Metallica: Disposable heroes by Giles Skerry

I have finally managed to illegally download Metallica’s 1986 release, Master of Puppets, having lost the CD for a number of years now. I don’t know why I used the adjective illegally, I just felt like being a bit dangerous. It has prompted me to reminisce about my on/off relationship with Metallica over the years. They have gone from being my favourite band to a guilty pleasure.

Why did this happen? There has always been a certain amount of pleasure placed on me by my school friends to denounce Hetfield and co. as the wankers they are. I remember my friend Greg defacing a poster I used to have with various expletives and obscenities, justifying it by saying that it was all true, and that they were really, really shit. I could not accept this, and went to sleep after school listening to any one of their albums. Increasingly, though, I would listen to what could be objectively described as their weaker albums (Load, Reload, etc). I’m not entirely sure why, I think it was because their early work, which stayed truer to their thrash metal roots, was quite hard to fall asleep too. Anyway, I fucking loved Metallica. I got to see them, too, in 2004 at Reading festival. It was the zenith of our relationship and produced a barren period subsequently. This was not totally inexplicable, I think I had achieved all I could with Metallica, and the pace of university life meant I was discovering numerous other bands that held my attention away from my childhood sweetheart. It was inevitable really. You just can't sustain home relationships at University.

Now, some years later, having amalgamated an eclectic and (I think) sufficiently acclaimed music collection, I decided to reappraise Metallica’s position within my hard drives. I have come to the conclusion that it is a worthy one. I must preface an explanation of this my saying that I am only really speaking about Metallica’s first three albums (Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets). I still have time for the Black album and And Justice for All but they come from a Metallica branching out of thrash metal. Herein lay the problem for Metallica I think. Their success within thrash metal led to their increasing popularity which by turn led to their sound becoming more commercial and straying into hard rock.

Add to this several other factors - egotism, wealth, the introverted nature of the Hetfield/Ulrich song writing partnership, James Hetfield’s conquering of his alcohol and drug problems, internal tension and members leaving, and the fact that both were complete and utter wankers - and you can begin to see why song writing suffered. Post black album, where their popularity rocketed, they delved into self-indulgent bluesy rock with little or no genuine feeling behind it. Save 1999’s album with the San Francisco Philharmonic, S&M, which, despite its excellence, only served to demonstrate their increasing popular accessibility, their nineties and noughties albums have been extremely poor. They have become victims of their own success because their realisation that Metallica had strayed far, far away from their roots only led to the train wreck of St. Anger, a devastatingly shit ‘return to what its all about’ album. It was totally contrived and only increased my antipathy towards the band. It was with all this in mind that I realised why I have been able to cherish Metallica once more.

A friend told me that in order to succeed in life you need to be able to compartmentalise. I have done exactly this with Metallica. I have split them up into two different entities. The one being the aging crusty fucknuts who release tired music and have some much wealth and such huge egos that they want to control the entire industry. I have no time for them. They are, well, cunts. And their music is shit. But the second Metallica are the earnest, drink fuelled aggressive bastards who brought three albums of the fastest and most complicated thrash metal ever made. Their anger, their loathing for pretension and the world they saw brought frenetic energy to their music, and a fierce, seething fury that I find utterly compelling. And yet, as people so often forget about Metallica, in Cliff Burton (who tragically died in a road traffic accident while the band were on tour) they had an incredibly gifted and classically trained bassist, whose appreciation for classical music was an integral influence on the technical musicianship of their early work. These classical influences are, to me, plain to see. Although, I am not knowledgeable enough about theory to discuss this in specific detail. You just have to listen to Call of Ktulu on Ride the Lightning to understand this.

Having said all this, is it fair to place Master of Puppets (by way of example as their most critically acclaimed album) alongside other great albums like Blonde on Blonde, Revolver, Forever Changes, Daydream Nation, Velvet Underground and Nico? I think so. It is as good as the aforementioned work but its strength is undermined by virtue of the negative and mocking attitude people generally have towards ‘thrash metal’ as a genre and the general contempt people have towards Metallica as they now are. Which is a shame.

words: Giles Skerry

Today I haven't done any work

I am at work and i haven't done any yet. Even by posting this, i am probably implicating myself in some way. Someone of relative stature within my boutique-style business to business publishers will probably stumble upon on this undiscovered blog and call me in to an unused conference room, slap me on the wrist, and then send me into the kitchen to lethargically operate the plunger on the office caffetiere. I don't even drink coffee - it leaves me with the same effects that most people who use cocaine complain of. Shuddery, achey heart, sore kidneys and a feeling of restlessness - minus the positives of course; I don't become obscenely confident and annoyingly content with the sound of my own voice for example.

While I am writing this, I should be transcribing an interview which featured a balding northerner from some big bank giving me an ass-aching lowdown on his bank's particular services and how they offer the most efficient assistance out there when it comes to getting returns from captive insurance investment strategies despite "market volatility" - so you can see why I have opted to write this excruciatingly tedious and self-absorbed personal rant which no one is ever going to read, with the exception of one or two mates who, even by this point, will have given up out of the sheer boredom of reading this rambling display of self-pity.

For those who are still reading, the reason is I just can't be bothered (pretty unoriginal, I know... have I lost you yet?). While I risk sounding like a pair of adolescent tits, three weeks of thankless tortue have got the better of me. As we drift deeper into recession, it seems it is 'lose your job, or lose the will to live'. Do or die. Kill or be killed. Or any other pointless cliche that describes everything I am trying to say, without really saying anything at all.

Anyways, my ultimate point is, to combat this feeling of absent self-worth I have opted to listen to this song repeatedly until my eyes feel as if they are going to turn into crusty Wotsits set in a bed of dry pot noodles... It really is beautiful.

Beirut - My Night With a Prostitute in Marseille

Radio GaGa

Radio: The warm pampering ass-fuck that drives us insane. By Giles Skerry

Recently I lost my Ipod. More accurately, I lost my bag which contained my Ipod and my father’s favourite book. This, combined with severe lack of funds, has led to me consider new ways of entertaining myself on those long walks through fields and along rivers. I am currently dabbling with radio. Not digital radio, mere lowly FM. Now my current routine is to switch between Radio 1 and Radio 2. I’m not sure why, maybe its my masochistic streak. I cant really abide Radio 1 on account of its inane DJs, inane music, and inane listeners. Radio 2 has its ups and downs. For instance I like Steve Wright but I hate Chris Evans. See? Simple really.

The point of this diatribe (yes, it is a diatribe) is not to celebrate or condemn each channel but actually to talk about one particularly despicable and risible element common to both. It is something a lot of my least favourite programs on TV and radio have in spades: namely, members of jonny public telling the world about their problems and how they’ve suffered. On Radio 2 this normally occurs on the Jeremy Vine show (Mon - Fri, 12 - 2). On it the smug and listing Vine invites listeners to participate in a discussion about various news stories of the day. I happened to catch the end of the show yesterday and they were talking about a drug being developed that could erase specific memories. It sounded like one of those ‘and finally’ stories about cats performing an emergency tracheotomy on their owner who was choking on a piece of gristle. What followed was truly shocking. Apart from all the cranks who saw it as one step away from total thought control, several callers saw it as a means of removing burdensome memories of past traumas from them, thus enabling them to live a full and rich life. As far as I can tell, there are only two arguments; both of which are happily exemplified by a text sent in and a caller. The text was from a woman who wished she could remove the memory of her husband who hung himself in their living room. Every day she cries, apparently. Vine remained remarkably nonchalant; I think he played Dr. Hook straight afterwards. Nonetheless her argument was that it would be good to be able to remove traumatic memories. Fair enough. Following the light relief of Hook M.D., Vine tried to eke out the reasons for the next caller getting in touch. This wasn’t very difficult. The guy was all too pleased to announce on national radio that “basically, when I was eight, I was raped”. The caller, an archaeologist, claimed that the drug was a bad idea because of the didactic strength of the past. Not bad, although I was always taught that academics hate this argument about the benefits of history. He undermined my respect for his intellect, however, when he subsequently argued that if you had the memory removed then you’d have to go through it all again when you bumped into someone on the street and they said "ooh, wasn’t it awful about when you were raped aged 8". I’m not sure if that’s dinner party conversation. What struck me was, firstly, my grotesque voyeurism and how I revelled in others’ misfortunes and, secondly, the sheer self-indulgence of these people. Everyone loves sympathy. The warm pampering arse-fuck of someone consoling you is one of the greatest pleasures known to man. Its like being hungover. Its shit, but the feeling of gradually returning to normal far outweighs the pain you’ve been through. People who want to ‘open up’ about their problems, which seem to be of ridiculous proportion or nature, should do so in the correct setting. Not on some pithy radio show presented by a wad of toilet roll stuck together by wanking too much.

The sheer antipathy of Vine, and his ability to empathise one minute before laughing and listening to yet another disco track, leads me nicely onto Radio 1’s equivalent shitstorm of self-indulgent grieving: Changing Tracks. Now presented by Sara Cox (in the absence of plastic-faced indie giver of handjobs Jo Whiley) it attempts to show the power of music by reading out the story of one person’s traumatic experience and the song that turned it around. It is fucking laughable. Sara Cox is so vapid that she cant even speak sometimes. She was clutching for the word ‘identify’ for about a minute today in the following sentence: “It’s a story a lot of people will er…um…will er…um…“and so on. Anyway, the joy of Changing Tracks is that the detestable self-indulgence of it all is easily countered by the listeners’ responses via text message and more significantly the complete contrast between the gravity of the story and the strength of the song. Now, bear in mind the stories are very rarely as shocking as boyhood rapings or being the sole survivor of a family trip to Disneyland. They are a bit less grim than that. One girl wrote in about her boyfriend. They were together for years until he admitted cheating. She broke up but missed him so much they got back together. He cheated again. They split up but got back together. By now he was physically and mentally abusive. She found text messages on his phone from another woman. Are you following so far? They split up, again, got back together again, before another final bout of cheating put the kibosh on the whole thing. I don’t know what part of that story I like the most. The guy had it sweet. What a dumb bitch. Anyway, that’s not the point. Regardless of my personal feelings about the story, she really was trying to change her life and she heard the song in question when out in taaawn on a night out with her mates and it made her realise that things can only get better. You’re dying to know what song aren’t you? 'Its All Over Now', 'Baby Blue'? 'The Rat'? Not quite. It was actually Ultrabeat’s 2003 smash hit 'Pretty Green Eyes'. Jesus fucking Christ. Unbelievable. Or at least I thought. Maybe a one off?

Unfortunately not. Today, on my bi-monthly walk to the Job Centre I tuned in for my fix of misery. It was the turn of some pregnant lady who’s grandmother died a few months after the birth of their kid, Kitty. Now I don’t know about you but that really isn’t anything to worry about. And yet, here’s Sara Cox reading out this pitiable email in her dulcet northern tones. “Trauma sadness blah blah blah misery blah then this song came on” and here’s the really important bit, “it made me realise that I needed to care for my child and that she needs me to be a good mother”. Does this mean that before she heard this particular song on the radio she was a neglectful violent mum? She used to beat the kid out of sheer frustration at the death of her lovely old gran? If that’s the case, maybe it was a stunning song. Take That’s 'Rule The World'. Hmm, I’m not so sure about this. I’ve heard the song and its really, really shit. But, this is very confusing, because a woman texted in to the show to say that her gran died and it gave the song new meaning. And a teacher trying to write reports ended up blubbing over her laptop, which is pretty dangerous. Maybe her pupil will write in next week about the death of their favourite teacher by electrocution. Maybe then Radio 1 could be tried for manslaughter? Maybe I should stop writing, get a knife, upload Take That onto my Mp3 player and go give my Nan some Shipman-style attention. Oh wait, I forgot, I lost my Ipod. Thank god for that.

Words: Giles Skerry

Cursed techno mayhem from GrecoRoman

Who? Colin Bailey, 29, a voodoo comic-book villain who terrorises dance floors.

Sounds like? Acid house, Black Sabbath and grime with old school rave melodies and throbbing bass lines.

It may be hard to believe that a boy brought up in a small Scottish town exposed to folklore and listening to Michael Jackson could be transformed into a ghoulish, death-obsessed techno fiend, working with Peaches and touring with Hot Chip

“It’s like my upbringing has gone full circle”, he says, “I heard Metallica and that was the changing point.” Next was a love of hardcore punk, which he pursued through singing in a band. But he says: “My true awakening came when I got into clubbing in Glasgow when I was about 21 or 22 and discovered all types of electronic music; I loved the feeling of elation in a club and this combined with a love of freeform jazz, metal, hardcore punk and no wave meant I was ready to make my own music.”

All these influences combined with a dark, cheeky imagination are what make up Colin’s alter ego, Drums of Death. As the story goes, on waking to the sound of tribal drums after a frivolous night with a Haitian warlord’s daughter, Princess Zara, Colin realised he was under a voodoo curse. “I wanted to create something that combined the primal with the visual; Drums of Death is like an allegory for growing up,” he explains. “It’s a subconscious thing; I was a quiet kid, so he’s like a comic-book villain that brings all the bad things out on a personal and aesthetic level.”

The sight of this macabre figure on stage, along with the wobbling bass lines, old school piano stabs and the whip and crack of snares causes riots. It is the closest we’ve ever come to dance-floor pantomime - only it’s more ‘Sin City’ than Widow Twanky.


Words: Adam Saville

Vampires!: they're everywhere!

It has without doubt been the scariest of all Halloweens, not just for mothers and children but for stock brokers too. By Adam Saville

Short-sellers, more recently coined ‘speculators’ within the third-rate rags left in scattered piles in London tube stations, stand accused of bringing down the pillars of monetary faith and security that were taken for granted by all of us. Prior to the existence of these demonic schemers, we are told the financial world was safe – children and mothers could sleep in the blissful assurance that the facets of our economy were free from vampiric stock brokers waiting to pounce on their next incapacitated victim, left for dead on the side of the road.

Of course, the monetary system itself is in no way flawed; it is the exceptional greed of a few that has brought down the system, right?

In order to address this issue, it is worth considering a simple analogy. In an anarchic world without rules, how would people behave? Would the day-to-day standards we uphold remain in tact? Would the inherent quality of the human condition prevail to allow us all to live in harmony? I think not.

It’s a shameful admittance, but a realistic one, that human beings are self-motivated; the traditional Darwinist notion, I believe, still rings true. It is for this reason, then, that we have rules, laws, guidelines and, most importantly, morals. If a human being is left to run wild and gratify himself in all the fleeting pleasures that the body or mind will allow without being told otherwise; pain at the expense of others will ensue. These are not new or complicated ideas – they are universal givens.

So what happens when you give absolute freedom to a bunch of vampires? By ‘vampires’, I mean money-motivated slime balls who would step over their own grandmother’s corpse to get their next fix, bonus, tip-off, bond, dividend or whatever you want to call it. Add this to the scenario; the vampire god – the king of the vampire kingdom – says ‘do whatever the FUCK you like’, which can be translated into ‘sell, sell, sell’, 'buy, buy, buy' or any other monetary derivative. In other words, ‘drink as much blood as you possible can because it will make us stronger’.

It doesn’t take much to conclude that, eventually, when this happens people will get hurt – the kingdom, as it were, will be reduced to indescribable chaos; there will be no overall winners and eventually no one will be left directly unaffected by bloodshed or the splatter of severed heads.


Words: Adam Saville

STRONGLOOK presents...

Friday 12th 2008 @ Barhouse 2pm-3am:

Downstairs (StrongLook)
Detachments
The Dead Formats
Whole Sick (KKK)
Mark Wrongson

Upstairs (This.is.Sick)
L-VIS 1990
Tomb Crew

PLUS T.I.S residents adverb & crossbones

THIS.IS.SICK presents...

Upstairs @ Barhouse: L-VIS 1990 & Tomb Crew feat residents adverb & crossbones

Friday 12th 2008 8pm-3am

Glade 2008

As I sit here thinking about what exactly occurred just under a month ago in a field near reading, I keep returning to the same problem: how to explain what was essentially and indescribable experience in a way that can be comprehended.

I could list the Djs I saw, but that wouldn’t do justice to the experience. I could reel off the recreational ’activities’ that took place, but that, too, can only go so far. For all the sense it made, I thought that perhaps a series of random noises and smells would sum it up best.

However, I am feeling intrepid so I will try my best. It is at first worth clarifying that my memory of it is fairly hazy. I took a disposable camera but when I returned home only nine photos were of anything. The rest were blank. This pretty much says it all.

Glade is, ostensibly, a dance music festival tailored to the psy-trance audience. This description undermines the presence of Jeff Mills, who blew us all away with an astounding two hour set, Dubfire, and Vitalic. Although, Vitalic didn’t show up, which only reiterated my belief that he is an incredibly unreliable DJ. I love OK Cowboy, but having seen him play a pretty ropey set in Brighton, charging the customer £12 for an hour long set, I was bitterly disappointed by his absence. The love affair has well and truly ended.

Well, that’s all the music I can remember. This isn’t going very well. I’m not sure its possible to continue in any meaningful way. To hell with convention. I’m just going to list five or so memories of glade, in no particular order. Perhaps that is the best way to represent Glade festival in words; erratic, incomprehensible and utterly confusing.

1. The food was excellent. I had falafel and it was delicious.
2. There were only 8000 or so attendees. It was incredibly intimate.
3. Imagine that you’re in a children’s nursery rhyme. Then combine this with the sense that you, and everyone around you, are on a quest, charged by some unknown force to walk around, dance, and talk complete shit. That’s Glade.
4. By the morning, I could only describe all music as thus: it sounded like the smell of glue.

I cant continue. I’m really trying but it really isn’t working. Everything was just so surreal. Perhaps its best if I leave you with a brief story.

The setting: Sunday night, the music had finished, and myself and my friend Luke (who had married a stranger in the inflatable chapel earlier in the day) went to the only place open: Granny’s Gaff.
This was a café that sold brandy coffee, whisky tea etc etc. There were deckchairs laid out, and films being projected on a big screen. A giant chessboard on the ground next to me, everyone wearing silver foil heat sheets, like the ones they give to marathon runners.

I spent my time either in the porch of the café, convinced I was on a boat, or sitting on the deckchair, admiring the films being played.

Oh, I almost forgot. Everyone who worked at the café was dressed up like a granny, complete with wig and long dress, and spoke with a croaky and extremely high pitched voice. Hours passed. A Charlie Chaplin silent film was being played. The security arrived, and took all the projection equipment due to excessive noise levels. From a silent film. The volume increased substantially by our protests. A cry was heard. ‘You can suck my balls’. The grannies come deranged partygoers argued with the security guards, maintaining at all times their granny routine. Luke and I left soon after. We found a man playing classical music on an out of tune piano, accompanied by a man banging out a drum ‘n’ bass rhythm using an empty tin of beans and a chair. Some more time passed. A woman sidled over to the drummer and handed him his much deserved crystal meth.

I left, feeling like I had died inside. Oh the humanity.

Well worth going again next year. Maybe I wont lose my mind quite so much next time.

Words: Giles Skerry.

The Story of DRUMS OF DEATH

Papa Djim doesn’t like techno, doesn’t like Kool Keith and certainly doesn’t like people sleeping with his daughter. Papa Djim does however like tribal Drums and the overall concept of Death. It’s not particularly surprising – Chief Papa Djim is a Haitian warlord. And Haitian warlords tend to be sticklers for tradition. But all this came as particularly bad news for one Colin Bailey as the repercussions of his whiskey-fuelled night with Princess Zara on his Haitian holiday became clear: Papa Djim was not best pleased, promptly placing an ancient voodoo curse on the young Glaswegian before ripping out his beating heart and replacing it with a broken drum machine! Colin awoke in his hotel room the next day with no memory of the previous night but soon discovered mysterious scars on his chest. And the pounding inside that chest didn’t sound like a heart… It sounded like drums.

Confused, Colin returned to the UK just in time to play his first ever live show at an infamous GRECO-ROMAN party alongside GROVESNOR, BOOJI BOY HIGH and HOT CHIP in an old mill on the outskirts of Manchester, but the venue was hit by a long, mysterious power-cut the minute he went on stage. A young Mancunian barman dived into the power-socket armed with little more than an anorak, a gurn and a screwdriver and managed to restore the power by publicly electrocuting himself to death in a puff of blue smoke. Despite this noble self-sacrifice the show was an electrifying success. But something was clear: there was a strange magic in the room. Colin’s voodoo curse had been unleashed. They should never have let him go on after midnight.

Mildly aroused by his virginal notch on the bedpost of Death, but haunted by the realisation that Papa Djim’s curse had followed him home, Colin turned for salvation to the holy trinity of Acid House, Black Sabbath and Grime. The voices told him to write his first confessional material: 'Breathe' (the first gasps of the reborn), 'Cursed By Magick' (the tale of Papa Djim's enduring curse) and 'Midnight Stalker' (what happens to his soul when the sun goes down). AND THUS DRUMS OF DEATH WAS BORN. This debut E.P. tells the story with old school techno piano stabs, throbbing distorted bass and lyrics that blend voodoo magick with references to Mozart, punk rock and 80s excesses. It comes complete with a sub-bass-heavy remix of 'Breathe' from DRUMS OF DEATH'S close friend New York City producer de jour DROP THE LIME.

But despite his best efforts the curse remains intact. Colin Bailey’s fate is to endure his inner drummer demon and to roam the earth reeking acid voodoo havoc after midnight as… DRUMS OF DEATH!

Aug 15th: Old Blue Last, London Sept 5th: Bestival (w. Greco-Roman Soundsystem)
Aug 22nd: Scala, Berlin Sept 6th: Contort Yourself, Manchester
Aug 29th: Barfly, London Oct 4th: Studio B, New York
Aug 30th: Broomfields Festival, Essex
Oct 18th: Matter, London (w. Greco-Roman Soundsystem)

And thus DRUMS OF DEATH steps – nae, bursts - out of Glasgow's nascent basscore scene and into the GRECO-ROMAN wrestling ring formerly held by 8-bit upstart DAVID E. SUGAR, electro balladeer GROVESNOR and fiery Portugese Kuduro trio BURAKA SOM SISTEMA. His first Long Player ‘Generation Hexed’ is to be released on GRECO-ROMAN in the darkest depths of winter, early '09.

D.I.M interview: Mind-bending distortion from Boys Noize Records

Who? Andreas Meid, 33, German electro-techno pioneer who makes a lot of noise.

Sounds like? Cranking your hearing aid up full and listening to Autechre through a blown-out speaker on an industrial building site.

There could be a number of explanations for why Andreas Meid’s breed of twisted electro-tech goes under the initials D.I.M. As an abbreviation, it could stand for ‘diminished chord’ as a reference to the dissonance within his music, or for ‘dimension’ perhaps as a nod towards the ethereal atmosphere it creates. But, in fact, these are no where near.


“The name comes from a painting by a good friend that had a spiral with a head and a hat, and the letters D.I.M on it”, he explains. The darkness of such a surreal image can clearly be heard in his tracks; the immaculately produced ‘Is You’, and the bordering on disturbing ‘Sysiphos’, have been storming dance-floors across Europe since 2007.

It’s not difficult to locate the source of the aggression within his music too. “At a young age, I was really into metal. The distortion and aggression of metal riffs and bass lines feature heavily within my music.”

Andreas grew up within a musical family with a father who exposed him to Motown at time when “you needed to hear music rather than search for it on the internet”. At nine, he learnt to play the piano and later moved onto the guitar, playing in a number of bands during his teens. His first concert experience, when he was 12, was a Happy Mondays gig in 1987, in Munich. “The venue was packed and the atmosphere was great. I remember seeing Sean Ryder come on stage with a joint and a beer, and thinking it was a little revolutionary considering the situation in Germany at this time.”

What has since followed is an obsession with wobbly synthesisers and grinding bass lines. He tells me, “I don’t have time for anything other than playing live and working in the studio. My hobby has become my career” - which doesn’t sound too dim to me.


Andrea’s Top 3 Metal Bands

Pull out quote: “At a young age, I was really into metal. The distortion and aggression of metal riffs and bass lines feature heavily within my music.”

Guns & Roses:

“I’m not sure if they count as metal, but their album ‘Appetite for Destruction’ is the greatest album ever made.”

Entombed:

“They’re a Swedish metal band. I like the aggression of the deep, huge guitars.”

Helmet:

“They’re a hardcore band from New York. I like them for the irregular drum rhythms.”


Words: Adam Saville

Words, Words, Words (2)... Giles Skerry on Barbers

"Literally hellish. The smell, the faces, the weather channel on TV, the car magazines, the endless chitchat, the coathook. The best thing is my feeling of superiority over the suckers without an appointment."

Words, Words, Words...

"It reminds me of an old story" he said. "It's about a man who said he could drum a beat; but it was not that his technique was wrong. It was that he had very small fingers. He tried to use his tiny fingers to beat the world. But when he failed, he made it his life to teach big-fingered people how to play the Bongos."

Words: Adam Saville

Cairo Diary #3: Birthday

Another extract from Adam Thomas' diary about his time in Egypt (the drunk)

It was Mohammed’s birthday and there was no school, so we smoked and gambled and drank spirits in the afternoon. Outside the heat swam in the air and people came and went from mosques and houses, mumbling. Their steps were busy and they carried sweetmeats and sugared almonds. Up in our three bathroom apartment the smoke from fine Cubans circled the poker table and we sprawled like lizards over the many couches, shirtless and full of food. In the corner the TV buzzed a Hollywood movie into our ears and the floor was scattered with pizza boxes and empty bottles. The bars were closed ofcourse and our friend who delivered the alcohol wasn’t allowed to do so today, but it didn’t matter; we had panic bought the day before, and there was enough to see us through. As the afternoon dripped into evening, the muezzins began the chorus of evening prayer. It rose up from the city like a cloud and rippled through every crack and crevice; filled every empty room and empty head; for a brief moment it replaced the dust and smoke and made the air hum with something else. We turned up the TV and closed the two sets of French windows that led on to the balcony. Not today. We were drunk.

Words:Adam Thomas

"Hyper Bass Fusion"

Young Upstart L-VIS 1990 has been at large, traumatising clubs in both Brighton and London, for almost two years; Adam Saville speaks to him with the onset of the release of his first E.P




It's 9:15pm on a Friday in Fabric and it’s almost empty. By my side is a bright-eyed 24-year old from Brighton with an Ace Ventura-style quiff and a multi-coloured shirt decorated with exotic fruits; his name is L-VIS 1990. He makes a type of bass-heavy dance music which he calls his “hyper bass sound”.

“I am from a Drum and Bass & breaks background”, he tells me. “A lot of the breaks DJs are only just getting into the electro thing. I was into it when it first started to emerge but now it’s completely tired.” What about bassline? “Bassline is on its own really, I don’t want to class myself within the bassline scene although I am a big fan. It is a really good scene full of energy, but most of the DJs are not really breaking out or crossing over on to the London club circuit. However, a new sound is emerging, and a new crew of DJs and producers is coming together to do something fresh and new”.

He tells me his club night Night Slugs, which was set up with Alex Bok Bok from Faggatronix, was set up because there was no night in London playing this bass-heavy sound. Prior to this, his club night in Brighton, So Loud, marked what he saw as an “official funeral” for the new rave of old. As he recalls, “we painted a banner in blood that read “New Rave R.I.P.”, that was the turning point for me, the return of bass.”

This reversion back to "bass" has produced a sound that fuses the aggression of bassline with the slickness of Ed Banger; it combines rave melodies, electro bleeps, jacking techno beats and the wobble of dubstep to create a sound that, as he asserts, is made “only for the dance-floor”.

“My sound has plucked all the goods bits that I have found in the last ten years of listening to dance music. I’ve put them all together – it’s like drum and bass, Detroit house, jacking ghetto house, grime, dubstep and garage all into one. What I want is for everyone to enjoy my sound. Whether you’re into dubstep, garage or electro, you can all get together and enjoy my sound.”

What L-VIS shrewdly avoids is sectioning his sound off; his music is not too dark or oppressive, but it certainly packs a punch. Plus it has a sense of humour; his sample of Al Green in ‘Stay Together’ is a cheeky nod towards the lack of girl-friendly elements that his music appears to be lacking.

“I’m not one for melody. I’m not musically trained – I make tunes that I think will go down well on the dance floor. Girl-friendly doesn’t have to be about female vocals or Spanish guitars. (Laughs) My music is girl-friendly in the sense that it is fun and that you can dance to it.” He’s not wrong. Three hours later, Room Three at Fabric is by no means short of girls, laughs and, of course, terrorising bass lines.

L-VIS 1990's E.P is out 21st July:

A1) Apple Bass
A2) Change the Game
B1) Mr Wobble
B2) Black Snax

Words: Adam Saville

Off-cast #1 Offices Are Strange Places No Matter How Hard You Try by Giles Skerry

Brilliant. Someone has brought their kid in. Every time this happens, the women flock to it, often shrieking with delight at the little terd.


Sorry about that. No matter how hard you try, you find yourself inexorably drawn into a world to which you think you don’t belong. This is entirely understandable. As a middle class, well-educated liberal with extreme delusions of artistic grandeur, I cannot help but think that I am basically spending seven hours a day rotting away in a physical, intellectual and moral compost heap.


My physical degradation bothers me the least. Sitting has often been one of my favourite pastimes, so atrophy is nothing new. Sure, I can actually feel the (small) muscles in my body turn into blubber but I have a thrice daily trip to the vending machine. This means I break a sweat throughout the day. That’s not to mention the epic journey outside for some fresh air. It’s not all good though. Constant typing has turned my hands into arthritic wrecks, so that by the end of the day I am barely able to lift the mashed potato I seem to always be eating to my mouth. And I come home with yet another illness. The air in here, by 4 p.m. is brackish and stagnant. Sometimes I eat mouldy food solely on the hope that it contains some penicillin to cure my ever increasing ails. I have also become a massive hypochondriac. I’m pretty certain that I have some sort of cancer, and if so it’s definitely because I work in an office.


As I write, I do so like a member of la resistance. I quickly switch screens (alt-tab folks) whenever anyone important walks by. Not because I fear recrimination and punishment. Rather, it is because in this environment any kind of intellectual discourse is considered heresy. There is no room for Vivaldi, or Kubrick, or Napoleon, or Eco. This is a world of solutionising, of task management, of spreadsheets. So severe is the busin-rot that has set in that there is actually one folder containing the following sub-folders: desk instructions, drafts, goals, metrics, process improvement, RMS PREP, SOX, staff, useful information*. Now, I don’t know what RMS PREP or SOX is but I’m pretty sure that if I read each file contained within I’d probably become so bored that I would collapse and die. This job has made me so brain dead that I am actually struggling to think about what intellectual conversations I’d like to have with my colleagues. I used to like all that shit, but now I just go home and watch the hits.


If you do feel the need to talk to colleagues about something other than ‘actioning the business plan’, then broadly speaking there are but three avenues you can go down. Sport (usually football) and plans for the weekend are deceptive cul-de-sacs. They can normally only be sustained for a few minutes before both parties go back to work feeling wholly unsatisfied and actually a little bit irate. The third avenue, however, often turns out to be a route 66 of conversation that can lead to laughter, friendship, and possibly hopefully sex: gossip. I have actually found myself trying to ingratiate myself with people by listening to their trite complaints about others’ fuckups and agreeing that he or she in question is surplus to requirements. Everyone, including myself, spends most of their time judging someone else.


This is the real problem with my office. I can take the absence of intellectual and physical stimulation because I can find these in my spare time (or not at all because I cant really be bothered). The moral reprehensibility of this job, however, is almost insurmountable. I actually have become a shit. I bitch about people just to pass the time and judge them because they are shit at a shit job. But it gets better. I am also a corporate bastard. My job basically entails making sure that debt collectors get their money from poor people who turned to the wrong people for a cash injection. I am the electronic equivalent of a sledgehammer. I break people with emails. One particular example stands out above all else to illustrate this.


I opened a sizeable envelope containing a list of everyone that one of our clients, CBN if you’re interested (ha!), had made bankrupt that year. I handed the document, which was well over fifty pages thick, to my Italian boss. She looked at it and began laughing. When I asked why, she said it was because they were all Sicilian, and everyone hates Sicilians. On the hope that I could get a pay rise, I started to laugh as well. It worked, though, because for seven fifty an hour I’d pretty much do anything.


*contains nothing useful.


N.B. Since writing this, I have received a letter from one of the debt collectors I work for demanding ninety quid. I’m not going to pay.

Words: Giles Skerry

NEW ADVERB MIX

Download the new installment of the Broomfields Festival podcasts @ Stronglook...

http://stronglook.blogspot.com/2008/06/broomfields-festival-dj-mix-adverb.html

Cairo Dairy (#2): Water

Adam Thomas, who lived in Egypt for a year, presents another right honourable extract from his diary




In Cairo you never feel clean. This is mostly because you never are; the air is heavy with dust and exhaust fumes that burn the back of your throat and coat your skin. It gets in your hair and pores and when you sweat it out you even your sweat tastes worse than normal. There is also a variety of smells to be had. Our street often smelled of vomit. Sometimes it smelled like barbeque; sometimes of both. Sometimes garlic. We found out later that this was because the top floor of our building was full of boxes stacked filled with garlic, slowly going bad. But we didn’t worry, we just took what we needed and left. Also the water is full of chlorine. This is because they use it to kill all the stuff that you get in the Nile - because it is bear dirty. Trouble is, now the water is full of chlorine, we couldn’t drink it; on account of our precious white skin, which turns green if chlorine gets in it. Also it turns you into a lifeguard, and then you can’t go about you business any more because people are always shouting “Oi lifeguard, come over here and look at my shoes, you stupid bastard” and stupid stuff like that.

Words: Adam Thomas

Cairo Diary (#1): The Adventures of al-Gore

During the time of The Festival of Sacrifice in Cairo the streets are a wash with animal sacrifice, Adam Thomas tells of his experiences



During the height of the Winter ‘Eid, the roads in Downtown run with blood and piss. It is at this time that the mass slaughter of the herds of sheep and cows that have been huddled outside butchers and roaming the streets over the past week or so takes place. There are mounds of crap, and also guts and feet. Once on the way to my friends flat I was lucky enough to find a horn; I wanted to keep it but then I realised this was a bit disgusting. Walking around even wealthy and relatively westernised areas such as Mohandiseen where I lived, you have to watch where you tread in case you accidentally step on something’s colon or stomach. It was around this time that my flatmate James saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with shit down our street, singing. He came home fuming, demanding to know “Where has he got the shit from? where is he taking it? And why is he singing to it?!” I told him I didn’t know, but suggested that he might be related to the cake selling midget who had chased him down Sharia’ Shehab the week before.

These gruesome – and massively unhygienic - sights therefore jar somewhat with the festival atmosphere that infects central Cairo and its inhabitants during these few days at the end of the year. This is the ‘Eid al-AdHaa, The Festival of the Sacrifice (in Egypt ‘Eid al-Kabir), The Big ‘Eid, which starts for three days the 10th day of the 12th month of the Islamic Calendar, the month in which the Hajj takes place. This is around the 17th of December, and commemorates the actions of Abraham who was ready to sacrifice his own son, Ishmael, as God had commanded. After Abraham had thus demonstrated his devotion to the Lord over all things, God took mercy on him and allowed him to sacrifice a sheep in place of his first born. It is for this reason that the best animals are selected and herded up in back alleys and main roads alike in preparation for the ‘Eid. In one particular street, the animals had been gathered under a large fairy light lit pavilion, built like the entrance to a fairground over the front of the regular butcher’s shop, where their throats were slit and their blood drained before they were skinned, gutted and turned into the meat for the many large and communal feasts that would take place over the next few days. The whole process took place in the street, late at night, in front of the crowd that had gathered there excitedly, and watched as an employee of the butcher’s shop recited the traditional prayers into a microphone at the top of his voice, at times reaching a sort of euphoric wail that seemed to spring from his very gut. Children ran and played around the animals and their various deposits; screaming and singing and swarming around my brother - blue eyed and friendly faced as he is.

Second only to the atmosphere of festivity that buzzes in the air during the ‘Eids is the sense of community. As in Ramadan, where food is often taken en masse and outside in large communal areas; the meat from this festival is not simply eaten, it is feasted upon, shared amongst families and friends and even strangers who happen to be walking past. As is decreed in the Qu’ran, meat is also provided for those who cannot afford their own, and wealthy Muslims with their own livestock are expected to contribute their best animals to be slaughtered to look after the poor and hungry, which in Egypt is a lot of people.

This is why even as you watch the blade being drawn across the throat, the blood spilling and the legs twitching, the skin being tugged from the flesh and finally the flat slab of meat being slapped onto the board; it is hard not to be fascinated, even enthralled by the whole gruesome process, just as the people are who come to watch it happening. It is probably something quite primitive, and what you are watching is – at is most basic level - ritual sacrifice. But even so, it’s pretty fuckin gnarly.

words: Adam Thomas

Around the world in 80 pages: #1 Moon(walker) pie, what a time to be alive

Believe it or not, I spent a good twenty minutes working out the title to this, my inaugural, post. Reading Wikipedia entries all day, obviously the best possible use of my time at work, I stumbled across a page about Michael Jackson’s 1988 dance odyssey Moonwalker where my eyes were immediately drawn to the text about Smooth Criminal.

I remembered very little about the video as I read; Alien Ant Farm’s unfortunate cover version had obscured my vision of Jackson at his inimitable best like a University rugby player drawing a penis over every page of the only copy of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Fortunately, I rushed home to remind myself exactly why, for a number of years, Michael Jackson was the biggest superstar in the world.

For those who haven’t seen it in its entirety, definitely check it out. It is without doubt the best music video I have ever seen. From the improbably well tossed quarter that slides neatly into the slot of the Jukebox to the renowned anti-gravity lean, there is not a moment that dips below utter perfection. Its such a shame, then, that Michael Jackson will be remembered not for the style, the moves, the talent he oozes throughout but for his dubious relationship with children and plastic surgery. And that’s the best thing about the video; there isn’t a bottle of bleach or child in sight. (O.K that’s only half true, but it’s the kids watching Jackson prance around in a seedy, backalley, speakeasy and not the other way round).

N.B. When I made a film with my friends during sixth form I held lofty ambitions that the climactic scene could be as good as Jacko‘s video. Well, not quite as good. Nowhere near as good. A decent attempt. Alright, an attempt. I suppose in that sense we succeeded. It was slightly unfair, though, because we only had six dancers, all of whom were poorly directed and untalented. And we filmed it in a rather small room in my mother’s house. Oh, and there was very little choreography. Or budget. Other than that, it was exactly the same. You can see the (completely transformed) end result here.

This week I have been listening to Musik, by Plastikman.

Next time: Serial killers, serial thrillers.

words: Giles Skerry

Confessions of a serial killer. Part 1.

Matthew Hamblin presents us with an extract from this latest work that delves into the darkest of all human psyches; the mind of a serial killer



Blood is the only part of killing that I find unpleasant. That’s why I mainly use blunt weapons; strangling would be fine if I was stronger, but my average strength means I can only usually strangle women.

I know people won’t understand. They were raised to not understand, to ignore passion and instinct in order to do what they believe is the ‘honest’ thing, not seeing that it is as far from honest as possible. They despise people like me, people who live true to thier feelings but yet they admire ‘our’ soldiers who aren’t following their desires at all they are just following the orders of our supposed leaders who do what I do just on a larger scale. At least I don’t do it for material objects; money and oil mean nothing to me. People no longer live true to their instincts. That’s why the only time I feel even a smidgeon of respect for the fuckers is in the final moments before they die, everything is then instinct. They no longer show they are hurting with the customary “ouch”, they forget all they have learnt; they no longer regurgitate bullshit. Instead the noises come from deep within them, noises that would usually frighten them; grunts and screams that sound as if they are the product of an explosion in their stomachs. The noises get more and more frantic, as the situation approaches the inevitable crescendo. And then the noises stop and I’m left alone - with beautiful silence - feeling as alive as it is physically possible.

Words: Matthew Hamblin