The Brass Band Outside my Window

Having grown up in a former 'ribbon development area' just outside Canterbury city centre, I am not used to brass bands marching outside my window. Occasionally there's a really old jogger, Silvia walking her unbelievably large poodle, kids on bikes, maybe the odd horse but nothing which makes you leave your desk, open the window and go 'WOW! LETS GO OUTSIDE RIGHT NOW!'

There are a lot more wows of this nature living as a student in Bologna; a hotbed of student liberalism, Italian communism and a vitally important city in the history of European socialism. The protest culture is much more vibrant. But locals lament the decline of poltical activism in Bologna over the last 20 years, and generally see the 'comune' (council) unrelentingly favouring the town's ageing residents in 'keeping the noise down'. The more alternative bars are having to shut earlier, the city's legendary 'social centre' scene has been whittled down from 20/30 to just one or two which are marginalised on the city's periphery, and the right to congegrate is always frustrated by Carabinieri saying you can't sit down but have to stand in the main university piazza to eat your slice of pizza or share a beer.

The band outside my window were marching with the aim of addressing the issue of diminishing social spaces in Bologna, which they believe fuels a climate of social angst and increases racial tensions within the city. The organisation calls itself 'La Ronda per Piacere'. This basically means 'walking around for fun'. You're not going to or returning form work, you're not walking with a specific aim of arriving anywhere in particularly: you're embracing your right to the city's public spaces.

Surely everyone at some stage in their lives has at least been on one protest of some sort about something. It's usually quite a frustrating experience. You're marching because you want international powers to pressure Israel to stop bombing the shit out of Lebanon, and someone is yanking at your sleeve trying to get you to sign up to the Communuist Party of Swindon. ALL the issues are invariably shoved into one big leftie mush of climate change, anti-globalisation, anti-war, veganism, CND, anti-capitalism, fair trade, anti-America etc etc, and inevitably you start to feel a bit of a fool as the issue at hand gets lost and it all feels so spineless.

The beauty of 'Ronda per Piacere' was that the march validated itself by virtue of it being a march. The whole idea is to demonstrate how exciting, interactive and enjoyable city streets can be. So how about everyone bring an instrument, we'll photocopy some lyric sheets, get a couple of beers and lets go for a walk together! Wailing saxophones, plodding euphoniums, pocket trumpets, stomping snares and squealing clarinets, all rollicking through a mix of traditional Italian and Balkan songs. Unlike the obligatory samba band in the standard political protest, which tends to get fucking irritating after a few hours, the Balkan tunes were joyful. It's what I imagine a Macedonian wedding to be like; the band marches through town collecting all the guests and everyone congregates for the wedding party to get thoroughly wankered together. We were flanked by two squads of Carabinieri police, but even they must have enjoyed a bit of music. It actually diffused any antagonism between police and walkers, despite the fact we were going straight down the middle of a main road. But even motorists were winding down windows, honking horns and enjoying seeing a bunch of people singing together, without being barked at to fly less and eat more vegetables. It was very hard to resist joining in on an aimless Saturday afternoon.

Sexual Intercourse with a Grand Piano

Squarepusher live in Bologna

Cosmotronic Camera Freakout

Squarepusher and the Dawn of Man

Last Saturday night I saw Squarepusher for the first time. Besides label-mate Aphex Twin, Squarepusher is arguably one of the most respected, innovative and progressive electronica artists on the world today. He seems to be one of the Gods. At least that's the vibe I get. I'm not really a massive electronica fan. Perhaps because I've spent long hours practicing as an instrumentalist (and I'm not particularly good with computers), I do get a bit precious about the importance of hitting, bowing and blowing things to make noises rather than using computers. I quite like the quote of electrophobe pianist Keith Jarrett, who once said music shouldn't be electronic, as 'there's enough electricity flowing through our bodies as it is'. Or something like that. But seeing as we are in the year 2009, maybe I should stop being such a stegosaurus, bosh a few amphetimines and get stuck right in there.

The concert was exhilarating. I'd really enjoyed 'Go Plastic' and 'Ultravisitor', but live he played basically all of his latest album 'Just a Souvenir'. The idea seems to be a kind of electronica jazz-fusion with some tracks with a live drummer, and basically more emphasis on Squarepusher-bass-master rather than Squarepusher-demon-programmer-of-volcanic-beats- which-aurally-rape-your-ears-redefining-what-you-thought-was-rhythmically-and-texturally-possible-in-music. Hard-core electronica fans don't seem so turned on by this. My older brother said it was a 'steaming pile of gash'.

But with my relative ignorance of electronica, I found the live experience exhilarating. He stood centre stage behind an arsenal of equipment, spraying the audience with bass guitar artillary fire, backed up by a drumming tank, regularly moving to the laptop to call in for more B52 air strikes. This is kind of why I like and dislike electronica: your mind is throttled by sound. It's musical thrill-seeking; an on-going search for dirtier beats, crazed melodies and incomprehensible structures, all made on equipment that you (or maybe just I) don't understand all blasting through your ears at 1,000,000 bpm. It's like Squarepusher is a super-nerd sent from the future, giving us a vision of where technology is taking music. As the drugs and the beer flowed, the overwhelming genius emanating from the stage whipped the audience into an animal frenzy. Like the appearance of the monolith in Kubrick's Dawn of Man, we were primitive beasts jumping, dancing and hollering over one another in a state of collective excitement, fear and exaltation. That's one of the best things about monster electronica; it overrides 21st century dance apathy, but not because it has a funky beat or an irresistably sensual rhythm, but because the music blasts its way into your body at such a pace that you have to dance or you go into spasm.

It's a bit like when a baby sees something that it can't yet make sense of; it might have a positive reaction; laughing or jumping up and down and clapping hands, but it might have a negative reaction; crying, running away and later that night having a bad nightmare. I don't think I'm running away from electronica anymore, but I still have to take it in small doses. Kind of a musical ecstacy: occasionally it's the ultimate sensory experience, but any kind of dependency I still believe is the highway to musical insanity.

The Creative Genius of Canterbury

Chair - a short film by Alaric King from The Bakery on Vimeo.



The link above is for a student film which I had the extreme pleasure of contributing towards with a small bit of piano music for the introduction. It gave a little glimpse into the vision, effort and skill needed to make your own film. It's an immense undertaking! But anyway, it's now finished and here for all to see in all its lo-fi glory.

It's a beautiful thing to slowly discover the awesomely creative and talented people you never knew were there. I must have driven down St Peter's Place thousands of times, never knowing that in one of the houses lives a bunch of students who make all kinds of awesomely creative films and publish them collectively through their homely website, 'The Bakery'. There's some great stuff, especially an awesome parody of the TV uni advertisement to promote UKC. Will definitely have to post that up.

In the meantime, this is Alaric King's 'The Chair', lovingly rendering the lifestory of an inanimate object: a wooden chair. Beautiful.

To get an idea of what goes into an 8 minute film, the whole process has been documented in a blog:
http://www.chairfilm.co.uk/blog/

Blog blog blog, what is it about the word blog? Alternatively bog, log, glob, gob. It has to be one of the ugliest recent additions to the english language. Surely it's not a word, just the noise we make in an effort to expel a rogue fly which has just entered your mouth on a country walk.

Brian Eno + Nanni Moretti = A Work of Pure Genius

Portico Quartet Busk

The Globalization of Music

The Portico Quartet busking on the London South Bank

Why do I enjoy listening to the Portico Quartet?

It’s a strange thing when a sound comes along which realizes a personal musical ideal which you weren’t even aware of. Toumani Diabate; Cinematic Orchestra; Radiohead; Steve Reich; a love of classic and contemporary European jazz; an irresistibly intuitive sense of melody: The Portico Quartet. I think I’ve just found my new favourite band. Great.

Then a week goes by.

Then on the third listen on an aimless Saturday afternoon, you’re gazing out the window and you start to worry...

“Wait a second. Maybe this isn’t that great. Mercury music prize nominee and Timeout magazine’s ‘World, Jazz and Folk album of 2008' might just be nothing more than middle class musical wallpaper. It’s very pleasant, the music makes friends quickly, but do I really want these hooks gouging into my ears for much longer? Maybe this is another case of the ECM syndrome: music that gets so preoccupied with its own aesthetic that you begin to question what musical content is actually there. I don’t know...every major newspaper and music magazine in the country is having a womad orgasm over these ‘post-jazzers’. Mmm. But. There's. Just. Something. I’m. Not. Quite...sure about.”

It was reassuring to hear the same uncertainty from friends. How much mileage is there in the music? Is it starting to get boring?

It's definitely been on my mind for a while, but I think I’ve worked out where the crisis of judgement comes from with the PQ. Things start to unravel when you try describing what it is. There isn’t really a genre to stick it in.

“Post-jazz -ambient-minimalist-groove?

Errrr.

World music? Oh fuck that...”

Nothing that any of the guys are doing is particularly unique in itself and can be broken down analytically without too much thought. The musicianship is certainly impressive, but that is not what breathes life into their music. I think the thing that makes their music dynamic is the sense of the creative process. In a word: busking.

Life for the Portico Quartet started with busking. Anyone who has ever tried busking, particularly in cold weather, knows that you’ve got to be pretty keen to do it. You need to find a groove which you’re happy in and can sustain for a good while. But above all, you need to be pretty good friends with the people you’re doing it with to want to carry on doing it. The Portico Quartet spent months and months travelling all over Europe. Performing together kept the trip going, and in doing so you can imagine how close they must be by now as friends. For me, the joy of their music is that you can actually hear this in the music. Never before, at least to my ears, has the sense of enjoyment and sheer joy from humans getting together to play music been better captured than on their album. It’s funny watching interviews on YouTube, as you realise how completely ordinary they are. There’s no mystique, no unpredictable frontman, no intellectualism. In fact, a recurring theme from interviews read online is disagreement and irritation with what critics have dressed them up as. I would say their music is even anti-intellectual. The irresistible catchiness of their tunes has not come from hours of introspective rehearsals in college, but is a dynamic response to the sensual experience of regular playing in the open air, a financial imperative to interact and catch people’s ears quickly and the on-going inspirational stimulus of a constantly changing environment. For me anyway, that’s the beauty of their music.

I do have a small fear that as they inevitably become more self-aware the spark will disappear and the music will lose its power. I’m hoping they can keep a healthy distance between themselves and the unbelievable industry that the music has generated. I suppose it gives hope that the music industry can get so turned on by a group like the Portico Quartet; a group which is essentially without genre and therefore more difficult to market to the consumer. I hope the music in the next album will continue to speak for itself.