Gossip Rubs Journalism’s Face in Dirt

Michael Jackson is dead, and if you’re honest, there will be a time in the past few years where you labeled him a “sick paedo”, so don’t go feigning sadness, yeah?

Now, I couldn’t give a toss about the man, and it’s not his death which interested me. It was the coverage. As a Journalism student, it made me feel incredibly uneasy to see the leading news agencies in the world running around like blue arsed flies; chomping on the recycled scraps of information left to them by celebrity gossip blog TMZ.

I may be getting well ahead of myself, but I can see a future where Kate Adie and John Simpson stand shoulder to shoulder with Perez Hilton on the front line; a world in which a representative from E! quizzes Ahmadinejad on his country’s high gender bias. Scary, no?

This isn’t the first time TMZ have beaten multi-national news corporations to scoops on celebrity deaths. Both the Steve Irwin and Heath Ledger spectacles were leaked first to this L.A based Blog, one of which happened the other side of America, and one of which happened the other side of the world.

I’m well aware of a gaping hole in this, the little voice in my head screaming “these are all celebrities, and this is a specialist celebrity blog!”. Well yes, that is true, but the fact is inescapable that the largest news agencies in the world, lost out to an online tabloid journal run by a Law graduate with no formal Journalism training.

Aside from a more than casual flirtation with facts (and a penchant for hyperbole) there is a much darker side to the celeb infatuated gossip mags and blogs. In Guardian scribe Oliver Burkeman’s “The Brangelina Industry“, he is told by head of X17 (one of the world’s largest Papparazzi agencies), that “there is this idea that there is only one truth, and that you have to stick to it. But maybe not.”. Come again?

Further damning of the industry comes from publicist Huvane (responsible for Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, Julianne Moore etc etc etc etc…). “If you co-operate with one of the magazines, their competitors become vengeful and attack clients… There is no upside to working with them … Their tactic is to make up stories that are so damaging, in the hope that we would engage in a dialogue that gives them access to the talent.” Lovely.

So here we have a biased industry, known to fabricate stories on the personal lives of celebrities (”[the story] can come from a genuine tip, or a photo. Or it can come out of our ass.” - anonymous celebrity weekly editor), at the forefront of international Journalism.

Sleep Well.

Celebrate Yourself - The Return of Shoegaze

18 years after My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, arguably the greatest album of the 90's, the Irish/American noise-poppers are back touring. This is a good thing. They're also recording a new album. This is a bloody good thing. They're even curating gargantuan hipster circle jerk All Tomorrow's Parties this winter. That's a fucking awesome thing.

The influence of this album can be seen in so many places, but it would be an act of monumental ignorance to hammer on about it, and ignore all the other bands that made this short-lived scene such a beautiful thing.

There was Lush and their spiky, angsty fuzz-pop, the trickling melancholy of Slowdive, and Ride's swirling psychedelia. Then there was Curve, Swervedriver, Spacemen 3...

So, that's the old guard. That happened then (admittedly, some of it is still happening with reformations from Swervedriver and MBV), but what the frick is going on now?

Well, two London club nights have been keeping the spirit alive. Club AC30 and Sonic Cathedral have been putting on the new wave of Shoegaze bands for some time now; as well as releasing singles by both stalwarts and newbies.

One of these bands is Spotlight Kid. Taking MBV's wall of noise sound and the Cocteau Twins' love of electronics, Spotlight Kid sidestep the dirgey pitfall that many bands fall into by upping the tempo and giving their noise a massive kick in the arse. Their one album to date, 2006's Departure is a gorgeous collection of summery fuzz-pop tunes which will make those drives down to the beach all the more giddy.

Going North of the border, we meet five fiery Celtic drinkers, The Twilight Sad. Spouting loner's poetry in the broadest of Glaswegian brogues, James Graham is an aesthetic and vocal representation of the brooding, rumbling, lush noise created by the band. Nothing like those other Scot noise-mongers Mogwai, they have more in common with a Jesus and Mary Chain that can program more than the beat from "Be My Baby". Expect sorrows being drowned by 9 pints of Tennant's Super and crescendos that will make your heart pump blood through your nose.

An offshoot of Shoegaze, Metalgaze seems to be a product of metal heads deciding things sounded a lot better slower. I'm guessing a shitload of grass was involved in this decision. Jesu (AKA Justin K Broaderick of defunct metallers Godflesh and grindcore heroes Napalm Death) make sludgy, hypnotic stoner rock which will most likely give you a hernia at high volume. 9 minute motorik drone workouts and pounding bass are the order of the day, with those gorgeous not-quite-there reverberating vocals merely another instrument in the great wall of sound.

Finally, a band getting slightly more attention in the media, French kitsch-poppers M83 (warning: video contains graphic scenes of rollerblading). Taking their cues from 80's Brat Pack cinema and the original Gaelic sex-pest, Serge Gainsbourg, you couldn't find a cooler band. Their 5th album proper, Saturdays = Youth was released last year to critical acclaim, landing them a support slot with MOR hounds Kings of Leon. Personally, I couldn't imagine more of a clash. M83's joyous, youthful synth-pop is leagues away from the stale, corporate music of some inbred rednecks with seriously burned cocks.

So go ahead, decorate your feet, they have to be interesting if you're going to spend a long time looking at them...

Maths Class make Mr Kyps their bitch

I won't waste too much time and too many words telling you how great Maths Class are, because if you have any sense at all you'll spot the Americanised name, add it to the throwaway pigeonholes of Mathcore and Electroclash, and run a very fucking long way in the opposite direction.

Even if you do get round to checking out their music and thinking "hmmm... not great", you would unfortunately be missing out on a shit hot live band.

Maths Class follow a noble lineage of bands like Throbbing Gristle and At The Drive In who never quite captured the live vibe they exuded in torrents while holed up in a studio, but if Silver Daggers tickle your pickle, then you're on the right street here.

Shifting tempos like a Delorean, and getting some nasty, nasty sounds out of a Bakelite phone; the itchy, jerky rhythms and clinically dry sounding guitars create some kind of bastard dance party in your brain, which, muddled by beer, sends intructions to your feet without bothering to let you know.

The band appeared raised on a pedestal, way up on the Mr. Kyps stage, but the massive soundsystem dissolved any semblance of detachment, and gave the audience more of an opportunity to study the five freaks on stage. Why are they here? What does this mean to me? Why am I here?

ANYWAY. For a generation unhappy with strict-tempo, four chord pub rock, for kids who want to jerk like Ian Curtis in a staring competition with a strobe light, Maths Class are here to bring 20 minutes of distraction, and you can't ask for much more than that.

An Evening With The Dandy Warhols

The Dandy Warhols are cooler than you, me and Johnny Depp. This is the first thing you must realise for a successful encounter.

What you must also realise, is, according to them they are responsible for the musical direction of the past 13 or so years. Except new rave, I found the person responsible for that and bludgeoned them with a flugelhorn.

“We just wanna make music that we feel people need that no-one else is making”, muses rambling front man Courtney Taylor-Taylor.

And inevitably, people will start copying that, or so he thinks. “When we released ‘…Monkey House’, everyone was into the White Stripes, The Strokes, and those bands came off the back of (previous album) ‘13 tales from Urban Bohemia’ “We had the big vintage guitar sound”. So there you go, The White Stripes aren’t as in to John Lee Hooker as you thought.

13 years must make those older songs sound pretty tired, right? Yes, and no explains guitarist Peter Holmström. “When they stop working, we’ll lay them off, even just for a show or two, and then we’ll bring ‘em back. A lot depends on the show and the crowd. If the audience freaks out, no matter how bad it sounds it’s gonna be ok”.

It’s funny that I should ask this, because the night’s set is absolutely crammed with songs from as far back as their ’95 debut, ‘Dandys rule, OK?’ They even played that one from the Vodaphone ad.

Plus, it would seem they lucked out on the oldies sounding fresh (this might be because there were hardly any students in the crowd). Really bloody good tunes like ‘Not if you were the last junkie on earth’ and ‘Horse Pills’ seem to have survived the turn of the century and new albums.

On stage, they have visibly matured, they have families and stuff now didn’t you know? Zia’s top stays on (to the disappointment of most of the crowd) and Courtney’s ‘fuck you, frat boy’ pose is a little more ‘fuck you, bank manager’.

I didn’t walk out blown away, nor did it rank among my gigs of the year (they’re hardly My Bloody Valentine, no matter how much they ape them), but it was good. Unfortunately, that’s all it was.

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Layers, so many bloody layers. A rock writer once said that listening to the Beatles fucks up your selective hearing. If that is true, then Baltimore four (sometimes two or three) piece Animal Collective are the new Beatles.

Jumping on a day glo pedestal somewhere between avant-garde electro and pure pop brilliance, ninth album Merriweather Post Pavilion is not incredibly detached from their previous material, but shows a band that are incredibly aware of the music they are making.

The songs have reached musical and lyrical perfection. Almost exclusively electronic, the bubbling and pulsing swells juxtapose a calming synth wash lapping on your speakers.

Songs about taking your clothes off in the summer, and the joys of coming of age lend an almost sentimental youthfulness and naivety to the songs.

Now almost devoid of the yelps main singer Avey Tare is known for, and replaced with reverb drenched harmonies more akin to the Beach Boys or mountain boys Fleet Foxes.

So forget Tiny Shoes, or whoever the BBC has voted the sound of ’09 - you know we will have by October. Animal Collective have earned every bit of praise aimed at them, and deserve to be loved by everyone.

Review: Damo Suzuki + Kawabata Makoto with Sound Carriers

Hooks and choruses are for weaklings. At least, this seems to be the ideology behind tonight's aural assault of sonic death, bought to you by legendary Can vocalist Damo Suzuki and Acid Mothers Temple front man Kawabata Makoto at Mr. Kyps in Poole. Performing a fully improvised set with a collective of Bournemouth based noise-mongers, this was not a night for those who think a night out at Bliss or Toko constitutes hardcore. The crowd were made up of all the local weird and wonderful freaks; AMT obsessives who travel the length of the country to see Makoto attack his cheap Strat copy with steel rods; those who saw Suzuki with Can the first time round, and those who just wanted to see what the hell was going to happen.
The night was divided into two sets, the first distinctly reminiscent of Can, with hypnotic Krautrock rhythms keeping steady pace for the assortment of musicians to bend strings and minds over. Or to just swing a mic in the air and see what happened. Occasionally it seemed to lose its way, teetering on aimless dirge, but more often than not it was psychedelia at its most unconscious and expansive. Suzuki's improvised mutterings and wailings were almost an aside to the artful musical indulgence. Makoto stretched the limits of his arsenal to vomit inducing proportions. Guitars were never meant to make those sounds, but thank fuck someone has figured out how.
If set number one ripped up the book of music conventions, then the second set sodomised it and fed the raped corpse to its Doberman. It was easily the most ear splitting and self-indulgent spectacle I have ever seen. Whereas before the sound waves were exquisitely morphed into some kind of trippy tie-die kaleidoscope pattern, they were now being crushed, compressed and scraped down a black board until they resembled the sharp edge of a bread knife.
Almost giving up on traditional instruments altogether, the most impressive being a guitarist who left his axe feeding back on the floor to concentrate on a suitcase full of synthesizers and modulators. Makoto apparently couldn't handle the free noise, leaving the stage five minutes in (later blaming it on a broken amp). After forty-five minutes of dual drumming and free noise, I was finished. 'No more!' my ears begged. I felt compelled to obey them, and luckily the set finished. Awe inspiring and brutal, but in small doses please.
There were no students at this gig, and that's just unacceptable. There must be some of you out there whose taste expands from Bournemouth's infestation of clubs. Gigs like this come once in a blue moon, and next time one's on, go.

Mocked Running News Story

School hostage crisis ends in bloodbath

One man has been gunned down and two people injured in major hostage crisis at a Dorset school today.

It took 17 shots from armed police to bring an end to a bloody siege which occurred today at the Talbot Village Primary school.

The first man was shot after a “domestic dispute”, which was seen by Ian Rogerson, a resident of Talbot Village.

Mr. Rogerson saw a man walking through Talbot Village looking ‘very agitated’, followed by a “balding, quite chubby man with a shotgun”.

After screaming ‘stay away from my wife’, the gunman shot the victim in the buttocks.

Losing sight of the victim as he dove into a hedge, the gunman assumed he had run into the local school and proceeded to enter the grounds.

The gunman proceeded to hold a first year class of children and their staff hostage. After a police negotiator spoke to the gunman through a school window, he agreed to let the remainder of the children go.

More shots were fired around this time, but Assistant Chief Constable Alan Rose insists this was merely “bravado” from the gunman, although he does admit that a school staff member suffered laceration and grazes to the arms and face as a result.

Alone in the building, the gunman resolved to come out peacefully if he could speak to his wife, who was brought by police from Dorchester to speak to him via radio link.

The man agreed to leave the building and surrender himself, but was shot 17 times by six armed officers after taking aim at a police officer and refusing lower his firearm.

None of the children or school staff was witness to the shooting.

The man’s wife is currently being comforted by the police.