. In fact I’m quite certain that I’ve waffled on about the beauty of listening to a good record in this very column so I’ll leave that go and today allow my music geek persona to take the reins and give a rundown of some of my favourite releases and what makes them so special.

Perhaps the most obvious thing about a record is the sheer size of the bloody things. At twelve squared inches, a record takes up a whole lot more real estate than a CD does, and some artists and their designers have used that to their advantage in presenting something that looks and feels as extraordinary as it sounds. This has been the case since the ‘60s when twelve inch Long Players (albums) became the standard format, replacing ten inch EPs and seven inch singles as the marketing priority. First it was gatefold jackets and fancy inserts (The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band being presented as a rather lavish glossy gatefold cover with red inner sleeve and cardboard cut-out sheet) and soon enough people were issuing triple gatefolds covered in psychedelic art (a la Hawkwind’s epic Space Ritual and Yes’ 3xLP Yessongs, which was delightfully illustrated by fantasy artist Roger Dean).

Following on in this tradition is Californian institution Neurosis and their label, Neurot Recordings. The double vinyl edition of Given to the Rising, the latest Neurosis album, comes housed in an astounding triple gatefold, the three panels on each side working together to present digital murals by Neurot’s resident graphic design artist Josh Graham. Also in the Neurot family is Australian psychedelic artist Seldon Hunt, whose elaborate work has graced the covers of records by Earth, Melvins, Isis, Jesu and of course Neurosis. His black and red layout for A Sun That Never Sets mirrors the unsettling musical contents held within the menacingly adorned jacket.

In issuing their final studio album The Ape of Naples, Coil took appropriate measures to ensure that the vinyl edition was suitably impressive. Housed in a thick, heavy box, the album is pressed onto three single-sided records which are each encased in their own card cover and packaged with a full-sized insert and an extra album in it’s own cover as well. Similarly havy-duty is Radiohead’s mail-order edition of In Rainbows, a thick card slip-case holding a thick card gatefold book containing the album on two records and CD, a bonus disk of outtakes, a lyric book and an art book. This edition was made to order and was unfortunately impossible to get a mere month after it was announced for sale. The standard vinyl edition of the record is disappointingly minimal; the two records housed only in a single jacket assembled from thin card.

Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree came in a gatefold jacket with an immense six-panel poster, both of which were printed with a gorgeous matte finish. Sigur Rós packaged their vinyl edition of ( ) in a single card sleeve but it was die-cut, allowing the blurred photography on the inner jackets to show through the brackets. They too included a six-panel poster in their Hoppípolla twelve inch. And not to be outdone, Trent Reznor issued 2500 signed and numbered boxed sets for his instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, which was both ludicrously expensive and ridiculously lavish. There were four LPs, two Blu-Ray disks, two art prints and three cloth-bound books in a heavy box... Vinyl indulgence of the highest order!

Greg Reason

Nine Inch Soapbox

Last year, Trent Reznor posted a large article for up and coming musicians to follow on from comments he made about The Beastie Boys having their online store set up well. Always keen to refine his online presence, Reznor has often pushed the envelope through sheer interactivity, his ridiculously elaborate Year Zero online game being one of the most ambitious undertakings of its kind. With this in mind as well as the twenty year career he’s had with Nine Inch Nails, it’s interesting to hear what he has to say about the current state of affairs and how a band can hope to achieve anything in this climate. As his original post is thousands of words, I here present some of the key points that Reznor made:

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) - your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you're forging your own path, read on.

Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters. To clarify: Parter with TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this - give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people's email info in exchange and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special - make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters... whatever.

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately. The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact - it sucks as the musician BUT THAT'S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So... have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process.

Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace - it's dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC. Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost if any - Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.” (see www.nin.com)

Not a whole lot has changed since Reznor typed this; indeed we’ve been stuck in this stalemate for years now and even now no one seems able to provide any solution. One of the few certainties that we have for people hoping to have a career in music is that more than ever before, it’s going to be a long, hard road to success!

Greg Reason

Looney Tunes

In this fortnight’s installment of Sound Politics I’d like to pay tribute to some of the less mentally stable characters in music. Many have drawn parallels between social ineptitude and prodigious talent but this crew really took it to new levels, all the while producing some of the most captivating music ever put to wax. Without further ado….

Perhaps the most legendary musical kook in history is Sun Ra, the genius pianist, composer and bandleader who led groups of thirty or more musicians in a seemingly endless series of combinations and under a new band name at almost every appearance. Sun Ra himself denied ever even being born, claiming that he was of extraterrestrial origin and that his parents were liars. He dressed in glitter laden robes, bejewelled headgear and Egyptian adornments, and was never known to either sleep or show any sexual interest in anyone at any stage of his life, either male or female. In short, he was an absolute enigma, something he gleefully played on at every given opportunity. “You can call me Mister Mystery,” he mocked in documentary A Joyful Noise.

Coil would go on to record a song entitled ‘Sex with Sun Ra’ on their magnificent album of 2004, Black Antlers, frontman Jhonn Balance intoning “I dream of colour music, and the intricacies of the machines that make it possible.” Balance himself was quite the unhinged personality, an extremely intelligent and talented performer worn down by a relentless alcohol addiction that would ultimately lead to his untimely demise. A psychotic episode in 2000 led to Coil issuing a limited edition double vinyl set packaged in record sleeves that were smeared with Balance’s own blood, the making of which actually calmed him down after he smashed the window in his room and proceeded to use large chunks of the glass to lacerate his arms. Nonetheless, he retained his twisted sense of humour even to his final years, quipping to the audience at the 2003 All Tomorrow’s Parties in Camber Sands, “That’s the good thing about having a chalet, you can sneak in a tranquilized horse!”

While Pink Floyd are massively famous and almost universally aclaimed, founding member Syd Barrett received far less attention following his departure from their ranks. Initially writing damn near every song in their catalog, Barrett grew increasingly unstable as the pressure of coming up with hit singles was amplified with their runaway success in 1967. He followed the immaculate Baroque flavoured Psych-Pop of ‘See Emily Play’ with the demented ‘Apples and Oranges’, stared blankly at interviewers and intermitently strummed a single chord during live performances. It was little wonder the group decided to oust him, although they were quite cruel in not even notifying him of this, leaving him waiting in the studio lobby while they were inside finishing sophomore album A Saucerful of Secrets without him.

While this was going on, The Beach Boys resident genius Brian Wilson was in the throes of a nervous breakdown. Unable to complete his painfully ambitious masterpiece Smile amidst a hostile environment that saw his writing partner Van Dyke Parks walk away in anger, Wilson contributed less and less to ensuing Beach Boys releases until he eventually surrendered to his madness and spent most of the Seventies in his bedroom. He would eventually complete Smile to worldwide acclaim in 2004 but for a long while there it seemed as though he would never even leave his house let alone record any more material. That the finished album is so immaculate is testament to the depth of Brian’s vision, regardless of how troubled his life was.

There have been many other legendary lunatics in music throughout the years, their demented output providing a fascinating alternative to the standard fare trumped out by their more conventional peers. It’s not always true that great art is forged from pain and madness but history certainly does provide ample evidence that a little of both can certainly make for compelling works indeed!

Greg Reason

Welcome to the Machine

Last installment I gave what was undoubtedly one of the leanest histories of Electronic music you’re ever likely to read but for the purposes of giving bite-sized chunks of information to casual readers it highlighted a few of the key players of the past. This time around I’m going to wax lyrical about some of the greatest Electronic artists of the modern era, hopefully confining myself to only a few lines about each in order to present a great number of these masterful musicians.

I guess using the term musicians challenges me to start off with Autechre, the Manchester duo who gleefully informed interviewers that they couldn’t play any musical instruments and championed the notion of “engineering as beautiful”. Their first few albums, which largely explored Acid, Rave and Ambient House, were highly influential in the ever-growing UK Electronic scene but by 1997 their music was becoming less rigid, more abstract and increasingly confounding in structure. Strongly influenced by such fearless institutions as Coil, David Tudor and Bernard Parmegiani, they grew to be something of a divisive force in the scene, one side hailing them as perhaps the most ingenious Electronic act of them all while the other cursed them for discarding the melody and steady pulse of their earlier work. I must admit a strong inclination towards the former notion, as I see works such as Draft 7.30 and Quaristice as not only some of the greatest Electronic records of all time but some of the greatest musical achievements of our era.

Instrumental in helping Autechre find their feet was fellow Manc Darrell Fitton, a notoriously media-shy composer who goes by the name Bola when he does indeed choose to issue music. A classically trained keyboardist, Fitton fuses an immaculate grasp of harmony with considerable technical chops to create some of the most emotionally resonant Electronic music ever set to wax. Thick bass and leaden percussion somehow coexist alongside drifting washes of ambience and melancholy Rhodes lines, rendered always in almost impossibly lucid productions. Three years on from the release of Kroungrine, there is talk of another album, thankfully dispelling the murmurs that told of Fitton retiring from the music industry altogether.

Well my idea of writing only a few lines seems to have gone out the window so I’ll now offer some more succinct descriptions of other leading lights in electronic sound. We all know about Richard D James the famous Aphex Twin so there is little to be added on that front. If nothing else, James was important in solidifying Warp Records’ position by not only bringing them mainstream recognition but also a whole lot of money. Warp began in Sheffield and in putting out 12 inch singles by such heroes as LFO and Nightmares on Wax they came to define the entire scene to many listeners outside of the UK. One of their early signings was local boys The Black Dog, a Magickal three-piece who had already issued numerous records on their own label before signing to Warp.

With Andy and Ed leaving the group to focus their energies on their Plaid project, founding member Ken Downie kept at it on his own until finding suitable companions to uphold the tradition with. Eventually parting ways with these two as well, Downie was close to calling the whole thing off before Martin and Richard Dust provided him with enough motivation to keep going. Leaning more towards Detroit’s minimal Techno than the Rave that informed their early work, The Black Dog in its modern incarnation manages to be smooth and clean while still packing incredible sub-pounding weight.

Everyone’s favourite Scottish hermits Boards of Canada are worth a mention for their remarkable fusing of peaceful nostalgia with troubling Psychedelia and it’s undoubtedly worth mentioning American duo Matmos, best known for their appearances alongside Björk but perhaps even more remarkable whilst performing their own peculiar brand of Electronica. And once again I’ve run out of space without even beginning to scratch the surface!

We Are the Robots

Though fairly well covered overseas, I’ve noticed that Australian magazines have a distinct lack of coverage when it comes to artists in the Electronic field. This is a real shame because throughout musical history, Electronic artists have long been one of the most creative forces out there. From Russolo’s Intonarumori to Chris Carter’s primitive sampling keyboards, the Electronic scene has long been privy to the thrill of innovation. That’s not to say that there aren’t hordes of Electronic musicians out there willingly aping the successes of others; everything that is truly great (and even many things that are far from) is inevitably replicated ad infinitum. But let’s not focus on the humdrum; let’s celebrate the shining lights of machine music.

I’m going to skip ahead from the Futurists, the Avant-garde, Concrète and Acousmatic composers and kick off this highly condensed timeline by throwing a little light on the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Ingenious studio boffins like Les Paul and Joe Meek had paved the way for the recording studio to be a playground of sorts (despite the fact that studio administrations of the day tended to run the facilities as if they were military outposts) by introducing all manner of techniques that revolutionized music production forever. The BBC’s in-house composers and engineers had the enviable task of creating music and sound effects for a myriad of other television programs, using rooms full of ludicrously expensive equipment in all manner of unconventional ways to generate appropriately otherworldly sounds.

Some of the members of the Workshop would go on to have a lasting impact on those who followed them, none moreso than the delightful maths student Delia Derbyshire. Most famous for creating the timeless theme music for Doctor Who - a job that stunned the song’s composer Ron Grainer into asking her “Did I write that?” – Derbyshire would later team up with fellow Radiophonic Workshop member Brian Hodgson and American composer David Vorhaus to form White Noise, the little known but widely revered group responsible for An Electric Storm, the album which from all reports seems to have been the soundtrack to more bad trips than almost any other album in history. Ever mysterious, it wasn’t long before Derbyshire quit music entirely and only ever began recording again shortly before her passing in 2001.

Operating simultaneously with White Noise were the undisputed overlords of Techno; the mighty Kraftwerk. Ask any Dance aficionado with even the vaguest sense of history and the answer is unanimous. Kraftwerk were verily the Big Bang of Electronica, setting forth ripples that continue to wash ashore even today. Emerging from the Krautrock movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, this German four-piece inspired everyone from Afrika Bambaataa (who sampled their iconic ‘Numbers’ for one of the first Hip-Hop songs in history, ‘Planet Rock’) to Big Black, Depeche Mode to Coldplay, Bowie to Jay Z… Their impact was immeasurable and it’s difficult to conceive of Dance music existing without them laying the framework for all that was to follow.

Taking Electronic music further towards the mainstream was Gary Numan, his 1979 hit ‘Cars’ taking the futuristic tones of synthesizers out from the murky haze of Progressive Rock and into the ears of pretty much everyone who listened to Pop radio. By the time the ‘80s kicked into gear the music world was turned upside down by an onslaught of electrical goodies that one could use to make exciting new sounds with. Jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock unleashed a trilogy of Electro Pop records that spawned the massive hit ‘Rockit’, the infamous film clip featuring Hancock effectively making a cameo appearance in a video dominated by robots.

While this installment of Sound Politics has been a frightfully incomplete history of Electronica up to the advent of music videos, I’ll use next fortnight’s column as an opportunity for me to simply rant and rave about many of the acts who took the craft to a whole other place from the ‘90s to the modern era!

The Man Machine (2009 Digital Remaster)

Morgan Macmanus and Omegachild - Ultimate Questions review

From the drifting sci-fi synths that slowly introduce the record through to the immensely bass-heavy beats that follow soon thereafter, Morgan McManus and Omegachild’s Ultimate Questions takes Hip-Hop to places it has never been before. Literally. Sounds like a whole lot of hype but I dare you to find another record that sounds like this one. Sure, you could point at things like cLOUDDEAD or even Shadow Huntaz but none have made a record quite like this one. McManus lyrical twists and turns are a perfect foil for Omegachild’s thunderous robot beats, the two combining to an extremely melodic and accomplished vision indeed. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the futuristic Hip-Hop sound these guys have invented grows to be frequently emulated in the not-too-distant future.

http://morganmacmanus.bandcamp.com/

Stranger Than Fiction

Prince thinks the internet is “completely over”. I’ll state from the outset that I’m very much a fan of his music and do indeed think that he is a genius but this is just far too funny to let pass. We’ve long known that the guy was an oddball – forcing the world to call him The Artist Formerly Known as Prince didn’t exactly help the cause – but never in my life would I have thought he would descend to this level of madness. Then again, he did become a Jehovah’s Witness and resort to local door-knocking in an attempt to convert his neighbours in Minneapolis so maybe I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am. I’ll not continue with this line of reasoning and allow this column to stray into religious commentary but I will say that anyone who has followed his career will note the detrimental affect that had on everything from his lyrics to his setlist selections. But again, that gave no indication of just how bizarre a turn of events was to transpire.

So now Prince has deleted his official website. He’s had his music removed from iTunes and is threatening YouTube with legal action should any of his videos appear. This is possibly the single most moronic thing the guy could ever do. For a guy who was always so far ahead of the curve to make these decisions indicates that any prescience he once had has now well and truly evaporated. It goes without saying that so long as there is an internet you will be able to download his music and watch his videos. There is absolutely nothing that can stop that from happening and in removing all officially sanctioned material he is leaving his representation in the hands of the fans.

This also is all about to change. It will be a very interesting thing indeed to see how many fans can actually stomach to stick with him on this one. Sure, they’ve grown accustomed to an admittedly high level of weirdness from him (perhaps that has even contributed to his appeal for some) but I’m not sure how many can take him seriously when he goes on the record with such statements as “The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." What can you say to that, really? I’m not about to throw my books in the trash but I can safely say I’m under no illusions that everyone is going to stop using the internet tomorrow and that it’ll be switched off by the weekend.

You can either play the game or you can ignore the game. I always thought Prince was smart enough to play. And play he did, doing everything from being among the first major artists to release an album over the internet (his five CD set Crystal Ball in 1998) to starting his own online subscriber service, NPG Music Club. He was even cunning enough to give away copies of his 2004 album Musicology with concert tickets, taking the record straight to the top of the charts by default when his tour was a runaway success but it seems like this sort of innovation has been eroded. By the time this goes to print he would have already given away two and a half million copies of his latest record 20Ten with copies of The Daily Mail in the UK, just as he did years ago, a move insiders have been quick to dub “a stunt equivalent to spinning a hula-hoop in Times Square”.

But at the end of the day, what counts is the music and judging by the last few releases that seems to have fallen by the wayside as well. 2003’s N.E.W.S. was his last consistent release, recent efforts seeming to pander more to nostalgia for the ‘80s than to any sort of true creativity. How on Earth has it come to this?NewsThe Rainbow ChildrenSign O the TimesCome