Chilinism

Abandon ship!

2005-10-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Chilinism is no more. I have proper hosting (DNS entries busy propagating as I type)... so from now on please go to www.gailycolouredplasticbag.co.uk

Ta.

Never Mind The Video iPod, here's...

2005-10-13T06:54:00.000-07:00

...the manuscript score of the Grosse Fuge, which has turned up unexpectedly in America. It amuses me that the BBC have referred to the piece as though "Grosse Fuge" is actually a title given to it by the composer, when, of course, it was originally just the finale for the Bb major string quartet. All it means is "big fugue".

When I was still at school, I once tried learning the lower part of a piano duet arrangment of the thing with a friend of mine. We barely scratched the surface - it's fearsomely difficult, remorselessly contemporary in its outlook (the first time I heard it I genuinely thought it was by Stravinsky) and completely unlike anything else in music. The manuscript is expected to sell for about £1.5 million. Money well spent if you've got it.

How to make an iPod nano screen protector

2005-10-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

For this recipe, you will need:

One iPod nano
One "tube" iPod nano sleeve
Two small pieces of sticky back plastic
The transparent plastic container your iPod tube sleeves came in

Instructions for assembly:

Cut a rectangle of transparent plastic that is slightly larger than the iPod screen
fix lightly to the sides of the iPod using sellotape - if you don't do this it will slide about in the sleeve
insert iPod into sleeve

And there you go. No nasty scratches on your beloved iPod nano screen.

Fall Heads Roll preamble

2005-10-12T01:28:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this as a preamble to a proper review, because the review will take me far too long, and I haven't posted for days ;-)

Firstly: I am what you'd call a die-hard Fall fan. I'm possibly not of the ilk that would buy recordings of Mark E. Smith breaking wind in the bath, but not all that far behind. In the past I've bought everything The Fall put out; I've trailed off a bit in recent years because I got fed up with paying out for thoroughly substandard live compilations, but still buy all the canonical albums and singles, and will still drive a fair distance to see them live.

All of which means it's actually very difficult for me to be objective about a Fall LP without judging it in its context next to all their other LPs. So bear in mind before you read these few comments, that I actually quite like Fall Heads Roll, and the harshness of my opinion of it is based entirely on the fact that it's a vastly inferior album in the Fall's canon. Nevertheless that still means it's head and shoulders above just about everything else.

But anyway, impressions based on a week's worth of listening:

Lyrically, FHR is, without doubt, the weakest thing Mark E. Smith has ever produced. The straightforwardness of the lyrics fits the straightforwardness of the music, granted, but it's not what I want from a Fall album.
Production-wise, it's also the most conventional. No scratchy mixes, or left-field stuff to destabilise the sound. It's a full-on garage-rock album.
The band, bless them, are great - Spencer Birtwistle is definitely the best drummer Smith has ever employed, and Steve Trafford is a more than worthy successor to Steve Hanley. But Pritchard's guitar playing doesn't have that wonderful off-kilter approach that Craig Scanlon, and, to a much lesser extent, Julia Nagle had. So the overall texture is, well, a bit too rock for my liking. In fact it's a bit ROCK!! for my liking.
It's far too bloody long. Some of the songs are pure filler - the "cover" of Walk Like A Man is dreadful, and should have been chopped. As should "Early Days of the Channel Fuehrer", which is a nice enough countryish waltz, but nothing really happens in it.

Anyway, this is just an initial summary - more later in excruciating detail.

Fall Heads Roll

2005-10-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

The new Fall LP arrived today, god bless Action Records... along with t-shirt and a couple of badges. I've bought the UK CD and vinyl issues... now all I need to do is order the double LP heavy vinyl version from Narnack records and I'll be away. ;-)

Nobody gets any sense out of me today.

iPod nano covers

2005-10-05T09:47:00.000-07:00

The long-awaited nano covers have arrived, so I can now use my beloved new toy with impunity. I've been really restrained up till now and not used it, which has been quite a struggle and has needed lots of willpower.

The cases themselves, disappointingly, are more "sleeves" than all-over body-armour; the nice young lady at Apple did tell me as much when I bought them, but I didn't really realise that they come with no degree of screen protection at all (in fact the gap for the screen is the bit you use to actually get the contraption into its sleeve). I think they're much the same as the sleeves that you used to be able to get for iPod minis, though I wouldn't swear to it, never having even seen one of the things. However, looking like a selection of rectangular luminous condoms, they come in packs of 5, which is four more than I need, so I've given three away - one each to Dan, Ashleigh and Mark (who bought one while on his Hols, bringing nano ownership in our team to an impressive 60%). I've kept the nicer colours for myself, naturally.

I might see about constructing some sort of cack-handed Heath Robinson affair of a screen cover, using only a section of transparent plastic from the packaging, a teaspoon, and a pound of parma ham. This may end up being quite dangerous.

The Sensual World - reappraisal

2005-10-04T01:39:00.000-07:00

A proper account of this LP is on its way, as I think it merits it - but, in brief, I listened to the album in some detail last night and am now far more convinced by it. The way Bush manages to integrate such diverse performers as Davy Spillane, Dave Gilmour, the Trio Bulgarka and Nigel Kennedy into her own sound-world is quite an achievement in fact. But that blasted Fairlight still dominates nearly everything, damn it! I know the Fairlight was an amazing piece of kit for its day, but even in 1989 it needed pensioning off. I assume she's still using it.

I think if I could only hear one vocal-only ensemble again, it would be the Trio Bulgarka. I've never tracked down any of their own recordings though - I must remember to do so. There's something electrifying about the coarseness of that open-throated Eastern European singing style that we reserved Brits simply can't do, although Kate manages a fair approximation of it on occasion.

Predictably I've been completely side-tracked by the final Delgados LP, Universal Audio, which I didn't really give due attention when I bought it. Everybody Come Down is perfect pop of the sort that makes me really wish they hadn't called it a day.

Kate inundation, part the second

2005-10-03T01:12:00.000-07:00

Having listened to Lionheart and Never For Ever a little, though admittedly not really enough, Never For Ever is clearly the stronger album, although England My Lionheart is admittedly a great song. Lionheart really does come across as an LP of out-takes from the sessions for The Kick Inside though, and feels pretty insubstantial.

Today a spanking new CD copy of The Kick Inside - the first Kate LP I bought, on vinyl of course - has arrived. I'm interested to see whether I still think it's any good, as I loved it when I first bought it, more for the left-of-centre material like Strange Phenomena and Them Heavy People than the "classics" like The Man With The Child In His Eyes and Wuthering Heights.

The other disc that arrived this morning was The Sensual World which I borrowed off a mate at school (I think it was Richard Daft) on cassette. I hated it then - my overriding impression was that Kate was smoking too much and relying on reverb to hide her shredded, dry vocal chords. My expectations of this one aren't too high.

Just waiting for a CD copy of Hounds of Love now.

Mental Oriental

2005-10-03T01:11:00.000-07:00

Gary is posting stuff on his blog again. There will be stuff about zombies, cheese, Barry, coal, ninjas (particularly ninjas).

Kate inundation commencement

2005-09-29T03:20:00.000-07:00

The first of my avalanche of cheap Kate Bush CDs has arrived from Jersey - and it's Lionheart, her second album from 1978. A browse of the lyric booklet didn't look too promising, as the words on this one seem particularly purple - but she has always got away with a lot because of the quality of her singing voice; she could sing complete nonsense (and often does) while still sounding completely alluring and convincing.

The jury's out at the moment - I'm only on track three. More later.

Mule Trainnnnnn! [thwack]

2005-09-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

I have waited half my life to see this.

Since I was a lad at school, I thought that the legendary Mr. Pastry had performed this notorious interpretation of Mule Train, but it turns out to be a Tremont Blackman.

To a modern audience in these sensivitve times, such a performance may well seem shocking, and the Health and Safety Executive would almost certainly have something to say about it. But for my own part, I actually quite fancy having a go. Imagine the look of joy and delight on the faces of your assembled colleagues, friends and family at a Christmas party when you produce a tea-tray, dress in a dinner jacket, complete with bow tie, and perform this routine.

If you want a non-real-player version of the file, Ashleigh has put some different formats up on nakedcleaner.com

You must watch it all the way through, for the grand finale of throwing the tea-tray on the ground in spectacular fashion, and marvel especially at the bendy-leg dance. This is officially the best thing ever, and I want it played - or even performed - at my funeral.

Addendum: I've just made the image at the top of this post in celebration of the great man. I'm thinking of bunging this up on Cafepress as a t-shirt design:

Everything Kills You

2005-09-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

You know, the new Bunnymen LP, Siberia, is well on its way to being, I think, one of my favourite ever records, even after only having owned it for a week. It has a really beautiful way of catching you off your guard...

In other news, I've done some new artwork for Simon Tocker's "Binary Jam" technical blog, although he doesn't seem to have put it out onto the live servers as yet. It's nothing special really - just five minutes' worth of faffing about with Photoshop, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

I used to have a thing about Link Wray

2005-09-27T04:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a Link Wray day, and I spent a pleasant hour or so listening to the "Guitar Preacher" compilation, which is a compilation of his exceptionally badly-recorded 70s LPs. Think a more gospelly acoustic Neil Young in terms of the accompaniments, and a slightly less grizzled Dylan singing and you're about halfway there. Dan thought it was "absolutely dreadful", though to be fair I did just hand him the headphones without really giving any thought to which song would be a good one to play to him.

After that I had a bit of a Jesus & Mary Chain afternoon, and played:

"Finbegin" - Lazycame (William Reid's post JAMC solo project)
"The Sound of Speed" - b-sides and singles album
"Honey's Dead" - 1992 LP

Today has so far been Dylan ("Blonde on Blonde") and Beefheart ("Mirror Man" sessions).

Gowna take yer fer a ride in ma tarotplane...

Repotting frenzy

2005-09-26T03:24:00.000-07:00

This weekend I decided to bite the bullet and repot my largest and fastest-growing cactus, a 3ft tall specimen of Opuntia Pailana, a type of prickly pear; it's only three years old, and I bought it as three pads, about a foot tall. Now it's grown 2' in height and is spreading outwards too, and the joints near the plant's base are thickening out and becoming woody in that mature cactus "right-now-it's-time-to-become-a-tree" type way.

So I thought it would be a good idea to put it into an unfeasibly large pot while it's still just about manageable. On went the industrial-strength thick leather gardening gloves, and out came a 24" pot which is going to be its permanent home until such time as it either dies or needs to be extricated from the greenhouse, for whatever reason. Needless to say, it's a vicious bugger, and its spines have papery sheaths and barbs on them, meaning that if you get them in your hands, they tear the flesh as you pull them out. Of course, a few managed to get through the gloves. No harm done though. It had managed to fill a 12" pot completely with a solid root ball, so my guess that it really needed a new pot proved right. And it does look rather good in its new home. I've had to take a section of staging out of the greenhouse at the far end to give it room, and have put a few other larger plants on the floor as well. I'm quite happy to let it grow as large as the greenhouse will let it, in the hopes that it might flower, but I suspect it won't be many years before it'll need cutting back...

Land of the Dead

2005-09-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Just been to see the new George A. Romero zombie film, Land of the Dead, with Dan, Ashleigh, and Mark.

It's a tremendous piece of work. Needless to say any fears that you might have had if you'd heard Jonathan Ross's review on Film 2005 are completely unfounded.

Yes, the zombies are communicating with one another, learning, and using basic tools, but there's nothing at all that isn't a development from the original trilogy of films. There are strong parallels between the way in which Bub, in Day of the Dead, handles a gun as a former soldier, and the way Big Daddy (UK viewers take note - he's not a comedy elderly wrestler) automatically handles a petrol pump towards the end of the film. And the theme of Day, which is that the zombies are essentially more humane than humans, is developed very effectively. The zombies begin co-operate with one another, and even begin to display some compassion - though Mark disagrees with my interpretation of this - while human society has become increasingly segregated with the lower classes treated little better than slaves.

This is the single most uncomfortable thing about the film: the zombies en masse are becoming even more sympathetic. We might have felt mildly sorry for the ones that got chained up in the lab in Day, and there's plenty of pathos in Bub - but Romero takes great pains to show Bub as a one-off in Day. This is no longer the case - they're all becoming Bubs.

I don't want this post to act as a spoiler so I won't give too much of the game away plot-wise. It's a very satisfying film, and the ending is open enough for Romero to be able to make a convincing follow-up if he gets the money to do so. There's some very pleasing gore, though it's actually quite understated - I wonder if Romero's expectation is that his audience now takes the zombie flesh-eating behaviour for granted, so it doesn't need to be underlined so heavily. The photography is gorgeous; watch out for the spider's web!

And even the quality of the acting is pretty good. The chap who plays Riley makes a great, detached hero, while Asia Argento is suitably sultry and moody (is that piercing on the back of her neck real?). Dennis Hopper is... well, Dennis Hopper. The "heavy", a Samoan called Pilsbury, is brilliant, and should have been used a little more, as he adds a welcome comic touch - especially with his final line of the film.

My only complaint is that the Big Daddy zombie's make-up is a little too human. He doesn't look quite decayed enough, but I suppose that's deliberate.

An unqualified ten out of ten - go and see it.

Das Boot

2005-09-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Just rebooted my computer with my iPod attached... and my machine entertainingly attempted to use the iPod as the boot disk, resulting in a stream of garbage across the top of the screen. Lovely. Makes me wonder what would happen if the iPod had been hacked to have Linux installed on it - would the two operating systems get into a fight? ;-)

The Fall, Dr. Shipman, and a 2 year old child

2005-09-23T02:02:00.000-07:00

I went round to visit my friend, and fellow Fall fan, Mark last night, armed with a recording of a Fall gig from earlier in the year that had on it their song "What About Us". The song is about a rabbit from East Germany who comes to Manchester as an immigrant, only to be dismayed by the fact that Dr. Shipman has been going around murdering old ladies with morphine. Bear with me...

There's a refrain in the backing vocals at a couple of points in the song, where Eleanor, Mark E. Smith's wife and the band's keyboard player, gets to shout "Hop! Hop! Hop!" repeatedly.

Never underestimate how amusing it is to teach this to an impressionable two year old. Mark's son Danann (pronounced Donnann) thought it was great, and was running around the room going "Hop! Hop! Hop!" - and even started picking up on the "What about us, Shipman?" refrain at the end, bounding about hollering "Ship! Ship! Ship!" By the time I left he was demanding that it be played again - "Daddy, again - hop hop hop!" so he'll no doubt be repeating it at nursery today.

New Kate Bush single

2005-09-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

The new Kate Bush single, King Of The Mountain, was given its first airing on the Ken Bruce Radio 2 show today. I've been giving it a listen on the BBC "listen again" thingy on the website. Of course Bruce gives it a huge build-up before playing it... but does it deserve it?

Reservedly, I'd say "yes".

The voice is still there and on fine form, and while the production is lovely and atmospheric, my only real gripe is that the song simply isn't particularly strong melodically. But the singing is expressive enough that she just about gets away with it.

Listening to the textures she's used, it doesn't surprise me that the record has been so long in gestation if the rest of the LP is like this: it's a typical Kate Bush sound-world where every detail has been considered. And whatever else, the song ends with such an irresistible lollopy reggae feel that you can't help but be caught up in it.

Roll on the LP (a double!)

Quote of the day

2005-09-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

"Let's go back to our desks and you can utilise my man-bag."

(M. Sheppard - with reference to his handy bag of screwdrivers and tools...)

Strings, lovely strings

2005-09-21T01:23:00.000-07:00

Just got all excited because I thought my Kate Bush CDs had arrived. Actually it was a box of guitar strings from Strings Direct.

I'm quite impressed with their speed of service, and they seem to be one of the few places in the UK that you can buy the very marvellous Elixir Nanoweb acoustic guitar strings. Not everyone likes these strings, as they've got a polymer coating that makes them feel a bit slippery to start with, and are quite "toppy" - which suits me fine. The best thing about them is that they have an incredible lifespan without ever sounding dead. Of course, they cost more than the average, but they're well worth it, if you ask me.

All in your mind...

2005-09-20T08:23:00.000-07:00

Just listening to the Bunnymen's "Grey album" - the eponymous 1987 (?) "Echo & The Bunnymen" and it makes me realise that I'm now completely incapable of being even vaguely objective about anything that involves Ian McCulloch singing. It's supposed to be a weak, listless, and wearisome record.

But it's lovely. So it seems I've long since departed from mere fandom and set sail for obsessive adulation.

I used to say that Mac was God when Elvis was on holiday; it might just be the other way round.

Data Panik

2005-09-20T05:11:00.000-07:00

Very excited by the news that indie-electro-pop outfit bis have regrouped (after a fashion) as Data Panik, with the addition of a live drummer and bass player. bis are responsible for one of the most memorable and fun gigs I've ever been to, and left me grinning like an idiot. Some of the later records weren't quite so exciting as they matured - but it'll be interesting to see what they come up with.

Their site is here

Siberia

2005-09-20T02:50:00.000-07:00

Unsurprisingly, I've found running an mp3 blog to be far too much effort, to the point where I simply can't be bothered to write in that kind of depth. Not that I don't enjoy it, but I just don't have time.

Anyway... the new Bunnymen LP arrived this morning. I had a bit of a scare as Amazon managed to let the remastered "Heaven Up Here" go out of stock, and as that was in the same order as Siberia, it looked like I wouldn't get the new one till next week. Several heart palpitations and a horrible feeling of physical panic later, I cancelled Heaven Up Here, and Siberia arrived this morning, bless them.

First impressions are that it might actually be even better than Ocean Rain, which, as eny fule kno, is The Greatest Album Ever Made (tm). All of which might cause some worrying fractures in the space-time continuum.

A bucketload of Kate Bush CDs is also due soon, as I decided it was time to catch up before the great woman's new material comes out.

Too much apple pie

2005-08-10T03:33:00.000-07:00

Kennedy - The Wedding Present

I was wondering what song I could use as a follow-up to the post about Sick Groove, and I started thinking about other insanely repetitive songs - maybe this blog should in fact have been called Repetition, because the more I think about it, the more repetition plays an important part in a lot of my most favourite music, whether it's The Fall's three R's ("repetition, repetition, repetition"), folk songs that I call "formula" songs where the same words are repeated over and over again with minor variations, or the american Minimalist composers like Glass and Reich.

When the all-new Wedding Present played at the Birmingham Academy 2 earlier this year, David Gedge said, after playing Kennedy at breakneck speed, "I never really liked that one, actually." And I can kind of understand that. I bet he loved it after it was first recorded, but like any other artist who has a couple of "big" songs that everyone calls out for at every gig, the attraction of it must have palled pretty quickly. I can't imagine he enjoys playing Dalliance very much either.

The album Kennedy is taken from was the second full-length Weds LP, Bizarro, which was re-released a little while back in glorious remastered form. If you're reading this as someone who bought the LP version, or the original issue CD (as I did) go and buy the reissue, immediately! Like the reissues of The Fall's back catalogue that Sanctuary are putting out at the moment, the improvements in the sound clarity are immeasurable, and I'm still hearing occasional little details that I've never heard before, even after 13 years of owning the album.

Conventional wisdom says that Bizarro was the swansong of The Wedding Present Phase One in many ways, and that only after that LP would the band achieve their "mature" sound; certainly, the influence of Steve Albini's production on the following LP, Seamonsters, was a lasting one, but there are plenty of hints at the direction the band's sound would take on Bizarro, especially in the droney chugging at the end of What Have I Said Now? and Bewitched. On these tracks, the jangly indie-pop sound of the debut LP, George Best, already seems like a thing of the past - its ghost is still lingering in the shadows, but its bloody corpse has been beaten into submission and generally given a good thrashing with a very heavy solid electric guitar (sorry, been watching too many zombie films this week).

Kennedy, at just under four and a half minutes, isn't quite as extreme as some of the songs on the album. After all, it was released as a single. Still, it conforms to that long-lost (and much-missed) late-80s/early-90s template of repeating a simple chord pattern over and over again for a good couple of minutes after the end of the song proper.

What Gedge and co. were great at, and which is often missed, I think, is that in amongst the thrashing rhythm guitar parts of the repetitive instrumentals there are almost always really strong lead guitar melodies. If they were higher up in the mix, they would probably be a little too saccharine, but squirrelled away as they are, they're just right. The same goes for Gedge's vocals in earlier Wedding Present - they're often buried in the mix to a point whereby you've no hope of picking up some of the lyrics unless you listen very carefully on headphones. It's a lovely, and very English, form of understatement, that in the midst of all this noise, the overall impression is one of having a quiet conversation in a pub.

Lost your love of life?
Too much apple pie
And now Harry's walked away with Johnny's wife

You've got to pick some people up
You've got to let some people go
And if Lee's name does come up
Oh well I really want to know
Because: everybody loves the TV show

Lee being Lee Harvey Oswald, of course, and the stuff about apple pies being to do with the theory (fact?) that the CIA went around poisoning people with apple pies. I love Gedge's broad delivery of these lines - I'm a big fan who sing naturally in their own accents, and can be found quite often shouting at the television because some snot-nosed boy band singer from Rotherham is snivelling along to some backing tracks in an awful fake-soul/"R & B" accent. No, sing in your own voice. It's not hard. A common perception in mainstream pop is that sounding English simply isn't "cool" - it's not the done thing, and it harks back to the time when English rock and roll bands wanted to emulate their American idols as far as possible. I find the Beatles guilty as charged (though funnily enough Harrison and Starr managed to keep a Scouse edge on their singing - no surprise then, that they were/are my favourite Beatles).

Anyway, I digress. David Lewis Gedge is living, walking, breathing proof that you can sing in a regional accent and sound very cool indeed. I've always wondered if the over-emphasised "Be-COZ" is just Gedge getting excited, or if it's a reference to everybody's favourite paper-mache headed comedian and all-round musical genius, Frank Sidebottom. We'll probably never know; I certainly wouldn't have the nerve to ask.

Kennedy is a bit like a steamroller at the end, gaining more and more momentum, sweeping you ever onwards and upwards as you listen. The way the layers of guitars pile up on top of one another owes as much to Phil Spector as it does to My Bloody Valentine. If you're not moved by these climactic final couple of minutes, then, I'm sorry, there's no hope for you. Turn it up louder and try again. If that doesn't work, turn it up louder and try again. And again. Gedge has never bettered this, and probably never will. Maybe in another 20 years' time he'll admit as much.

I've a special affection for this song in particular because of a spectacularly bad gig my second band played when we were still at school. We finished with a terrible version of Kennedy; our drummer, being an orchestral percussionist, hadn't really got the feel of it. I couldn't really sing back then, certainly not without monitor speakers. My old (and very bad 1970s) electric guitar was completely out of tune, and our rhythm guitarist was so bad that we'd turned him down so that he was almost inaudible. We were truly awful, and the audience was pretty restless by the time we played Kennedy. At some point early in the song some bright spark decided it would be a good idea to turn the lights of the drama studio out, and put a strobe light on. Cue one very inept band fighting to keep control of said musical juggernaut. Frankly, the song, and the darkness, won, and we lost. Badly. I still have a tape of this terrible, terrible performance somewhere. I intend never to listen to it again!

Off and on, off and on

2005-08-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Sick Groove - Ill Ease

I was first introduced to Ill Ease by an American friend who came to stay with me in either 1998 or 1999. He had come over from the States armed with a load of CDs of obscure lo-fi Americana, intending to visit BBC Maida Vale and give them to the late John Peel - this was before Peel de-camped his show to Peel Acres. He never got the chance, and decided that he was going to give one CD to each friend he visited while over here - he suggested I might like something else (I forget what), but instead I plumped for Live at the Gate, the first full-length Ill Ease album. Ill Ease is the recording pseudonym of Elizabeth Sharp, and the first thing I heard of hers was the magnificent "Walking Pneumonia", with its uncomfortable production and hilarious refrain of "fuck everyone" which gets applied to just about every State in the Union in turn:

Hello
could you connect me to
long-distance information
I'd really like to talk to someone
who'll fuck with my good mood
fuck everyone in California
fuck everyone in Florida
got the walking pneumonia
and I can't sit still
fuck everyone fuck everyone
fuck everyone fuck everyo-ho-ho-hone
fuck everyone fuck everyone
fuck everyone fuck everyo-ho-ho-hone
[...]
fuck everyone in Oregon
fuck everyone in Nevada
fuck everyone in Illinois
fuck everyone in Virginia
fuck everyone in Maryland
fuck everyone in D.C.
[etc...]

The way I've typed out "everyo-ho-ho-hone" doesn't do her delivery justice at all, of course - it's performed as if she were momentarily possessed by the disenchanted spirit of a generic 60s Merseybeat singer.

Sharp's vocal delivery is adenoidal, imprecise, and dead-pan, almost to the point of sounding completely detached and disinterested. Her detachment is what makes this song, and most of her output, so irresistible. Not for her the teenage angst of a Rage Against The Machine style fuck you I won't do what you tell me (or fuck you I won't tidy my bedroom as it's none-too-affectionately rendered around these parts), but something altogether more knowing and if not always tongue-in-cheek then certainly aware of the inherent absurdity of the things she writes about. But the predominance of the "fuck everyone" refrain is such that by the time you've finished laughing at and with it, the title and nominal subject of the song - an unspecified drug withdrawal of some sort - is long forgotten. Ingenious stuff, utterly relentless, and proof that swearing can indeed be big and clever.

Musically, Walking Pneumonia is completely representative - obsessive little figures worked out over and over again, odd instrumentation (no bass - picked guitar, tonally unrelated guitar harmonics, and glockenspiel only, with an out-of-tune piano added in the repeated fuck everyone sections) lopsided drum patterns (she's a particularly fine drummer) and completely non-diatonic harmony. Sharp claims to have a neurological disorder similar to synaesthesia, but rather than associating sound and colour she associates sound and physical pleasure. There's no knowing whether or not this is simply a bit of self-mythologising but her harmonic and rhythmic identity are both so strong and so unusual that I'm inclined to believe her.

Anyway - enough background. Walking Pneumonia isn't the song that I want to talk about, because, much as I love it, I don't love it nearly as much as Sick Groove. I first heard this song on the "Greatest Tits" 10" compilation of material from the first three albums on Strange Fruit records, but have finally - after years of trying - managed to get hold of a copy of the Circle Line Tours CD from 1999. It's wonderful.

Sick Groove is one of those really special, one-of-a-kind recordings. It eats into your brain, and you'll never, ever forget it. It opens with an angular bass riff, and the drum riff that unites its whole glorious nine and a half minutes. Depending on how you hear it, this riff is either two bars of 5/8 time or a single bar of 5/4 time. The groove it establishes really lives up to its name, too; my brain only grudgingly accepts its regular irregularity, even though it feels beautifully circular - it's the sort of thing I imagine Philip Glass would have produced if he had been a lo-fi alternative-rock type.

I'm caught in a sick groove
On a Tuesday afternoon
In the summer the walls have heartbeats
And the windows shake like skin
In the winter nothing moves
It's all locked into a sick groove
I remember last fall with its targets and sityes
I was mesmerised by the sound of things slowing down
Now I'm caught in a sick groove
On a Tuesday afternoon...

Musically it's so well-constructed it's hard to think of it as mere pop music. And if that sounds pretentious, well, tough. It's constructed as an extended collage of related and unrelated cells of brief melodic lines and chord patterns. I forget who once compared Mike Oldfield to Messiaen but it's a comparison that holds true with Sharp as well; she creates a selection of blocks of sound, and then keeps recontextualising them to see how they fit together in different ways. Of course, Messiaen was also a synaesthete, and composed in terms of harmonic colours - which is possibly another reason to lend some credence to Sharp's accounts of her neurological disorder.

Things to listen for in the first few minutes:

It opens with bass outlining a riff that is based on the "devil's interval", the diminished 5th (G --> Db in this case) with guitar and that drum pattern - notice that throughout the whole song there's not a single drum fill; it's completely rigid and metronomic. A shaker appears stereo left at around the 0:42 mark, followed by the electric piano at about 1:04. At 1:13 the harmonic feel settles down with the bass playing single repeated notes, but the regularity of that is undermined by the chromatic figures played by the electric piano - which are also played as cross rhythms that don't conform to the quintuple rhythms.

All of that breaks down at around 1:55 leaving the bass alone with a new figure... but that's soon gone when the bass starts playing harmonics duting a really dischordant passage at about 2:05; it's connected with the previous section by the chromatic electric piano figures; the tambourine replaces the shaker... and a distorted guitar pattern creeps in at 2:25 that becopmes more and more significant later on.

At 2:45 there's the first musical resolution of sorts when the acoustic piano first comes in with that gorgeous luminous quality to the way she's recorded it - we've got a couple of repeated diatonic chords (G and G with an added second) although even at this point the harmony is destabilised by isolated bass E notes in the piano's left hand making it fleetingly feel like E minor!

At 3:50 there's a real feeling of relief as the bass comes back in to anchor everything back together... it's a beautifully well-judged moment. But then the bass immediately begins to shift while the piano part stays the same. There's a lot to be said for this kind of arrangement though - battering out a major chord on top of changing bass notes can be tremendously effective. It's as though the whole point of Sick Groove is that nothing can be allowed to be too comforting.

Even when it does settle down properly at around the 6 minute mark to a very Velvet Underground two-chord feel, we've got that distorted guitar pattern back to make a mess of the harmony, and completely rhythmically and harmonically unrelated electric piano patterns come in soon enough.

It's tempting to say that I wish it could go on forever, but I actually think it's just right. Sick Groove is so involving that it's very temporally disorientating. When you listen to it you have no idea whether it's taken four minutes or forty because it seems to make time stand still. Just lovely.

Circle Line Tours is, as I said, long out of print, so I can't encourage you to go out and buy a copy, but if Sharp's 2004 album The Exorcist is as good as her previous output, and I haven't heard it yet, it'll be well worth hearing. Buy it!

Buy The Exorcist