Anything But Silence

Welcome to my journal, 'Anything But Silence.'

Most of the entries here are my musings on music and the music industry.  Please note : It's no longer possible to be my "friend" here and I have deleted all my old friends.  It's nothing personal.  I just need an excuse to make "real" friends, away from the internet.  Sorry. 

I have started a record label with some friends. I was bored....what can I say?
One subscribes and we send you 5 limited edition, hand-packaged releases, at about the rate of one-a-month, to your doormat.
You can't buy the releases in stores.
A lot of people subscribed this week. Things are going well.
You can read more here/subscribe/listen, etc :

http://www.secondlanguagemusic.com

This is our second release. It's flying out fast :






Music & Migration

Various Artists

Label : Second Language

Cat No : SL02




TRACKLISTING:



1. Hauschka - Lipstick Race

2. David John Sheppard - Small Town Raptor

3. Vashti Bunyan - Here (Demo)

4. Danny Norbury - The Lovers

5. Xela - Autumn Prayer

6. Heather Woods Broderick - Suture

7. Enderby's Room - Tiptoe

8. The Declining Winter - Red Kite

9. Ghostwriter - Even Solemnity In The Instruments (Farina's Automatic Translation Machine)

10. Darren Hayman - Summer Visitors

11. Gareth S. Brown - Over Biscay

12. Peter Broderick - Untitled For Violins

13. Lene Charlotte Holm - Tracing Echoes

14. ANT - Magpies (Demo)

15. brave timbers - Let's Never Go Back

16. Carousell - Black Swallow

17. Seasons (pre-din) - A Night Alone Pt. 2

18. Winter Cabin - Swifts And Swallows

19. Fieldhead - Open Show

20. Library Tapes - Another Field

21. Leyland Kirby - Whiffling

A true original, savagely under-rated.

Synthpop was my punk. I was too young for "actual" punk and somehow it completely missed my little heavy metal village. After a mild dalliance with Two Tone, thanks to my older brother, I came across pre-Dare Human League. Their Travelogue and Reproduction albums were thickly inspired by the short stories of Philip K Dick and JG Ballard; bland, identikit, commercial cities populated by tense, paranoid clerks. I loved them. Via the Human League, I quickly made my way to the earlier work of Soft Cell, most notably The Girl With The Patent Leather Face on the first, still enthralling Some Bizarre label compilation. Pre-New Romantic, the analogue synthesizer was as punk as a two string, untuned guitar. A synth could sound hideous and beautiful in turns. It distorted, it squealed, it hinted towards a sleek, silver future where EVERYONE would have a computer in their own homes! Imagine!

I pined for a synth. My mate, Johnny, somehow got the cash together to buy an SH101, complete with modulation handgrip. We'd spend Saturday evenings in his room listening to its squelches and beeps, completely unable to string three notes together. Occasionally, I'd hit his Star Instruments Synare with a wooden spoon, though it only had two settings - disco pee-oo and white noise. We weren't much of an outfit.

In the confines of my bedroom, I'd try to work out how The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and the Some Bizarre crew would make these fantastic robotic soundscapes. Cold, industrial, metallic sounds borrowed from factories and office machinery. I wanted in.

My first synthesizer wasn't really a synthesizer. My parents bought me a cheap Yamaha keyboard for my birthday. It had 12 preset sounds - all thin synthesized interpretations of acoustic instruments : flute, guitar, piano, etc. I would feed it through any guitar pedals I could borrow from friends, multi-track it on my brother's tape-to-tape deck - anything to make it sound as close to that Sheffield sound as I could get.

Ironically, by 1981, the year Kraftwerk, The Human League, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode all hit the charts, my synth was back in its box. I was suddenly contented to watch the big boys make the music. And then came The Smiths.
Johnny sold his SH101 and bought a semi-acoustic guitar. The synth had had its moment. The Smiths washed it all away like a tidal wave.

Recently, however, much thanks to the internet, I've rediscovered a seemingly endless stream of long-lost, obscure synth groups from the early 80's who might not have found the limelight but better still, had that cold, minimal sound - the perfect cohesion between a cheap drum-machine and a monosynth. The future, it seems, is back.

I'm diggin' this....

...I wanted to make music like this....







I failed.

Now Michael Jackson's dead, it's time for Bowie to step back up to the "weirdest fucker on the planet" mantle. Or maybe he's done his bit?

Last night, my band played a record store and then we DJed across the street at a cafe. We all took turns to spin but this is what I played (not in this order though) :

ARTIST - TRACK

We Fell To Earth - The Double
Silver Apples - Oscillations
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
Gary Numan - Cars
Studio - Self Service
PIL - Public Image
Suicide - Ghost Rider
Sharades - Dumbhead
Deux - Game & Performance
TV On The Radio - Golden Age
The XX - Islands
The Ravonettes - Aly, Walk With Me
Chromatics - I Want Your Love
The Human League - Rock N Roll/Nightclubbing
ARE Weapons - Fuck U, Pay Me


It worked out pretty well.

Some of it :

Do your worst.

There's been some amazing music this year.

The young guys next door use their outdoors voice indoors. So you can hear them outdoors. They obviously get this from their grandmother who sees no reason to speak when you can shout at the top of your voice.

I wonder how people end up like this? Are they told to shut up throughout their childhoods and thus, in later life, "release themselves?" Or are they simply starved for attention? Is it a cry for help? "Listen to me!!!! Help me!!!!"

My mother never stops talking. My father hardly says anything. I only raise my voice when I am especially frustrated. Otherwise, pretty calm, I'd say. But the older I get, the more frustrated I get....with people who shout, mainly.

On a similar note, a nice interview with Douglas Coupland in The Guardian today. He can't stand noise either :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/07/decca-aitkenhead-douglas-coupland