The Afterword

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Armchair Electronica Volume 7: It’s a (Smor) gas-gas-gas (bord)

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At the old Afterword site I posted a series of playlists around electronic and experimental music I enjoyed listening to. Here’s a new playlist of tracks released over the past few months that I’ve been enjoying. I know next to nothing about most of these artists but that is often integral to my enjoyment of the music. Hopefully you’ll enjoy some of the tracks as well.

My Stolen Ashley Madison Profile

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Name: GravyBoy Age: The Romantic Era (Sagittarian) Location: Let me just check my GPS (Gorgeous Positioning System)….Travelodge, Leeds Central Height: 5’6″ (6’1″ in Cuban Heels) Weight: 12.5 stone (17 stone in Cuban Heels) Languages spoken: English and Love Status: Married, but we have an understanding. I think. Job: Innovation Sherpa Gender: I don’t believe in genders or having an agenda Ethnicity: I like Thai Smoking Habits: Fish mainly My limits are: Nutbush City and central Leeds

About Me:

It’s not about me, it’s about you. When we meet we will connect. In that connection I will make you feel that it’s all about you and only you. I will listen to your problems and let you know that solving them is all about you. I will listen to your hopes and dreams and let you know that making them real is all about you. I will remain a mystery. I will listen with all my senses: my mind, my eyes, my nose, my hands, my fingers, my lips, my tongue. In other words, not just with my ears.

Preferences and encounters I am open to:

You must be good with your hands. I struggle with jar lids. I want » Continue Reading.

Spider and I is a Summer’s Day Song

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I’m one of a small but significant group of people who continues to look forward to the release of McCartney III. I love its’ two predecessors. McCartney I and McCartney II are both, in their own way, evidence of Paul in retreat, introspective, insular but inspired; to write and record music that combines his accessibility and popularity with a much needed adrenaline burst of unpredictability and inscrutability. Paul missed The Beatles but would anyone miss him underlined McCartney I. The need for McCartney II is less obvious: possibly contractual, possibly self-indulgent, possibly rash, possibly confessional.

Some call these albums half-baked (Danny Baker was no fan of McCartney II) but I find their work-in-progress vibe in itself fascinating. It’s the person as much as the music that is in development; regrouping, reorganising and reassessing. By revealing something more of the inner workings of Paul’s song-writing in the self-organisation – evidence often gets lost, either in wonderment or in antipathy, depending on where you stand on fully polished solo/Wings McCartney – these albums seem to reboot, in equal measure, both the artist and the fan.

McCartney II is my personal favourite. I was 13 when it came out. I’d grown up with » Continue Reading.

For Those About To Rock (Please Remember Your Parentheses)

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My favourite use of parentheses in rock – because it’s the sexiest ever ice-breaker at social gatherings to have a favourite use of parentheses in rock – is (Get A) Grip (On Yourself) by The Stranglers. I particularly like the way the parentheses get a grip on the word ‘Grip’. It takes my enjoyment of the song to a whole new metaphorical and intellectual level and instantly sets me apart from Donald Trump.

What’s the difference between Hepcats and Squares? Only Squares use [].

You can have that [one].

I don’t want to overstate the importance of parentheses in rock but take it as read that you can flirt like mad with your wife’s/husband’s work colleagues without anyone thinking it untoward or too familiar if you squeeze a Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) or a Bang A Gong (Get It On) – the latter as part of a crowd-pleasing Leslie Phillips impersonation – into the more lascivious topics of your conversation such as the amount of money you’ve saved on your weekly shop by switching to Aldi or whether or not to buy holiday Euros now or at the last minute given the Greek situation.

» Continue Reading.

Picture (A Little Girl)

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My youngest daughter is dressed and ready for school but is already in her own world. It’s this morning, around 7.00am. The air in the house is thankfully cool and vibrant once again after the humid torpor of the past few days that rendered us all mute and distracted from the normal family sensibilities. She stands in her bedroom lost in thought and looks out of her window to the back garden below and the fields and woods beyond. The sun is streaming through and bathes her in its muted warmth. She lifts the recorder to her lips and practises the piece she’ll soon be performing at the summer fair. I’ve been away on business for what seems like a lifetime and it’s my first opportunity to hear her play this particular melody. She doesn’t see me hovering at her door. As she plays her head bobs slowly and assuredly and I look at the shadow cast on the wall behind her. It is festooned with prints and postcards she has collected of Albert Irvin’s child-like abstracts and Gary Hume’s minimalist birds of bright colours, mingled with her own rainbow artwork of puffins, pufflings and assorted panoramas. With her red » Continue Reading.

FIFA: a joke

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What do you call a man who throws his jacket across the room?

Answers on the back of a cheque for £10M please.

I ordered a French takeaway last night: a big dish of brown mushrooms. Nothing beats a Cèpe Platter take out.

As long as Interpol allows it, I’m here all week.

Mercy Buckets.

Distant Past

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A number of people have tried to turn me onto the group Everything Everything in recent years to no avail. I instantly found them annoying in that “love/hate” way some bands generate as a first impression that stays with you. Their music sounded “interesting”, but in that distracted way whereby the part of my brain that was being engaged wasn’t the music itself but the ideas informing the music. They’re a band that definitely had some great ideas, some flashes of brilliance, some wonderful quirks, judders and ejaculations of ecstatic musicality that showed promise but rarely had they put out a song that pulled all the elements together, that created a sufficient momentum to break free of the gravitational pull of ‘style over substance’.

But now they’ve released the song Distant Past and I love it. They’re still annoying – it doesn’t help that the lead singer looks like Will Young auditioning for a part in Peaky Blinders – but it doesn’t seem to matter this time out. All in all quite a thrilling slice of alternative pop.

Tobias Jesso Jr

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Aspiring writers are often told to write about what they know and it’s an adage that Tobias Jesso Jr has taken to heart. With a title like ‘Without You’ there is a strong clue about where and when he’s coming from with this track from his album ‘Goon’ as well as who is inspirations are. Yes, it’s another young singer/songwriter mining the classic balladry of classic singer/songwriters. But oh boy, he does it so well I don’t care. Ignore if you hate that melodic sentimentality Macca sprinkles like icing sugar on candy floss.

The Wrong Demographic

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I was born in 1967. This new song – ‘Baby Love’ by the French songstress Petite Meller – is not meant for me. In the age of precision targeted, consumer-driven marketing it’s probably directed at my eldest daughter who is 11. She loves it. The thing is, I love it too. It’s both really “now” but the vibe and in particular the saxophone break is very old-fashioned to my ears and the overall confection seems to me genuinely gauche and engaging as good pop should be, in my mind anyway. Not in my daughter’s mind though: she loves it because it’s a good tune you can dance to and because Petite Meller isn’t “like all the others”. It reminds her of Grimes and La Roux.

Still, I’m totally the wrong demographic for this and I’m conscious of that. The video, for me, is quite subversive and, as a father, a little disturbing but I’m not sure if my concern is warranted, if I’m not simply projecting outmoded concerns and therefore missing something that I’m in the wrong demographic to “see”.

So, what act or song do you love that you apparently shouldn’t because you are the wrong demographic?

Gong but not forgotten

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Whenever Richard Dawkins spoke of Bertrand Russell’s teapot in space I’d always think of Daevid Allen and smile. I’ve spent many hours telling people how big an influence Gong must have been on Magazine. Some Camembert tonight.