She leaves and the town is immersed in an indigo dye that inflates and fidgets against the windows. From upstairs i hear my grandad chatting to the answering machine, he's saying

"antonio illness has gotten worse"

his voice has that phone inflection. Then i hear the realisation followed by his own imperfect cadence to every message "okthenbye"

Looking at the melancholy mid-afternoon palette the beer seems bitter. The dubstep on the cd player is all moody atmospherics, manipulated warbling and nuanced sorrow. There are organs that rise and fall like subordinates as a leader enters the room. I feel the weight of the spindly fingers flexing and pressurizing the keys.Trying to shape the sound, to craft and give actuality to the afternoon. I've been neglecting my appetite. The song takes a sequence of octave leaps and is joined by a bass that circulates round the room like an enormous wasp, panning both ears. It's music built on gaps, unafraid to democratise- a symposium of contained energy that allows multiple-authorship. Five second spaces where street noises surges and is saturates, ten second lapses to allow the couple sitting behind on the buses conversation to enter the sonic amphitheatre with the seagulls. These awnings and alcoves remain for enough time to allow cobwebs to gather in the dark- only to sweep them away. The beer is isolating its ingredients to my palette, laying them before me. This wasn't why it was uncapped, i wanted the monotonous frothy warmth of last night, the impression of being blown up through a nozzle like a lilo.

My emails are read from the fluorescence of the screen in the darkening room, they offer me

'rewards today'

As their subheadings ask of me whether I

''need 750 GBP?"

and don't give me time to respond before adding

"OK!"

Spam breeds. Junk has been allocated to the wrong folder whilst the vital and long awaited is relegated to JUNK. My life in part governed by this ineffectual, impersonal algorithm. Taking subject headers that promise too much, that smile too earnestly, as outright false, as too dramatically at odds with authentic relationships.

Outside is now veridian and the dubstep has segued into piano balladery, the beer continues to put its ingredients in separate dorms and she's still in Bristol.

November

The best and worst of days drip like stalactites from her whole.

Cursing the indefatigable soul,

and spots congregate beneath my hair.

I can sit here for days and watch my hair grow,

Listening for the tree

Calling in the silent forest.

Bodies that lie in the path of trains of cognition

Staging a coronation of my mystery aches with

Grand Names.

I'll sit and let the entropic room decide my fate.

To be pacified or roam, my skins gained a

Mahogany veneer after my trip away i'm told.

Days of serving eclairs to the old have me

Entertaining byronic flights around the continent,

Their faces creased as used tissues and just as sanitary-

Hair Growth dipersed in the gardens by their looping ears and tunnelling nostrils.

The state box tells me that the french are striking,

As does page 25 of sentimental education.

Oh Well,

I think,

Let them

Roast cars

Served with

Molotov's on the

Platter of the

Tarmac!

The suburbs are an inferno tonight.

Here amongst the retired i'm catching the tails of fancy-

Climbing aboard towards an exploration of the soul-

Its facets, the beeches, the mist urge in

wist for my departure.

Check In

Tudor facades, mocked as we crept from the crypt

Beneath Maples that cradled Phosphor.

Suburbia, napping, yawns and allows

Tintoretto to drape over the scene

A Venetian sky’s light pollution,

St Mark’s body brought to Venice.

Bound In tandem with the estuary

A needle stitching the seam of dusk,

Where it seems a comfort to be free,

Brush the strewn paper along the aisle,

Sit idle, and draft

The tableau of my arrival.

press release for the bland tangerines

The Black Tambourines, are not:
A group of percussionists
A beck cover act or
A plural of the seminal 80’s noise band

What they are is Cornwall’s premier surf-rock band. The lineup is: Jake Willbourne, the formidably creative punk Buddhist who croons, yelps and plays bass, Paddy Staccpoole the taciturn guitarist who catcalls, paints, sings and rarely smiles, Jim Sibley the urbane drummer and keen cyclist who defies every tub-thumping stereotype going and Josh Spencer the languid hip-hop enthusiast who’s wall of guitar noise unifies the group.

The fourtet emerged in a puff of weed smoke from the primordial soup of Truro College’s music course and began to notch up regular appearances at gig’s put on by the tireless promoters at Duelling Kazoo’s and Dirty Sunday’s. After only a series of gigs the band began to generate real excitement amongst local music fans, as people flocked eager to witness the risk and energy of genuine rocknroll. For too long the Cornish had been limited to yawning through sets of either post-hardcore macho posturing or banal surf-songwriters at local gigs, so the arrival of the BT’s sent a strain of enthusiasm through the college populations.

Having recorded their eponymous first EP themselves in a hazy week last summer and finished college they set about consolidating the attention that surrounded them in more hectic performances. The songs on the ep deal with: unwanted attention ‘I don’t want to be yr lover’ the affectations of a local hipster ‘tommy’ and sticking two fingers up other peoples expectations ‘I can’t surf’ (and wishing happy birthday to paddy’s dad) All of this wrapped up in their rad and raucous blend of lo-fi garage. Achievements to date include their split seven inch on up and coming south-west imprint ART IS HARD RECORDS with like-minded Exeter dudes New Year’s Evil, with whom they shared a ferocious gig at Exeter cavern and are planning a Spring tour. Having shared a stage with acts like Jeff the Brotherhood and The Automatic (in steeply descending order of brilliance) and hosted their own smoky/strobe-lit gigs emblazoned in projected visuals of skateboarding, the band rarely turn in a dull show.

Perhaps the best crystallization of the disparate influences that are fused in the Black Tambourines circuits is their most recent ‘HOMBRE’ Ep (again self-issued & recorded). The EP does away with the murkiness of its predecessor to reveal the sheer strength of their current set of songs that now share triple vocal duties between Spencer, Jake and Paddy. As the songs clearly show, the BT’s don’t shy away from melody- and songs like ‘Vitamin D’ with its final emphatic refrain demonstrate their love for the likes of Brian Wilson. This isn’t a band likely to buckle to musical orthodoxy or one that can’t evolve. No, this music defies the homogenization of your standard listening experience to present you pure, undignified creativity at its most intact, affecting and downright fun.

FUCK SHIT UP 2K11

The Conversation

As Gene Hackman (a very appropriate name as it happens) peers through the mist in his dream sequence he asserts, "i'm not afraid of death" and then after grasping for a few seconds concludes 'but i am afraid of murder" This hypnotic scene is perhaps the most unnerving and Lynchian part of a film that manages to detect the neurosis and frustrated responsibilities of the modern man in a distorted conversation with the viewer.

The story of Harry Cole, an uptight but professionally esteemed eavesdropper, bugger and phone hacker who taps into his conscience whilst recording an elliptical conversation held between a couple in a San Fransisco park. A devout catholic, the film follows a man though his existential dillema as it gradually dawns on him that the ethics of his trade are not as seemingly mundane as he had supposed. As he begins to suspect devious underlying motives beneath the malaise of his assignment, Cole is intent upon confronting the Director to get assurance that the couple will not be harmed. The futility of his efforts at locating the 'director' were evocative of K's struggle in The Castle to gain a meeting with the enigmatic Klamm, and the administrative hurdles thrown across his path (the obstinate receptionist, and Harrison Ford's malevolent personal assistant) just further reinforced the Kafkaesque impression.

I think it can be legitimately referred to as a postmodern film due to both its content and form. In a similar way to how Hitchcock's Rear Window makes the viewer bedfellows with a peeping tom, and consequently forces them to re-evaluate the voyeuristic side of the cinema, the conversation achieves the same self-analysis by looking behind the curtain of the couples unfolding narrative at the observer on the other side. The jerky, non-linear and fragmentary nature of the espionage makes for a prevailing spirit of suspense, manufactured, as it was in Rear Window, through the most minute of changes in the visibility or audibility of the subject. The subversion employed is that of revolving the lens onto the director of the recording, cole, who at first deflects any interest in the case onto the 'director', who is made unattainable by the machinations of his secretary- all of whom we then understand are pliable to the instructions of the true director Francis Ford Coppolla, shielded at all times from the scrutiny of the lens.

Harry Cole's dysfunctional,shrewd and mechanical dealings with people in combination with his catholic upbringing where reminiscent of Pinky in Brighton Rock, and how both manufacture an enigma around themselves in order to conceal a desperate loneliness. When Cole visits the prostitute he begins to illuminate an affection previously absent from his character yet this is reflexively withdrawn as soon as she begins to question him. This idea of the guarded and secretive inquisitor, skilled at peeling away the mysteries of others lives but cautious to the slightest intrusion into his own, is a fascinating paradox that has deservedly appeared in many thrillers. The most recent recycling of the Cole prototype would appear to be the protagonist in the real-life story of East German oppression The Lives Of Other's, who throughout yields no interference by his colleagues into his own opinions, interests or hobbies so as to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile he is documenting the every movement of the counterculturists under his surveillance, from discussion about minutia down to his bemused paraphrasing of their sex. In fact despite the different settings, the breadth of similarities is such that you have to stop to remind yourself that however fantastical such an environment may appear, the Stazi did exist and where active during the period coppola made his movie.

Overall a magnificently shot, compelling and disturbing drama- the final coda of which is still vividly present to my mind.Harry Cole slumped on the floor mournfully improvising on saxophone over the snaking piano theme, his shirt unfurled and clammy, surrounded by the detritus of the street-lit apartment he has turned upside down and stripped bare to find a trace of surveillance.

The NME within

The NME

For many years I have drafted letters to you in an idle moment, usually associated with some slight concern over the placement of a band or an unfair review. I’ve finally taken the plunge this time- chiefly due to your exclusion of moi once again from your list of top tips for 2011. Now perhaps it would be wise to tackle your immediate responses that this gratuitous omission is because “we’ve never heard your music” “Neither has anyone we know” and perhaps because “in fact you’ve not played anyone your music”. Well to satisfy your concerns here’s a brief description set in the closest the fickle and limited system of language can come to fully encompassing the ethereal majesty of the album, as yet unrecorded, practiced or written, that I have mentally devised.

They are songs which catapult the unassuming listener headlong into the musical equivalent of a Borges novel, where they are diverted on every path by a fresh crescendo- noise solo- spoken word indictment of the hipster scene- percussive interlude- surf-pop riffing- 4 point harmony- cascades of analogue synth wizardry- slap bass solo- doo-wop reinvention-irreverent name drop-minimalist homage- unusual and unpredictable fusion- anthemic chorus (featuring an assortment of motivational phrases ‘hold your head up’ sort of deal) which finally twists towards the majestic climax, a haunting but euphoric finale of rap-orientated math-rock. All of this shrink-wrapped in the kind of production that Eno, Godrich, Martin, Street et al have fruitlessly spent their careers attempting to replicate.

Now I fully appreciate that your allegiance to a band involves a kind of investment in them, and that you've become scarred and made wary by your involvement with many proverbial Northern Rock’s in the past (The Darkness, Twang, Courteneers, Brother, Travis) Therefore I can categorically assure you that a late inclusion of me and my oeuvre to either the Best of 2010 or New List 2011 (i'd settle for a pre-emptive insertion into next years list) would involve only a slight amount of risk. I think you’ll find it prudent to massively market my genius now so as to hasten the predictable clamour of assorted music publicists, blogs and magazines claiming they discovered me, when I actually record or devise some music. Think of it as a musical ‘Ponzi’ scheme in which everybody gets rich and no one gets hurt if it makes you feel more committed?

Kind Regards,

The Face Of Music To Come,

Cornwall.

HARDCORE

As it is swiftly becoming cornwall’s premier musical export, in as much it has any, I’m struggling to understand the appeal of Hardcore.

It is a scene that has organically developed its ethos upon values of integrity, a D.I.Y approach to marketing/promotion/merchandise and an emphasis upon pure expression and authenticity with a leftwing slant. So in its core values then it appears not too dissimilar to any musical movement, which strives to develop in the shadow of major label or mainstream recognition- and in fact seeks to exclude them. Its essential basis as a cultural movement is virtually, to the uninitiated, undecipherable from punk rock or indie. As far as I can make out, not professing to be any hardcore scholar, its roots lie in the early 1980’s West Coast scene when Punk was imported to the states and swiftly got brasher, brattier, faster, arguably less fun and snottier. These origins perhaps explain why the scenes intertwined with skating, metal and ripped jeans, caps and all its other sartorial choices. If this is taken into account then it is undeniably impressive that a scene approaching middle age has managed to resist being branded, packaged and marketed in the way so many of its forbearers were. Perhaps this is the enduring attraction for a lot of people- the sense of involvement with fostering a scene in your local area, where your friend’s bands play with your bands your other friends design the shirts and flyers and others take the pictures/ spread the word/ distribute the e.p’s. All very honourable anti-authoritarian stuff involving a communal outlook countless other scenes could do well to emulate. However the confusion for me doesn’t arise from all the paraphernalia but the actual music itself.

Now your first bonafide hardcore gig is likely to leave you feeling deeply impressed, probably slightly concerned and saturated in sweat. There’s traditionally a diminutive tattooed shirtless and angry singer hurling himself around in a frenzied assortment of contortions, messianic postures and ferocious screams at the crowd. The final coda of the set will resolve (?) with this glistening homunculus coiled on the floor in the microphone lead bellowing like a newborn whilst the rest of the band sheepishly depart offstage, not without forgetting to rest the guitars by the amps in an inferno of feedback. Your witnessing this scene of roars, lunges and flung fists by the, predominately white, crowd you know by day to be largely content, bourgeois and vegetarian with stupefaction- who’s the enemy here? So in search of a clue you return home to consult the lyric sheet that came attached with the gatefold ep and are confronted only with vague revolutionary platitudes, some odes to beer and Evil Dead style brutality.

So maybe you’ve missed the point, after all the majority of contemporary music’s purpose isn’t held in the words. Well that leaves the dishwater where muddied guitar tones languish at snail speed with break beats and dissonance clashes in a dirge. If atonality is the point then anything involving john cage or Schoenburg’s 12 note scale fits the bill, if its raw power then Mahler is hardcore or if the qualification is minimalist and aleatoric then Steve Reich slips under the manifold. This is not to say that the gigs aren’t enticing but it’s more for the theatre and the flamboyance of the stage show than any conviction in what’s being said or heard. There’s an illusion of depth to it all- reinforced in part by the budding cultural theorists and Marxists amongst them, which you can be forgiven for thinking involves some subversion of audience expectations/established rock conventions. But it’s fundamentally so derivative at every junction that the original impression of fascination fades to reveal the lack of ambition and imagination at the core of many of the bands.

Regardless of how insightful the content may be, the form it takes ultimately maroons them beyond either critical or mainstream appreciation. Precisely because so many of the key participants in a scene like this are so stable, genuine and outgoing in real life- its hard to pinpoint where their vehemence originates from. Not that I’m suggesting that art should be confined to the artists mood alone but if not it should at least be imaginative- otherwise its hard to reconcile creator with creation. Which then, despite all the expressions of sincerity, comradery and authenticity, makes it all seem rather false and disingenuous- more a simulation of what the impassioned and furious look like than an accurate reflection. Do you ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?