RadioheaDemocracy
This morning I voted for the hipster runoff remix in Radiohead’s Nude re/mix competition.
I thought it was cute, in a self-referential, ironic sort of a way. And as we all know I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.
But then I went on the dude’s website and discovered that he’s a bit of a nob. He keeps lauding himself as the new J.U.S.T.I.C.E. And even if that’s meta-meta-ironic, I still disapprove.
I tried to vote twice for the Black Method mix to compensate, but the website wouldn’t let me. So I’m just posting this in protest instead.
Flavas of the month
Some things I’ve been enjoying recently include:
Wayne McGregor’s incredible new ballet Chroma, with music by the White Stripes and Joby Talbot.
London folk(tronica) outfit Tunng (who, I’ve only just discovered, featured - along with everyone else apparently - on the O.C. with their cover of Bloc Party’s “The Pioneers”).
Australian opera-singer turned pop-star Kate Miller-Heidke. I saw her perform this number live in Sydney harbour on Australia Day, but the bootleg footage of that performance is a bit dodgy, so check this version out instead.
Jigsaw falling into place
This is the official video for Radiohead’s new single Jigsaw Falling Into Place:
Weird eh!? (As always) I particularly love Thom’s mental facial expressions. The swirly swayey effect seems to have been made by attaching video cameras on booms to bicycle helmets. Quite apart from the fact that this makes for an awesome and not to mention extremely original product, though, what is most interesting about the video from my perspective is just how homemade it feels.
Now Radiohead have always made great music videos. And they have always shied away from the bells and whistles side of an industry that they have never been comfortable with. But this is something different. This is a total rejection of industry production values. Like the Scotch Mist webcast, it was directed by Adam Buxton, produced by Garth Jennings and recorded in a single take from Radiohead’s studio in Oxfordshire. This is a band that clearly saw long before anyone else in the mainstream the potential in a new aesthetic that, in its immediacy, is capable at least of being freer, truer, somehow more authentic than the old. What’s more, they are not just mimicking the do-it-yourself vibe of the YouTube generation here, they are engaging with it, taking advantage of it and in the process legitimising it. That is crucial. Whatever you may think of Radiohead’s music, one thing is certain: they get the new digiculture. Art 2.0. And more power to them I say. If this is going to be the future of the industry, we may as well have the likes of Radiohead leading the way!
Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008 at 05:56AM
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inspiredbycoffee
in Culture, Music, Digi
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inspiredbycoffee
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Sorry: a new beginning
Read the text of the full speech here.
One part, which does not appear in the video above, is particularly worthy of noting. Yes Rudd’s words were very moving. Yes they were very symbolic, very important and long overdue. But crucially they were also a call to action, real action the likes of which Australia has not seen before, and certainly not under Howard’s long-standing Liberal government.
“The truth is: a business as usual approach towards indigenous Australians is not working.
Most old approaches are not working.
We need a new beginning, a new beginning which contains real measures of policy success or policy failure; a new beginning, a new partnership, on closing the gap with sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country but instead allowing flexible, tailored, local approaches to achieve commonly-agreed national objectives that lie at the core of our proposed new partnership; a new beginning that draws intelligently on the experiences of new policy settings across the nation.
However, unless we as a parliament set a destination for the nation, we have no clear point to guide our policy, our programs or our purpose; we have no centralised organising principle.
Let us resolve today to begin with the little children, a fitting place to start on this day of apology for the stolen generations.
Let us resolve over the next five years to have every indigenous four-year-old in a remote Aboriginal community enrolled in and attending a proper early childhood education centre or opportunity and engaged in proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs.Let us resolve to build new educational opportunities for these little ones, year by year, step by step, following the completion of their crucial preschool year.
Let us resolve to use this systematic approach to build future educational opportunities for indigenous children to provide proper primary and preventive health care for the same children, to begin the task of rolling back the obscenity that we find today in infant mortality rates in remote indigenous communities up to four times higher than in other communities.
None of this will be easy. Most of it will be hard, very hard. But none of it is impossible, and all of it is achievable with clear goals, clear thinking, and by placing an absolute premium on respect, cooperation and mutual responsibility as the guiding principles of this new partnership on closing the gap.Let me take this one step further and take what some may see as a piece of political posturing and make a practical proposal to the opposition on this day, the first full sitting day of the new parliament.
I said before the election that the nation needed a kind of war cabinet on parts of Indigenous policy, because the challenges are too great and the consequences are too great to allow it all to become a political football, as it has been so often in the past. I therefore propose a joint policy commission, to be led by the Leader of the Opposition and me, with a mandate to develop and implement, to begin with, an effective housing strategy for remote communities over the next five years.
It will be consistent with the government’s policy framework, a new partnership for closing the gap. If this commission operates well, I then propose that it work on the further task of constitutional recognition of the first Australians, consistent with the longstanding platform commitments of my party and the pre-election position of the opposition.”
Here here Mr Rudd.
Posted on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 03:38AM
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inspiredbycoffee
in Culture, Politics / Law
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inspiredbycoffee
in Culture, Politics / Law
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(Briefly) On Privilege
I’ve been thinking a lot about Privilege since I’ve been home. (Or rather, on the basis of a few fragmented musings, I’m thinking about it now: thinking without writing for me is so horribly scattered.)
It is such an extraordinarily privileged thing I am doing right now. 24, not a penny to my name but with an education that money alone can’t buy (financial privilege is not the only kind worth reflecting on), I have returned from Australia to the security of a home, a family and unfailing support. And look at my plans. I swan off to Lyon for six months in April. To do what? Ponce around, eat, drink, soak up the ‘culture’, learn a smattering of French. Work too, of course. I am not so privileged (but isn’t the ability to say that virtually a privilege in itself?). And then off somewhere new again – oh, how I’ve travelled – for a PhD on something terribly cerebral no doubt but unabashedly irrelevant: essential stuff for any self-resepecting wannabe lefty aesthete. But always, and what’s more only, safe in the knowledge that I can return to the comforts and security of the Daily Mail-reading suburbs at any point should anything go awry.
Privilege, cherry picker of principles. The realisation that when it really comes down to it one is so utterly ready to sacrifice one’s ethics at the altar of such an un-ironically bourgeois ‘reality’, and moreover to attempt to justify doing so. So terribly learned and sincere in conversation, so completely lacking in follow through. Or only when it’s convenient. A vegetarian on environmental grounds who could feed a village of Oxfam TV orphans for weeks on frequent flyer points alone. There are countless other examples.
And again, all this self-abasement, which is nothing but an English form of self-aggrandisement but which I justify as earnest self-reflection, is perhaps the most privileged part of all. As if awareness of one’s fortuity, one’s fallibility, somehow justified it.
Privilege, cherry picker of principles. The realisation that when it really comes down to it one is so utterly ready to sacrifice one’s ethics at the altar of such an un-ironically bourgeois ‘reality’, and moreover to attempt to justify doing so. So terribly learned and sincere in conversation, so completely lacking in follow through. Or only when it’s convenient. A vegetarian on environmental grounds who could feed a village of Oxfam TV orphans for weeks on frequent flyer points alone. There are countless other examples.
And again, all this self-abasement, which is nothing but an English form of self-aggrandisement but which I justify as earnest self-reflection, is perhaps the most privileged part of all. As if awareness of one’s fortuity, one’s fallibility, somehow justified it.
Or does it?
I am not generally one for pithy quotations, but one phrase from John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a novel of exceptional lucidity and insight, seems to me to go right to the heart of the matter. The single redeeming feature of members of the English middle class, Fowles says, (and the problem of Privilege is nothing but the problem of precisely that class) is that they hate themselves.
Now hate is a little strong perhaps (though only a little) and there is guilt in there too, but otherwise the insight is spot on. The feeling is something like a violent humility, the recognition of one’s infinite fortune at the same time as one’s utter irrelevance, the tantalising rupture between an overwhelming responsibility to act and the ability in doing so to bring about any obvious effect. It is not a matter of justifying one’s privilege then, but acknowledging it, ugly as it undoubtedly is. That is at least something. And the real challenge remains to allow one’s privilege to erode one’s principles as seldom as possible. Scant solace perhaps, but I’m afraid that is all we are likely to get. And as Fowles would undoubtedly suggest, it is certainly more than we deserve.
I am not generally one for pithy quotations, but one phrase from John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a novel of exceptional lucidity and insight, seems to me to go right to the heart of the matter. The single redeeming feature of members of the English middle class, Fowles says, (and the problem of Privilege is nothing but the problem of precisely that class) is that they hate themselves.
Now hate is a little strong perhaps (though only a little) and there is guilt in there too, but otherwise the insight is spot on. The feeling is something like a violent humility, the recognition of one’s infinite fortune at the same time as one’s utter irrelevance, the tantalising rupture between an overwhelming responsibility to act and the ability in doing so to bring about any obvious effect. It is not a matter of justifying one’s privilege then, but acknowledging it, ugly as it undoubtedly is. That is at least something. And the real challenge remains to allow one’s privilege to erode one’s principles as seldom as possible. Scant solace perhaps, but I’m afraid that is all we are likely to get. And as Fowles would undoubtedly suggest, it is certainly more than we deserve.
Posted on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 08:27AM
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inspiredbycoffee
in general allroundity
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inspiredbycoffee
in general allroundity
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Call Centre Haikus (3)
Call centre, day three:
Fuck that, it’s just not worth it!
Long weekend for James. :o)
Call Centre Haikus (2)
Call centre, day two:
Ahhhh…so THAT’S why people hate
This godawful job!
Call Centre Haikus (1)
Call centre, day one:
Surprisingly bearable!
Life calling perhaps?
In Rainbows
The worst of the storm has passed. There was always going to be one with the release of Radiohead’s first album in four years and seventh overall. But that the band chose to distribute In Rainbows so innovatively1 meant that all the blustering lingered rather longer than it otherwise would have. A month later, the seas are beginning to settle and it is finally safe to venture a word or two from something resembling a critical distance.
But before I do so, an aside.
Gervase de Wilde, for the Telegraph, wrote the following on October 11th, the day after In Rainbows’ release:
“Should I change albums when my ipod tells me I have listened to In Rainbows 40 times in a row?”
Were it capable of such an amazing feat, no doubt my ipod would tell a similar story. There is something strangely compulsive about In Rainbows. It is familiar but different, subtle but not pretentious: it manages to avoid being obvious, without being actively difficult. The “old media”, however, is structurally incapable of giving an album of this sort the time it deserves to mellow. Its attentions endure only as long as its financial interest whereas a blogger’s corresponds instead to the duration of their passion. At least where Radiohead fans are concerned, that is to say a good deal longer. And so even if opinion in the blogosphere, wikipedia and the like was admittedly a little rough round the edges to begin with, there is no doubt whatsoever that it will continue to refine and develop long after the Telegraph’s has faded away into irrelevance.
And so to the music.
But before I do so, an aside.
Gervase de Wilde, for the Telegraph, wrote the following on October 11th, the day after In Rainbows’ release:
The scramble to review the album has, surprisingly, been dominated not by the new media publications and bloggers who are in many ways the band’s natural constituency but by broadsheet newspapers who have beaten their online competitors to the punch with more considered pieces on the album. One advantage of being paid for your opinion is that you can take some time to work out what it is.This kind of statement always make me squirm. First, it wreaks of cigar smoke and portly old bachelors sneering in gentlemen’s clubs: in its swaggering appeal to the traditional, it is just so horribly smug. Second, by pitting “old” media against “new”, professional (read expert) against amateur (read pleb), it implies that any differences between the two are limited to differences of quality and not purpose, when that is plainly not the case. Third, it is qualitatively wrong, pure and simple. Because although “one advantage of being paid for your opinion” may very well be “that you can take some time to work out what it is”, when “some time” means one day, that is not a particularly impressive claim at all. A friend sent me the following text a couple of weeks ago:
“Should I change albums when my ipod tells me I have listened to In Rainbows 40 times in a row?”
Were it capable of such an amazing feat, no doubt my ipod would tell a similar story. There is something strangely compulsive about In Rainbows. It is familiar but different, subtle but not pretentious: it manages to avoid being obvious, without being actively difficult. The “old media”, however, is structurally incapable of giving an album of this sort the time it deserves to mellow. Its attentions endure only as long as its financial interest whereas a blogger’s corresponds instead to the duration of their passion. At least where Radiohead fans are concerned, that is to say a good deal longer. And so even if opinion in the blogosphere, wikipedia and the like was admittedly a little rough round the edges to begin with, there is no doubt whatsoever that it will continue to refine and develop long after the Telegraph’s has faded away into irrelevance.
And so to the music.
The first thing, I think, is to reiterate that there is something different about this album. Precisely what, is more difficult to say. It is patently not era-defining like OK Computer, or a radical and boldly innovative musical progression like Kid A. I would not say that In Rainbows is “important” as such. But it does mark an important departure nevertheless, a somehow familiar new direction for the band.
The title provides a clue.
Like “OK Computer”, “In Rainbows” describes the overall mood of the album rather than referencing either the title of a track (The Bends, Kid A, Amnesiac) or a specific lyric (Pablo Honey, Hail to the Thief). And it is the mood of In Rainbows that really sets it apart from the rest of Radiohead’s back catalogue. There is a tranquillity here, an organic lyricism and even a romance which – although these may not be altogether unfamiliar colours to the Radiohead palette – have never been applied anywhere near so consistently on previous outings. Though many of the tracks on In Rainbows would have worked just as well on other albums, their combination signals an overall move into uncharted waters.
In terms of musical approach, In Rainbows withdraws even further from the electronic experimentalism of the Kid A / Amnesiac sessions than Hail to the Thief (which I always think of as having a sort of electro-/-dance-/-rock vibe to it overall, despite some notable exceptions), giving a greater emphasis both to acoustic instrumentation and more conventional melody. But that should not be taken to mean that In Rainbows signals a “return” of any sort, least of all to the band’s supposed “glory days” (by which is meant OK Computer and The Bends) as some critics have suggested. Rather, it marks Radiohead’s passage into maturity. Familiar themes, new insights.
In a way, the first two tracks of the album are anomalous. The ambiance that really sets In Rainbows apart begins in earnest only with Nude. Nevertheless, even the more energetic openers are not entirely out of keeping with the album’s overall spirit. Although 15 Step gets proceedings going with a bang of processed beats, it soon settles into a lilting guitar riff. And Bodysnatchers – unquestionably In Rainbows’ most frenetic offering – never seems to invite Yorke’s patented demented chicken dance in quite the same way that either of Hail to the Thief’s openers – 2 + 2 = 5 and Sit Down – Stand Up – did.
Nude is utterly haunting. The vocals are just beautiful and the instrumentation as delicate as it comes. It came as no surprise to learn that the track was first debuted on the OK Computer. “Don’t get any big ideas: they’re not gonna happen” / “Now that you’ve found it, it’s gone. Now that you feel it, you don’t”: the lyrics speak the disillusionment that made Radiohead so famous. And yet, at least in context, Nude does not sound like the Radiohead of OK Computer. There, it might have seemed bleak. Here, it is sad, certainly, but there is no resentment anymore: just a strange melancholy that could, if you were so inclined, almost be read as a kind of private contentment, or at least an appreciation borne of experience.
Weird Fishes / Arpeggi is a gem. Its trickling guitars are surpassed only by the mellow bass synth of All I Need as my personal musical highlight of the album. The moment when that synth finally passes over to the piano as the song begins to build to its wonderful string-infused climax is a masterstroke of instrumental texturing, and prevents the lyrics – “You’re all I need, you’re all I need. I’m in the middle of your picture, lying in the reeds” – from sounding anything like cheesy, though I think they easily could in a different context.
The title provides a clue.
Like “OK Computer”, “In Rainbows” describes the overall mood of the album rather than referencing either the title of a track (The Bends, Kid A, Amnesiac) or a specific lyric (Pablo Honey, Hail to the Thief). And it is the mood of In Rainbows that really sets it apart from the rest of Radiohead’s back catalogue. There is a tranquillity here, an organic lyricism and even a romance which – although these may not be altogether unfamiliar colours to the Radiohead palette – have never been applied anywhere near so consistently on previous outings. Though many of the tracks on In Rainbows would have worked just as well on other albums, their combination signals an overall move into uncharted waters.
In terms of musical approach, In Rainbows withdraws even further from the electronic experimentalism of the Kid A / Amnesiac sessions than Hail to the Thief (which I always think of as having a sort of electro-/-dance-/-rock vibe to it overall, despite some notable exceptions), giving a greater emphasis both to acoustic instrumentation and more conventional melody. But that should not be taken to mean that In Rainbows signals a “return” of any sort, least of all to the band’s supposed “glory days” (by which is meant OK Computer and The Bends) as some critics have suggested. Rather, it marks Radiohead’s passage into maturity. Familiar themes, new insights.
In a way, the first two tracks of the album are anomalous. The ambiance that really sets In Rainbows apart begins in earnest only with Nude. Nevertheless, even the more energetic openers are not entirely out of keeping with the album’s overall spirit. Although 15 Step gets proceedings going with a bang of processed beats, it soon settles into a lilting guitar riff. And Bodysnatchers – unquestionably In Rainbows’ most frenetic offering – never seems to invite Yorke’s patented demented chicken dance in quite the same way that either of Hail to the Thief’s openers – 2 + 2 = 5 and Sit Down – Stand Up – did.
Nude is utterly haunting. The vocals are just beautiful and the instrumentation as delicate as it comes. It came as no surprise to learn that the track was first debuted on the OK Computer. “Don’t get any big ideas: they’re not gonna happen” / “Now that you’ve found it, it’s gone. Now that you feel it, you don’t”: the lyrics speak the disillusionment that made Radiohead so famous. And yet, at least in context, Nude does not sound like the Radiohead of OK Computer. There, it might have seemed bleak. Here, it is sad, certainly, but there is no resentment anymore: just a strange melancholy that could, if you were so inclined, almost be read as a kind of private contentment, or at least an appreciation borne of experience.
Weird Fishes / Arpeggi is a gem. Its trickling guitars are surpassed only by the mellow bass synth of All I Need as my personal musical highlight of the album. The moment when that synth finally passes over to the piano as the song begins to build to its wonderful string-infused climax is a masterstroke of instrumental texturing, and prevents the lyrics – “You’re all I need, you’re all I need. I’m in the middle of your picture, lying in the reeds” – from sounding anything like cheesy, though I think they easily could in a different context.
By contrast, Faust Arp is a far simpler affair, though no less beautiful for it. Again the instrumentation is key, with the strings adding depth and colour to what is otherwise a relatively standard folk ditty.
Reckoner is triumphant. Yorke’s soaring vocal is easily his best work on the album and, although the lyrics are a little opaque, I never fail to find this track uplifting (though it’s a shame about the fade out).
Reckoner is triumphant. Yorke’s soaring vocal is easily his best work on the album and, although the lyrics are a little opaque, I never fail to find this track uplifting (though it’s a shame about the fade out).
House of Cards seems at first to pick up where All I Need left off. “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover. No matter how it ends, no matter how it starts.” One would almost suspect Yorke of a romantic vulnerability if it weren’t for the fact that the “you” here is clearly not the same as the romantic muse featured in All I need. “Throw your keys in the bowl, Kiss your husband goodnight”, Yorke sings. Images of suburban wife swapping aside, though, House of Cards is probably my least favourite track overall. Sometimes I find the groove drags on a little and I am frequently grateful when the exuberant Jigsaw Falling into Place kicks in.
Videotape provides a really fitting finale. It is Radiohead at their most contemplative. The narrative puts Yorke at heaven’s gates (In Rainbows?), looking down and reflecting on what, in a life that was not always perfect (“Mephistopheles reaching up to grab me”), his most endearing memories are. Not only is this a question that we could scarcely imagine the band that made OK Computer asking previously, but that the answer would be so tender is particularly surprising: “you are my centre when I spin away”. If any doubt remained that we were no longer dealing with the Radiohead of old, but with a more mature, wistful outfit altogether, it is dispelled with In Rainbows’ touching closing words: “No matter what happens, you shouldn’t be afraid because this has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.”2
This album, while not epochal like OK Computer or genre bending like Kid A will nevertheless quickly become a classic I’m sure. It may even convert a few skeptics, convinced by the twin myths (1) that Radiohead are doom and gloom and nothing more and (2) that they’ve not made anything good since they retreated from the mainstream (which, in truth, they were never in to start with) and stopped being a “rock band”. In Rainbows is not Radiohead’s best album. It is not their most ground breaking or their most important. But it is probably their most mature. It is definitely their most sensuous and tranquil. And I strongly suspect that it may eventually prove to be one of many people’s favourites.
1 For what it’s worth, I paid five pounds.
Videotape provides a really fitting finale. It is Radiohead at their most contemplative. The narrative puts Yorke at heaven’s gates (In Rainbows?), looking down and reflecting on what, in a life that was not always perfect (“Mephistopheles reaching up to grab me”), his most endearing memories are. Not only is this a question that we could scarcely imagine the band that made OK Computer asking previously, but that the answer would be so tender is particularly surprising: “you are my centre when I spin away”. If any doubt remained that we were no longer dealing with the Radiohead of old, but with a more mature, wistful outfit altogether, it is dispelled with In Rainbows’ touching closing words: “No matter what happens, you shouldn’t be afraid because this has been the most perfect day I’ve ever seen.”2
This album, while not epochal like OK Computer or genre bending like Kid A will nevertheless quickly become a classic I’m sure. It may even convert a few skeptics, convinced by the twin myths (1) that Radiohead are doom and gloom and nothing more and (2) that they’ve not made anything good since they retreated from the mainstream (which, in truth, they were never in to start with) and stopped being a “rock band”. In Rainbows is not Radiohead’s best album. It is not their most ground breaking or their most important. But it is probably their most mature. It is definitely their most sensuous and tranquil. And I strongly suspect that it may eventually prove to be one of many people’s favourites.
1 For what it’s worth, I paid five pounds.
2 Unless, of course, the song is actually about somebody in the process of preparing his suicide, which would put an entirely different spin on things! And even as I write, I am increasingly convinced that that is the case. The crucial verse seems to be as follows: “This is my way of saying goodbye, because I can’t do it face to face. I’m talking to you after it’s too late, from my videotape.” Nothing’s ever easy with Radiohead is it!? Then again, that’s precisely the point! And I don’t think that Videotape is necessarily less touching for being a suicide note. Arguably, it is even more so.
