Issue 4 - The Music Inspired Issue
James Hayes This Issues Editor
In this day controlled by the media all we hear of is Terrorist bombers, killer earthquakes and footballers wives, even if you throw your TV out the window, the everyday tragedy and monotony of things you have no power over will bite you on your ass around the next corner, other than moving to the mountains to live with a goat there is no way to escape it... ... And so we need to find our own place, a place we feel comfortable, this alone is no easy task with car horns and debauchery going on outside our doors. We need to block this out somehow and most of us do this with music.
There is music for every emotion, music for every state, music for dancing, music for crying. Music can give you memories of happiness or remind you of a friend, and so for most people, music is a refuge that takes us to wherever we want to be, whether it be in the past present or the future, your life or somebody else’s, music is our way to escape. Onefiveeight have decided to dedicate this issue to the psychedelic, beautiful, stagnant, Funky, heavy minds of our favorite artists. We are going to explore different ways that this extraordinary power(music) can inspire and sooth our ever more curious brains.
Contents 6 Music inspired OneFiveEight’s creative regulers show you what we been doing these past few months! 17 Confessions of a Cinephile Jake Balwinson Takes you on a Music related Jouney into World Cinima. 19 Studio one69A OneFiveEight interviews Manchester based screen printers studio One69A 21 Music For Health Holly Marland writes about a new approach to health of mind 23 Gooniverse Infected by Design and Willsy lure you into the tepid jaccuuzi that is The Gooniverse 25 Toms Album Reiviews Rich T Gives us his take on some Albums that you may or may not have heard of!
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TRANSCRIPTION OF PILOTS RECORDING FROM THE DESERT ROSE As we approached the anomaly time ceased its rational flow. In all likelihood, this will be my final recording. Without reasonably being able to explain my thinking I believe that we were wrong, the fear and the mania of our response unfounded. I began my descent into this maelstrom expecting to find a province entropic but instead have experienced an awareness so deep I now struggle to separate self from surroundings. On the third day of entry the physicality of my vessel began an initially terrifying process of deconstruction and I now
exist in a void filled only with shapes and colours. As I gazed upon these galactic structures I found myself inexplicably drawn into them. Once I was, for lack of a better word, inside of them, I experienced emotions in their most undiluted and visceral form. Fear was a curved blue line. Love was crimson. My hyperconscious mind now dwells within all of these shapes simultaneously, every feeling imaginable an infinite feedback loop. How I am recording this message I do not know, my attachment to the reality of my ship less tangible than a dream. Through it all I hear her voice. I will… [STATIC] - RECORDING ENDS
The next two pages feature imagery and written content inspired by the Outpost tunes ‘Falling to Earth’ and ‘Endings’, downloadable from www.onefiveeight. co.uk/music. The written contribution comes from S.Willis and the illustrations from Aiden Barrett. You may think these images are computer generated. They are in fact taken from photographs and manipulated to give the finished effect
When Henriksen told me what we’d be doing out there the last thing I expected was this. Harley’s Town had been a run down waste of rock even before the incident, now it was a ghost town. The only life left in the place wasn’t strictly what you’d call life, wasn’t even something you’d notice had this hole been teaming with its usual crowd of prospectors. As it was the only thing disrupting the stillness of the halcyon twilight was the compulsive bustle of service drones carrying out the last commands of a fractured central intelligence. One of the zombie machines was repetitively filling feeding troughs with whatever passed for food for whatever passed for a horse around here, grey and brown chunks of the stuff piled into steadily collapsing pyramids. Henriksen put two bullets into the drone then squinted as a
hunk of shrapnel landed noisily and caught the light of the receding sun; “target practice” he said. I nodded at him, hoping he wouldn’t need it. The site of the termination was as strange and as dull as any I’ve seen before or since. Fragments of the destroyed alien construct were spread across a mile wide radius, several fragments suspended in the air, seemingly oblivious to gravity. The bizarre surface material of these fragments gave them the appearance of being outside the dimensions that governed us, appearing to be the same shape no matter which side they were viewed from. Military approved narcotics dulled the headache that ensued from bearing witness to them. Up until this point our job had followed the three F’s, ‘finding, filing and firing’, firing referring to
the practice of destroying the remains with napalm. The filing part of the job involved accessing the memory of the constructs to record the DNA of its victims. It was this second F that I anticipated to be our next move; Henriksen however told me we’d be trying out “something really fucking special today”. As we watched on, a hover drone I’d wrongly assumed was there for surveillance began spraying the constructs with a mist of viscous green liquid. After several minutes of glowing eerily a ray of indescribable light escaped them and beamed towards the hover drone. The militaries official position is that this never happened. I don’t know what it was I saw. It looked like life. It wouldn’t be long before they didn’t need clean-up guys like me anymore.
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ere we follow our own Helen Beard on her adventures around South America. this issue gives us a glimpse of life in the Andean region of Bolivia at Carnival time, the week leading up to Easter. The local Bolivian people of the Lake Titicaca region and La Paz explode
into celebration, rejoicing in traditional culture, music and dance. These two images present a furtive view of the revelling, exposing the colour, movement, setting and vibe within an outsider’s photographic boundary.
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he importance, that for centuries, Andean societies have attributed to music is manifested in the high degree of complexity and beauty displayed within their musical forms, as well as in their musical variety and the instrumental ingenuity, The musical experience can not only be reduced to its aesthetic aspects however. The music constitutes one of the fundamental languages of the ritual and, in its way, the sounds - like the costumes and the textiles - express the identity of each group. The
characteristics of the musical sounds can distinguish the masculine and the feminine, it also organises the annual cycles of ritual and defines the sacred spaces... to play an instrument, to sing or to dance, structures a way through which to live, as well as a way to conceive and make sense of the world and society. Helen Peart
lvis Costello once said that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. He had a good point. Another thing it’s like is counting to the highest number you can, because once you start, there is no reasonable end to it.Even if in the distant future we work out the exact science of what music is and why it moves us like it does, no one person will ever know all there is to know about it in the same way that no one nuclear physicist will ever understand the complete ins and outs of a nuclear power plant.. There’s simply too much to take in. Valiantly we try though, I mean, we all like music and we all talk, we’re hardly not going to discuss it are we? Unfortunately our efforts to describe the intangible behemoth are limited by our construction kit language. That is until Microsoft invents telepathy anyway. Over recent years much of the music press has been taking inspiration from the late, great, John Peel. This means that we are being introduced to a dizzying array of new music with more diversity than an estuary mudflat (having an education in biodiversity
I can confirm that that’s a lot of diversity, in fact they are somewhat surprisingly second only to the rainforest!). Unfortunately the one thing they haven’t inherited from Mr. Peel is his humbling modesty, that quintessentially English trait that we found so endearing. If you don’t think modesty is important in a broadcaster or journalist then compare the likes of John Peel and David Attenborough to the vulgar clogged arteries that are Simon Cowell and Alan Sugar. Who would you rather be stuck on a desert island with? Okay, it’s Cowell and Sugar, but only because you’d be able to bludgeon them to death with a coconut without fear of reprisal. I’m pretty sure I never heard John Peel introduce a band with a sentence like: “Okay this is a fantastic new song that I helped introduce, this song is really big, all thanks to me. Performed by…I dunno, some shit wipes from Gloucester or something” Okay, so that might be an exaggeration but the music press is still blowing it’s own trumpet more than a self blowing trumpet with the reincarnated spirit of Louis Armstrong living inside of it.
Elvis Costello once said that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’. He had a good point. Another thing it’s like is counting to the highest number you can, because once you start, there is no reasonable end to it. Even if in the distant future we work out the exact science of what music is and why it moves us like it does, no one person will ever know all there is to know in the same way that no one nuclear physicist understand the complete ins and outs of a nuclear power plant. There’s simply too much to take in. Valiantly we try though, I mean, we all like music and we all talk, we’re hardly not going to discuss it are we? Unfortunately our efforts to describe the intangible behemoth are limited by our construction kit language. That is until Microsoft invents telepathy anyway. Over recent years much of the music press has been taking inspiration from the late, great, John Peel. This means that we are being introduced to a dizzying array of new music with more diversity than an estuary mudflat (having an education in biodiversity I can confirm that that’s a lot of diversity, in fact they
are somewhat surprisingly second only to the rainforest!). Unfortunately the one thing they haven’t inherited from Mr. Peel is his humbling modesty, that quintessentially English trait that we found so endearing. If you don’t think modesty is important in a broadcaster or journalist then compare the likes of John Peel and David Attenborough to the vulgar clogged arteries that are Simon Cowell and Alan Sugar. Who would you rather be stuck on a desert island with? Okay, it’s Cowell and Sugar, but only because you’d be able to bludgeon them to death with a coconut without fear of reprisal. I’m pretty sure I never heard John Peel introduce a band with a sentence like: “Okay this is a fantastic new song that I helped introduce, this song is really big, all thanks to me. Performed by…I dunno, some shit wipes from Gloucester or something” Okay, so that might be an exaggeration but the music press is still blowing it’s own trumpet more than a self blowing trumpet with the reincarnated spirit of Louis Arstrong living inside of it. One thing you see a lot is stations and publications making reference to their
bands, so now we have ‘Uncut bands’ and ‘NME bands’ and ‘6music bands’, as if these bands are part of some sort of musical harem they’re keeping. After introducing a friend to a group of mates I didn’t keep referring to him as ‘Geoffrey’s boy’. Whenever he said something funny I didn’t keep bringing up the fact that I introduced him, as if I deserve credit for all his subsequent actions. There seems to be an attitude that bands owe these people something. If you listen to a band and enjoy it, and you show it to your friends, that band doesn’t owe you anything. If you buy a band’s album and go to see them live, they still don’t owe you anything. Why? Because they’re giving you music that you enjoy and that’s a precious thing. If the band is humble and modest enough to thank their audience than that’s great but that modesty should work both ways. The only time a band is indebted to someone is when they get constant airplay despite their music being absolutely vile. So in that case Chris Moyle’s is owed a lot, and I sincerely hope he gets what’s coming to him. Another problem with the music press is that at times
One thing you see a lot of is stations and publications making reference to their bands, so now we have ‘Uncut bands’ and ‘NME bands’ and ‘6music bands’, as if these bands are part of some sort of musical harem they’re keeping. After introducing a friend to a group of mates I didn’t keep referring to him as ‘Geoffrey’s boy’. Whenever he said something funny I didn’t keep bringing up the fact that I introduced him, as if I deserve credit for all his subsequent actions. There seems to be an attitude that bands owe these people something. If you listen to a band and enjoy it, and you show it to your friends, that band doesn’t owe you anything. If you buy a band’s album and go to see them live, they still don’t owe you anything. Why? Because they’re giving you music that you enjoy and that’s a precious thing. If the band is humble and modest enough to thank their audience than that’s great but that modesty should work both ways. The only time a band is indebted to someone is when they get constant airplay despite their music being absolutely vile. So in that case Chris Moyles is owed a lot, and I sincerely hope he gets what’s coming to him. Another problem with the music press is that at times some publications read more like gossip magazines than worthwhile journalism. Many articles seem to be plastered with vox pops from musical faces, weighing their oar in about all sorts of issues. I personally think there is a very good argument for not knowing the opinions and personalities of the musicians we listen to. A few years ago I read an interview with Joni Mitchell in which she was complaining that the flower power movement never managed to make any serious change because people didn’t put the effort in, like she did; singing her songs. This read to me like a transcript of a Miss World contestant speech, as if she was disassociated from the actual goings on in the world in the way that many ‘celebrities’ are. In the same interview she was talking about how she was releasing her new album through Starbucks, the coffee corporation with an expansion policy that makes malaria look timid. So now, whenever I listen to her music I can’t help but think ‘shame she’s a massive dick’.
Do we need to know what these people think? I personally was much happier before I found out that Badly Drawn Boy “always tried to dress fashionably”. I mean, if you bought a delicious cake, would you want to know the bakers opinion about the Middle East? That fudge topping isn’t going to taste any sweeter for having found out that the man who baked it is into S&M dogging tig. I do think there’s a place for reading about the life and times of musicians, and that place is in a posthumous biography or biographies. That way, even if they were a massive dick, you can forgive them. Because they’re dead. Feel free to disagree with anything I’ve said up until this point but one thing everyone should get behind is the campaign to keep 6music on the airwaves. If you haven’t heard, the new head honcho at the BBC has decided to axe 6music because it attracts a relatively low listening base. Well since that decision the BBC has realised that although small, that group of listeners is fiercely loyal and all sorts of petitions have sprung up. 6music is a station inspired by John Peel, and most of the time that really shows. Okay, so the daytimes can be a bit playlisty but all the evening shows are amazingly varied, spanning genres like Russia spans Eurasia. 6musics real secret weapon though is their access to the extensive and magnificent BBC and John Peel archives of live recordings, a.k.a. ‘the good stuff’. I realise I may have been slightly critical of 6musics occasional lack of modesty but can’t we all just get along? I’m sure they slag me off behind my back. Or would, if they knew who I was. Or cared. Anyway, get your arse down to this website to join the petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/speakout/ BBCcutsSO?js=true
Geoffery Bones Illustated By James Hayes
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Well, I stand up next to a mountain And I chop it down with the edge of my hand. Well, I stand up next to a mountain, Chop it down with the edge of my hand. Well, I pick up all the pieces and make an island, Might even raise just a little sand. Cause I’m a voodoo chile, Lord knows I’m a voodoo chile, baby.” Words sung by musical legend Jimi Hendrix, in his song ‘Voodoo Chile- (Slight Return)’, as he plays his guitar to perfection. It’s always been a favourite of mine. He wasn’t a great singer, yet it didn’t matter because he could truly ‘play his guitar like he was ringin’ a bell!’ but it’s the words too that I like in this version. When I’m listening to it, I hear a man so ‘in the zone’, as he sings about doing the impossible, accompanied by sounds that at the time and perhaps even now, no other creature on the planet could make, it gives me goosebumps and the feeling that you CAN create something truly unique and special of your own, if you too find yourself jammin’ in the zone! Ow!! Ha ha!
‘ Jimi’s Infected Hand’ Infected By Design (David Healy)
So anyway, this piece was inspired by Jimi at his best, to give to one of my best mates Jim as a birthday present! As ‘Infected By Design’, I sometimes find myself ‘in the zone’ and can believe in myself enough to create something I can be proud of and therefore worthy as a gift for a good friend. That’s all folks! And if I don’t meet you no more in this world Then I’ll, I’ll meet you in the next one and don’t be late, don’t be late.
Kings rhythm grows, Even as seed replace his teeth, Is Roots... Kings heart pounds, Even as trunk returned is sheathed, Is Roots... Kings song rings, Even as leaves and stem bequeath, Is Roots... King is king, Even as roots grow beneath
Roots By Judy Ward
ld i w p u g n mi o c e r a s wer o l f e s e h T n e r d l i h c e hos t k e c k a i l b e e r m a o c ’t n They o d & l oo h c s o t f f Go o r e h t o m r i the e k i l m k c a a r c o t And I t bou a d n u o r Waiting a ck a b m e h t I want r e w o l f a like e r a n u u s o e Y h t o t e s i r & e You ris ck a b k o o l t o om You do n r f e m a c ou y e r e h w at at h t e k i l e b I wanna
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"These Flowers" By Ju dy ward
In today’s over-digitized-autotuned-world, the expansive sound of analog is not only becoming a lost practice, but a forgotten commodity. In short, analog (recorded) music is captured at a higher density - with an infinite amount of sound resolution. Digital music on the other hand, is (often) capped at a particular resolution - rendering it captured with limited density.
“I’m going down To the devil’s water I’m gonna drown In that troubled water” From the first entrancing wave like snare to the infinite beat, like the ebb and flow of the lunar effect on the great blue body. The airy vocal repeating again and again like the wind blowing through the sail of a ship. The soft flowing sound of the synth soothes you into the tune and creates a real feeling of vulnerability. This piece was inspired by a tune called Devel’s Water by Rennie Foster. It was artistically fabricated by OneFiveEight’s own Jim Bestall. Without a doubt you will appreciate the skill, time and effort gone into this piece, however, to get the full impact you really need to hear the tune in full. follow this link and enjoy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u-RlVyBvA&feature=related
Jazz is one of, if not the most, inspirational forms of music to have ever been conceived. Since its conception in the early 1900s there has been many masters of this varied genre that have sadly now past away. These past legends and their influence to modern music have sculpted my personal tastes and many other people like me. This piece pays homage to them and reflects the respect I have for their achievements. Luke Breen
Lino cutting tool, roller and inks
Initial prints
Lino with design cut
Inspirational
Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Earl Hines (1903–1983), Fats Waller (1904–1943), Sun Ra (1914–1993), Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), Dizzy Gillespie (1917–1993), Miles Davis (1926–1991), John Coltrane (1926–1967), Billie Holiday (1915–1959), Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), Cab Calloway (1907–1994), Fela Kuti (1938–1997), Charles Mingus (1922–1979), Nina Simon (1933–2003), King Curtis (1934-1971).
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ometimes I think that maybe my tastes in music are intrinsically linked to the unhealthy amount of time I spend watching films. I practically live in 60’s and 70’s cult cinema; soaking up the raucous funk and soul in Blaxploitation soundtracks, the occasionally industrial clank of avant garde scores found in the European New Wave, and the eternally cool (but strange)
jazz soundtracks created by the likes of Krzysztof Komeda. Some of my favourite musicians are also influenced by film sound tracks, for example HipHop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, who was highly influenced by John Carpenter’s experimental synth score for his own 1976 film, Assault on Precinct 13. But probably my favourite cinema related musicians are Italian
progressive rock band, Goblin, and in particular their score for Dario Argento’s ultra violent 1975 psychothriller, Profondo Rosso. Which is better known as Deep Red. Deep Red belongs to, and could be seen as an archetypal example of a Giallo, which is a unique style of Italian horror cinema. Giallo’s (or Gialli), can, more often than not, be identified by certain
elements that are found in this film; a mysterious gloved psychopath, an unwitting witness-turned amateur sleuth, several violent and gory deaths, red herrings, hyper-red blood, point-of-view sequences, stylised lighting and cinematography and of course, uniquely groovy sound tracks. Goblin’s madly mixed-up sound track is used quite sparsely in the film, almost creating leitmotifs for certain suspenseful scenes. This includes the deaths, which are all introduced with a brilliantly delirious, percussion-heavy funk track. What makes this sound track particularly special is that the band seem to draw influences
from all over the place; jazz fusion, psychedelia, hard rock and of course, funk. What makes Deep Red’s connection to music more... deep, is how it fits into the story line. Our witness-turnedamateur sleuth is Marcus Daly, a pianist. In one scene he explains why he writes music; “Well my psychiatrist would say that it’s because I hated my father. Because, when I bash the keys, I’m bashing his teeth in... actually it’s because I like music.” Where there may be no psychological link to music for Marcus, there definitely is one for the killer, who’s calling card is an eerie
child’s lullaby. The lullaby is linked to childhood trauma, according to a psychiatrist, who funnily enough, in some kind of sick retribution, gets his teeth bashed in later on. There’s no denying that Goblin are working with the images on screen, creating a psychopathic patchwork of sounds. But what makes it appeal to me is the fact it also works just as well as a standalone record. Simply great music.
By Jake Baldwinson Illusrations by Rob Goodall for more of Rob’s Work take a look at: http://wizardofthenorth.tumblr.com/
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or the sake of the issue theme do you get much musically based work? Are you working on something musically based now? We work with a variety of clients from the music industry, most recently we printed limited edition album sleeves for The Detachments and the Jonny Miller remix of Radiohead’s Reckoner. We have also recently printed a range of tshirts for Single Cell Collective and Dead Like Harry. Over the next few months we will be running a series of screen-printing workshops in conjunction with a Joy Division exhibition.
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Why the name Studio one69A? Our first studio was in the basement of a flat we used to share, one69A was the number of the flat.
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ormletoigget difficult htointo? of hisIswscreen-printing n o rk v is it w w w In terms of cost, in .rcan you want to produce ambe daifq.c om commercially. The initial set up of equipment can
be a pretty big layout. In terms of procuring work and developing technique, this can sometimes be a challenge but we are always learning new ways of approaching our work. Would I need to enroll in a college course to be able to do it? Not necessarily. Apart from a bit of screenprinting at university we are both pretty much self-taught, it depends on how much patience and dedication you have!
Why do you think processes like screenprinting are still so important and popular? We feel screen-printing has an added value which can’t be replicated with digitally printed items. The intrinsic, unique, character of each print gives them a charm that other processes cannot. The majority of artists and designers we work with share our appreciation for this quality of the process. We also work closely with clients to ensure that they have a high level of involvement in the finished product; it’s not unusual for them to come to the studio and have a go at printing. Our workshops are also successful because of this same contrast to working in a digital format; people have the opportunity to learn a new skill, which has a hands on approach with instant results. Do you try and experiment with your printing, And how? We see screen-printing itself as process of experimentation. Obviously things like the physical technique of printing are quite fixed, but artistic part of what we do is something that we are always seeking to both refine and evolve. This development might be as simple as varying the material or objects we print on or how we distribute any finished work. Basically, printing is an artistic process and as such it is always an experiment.
Do you collaborate with other artists or collectives? Collaboration is an integral part of what we do. As well as providing support for each other, working with a variety of artists enables us to experiment with our ideas. We are joining forces with TBA who print their monthly magazine at our studio. ‘New Manchester’ is a TBA / one69a launch event and poster exhibition at Islington Mill on 14th & 15th May. We are also currently collaborating with HussainDeyn on a range of apparel, fabric design and fashion workshops. The list goes on, we are really lucky to be working with some very talented people and their support is invaluable. www.one69a.com We are still taking submissions for the ‘New Manchester’ poster exhibition. The deadline is Friday 30th April. Please email for full brief studio@one69a.com.
Interviewed by
James Hayes
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our percent of the population have what’s called congenital amusia - a quirk of brain functioning that means they can’t process musical information. The rest of us are likely to use music on a daily basis to help us navigate the ups and downs of life. Many of us will have experienced what it’s like to make music ourselves – from creating our own sound world in the shower to performing more publicly on our own or in groups. Music seems to matter. As the French writer and psychoanalyst Michel Schneider said, ‘even if music doesn’t serve any purpose, it helps us to live’. As babies, our pre-verbal communications are innately musical and adults find themselves instinctively responding to tiny tots in a cooing, musical ‘Mother-ese’. Scientists now have plenty of evidence about the way in which musical communication is hard-wired in the brain from
before birth. By around 26 weeks of gestation, a foetus has already begun to acquire an understanding of the pitches, rhythms, dynamics and contours of communication. Scientists are also showing how our musical memory remains in tact after other parts of brain functioning have closed down. People with Alzheimer’s or Dementia may not know who their nearest and dearest are anymore but they can still remember the songs of their childhood. Someone rendered incapable of speech after a stroke can learn to string words together again through singing. It seems that ‘musicality’ is an important part of who we are, from cradle to grave. Working at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, I’ve been exploring music’s capacity to lift people when they’re vulnerable because of ill health. My interest was ignited after going to a concert that I’d organised in conjunction with the
arts for health organisation LIME six years ago. The Little Tuba Duo (tuba & euphonium) was performing at the Neuro – Rehabilitation Unit at Manchester Royal Infirmary as part of a pilot concert series in different hospital settings. I was sitting next to a teenage boy who’d been in road traffic accident and was now seriously brain damaged. During a relatively upbeat duet, he started moving his fingers, almost in time with the music and increasingly purposefully. His Dad was completely overwhelmed because it was the
first time since the accident that his son had moved in such a meaningful way. It was profoundly moving for everyone there; I knew I had to find out more. I discovered a spectrum of different approaches to bringing music to health care, ranging from interactive concerts through to music therapy. In the middle ground between these approaches, I came across the work of Musique et SantĂŠ in Paris. They train musicians to humanise the hospital environment through co-creating music with people rather than simply performing for them. Their musicians are employed as resident artists within hospitals, working collaboratively with the clinical team but maintaining a degree of cultural autonomy.
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isiting hospitals in Paris, I watched musicians easing the tension of the hospital environment, using music to facilitate communication between patients, staff and visitors. In neonatal intensive care, the musicians were able to give mothers the confidence to sing with their premature babies, breaking the barrier of the incubators. In general ward settings, they helped staff to make music as a way of easing patients’ agitation during medical procedures. In one interaction, I watched as a whole room of elderly patients with Dementia were brought out of a state of dull inertia into an almost club-like frenzy though involvement in an African call and response song. The musicologist Christopher Small describes this kind of communal reanimation as ‘musicking’ – playing and communicating together. As Philippe Bouteloup, Musique et Santé’s Director writes, ‘to play with sounds, to sing, is to appeal to everyone’s imagination and creativity - parents’, children’s and carers’. It is, quite simply, making room for pleasure, for life’. Having seen Musique et Santé’s approach, it was clear to me that musicians needed to develop particular skills to bring about these shared experiences. They needed to be able to measure their own input, knowing when to do less in order to gain more from other people. They needed to strip music down to its basic elements to make music accessible to vulnerable people, working at other people’s speed rather than their own. They needed to have a 360 degree awareness whilst working in an environment already full of sounds (sometimes disturbing) and often dominated by difficult clinical interventions. These skills don’t necessarily come naturally to musicians, particularly classically trained musicians who often perform in ‘the spotlight’ and are inclined to fill silence with their own elaborate and beautiful sounds. In sensitive hospital environments, music making needs to be introduced subtly and respectfully rather than
being imposed. Musicians need to know when to stop playing, and how to question what their role is in each different situation, understanding the ethical implications of what they do. Because of these challenges, I felt it was important to draw on Musique et Santé’s considerable expertise. They’ve been delivering residencies in hospitals for over 20 years and their work has the support of the French Ministry of Health and Ministry of Culture. Over the last four years, I’ve collaborated with them to develop training opportunities and support for musicians interested in working in healthcare settings. We now run an introductory training week in Paris every year which has been attended by all kinds of musicians from across Europe. We also have an ongoing exchange training programme with musicians from Ireland, Poland, France, UK and Finland, bringing music to hospitals in each of those countries. Ros Hawley, a local community musician who trained on the first of these exchange programmes is now leading training programmes at the RNCM, working alongside her partner Mark Fisher.
Undergraduate and postgraduate students can do modules in Music for Health as an accredited part of their courses. Exploring different elements of musical communication, they observe Ros and Mark working in settings including the new Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, Seashell School for people with communication disorders and Wigan and Leigh Hospice. They also get involved in community arts and mental health projects run by the social enterprise BlueSCI and the NHS Funded organisation START Manchester. As their confidence grows, the students can start working on their own with guidance and support from Ros and Mark. It’s amazing to watch their perceptions of music and people changing as they engage in intimate musical interactions in challenging contexts. As one student commented, ‘being a musician in a hospital is vastly different to performing on the concert platform. You have to be incredibly sensitive, to lose the ego and to connect and interact with people.’ Another wrote ‘Usually when I perform, I am very mentally, emotionally and physically detached from the audience. Through this course, I regained individuality, self expression and imagination in my music making and how to create the chance for the patient to express themselves and use their imagination on an equal footing.’ Music for Health is now a small department within the RNCM and has secured funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to support Ros and Mark’s work. The funding has also enabled us to appoint a new Project Manager, Lilli BrodnerFrancis, who is bringing a fresh energy to the programme. We have a regular presence in a range of health and social care settings and we’re hooking up with researchers to find a better language for translating the power of music making into hard evidence. It’s early days but the interest in what we do seems to be constantly growing. If you’d like to receive a monthly update about opportunities and events in this unique field of work or share your ideas about music’s relationship to health, then please contact me at holly.marland@rncm.ac.uk.
STORY RELATED PUN Algerian scientists have discovered a way of replacing pain receptors in the body with wi-fi hotspots, the end result being that instead of annoying physical discomfort, injury now results in peoples optical nerves being redirected to a series of humorous videos hosted on youtube. Sports pundits are worried that it might turn boxing into one big giggle fest, returning the sport to the dark days of Audley Harrison. BASTARDLY DIRD A particularly large emperor penguin was spotted sporting a tight little moustache last week leading some conservationists to suspect that it may be up to something dastardly. These suspicions were strengthened when the flightless bird was seen wearing a cape and tying a distressed young maiden to a train line. Tiger Woods has offered to beat the animal to death with one of his golf clubs but scientists have said they’d prefer to observe it for a while first in case it does something amusing.
SPACE ODDITY Disgraced celestial body Pluto is yet again facing an embarrassing reclassification. Not content with labelling the space rock a ‘dwarf planet’ the International Astronomical Union (IAU) now insist that Pluto be referred to as ‘Marlon Brando’s principal stunt double’. American textbooks have already been edited to read “Pluto was a stunt double who worked with popular method actor Marlon Brando on several of his most popular films, including The Godfather part 2 and Apocalypse Now...” Opponents to the move believe that power has gone to the heads of the IAU, the union famously responsible for the ‘Choco Krispies’ debacle. PAINBOW An extremist alliance comprised of Al Qaeda, the Klu Klux Klan, and Jim Davidson declared war on rainbows last night for being flagrantly flamboyant and encouraging a range of behaviour they deem unacceptable such as winking at strangers and fisting. Thankfully it is the
same stupidity that births their intolerance that will also prevent them from finding an adequate solution to the predictably coloured phenomena. The gay community in Manchester is said to be tired this morning after a really good night out on Canal Street. On a related note, Davidson has also declared a one-man war on Canals due to their association with macho liaisons. iPALM Technophiles wondering what exactly the USP (Unique Selling Point)- or more simply; the point- of the ipad is were relieved today to find out that Apple’s new invention is the electronic holy grail after all. Apple head honcho Steve Jobs has now revealed that a water-proof and reinforced screen means that users can eat a delicious Sunday roast straight off the hardware whilst simultaneously streaming porn on it. Jobs said “every potato you shovel off the ipad brings you one scrumptious mouthful closer to that big creamy pay off”. Also unveiled today was a new line of porn developed
by Apple themselves in which women do depraved things to themselves with the vibrating functions of iphones. Having seen it we don’t really see the point, you could make the fruit logoed smart phone out as clear as crystal but the gash was well out of focus. Apparently though, it’s exactly what the fans wanted.
in their novelty Mr. Bean underwear). Over the past ten years there’s been a big increase in American celebrities coming over here to advertise various dreadful products. There’s also been a big increase in foreigners sniggering behind our backs in continental bistros. And most annoyingly a significant increase in tourists dangling their keys in front of our faces and going “koochy-koochy-koo” as if we had the mental capacity of a fucking infant. It’s almost like people don’t take us seriously anymore, but why would that be? The reason is because our foreign friends are being treated to ‘…and finally’ news stories in which they see a bunch of back-snapping,
I just saw Iggy Pop in an advertisement for car insurance, what should you do when your heroes let you down like this? Although this may seem like a sell out, you need to put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Pop, and indeed the shoes of every other non-English person on the planet (for people who don’t wear shoes (or the footless) just imagine yourself
Gloucestershire window lickers, careening down hills like an avalanche of incest after a massive rolling cheese. The result of this is that people around the world automatically imagine us all as being gormless, cheesechasers, in the same way that many English people imagine all the Welsh are slow talking, sheep-shaggers (which is a myth as most of them haven’t had sex with sheep at all). This mental stereotyping is what makes people like Iggy Pop, Samuel L. Jackson and Ronald McDonald think they can come over here and
advertise without losing credibility. Think about it, if there was a country in which you thought all the citizens competed in a game in which they swam after a leg of lamb down the rapids of a dangerous river, maiming and killing themselves in the process, you wouldn’t really worry about looking lame for advertising peroxide flavoured coke over there. This leaves us with two options to solving our international image crisis: 1: Get people around the world to look into things before creating harmful stereotypes 2: Sever Gloucestershire from the rest of the country using jumbos sized JCB diggers. When this phase is complete drag the newly formed island out to international waters, beyond the reach of the long arm of the law. Finally, repeatedly nuke the island until it resembles a seriously overcooked burger.
brain tumour. Another problem is he bends the truth, lies, and uses the vulnerable to get his own way. His main form of attack is to turn up at the offices of big businesses and demand an interview about all the bad stuff they’ve done, only to be refused. This gives viewers the impression that they won’t talk to Michael because they are fearful he will expose their evil wrong doing. In reality though, very few CEO’s will stop what they are doing to go and talk to some fat tramp just because he’s gone to the effort of turning up with a video camera. In the reality not shown in his films, sometimes he does get an interview but he doesn’t show them, as they don’t support the narrative structure he has planned for his movie. I’m not saying the people he goes after aren’t real villains, I’m just saying that he is worse than all of them combined. The reason they didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is because Michael Moore ate them all. Michael Moore should be drowned in oil by industrialists. What’s the cutest, puppies or kittens? Emmmm, god, I don’t know! They’re both, so cute! I’ll have to go with kittens because I saw one playing in a laundry basket once and it was sssooooooo cccuuuuutttteeee!!!!
Obviously one of these solutions would be too hard to achieve, so we should go for the easy approach. You might think that a bumpkin genocide would give us a worse reputation that the cheese chasing but at least we won’t have half naked rock icons advertising car insurance anymore. Is Michael Moore’s new film any good? Michael Moore is a repellent heifer who cares more about drawing attention to himself than the causes he represents. One of his problems is that he thinks he’s funny but he isn’t, kind of like Justin Lee Collins reincarnated as a
From the Helter Skelter inspired Manson killings, to New Labour riding the crest of Brit Pops mighty wave, most of our favourite things have been inspired by music. Here’s a look at some of the bestest. • The year was 1967 and America had it all: mind bending music with an apocalyptic tinge, legions of herbally motivated beatniks looking for a cause to latch on to, and an arsenal with more smash than an instant mash expo. With that in mind the Yanks invaded Vietnam, providing the perfect backdrop to a soundtrack unrivalled to this day. But don’t think the Vietnamese didn’t get anything out of it, they were rocking a kind of minimal hardcorefolktronica that went perfectly with the sort of insurgent jungle warfare they made their own. • When hard house first came out, who could help but listen to the ear popping punishment of the ‘hoovers’, and think: right now I desperately want to be flapping around in a puddle of my own psychosis, experiencing a total collapse of self and reality akin to a thousand shards of dread piercing the soft fleshy underside of my pseudotortoise mind, praying to anything that will listen to wipe me off the windshield of existence. When GHB hit the club scene that wish became a reality, thus was born the geebee dance floor fuck-up. Hard House is now more commonly referred to as Fast House of course, the reason being it’s about as hard as piss in zero gravity. • When Eminem first came out the general public was worried that his blatant disregard for the laws of society would inspire the youth of the day to tool up and take to the streets in a hail of lead and profanity. Eminem himself was
worried that he would inspire a million other working class white rappers, all trying to be just like him. In the end though all he inspired was a million furrowed brows, a million bemused smiles, as the listening public watched his whiney, peroxide stained career and thought “jeez, what a fanny!” • After hearing the dreary, turgid, Soviet National Anthem for the thousandth time that week, comrade Uri Mikalkov went in to his job at the nuclear power plant thinking “perhaps today I will not be so strident with my safety checks”. • Anakin Skywalker tried living a good life, but being constantly followed by “The Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme)” made this impossible. None of the tramps at the soup kitchen wanted to take a bowl of liquid yum from the boy with the sinister theme music, pleasing as his facial features were. Old ladies didn’t want help crossing the street from a young man whose backing track sounded like a thousand Stormtroopers crushing the skulls of their enemies beneath their mighty white boots. So he gave Obi Wan a waggle of his defiant middle finger and took his orchestral overture to the dark side. The rest is history (although suspiciously it looked more like the future). (DISCLAIMER: The Soviet National Anthem is actually really uplifting and joyous (check Wikipedia), we don’t know what Uri’s problem was, sour bastard!)
)N THIS ISSUE WE HAVE TWO ALBUMS THAT HAVE BEEN FAIRLY RECENTLY RELEASED BECAUSE ) WANTED TO COVER SOME GREAT NEW MUSIC ) THINK YOU ALL SHOULD BE HEARING !LSO ) VE INCLUDED AN UNDERRATED CLASSIC WHICH IS ADMITTEDLY AN AQUIRED TASTE BUT AGAIN GIVE IT A GO YOU NEVER KNOW YOU MAY LIKE IT Design-wise this time I’ve gone for a very simple grid-dictated layout because I wanted to display fully the beautiful macro photography courtesy of Adam Ross, with the type being extremely clean legible. Good ol’ Helvetica Neue! I’ve chosen Adam’s photography because it’s very organic and inspired by the earth and I think the three albums you’re going to read about all share those qualities to some extent. So I hope you enjoy and go pick up yourself some decent tunes. TR.
tom's alb reviews all photography Š Adam Ross. contact Adam at onefatpothead@hotmail.com In case you were wondering... it’s a pine cone.
lbum s
*OANNA .EWSOM (AVE /NE /N -E $RAG #ITY *OANNA .EWSOM HAS GARNERED CONSIDERABLE RESPECT AND ADMIRATION WITHIN THE FOLK MUSIC COMMUNITY (ER CHILDLIKE VOCALS DEFT HARP WORK MAKE HER INSTANTLY RECOGNISABLE AND IN A WORLD WHERE ANY CHUMP CAN PUT AN ALBUM TOGETHER THAT SOUNDS LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE THAT S A FEAT IN ITSELF Ashamedly, ‘Have One On Me’ is my first proper introduction to Joanna Newsom and as it’s a triple album it feels like being chucked in at the deepend. I’ve heard the odd track in passing and her first album, ‘Milk Eyed Mender’ was on in the background for a time at uni courtesy of fellow 158-er; Jim, but I’ve never stopped long enough to pay real attention. Because attention is what you really need to experience Joanna’s music to it’s fullest. The key ingredients being her voice & her harp; you’d presume it would be a light and easy listen. On the contrary; her compositions are dense and initially quite impenetrable. Her voice is everpresent and there are very little musical interludes and very few choruses or obvious hooks to immediately latch onto. This does sound off-putting but the way the music is woven round her words and each harp flutter or string saw serves to embellish and highlight each line she sings is at times utterly beautiful. Some of the musical touches are bordering on genius - the unexpected entrance of a double bass and lower percussion elements on ‘In California’ on the second disc beautifully contrast it’s slower pace and sparse strings. The piano touches and string stabs on ‘Kingfisher’ enliven the whole song in a well timed crescendo and wonderfully emphasises the sweetness of the ending section. The way ‘In California’ dances round various rhythms & tempos later on in the track is also illustrative of how the music follows the complexity of Joanna’s storytelling lyrics. Often of love and loss and sewn with rich imagery & language; it would be possible to write an entire essay about her lyrics they’re so intriguing and plentiful and important in her music. It feels as though the music is a vehicle for the words which gives them weight and added meaning as so much music nowadays doesn’t always have.
What ’s your poison?
Also, I always find analysing an album’s packaging to be beneficial in understanding it fully. Sometimes the artwork can really enhance the experience of listening to a record & add to how a record is perceived. For instance how amazingly iconic was ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with the light prism emblem? The mysterious female figure in black on the cover of Black Sabbath’s first album sets the tone perfectly for the seminal opening track. So much for not judging a book by it’s cover eh. ‘Have One On Me’, both the vinyl and CD versions are presented in a sturdy ‘box-set’ style package, which I love because I dislike brittle jewel cases. The record’s cover is a shot of Newsom draped over an ornately adorned couch surrounded by, no doubt symbolic, ornaments, drapes, furniture, paintings, sculptures etc. It perfectly compliments the sumptuous and rich, yet complex music within all the while keeping Newsom herself the focal point even though there is so much going on around her. Quite brilliant if you think about it. Only thing that puzzles me is the big nasty font they’ve slapped in the letterbox type layout on the cover - it just seems as though they’d got the image at the last second & shoved on some text as an afterthought. All subjective I suppose...
Obvious references and comparisons to Newsom are Kate Bush, with the theatrical vocals and Joni Mitchell with the fantastic songwriting and open and honest lyricism. Fans of Joni & Kate Bush should definitely look to Joanna Newsom for not necessarily more of the same, just someone who is on the same page and taking their ideas and expending majestically upon them. In conclusion, ‘Have On On Me’ is a dense yet beautiful album with rich lyrical imagery. It will definitely reward repeat listens but it’s not a pop record by any means. You’ll delight in finding new things on each listen and indeed new favourite songs as the whole trip is 2 hours long. The only concern is the lack of memorable hooks & musical figures. Sure it’s a beautiful listen and highly enjoyable when it’s on, but how much will you remember when it’s not playing?
(IGH /N &IRE 3NAKES FOR THE $IVINE #ENTURY -EDIA /N HEARING THE OPENING BARS OF @3NAKES FOR THE $IVINE ) WAS INITIALLY DISAPPOINTED ) HAVE BEEN AN AVID FAN OF (IGH /N &IRE SINCE THEIR DEBUT @4HE !RT OF 3ELF $EFENSE CAME OUT IN )T WAS AN ABSOLUTE MONOLITH OF A STONER ROCK RECORD PROPELLED BY MASSIVE MID TEMPO RIFFS AND STOMPING DRUMS High On Fire, throughout their discography, have slowly been speeding up and getting more an more furious. On the opening title track on ‘Snakes for the Divine’, our protagonist, Matt Pike kicks off with an uber-cheesy progressive metal lick that made me cringe immediately. How can this be the same band that gave us the slow bludgeon of ‘10,000 Years’ and ‘Thraft of Caanan’?? But because it was still High On Fire, there’s an unstoppable, elemental force compelling you to listen. After listening through a couple more times, I realised; why the hell am I bothered if it’s cheesy or not? What does it matter? Once this thought has settled and you can listen to this album without an objective viewpoint or without preconceptions (yes the cover art is cheesy, yes it’s pretty much as “metal� as you can get but;) it’s one of the most enjoyable albums I’ve heard in years. The whole album is a perfectly executed exercise in displaying pure and unashamed disregard for subtlety. High On Fire pummel you with monster riffs for 49 minutes and 53 seconds. The title track is just immense - 8 minutes of frenetic, adrenaline fueled madness. That cheesy metal lick builds up with the rest of the band in an explosion of chugging fuzz and tribal drumming. It’s utterly cathartic. The whole reason people listen to metal - as with a lot of types of music, including dubstep & drum & bass - is for transcendence; for the music to take you somewhere else or to make you feel & respond to it in some way. The most effective music does this easily. Metal is meant to evoke a primal reaction; it doesn’t need to be clever or complex or subtle to be effective; but the best metal does all of this. Think of ‘Master of Puppets’ by Metallica; it’s an 8minute long progressive masterpiece. The complex structure; the mellow harmonised guitar section mid-way through, and it has that riff... THAT riff.
FROST HA That riff which makes the hair stand on end every time you hear the opening attack; “DA! DA, DA DAAAAAAA.....�. High On Fire, with Snakes for the Divine, have touched upon this magic formula that seemingly only a few bands have found. Power, adrenaline and a hint of restraint which makes the heavy bits all the more effective. Nothing demonstrates this more than the third track; ‘Bastard Samurai’. After the pulverising you’re received from the opening salvo of the title track & ‘Frost Hammer’, ‘Bastard Samurai’ begins a lot slower & more menacing rather than steamrolling your ear drums. The verse has a more contemplative delayed guitar line and allows the band to breathe and Matt Pike actually sings the verses. This builds up until Pike roars; “son of a bitch will bleed a whiiiiiiile!� and all hell breaks loose. It’s utter, simple catharsis & is all the more effective because of the first two tracks. These simple, yet clever dynamics make ‘Bastard Samurai’ one of the highlights of the album, and indeed High On Fire’s back catalogue. ‘How Dark We Pray’ is also a more stripped back number in contrast to the body of the album’s frenetic stampede of riffs & drums. Here, Matt Pike demonstrates some great melodic guitar lines which serve to further break up the album and make the heavy parts all the more forceful. ‘Snakes for the Divine’ is a massive surprise for me as I was beginning to write off High On Fire as morphing into just another metal band. But with this new album they’ve reinvigorated my interest and appreciation of quality heavy music. Even if you’re not really into metal; give this album a chance and even at it’s basic level; simply have a damn good time listening to it.
AMMER!!!
'!3 .AH UND &ERN +OMPAKT '!3 IS THE BRAINCHILD OF 7OLFGANG 6OIGT OWNER OF INmUENTIAL ELECTRONIC MUSIC IMPRINT +OMPAKT 7ITH COUNTLESS RECORDS UNDER DIFFERENT PSEUDONYMS PLUS OWNING VARIOUS RECORD LABELS IN THE PAST 6OIGT IS CONSIDERED A BIT OF A LEGEND IN THE lELD OF AMBIENT TECHNO .OTHING EXEMPLIlES THIS MORE THAN HIS '!3 PROJECT
drums f the dee
Nah und Fern (which translates as Near and Far) collects together the 4 hard-to-find albums released by Voigt under the GAS psudonym between 1996 and 2000. Basically if you’re looking for essential ambient techno then you stop here.
The best example I’ve found that resembles GAS’ murk, dread and atmosphere is that scene in the mines of Moria in Lord of the Rings, when they hear the “drums from the deep� before the fiery balrog creature emerges from the caverns.
I feel that viewing the four albums as a whole makes them feel more substantial than if the albums were re-released separately, which was a great choice to begin with. The albums are presented in a box with card sleeves which serve to portion out the tracks in their respective albums. It’s one body of work with one goal, one presence with only tiny dynamic and stylistic shifts to separate them. There is no need to separate them.
I haven’t heard anything quite like GAS before or since. Other ambient electronic music like Basic Channel, Aphex Twin’s first album, Monolake or Echospace don’t quite capture that otherworldly vibe and atmosphere conjoured by GAS’ four monumental albums. They’re all dwarfed by the sheer scale and weight of the material. Echospace sounds positively cheerful and childlike when juxtaposed with track five from ‘Zauberberg’, the second GAS album, for example.
GAS is utterly transcendental music. Heavily processed strings, piano, guitar and I imagine a whole host of other sounds and eerie soundscapes comprise the murk of GAS’ overall sound. Each wave of sound threads into another and warps and flows in and out of consciousness creating a dense, soothing cotton-wool atmosphere to immerse yourself into. Half of the tracks are pinned down by an unrelenting techno pulse that really does sound like a heart beat emanating from a vast murky cavern. It is creepy music but it’s somehow calming and soothing at the same time - it carries you off. It also occasionally provides a blank canvas for whatever emotion that surfaces, takes it and carries it away with the atmospheric lava-flow of pulsing beats and cotton-wool soundscapes.
I will say, for the record - and you’d probably guessed this from reading the review anyway - that I can’t stress enough how utterly inaccessible this music is. It’s debatable even if you can call it “music� at all. It’s like the audible representation of gravity or tectonic plates or something - not “music�. “Music� is melodious and you can hum it. Can’t you? Also - it’s definitely for certain moods - you can’t just stick it on anytime; it’ll clear a party in seconds. If you’re looking for something a bit different, try some GAS. There’s nothing else quite like it. Astonishing stuff.
from ep
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