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The Stool Pigeon’s King Canute-like stand against the digital tide

alliana — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

Maggoty Lamb applauds the Stool Pigeon’s continued success and wonders if the telephone interview is due for an upgrade

Does anybody out there like the idea of a music paper that is equally comfortable pontificating about Nas, Roky Erickson, Marc Almond and Holy Fuck, has the reassuringly newsprint-y feel of Melody Maker in the late 70s, and doesn’t actually cost any money to buy? Of course you do, and the fact that such a publication already exists in the form of the Stool Pigeon is a cause for general celebration.

With five issues a year, a print-run of 60,000, and even a functional nuts-and-bolts website for those unable or unwilling to leave their homes in search of the kind of aspiring hipster hangout that generally has a pile on the shelf by the door (if you run one of those establishments and would like to summon your own personal flock of papery Pigeons, contact info@thestoolpigeon.co.uk), excuses for not giving this title a go are running perilously short. The current issue has a lovely picture of Alan Moore on the cover and the graphic novel overlord’s views on how Russell Brand should be punished for his insensitive attitude to victims of sexual crime in the Northampton area are just one of numerous worthwhile talking-points to be found inside.

As if this whole valiant endeavour were not already counter-intuitive, the Stool Pigeon recently celebrated its fifth anniversary with the publication of two stylishly presented and authentically pocket-sized paperbacks. We Need You Lazzaro, You Lazy, Greasy Bastard – a selection of columns by honky bluesman Son of Dave – is probably for fans only, but the 19 stories from the paper’s first five years gathered in Grace Under Pressure (Junko Partner, £6.99) make a strong case for the viability of the enterprise.

Editor Phil Hebblethwaite dedicates this ringing declaration of faith in the power of the printed word to: “The short-sighted dude I saw reading a copy of the paper two inches in front of his face while walking in Soho … He tripped on a bag of rubbish, went arse over tit, then got up and carried on reading as if nothing had happened.” However, the musical selection policy is anything but myopic, with Omar Souleyman and Chavez-friendly Venezuelan pop jockeying for position with Marilyn Manson and Grace Jones.

Alex Marshall’s spirited encounter with Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox sets the tone. The latter claims his main sources of inspiration as “girl groups, Rauschenberg collages and Tiffany lamps” and when challenged to identify an echo of the first of those in his band’s music, Cox replies: “I do not like ripping off my influences … music doesn’t need to be digested a second time and re-shat out. You just lose bulk in the stool, you get diarrhoea.” While the scatological metaphor may not be everybody’s cup of camomile, anyone who has ever seen Duffy or the Zutons live will know what Cox means.

Inevitably – and as one would hope – areas of disputation also arise. Garry Mulholland’s interview with Tricky makes the disingenuous suggestion that the ornery Bristolian’s career has been somehow held back by the inability of other “middle-class” music journalists to get to grips with his straightforward proletarian essence. As a satellite of the perpetually orbiting death star that is Julie Burchill, Mulholland is contractually forbidden from accepting that anyone who earns anything like a living wage through theorising about pop music for national newspapers is by any meaningful definition a fully paid-up member of the bourgeoisie. But that is not even the real point here. The nub of the matter is that it’s the reluctance of those same journalistic kulaks to call Tricky out on some of the bullshit he states and does that has helped his career last for as long as it has done. And I state that as a fan.

It’s intriguing to note that rather than attempting to replicate the form of the traditional broadsheet or music-press feature (as Mulholland’s Tricky article does), many of the Stool Pigeon’s finest moments – for example, Cyrus Shahrad’s informative and knowledgeable piece on MF Doom, and Daddy Bones’s less serious brush with Snoop Dogg – are unapologetically presented phone interviews. The reason these work so well here – as they used to in Andy Warhol’s Interview – is that so long as both journalist and artist can commit the requisite amount of energy to the conversation, each will emerge with their dignity and mystique enhanced in slightly different ways.

The subject will not have had a little fraction of their day-to-day behaviour – how they interact with PR people/waitresses/cab drivers etc – blown up into a generally (though not always) spurious representation of their entire personality. Meawhile the writer will not have been obliged to track down their quarry on three separate occasions in an environmentally destructive sequence of different time-zones, solely to fabricate the illusion that they have spent the last six months with their subject, when in fact they are probably looking at a total mutual engagement of a couple of hours tops.

It is probably not the dirtiest of the music journalist’s professional secrets that at some point in his or her career even the most honest writers – however genuine their preference for the music of Albert Ayler over that of Free or Tiesto – will have felt obliged to misleadingly imply the existence of a face-to-face encounter when only a telephone conversation actually took place. If the Stool Pigeon’s more rigorous and straightforward approach promotes greater accountability in this area, that would be one more reason to be grateful for its continued existence. And let’s not forget that – as anyone who has recently house-trained a puppy will tell you – an iPad’s no good for insulating your kitchen floor against the toxic depredations of dog piss.

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Kanye West premieres new material at Facebook HQ

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

The rapper’s tabletop performance of his ‘poetry’ was enjoyed by the world’s leading social networking employees

Kanye West has posted a couple of clips that show him debuting new material in the unlikely setting of Facebook HQ. Wearing an dashing suit and standing on a table, West delivered a capella versions of Lost in the World/Chain Gang (above) and Mama’s Boyfriend (below) to a room full of cheering Facebook employees. “Many times in my life I’ve had to deal with moments of doubt,” West wrote on his blog, Kanyeuniversity.com, about the performance. “Your energy was a gift so electric, so genuine, that it really helped me give my best.”

One question: why Facebook?

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New music: Lauryn Hill – Repercussions

dave — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 12:00:06 +0000

Is this leaked song an old unreleased track or a hint that the singer will finally release a follow up to her 1998 solo album?

Lauryn Hill has been away from music for far too long, so you cannot blame fans for getting excited about the unexpected arrival of a new song. The question is, is the track actually new or an unreleased recording from the late 1990s? Repercussion is a languid, introspective account of Hill’s life with lyrics recalling those on her 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill: “I was born into this world, a tiny ditty baby girl … a racist world, now it’s a difficult process – the matter is of perception.” As it bears the hallmarks of her earlier work, fans are already speculating that it was a reject from The Miseducation … LP, while others suggest the recent confirmation that the singer will play the Rock the Bells tour in the US is a sign she is about to release new material. Maybe our blog convinced her to up the work rate!

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In praise of Mary Anne Hobbs, a new music champion | Joe Muggs

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

The DJ, who announced she was leaving Radio 1 on Friday, was instrumental in taking dubstep to a wider audience. But this was just a little part of a mindboggling career

Mary Anne Hobbs announced on Friday that she is quitting her popular Radio 1 show Experimental (formerly The Breezeblock) after 14 years to be a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. It’s a typically dramatic and decisive gesture from someone who has carved out her own niche throughout a mindboggling career.

I grew up reading Hobbs in NME in the mid to late 80s. It was pretty much the magazine’s last great era, and she held her own in the boys’ club of Stuart Maconie, David Quantick, Danny Kelly, Andrew Collins and Steve Lamacq, writing cover features on Nirvana and Happy Mondays. I enjoyed her DJing and confrontational interviews on Xfm and Radio 1, where as well as playing brutally extreme guitar music, she was the only person bar her mentor John Peel to feature records from the odder corners of electronica.

I only began to realise just how much she had achieved when our paths crossed in 2005 thanks to the emerging sound of dubstep. I championed its bass throb in my small way in the press, but Hobbs gave the localised scene an almighty boot up the arse, sending it global to a degree no comparable UK underground genre has ever managed.

Watching Hobbs shepherd a fledgling scene to the point where its core artists are producing Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg and Rihanna was impressive enough. But as I got to know (and interview) her, I realised she escaped an abusive home at 16 to live in a automobile park with a hard rock band because “that’s how you became a music writer”. She has the strength of character to stare down John Lydon and charm Chuck D, and counts Jeremy Paxman and Chris Morris as friends.

Hobbs is not giving up music evangelism – she still DJs around the world with the energy of someone half her age – and Radio 1 has not announced what will happen to her programme, so the ramifications of her move are not clear yet. But there is no question that, like everything else she is done, her departure will stir things up for a lot of people on a surprisingly massive scale.

Urban musicElectronic musicRadioRadio 1Radio industryBBCguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Great moments in jazz: Ornette Coleman defines the Shape of Jazz to Come

jessica — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

Initially regarded as a fraud or a fool, his playing influenced half a century of jazz – and this album defines his greatness more than any other

Last summer Ornette Coleman, the then 79 year-old saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer from Forth Worth, curated the annual Meltdown Festival of mixed-genre music at London’s South Bank. Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers was there to play his respects, Patti Smith was there, Baaba Maal was there, Bill Frisell turned up for a jam, and the eclectic programmes buzzed with beatboxers, traditional Moroccan drum-choirs, hip-hop bands, big-bands and a lot more. On the final night, the Royal Festival Hall crowd would not let the avuncular and very contented-looking Coleman go – and even after a fast and furious (not to mention lengthy) set with his band, the saxophonist was happy to wander endlessly up and down the edge of the stage, reaching out to the forest of hands waving to greet him as the audience pressed ecstatically to the front. It was a spontaneous show of gratitude not only for Coleman’s still remarkably vivacious playing on the night, but for the previous half-century of unswervingly independent creativity he represented.

That night took me back to the first time I heard Coleman play live, in Manchester in 1966, when many of those present were baffled or even angered by his music rather than grateful for it, and after the first half-hour or so of his set I was considering leaving myself. Coleman’s lovely melodies and intensely human and voice-like saxophone sound seem so natural now, that it’s perhaps hard to imagine the furore he caused on his emergence in the late 1950s. Indeed, Coleman was often treated as a fraud or a fool. Why? For his abandonment of the chord-sequences of popular songs on which jazz was usually based, for the spontaneous straying between keys he and his musicians practised (noted by commenter Bix2bop on my last Great Moments blog on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue), and for his unselfconciously untutored additional improvising on violin and trumpet. But I did not leave that 1966 gig, because the music’s emotional message began to get through to me, and it’s remained and grown there ever since. Coleman was audibly steeped in the blues, even though whether it happened in twelve bars or not did not matter to him. He also swung infectiously, his phrasing sounded like euphoric laughter, or startled or sorrowful cries, and a love-song like Lonely Woman (embedded above) deserved comparison with the most eloquent melodies ever conceived.

Coleman grew up in the 1930s and 40s in Fort Worth, Texas. His mom gave him a saxophone and, as as he told BBC Jazz on 3′s Jez Nelson last year: “I thought it was a toy and I just played it. Didn’t know you have to learn something to find out what the toy does”. That innocence led to the young Coleman being mesmerised by the changing timbres of the horn, rather than by the accepted patterns usually deployed to organise them. Surrounded by the blues in his childhood, Coleman absorbed blues-singers’ tonalities in his playing. He worked fitfully in local R&B bands as a teenager, but would get fired for not sticking to the chords or keys. Then he began to find his own ways of learning – and willfully reshuffling – the bebop phrasing of Charlie Parker, met likeminded young musical radicals including the bassist Charlie Haden and trumpeter Don Cherry on the West Coast, and with them began to evolve a freewheeling and intuitive new way of improvising jazz collectively. The group worked briefly with pianist Paul Bley at Los Angeles’ Hillcrest Club in 1958 (one of the rare occasions Coleman bowed to the demands of a fixed-pitch harmony instrument) before breaking out with a series of amazing recordings for the small Contemporary label. In a spectacular career since, he was not only to transform the language of jazz improvisation, but write symphonies and collaborate with opera singers, and inititiate an electric-fusion approach with Prime Time in the 1970s that is been as influential as his acoustic one.

But it was Coleman’s 1959 Atlantic recording, The Shape Of Jazz To Come, that brought his unique vision into focus for a wider audience. Some of it resembled bebop, but of a fragmented, idiosyncratically-paced variety. Some of it was hauntingly intense, like Lonely Woman. Performed by Coleman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and drummer Billy Higgins, the music embodied its principal creator’s childhood conviction, as he expressed it to Jez Nelson on Jazz on 3, that “music was just something human beings done naturally, like eating”.

Artists everywhere have listened more closely to their hearts because of Ornette Coleman, and taken courage from his example to try to pursue the freshest, most honest and uncliched ideas, regardless of establishment suspicion or economic pressures. But more than anything, maybe he reaches us with his enduring attitude of wonderment at the clamorous richness of life.

JazzJohn Fordhamguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

New music: Chad Valley – Up and Down

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

A summer jam from a man whose real name trumps his stage one

So, what do we know about Chad Valley? Well, we know from his MySpace that he is from Oxford, that his – much more exotic – real name is Hugo Manuel and that he is one sixth of the band, Jonquil. Now, this is all very well in a This Is Your Life kind of way, but what is the music like? Up and Down is a slinky Hot Chip on downers, a disco-infused summer “joint” featuring some shimmering synths, padded drum beats and Manuel’s impressive croon. You know when Big Brother contestants say, “it was like some mad rollercoaster ride in that house, Davina”? Well, this song sums that sentiment up perfectly.

Pop and rockElectronic musicMichael Craggguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mercury prize nominations: Brits are back on song

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

After years in the shadow of Brooklyn bands, the British album is stronger than ever. Rosie Swash salutes a Mercury shortlist that reflects the boom in homegrown talent

Has there ever been a more maligned award than the Mercury music prize? The annual round of hand-wringing and what’s-it-for criticism began even before yesterday’s shortlist was announced – though, if anything, the dissenting voices have been a fair bit quieter since. Does this mean this year’s 12 album nominees are an unusually safe bet? Dizzee Rascal, the xx, Paul Weller: you could argue that the judges have managed to nod in every musical direction this island has to offer. Or, less cynically, you could state the range is a positive sign that British music is on fighting form, after a period of several years in which the US album has dominated the awards scene, as well as critics’ and readers’ polls.

In fact, the field has seemed even narrower than that: for the last couple of years it’s been largely Brooklyn exports who have swept the board. Last year brought wildly successful albums from Brooklyn-based Dirty Projectors, Brooklyn-based Grizzly Bear and Brooklyn/Baltimore-based Animal Collective. In 2008, the Guardian critics’ end of year poll for ideal album was topped by New Yorkers TV on the Radio and their excellent political art-rock LP Dear Science (the influential US website Pitchfork concurred with us); meanwhile, the readers chose Wisconsin’s cabin-dwelling troubadour Bon Iver and his album For Emma, Forever Ago. That year also saw brilliant albums by Vampire Weekend and MGMT – both, you guessed it, based in Brooklyn.

But the last 12 months have been triumphant for British music, and the Mercury panel has gone some way towards reflecting this. Nominations for Mumford & Sons and their tour-mate Laura Marling (also Marcus Mumford’s girlfriend) shine a light on the success of London’s so-called New Folk scene: both acts straddle the generation divide, uniting teenage fans with those who remember the halcyon days of 1960s folk. The recent success of “heritage” acts (Led Zeppelin, Leonard Cohen, the Police) has also generated a fresh appetite for reunions and revivals. Many of these acts get away with plundering their back catalogue; Weller, however, who has been making music for more than 30 years, has surprised everyone by moving on and releasing what critics have rated the ideal album of his career, Wake Up the Nation.

The nomination for Dizzee Rascal’s fourth album, Tongue N’ Cheek, is already bothering some: the prize is meant to reward artistic ambition, and many would argue that the 24-year-old rapper is more interested in raising his game commercially on this showing. But the last year has seen British hip-hop artists do the one thing no one expected: sell records. Chipmunk, N-Dubz and Tinchy Stryder have all topped the charts; none of them would be there without the man who won his first Mercury prize seven years ago for Boy in Da Corner.

My own favourite album on the list comes from Wild Beasts, whose music is hard to quantify (though you could reductively describe them as indie-pop). The Kendal four-piece have many remarkable strings to their bow: two lead singers capable of singing both in falsetto and baritone, an intrinsic understanding of rhythm and groove, a gift for visceral and poetic lyrics. They are also just the kind of band who could benefit from the exposure a Mercury win would bring them: they are near enough the mainstream to accumulate a growing fanbase and critical praise, but without that translating to significant sales – yet.

Already the xx and Dizzee Rascal are favourites to win. The xx’s album has managed to hang on to its artistic credibility while being ubiquitous in the mainstream media (something the Mercury prize seems to value). Their songs sound as at home on hip music blogs as they do soundtracking Grey’s Anatomy – bracing, captivating and aching with languid sexuality.

Would it be good for the xx if they won? The Mercury prize can be a gift or a curse. While few would balk at the £20,000 prize fund that goes with it, you only have to look at the fate of last year’s winner, Speech Debelle, to be reminded how transient success can be. No sooner was she thanking indie label Big Dada for allowing her to release a “hip-hop Tracy Chapman” album than she dumped the label, after it became apparent that it took more than the approval of a roomful of music industry insiders to persuade the British public to pay for an album of dull art-rap that sounded nothing like Tracy Chapman.

Still, it’s not all bad news. As the Mercury limelight begins to swing towards some other lucky (or unlucky) soul, it was confirmed this week that Big Dada had reunited with Debelle; her next album, rumoured to be called The Art of Speech, will be released by them in the not-too-distant future.

Mercury prizeLaura MarlingDizzee RascalThe xxCorinne Bailey RaePaul WellerWild BeastsMumford & SonsRosie Swashguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Exclusive: Listen to Tom Jones’s Praise and Blame

chuck — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

After all the hype, is Tom Jones’s new album really such a departure? Listen for yourselves and let us know

It was the album that “horrified” the label releasing it, even though let’s face it, that was clearly a PR stunt. More significant are the murmurings that Praise and Blame may well be the Welsh crooner’s “Johnny Cash moment”. So what do you hear? The sound of a man stripping back his sound and baring his soul? The same old same old? Or a “sick joke” designed to infuriate the label? Have a listen on this widget brought to you by free music sharing service We7, and let us know your thoughts below.

Praise and Blame is released on 26 July

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Video exclusive: Kano – Upside

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 12:00:04 +0000

The rapper speaks us through the concept for the video to his new single, Upside, featuring Michelle Breeze

Taken from Kano’s forthcoming album, Method to the Maadness, Upside sees the rapper teaming up with Why Why Peaches vocalist Michelle Breeze. “One of the key lyrics that inspired the video is: ’If I lose my head, I lose my focus, but I’ll lose my dough before I lose my soul.’” explains Kano. The video, directed by Henry Schofield and shot in Canning Town, east London, sees the rapper playing a boxer cornered by two fixers who want him to throw a fight. Method to the Maadness is out on 30 August and features contributions from Boys Noize, Hot Chip, Diplo, and Damon Albarn.

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Who are the unsung heroes of pop?

john — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:00:05 +0000

Today in Film&Music we celebrate the lesser-known movers and shakers who shaped pop. Tell us who you think deserves a nod

Pop music is full of secret histories. It’s not just about the canon, the critically approved history that takes us from Elvis to the Beatles and the Stones, through the supposedly barren years of the early 70s, into punk and beyond, with diversions for soul and funk and hip-hop and house. Pop feeds off itself in strange and unexpected ways, and its story is not as straightforward as the canonical telling suggests.

In this week’s Film&Music we have tried to touch on that by taking 10 artists (well, strictly nine artists and one record company employee) and looking at the way each of them helped shaped pop. Some, like Earth Wind & Fire, are superstars who seemed only to be regarded as radio-friendly unit-shifters, even though that ubiquity gave them large influence over generations of musicians. Others, such as Mick Green of the Pirates, mastered one specific thing that filtered through music to the extent that his descendants probably do not even realise the debt they owe. One, Ralph Peer, is a non-musician who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to inadvertently kickstart commercial country music. If it had not been him, it would have been someone else, but that doesn’t negate his importance.

But we only had room for 10, though the original discussions among the writers produced dozens of names who could have been included. Ours is not a top 10; there is no particular logic to the selections, they are just people we felt have been underappreciated. So we want you to expand our list. Who are music’s other unsung heroes? And what did they do that echoed down the years? Make your cases here: we are all ears.

Pop and rockMichael Hannguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds