Book Review - after the quake by Haruki Murakami

When the Kobe earthquake struck Japan in 1995, its effects extended further than the physical cracking open of the earth. Each of the characters in ‘after the quake’, live far from the epicentre of the disaster, but still feel the shock waves ricochet through their lives, setting off minute chains of events that lead them eventually back to the cracks in their own existence.

Japanese master of fiction, Haruki Murakami, here presents six short stories exploring the way in which the earth’s unidentifiable power can change all of us in the most unexpected and unconnected of ways. His writing is full of a powerful knowing that is seemingly beyond even him to express. It is as though each thread of narrative is a feather-thick inky stroke of Japanese calligraphy, unable to portray the whole, but nonetheless part of the whole, and perhaps clue to the meaning of all this human fragility in the face of the mysterious power of the environment.

The distant earthquake, witnessed by these individuals only on the television and the radio, forces them to confront an overwhelming sense of emptiness that they have carried within them for a long time. In ‘UFO in Kushiro’ an electronics salesman, Komura, comes home from work one Sunday to find his wife gone, leaving only a note saying, ‘living like you is like living with a chunk of air’. ‘Landscape with Flatiron’ explores the suicidal feelings of a young runaway and her middle-aged friend with a talent for building the perfect bonfire.

Through these beautiful small sketches exploring the gently consuming ache of life without love, Murakami defies genres by slipping with authorial ease between the romantic, the terrifying and the absurd. In a bizarre cartoon-like yarn, Katagiri, the ‘less than ordinary’ protagonist of ‘Super-Frog Saves Tokyo’, is visited by an enormous frog one evening, and coerced into doing battle against a giant subterranean earthquake-causing evil, known as Worm.

Murakami’s elusively twisting plotlines succeed in rendering his stories infectiously intriguing and endlessly strange. He gives us little detail and keeps each chapter too short to be anything more than a fleeting glance at the goings on in foreign lives. But as Murakami pulls each narrative thread from the tangle of time he sheds shards of light on ineffable truths, making his prose nothing short of magical.

BBC Cambridgeshire Music Feature - Deaf By Stereo

There's nowhere better to be right now than Peterborough if you fancy a bit of indie-magic. Local reveller Hazel Sheffield tells us about a particular trio who are bringing bands to the masses.

There’s a buzz on the streets of Peterborough. No longer satisfied with the monotony of the chain-owned bar circuit on Broadway, the weekend crowd are heading downtown to be a part of the most exciting local development since John Lewis started opening on Sundays. The whispers are that three musically inspired individuals are revolutionising the Peterborough music scene under the name ‘Deaf By Stereo’.

This three-way partnership is putting Peterborough on the live-music map, organising nights out the likes of which the locals have never seen before by attracting some of the most exciting new acts in the country to the culturally undernourished streets of the ‘borough. The weekend will never be the same again…

Deaf By Stereo was conceived nine months ago by good friends Mark Pearson, Rachel Devlin and Jenny Leaman, through a shared passion for new music and their recognition that Peterborough desperately needed to offer more than corporately owned nightlife to its local population.

After scouring the festival circuit for the cream of musical talent last summer they began to formulate some of the most exciting live line-ups the city has ever seen. These personally financed, not-for-profit bundles of musical joy began with a bang on the 15th September, with local heroes Dirty Little Faces wowing fans with a sell-out set, supported by Ipswich’s finest, Rosalita.

Rachel speaks for the majority in Peterborough when she says, “It was clear Peterborough was lacking the live entertainment necessary to draw people from their homes on a Saturday night. Since Deaf By Stereo began we’ve been amazed by local support from live music fans of all ages and persuasions turning out to hear some of the best new bands in the country.”

Concentrating on bands from the medium-sized tour circuit has helped the trio attract a remarkable array of exciting new talent – from twisted electro of Dan Le Sac, Does It Offend You, Yeah? and Fenech-Soler, to the indie-cool of The Anomalies and The Brays.

With the line up for this year already stretching into May, Deaf By Stereo are poised to achieve big things in 2008. Expect unsurpassed entertainment on your doorstep from Late Of The Pier, Video Nasties, and The Librarians, to name but a few. Tickets are already on sale for the 26th January, when the Xoo Bar will host an indie-rock riot in the form of Rosalita, with support from the Brays.

Information about all future events and how to reserve your place can be found on the Deaf By Stereo myspace page. “The most important thing is that we continue to give the people of Peterborough the opportunity to hear great music in their home town,” Rachel explains, “and as long as live music lovers in the city continue to show us support on the level that we’ve received so far, Deaf By Stereo can only go from strength to strength.”

Find out more at: http://www.myspace.com/deaf_by_stereo
See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cambridgeshire/content/articles/2008/01/14/deaf_by_stereo_feature.shtml

Album Review - Instruments of Science and Technology: Music From The Films Of R/Swift

Instruments of Science and Technology – Music From The Films Of R Swift

The side project of self-deprecating pop wonderman Richard Swift, Instruments of Science and Technology, is less a different sound for the American film-maker-cum-songwriter than an alternate musical universe. His last album, ‘Dressed Up For the Letdown’, was released last year to critical acclaim, a self-conscious depressingly cheerful pop record complete with clanging piano and smiley strum-along guitar. If you loved it, be wary: ‘Music From The Films Of R Swift’ is not cut from the same cloth. This is a dark, experimental avenue for Swift, one that follows in the electronic tradition of some of the most influential bands of the last fifty years.

INST is a revivalist hybrid, reworking elements of dub, hip-hop and contemporary composition into a strong kraut-rock foundation. The opening narration informs unsuspecting listeners, “The best way to relax is to lie down upon your bed and stretch out.” Presumably Swift didn’t intend this to be the soundtrack to his recommended relaxation technique, as what follows is a kind of musical salvia nightmare perforated with swaths of twisted ambience.

Post-narration, Swift takes an aural plunge into the retro-pulsing eponymous ‘INST’, thick with cheese-grating vocoder and strongly reminiscent of the revolutionary industrial sounds of seventies Kraftwerk. Drifting, spacious ambience in ‘Subplot’, ‘Plan A and Plan B’, and ‘War/Unwar’ break up the darker, almost tribal propulsion of ‘Shooting A Rhino Between The Shoulders’ and ‘Theme 3’, whilst the muted groove of the percussion in ‘Ghost of Hip-Hop’ is almost lost in a synthetically hypnotic electro-cloud. What all the tracks on the album have in common is the ability to render vivid cinemascapes in sound, like a twisted modern day Fantasia for a digital generation. Forget melody and convention, INST explores sound on the periphery of human comprehension. That isn’t to say that this is groundbreaking stuff – in fact far from it – but it does cement Swift’s position as a schizophrenically talented, genre-dodging musical innovator.

Album Review - Kyte: Kyte

Kyte – Kyte (KIDS) released 18/2/08
If there is a shoegaze revival going on, Kyte aren’t a part of it. Especially not shoerave, whatever that might be, thank you NME. What this Leicestershire five-piece have achieved with their self-titled debut album is a musically enlightened glacial soundscape born of the surging ambience of Sigur Rós and the deft lyricism of Death Cab for Cutie: an instrumentally organic, homegrown parcel of Postal Service dream-pop.

Layers of clean sound swell and subside through each track on this album, a huge departure from the encompassing white-noisiness of quintessential shoegazers such as My Bloody Valentine. For Kyte, each musical component is polished and placed within a swirling mêlée that builds electronica into the gentle chug of math-rock guitars, tidal currents of percussion and the hypnotic twinkle of piano and xylophone. Somewhere inside this sonic hangar the lonesome lo-fi vocals of Nick Moon float on a synth cloud, murmuring charismatic threnodies. If only the boy wouldn’t affect an American accent…

Opener ‘Planet’ is the only track to be previously released as a 7” single on Sonic Cathedral. It showcases orb-like loops of piano and lead that slip into gasping percussive currents under the indie-sensible reaches of the vocal, eventually climaxing in pulsating reverb-saturated guitars and endless cymbal froth before pattering out to keyboard chords. It seems an odd choice for the band’s debut, whose talents might be better explored through the celestial 8-bit and grounding arpeggiated piano loop of ‘They Won’t Sleep’. This album highlight switches to the fizzing skitter of 16-beat drum-work mid-swell, building into the fuzz of a white noise finale that echoes into the barely audible intro of the ultimate track, ‘These Tales of Our Stay’.

There are clattering drums and piercing glockenspiel in the Mercury-nominated Maps mix of ‘Secular Ventures’ and evidence of extraordinary percussive talent in the range of instrumentation used on the latino-shuffle of ‘Home’. One of Kyte’s warmest offerings, ‘Sunshine’, begins with a screeching dial-up modem loop, becoming a synthetic track of continuous upward movement interspersed with delicious vinyl crackles and the gentle thump of the piano, like the yellow of the day creeping through cold window glass, warming etiolated winter skin.

Since the release of ‘Planet’ in September Kyte have clinched a backing track deal with the ubiquitous HBO for the Sopranos’ new trailer, been hailed by NME as ‘Best New Band On Myspace’ and toured with the likes of The Whip. With an average age of 20 and a sound that leaves plenty of scope for maturation, this is a band to look out for in 2008. The album’s a slow burner lacking in the melodic hooks that make Death Cab or Postal Service so lucratively listenable, but there is movement here – the evolution of organic-electro sound – and it is tangible and real and promises to make Kyte an exciting live act, too.

Gigwise - Singles January 2008

The Brute Chorus – Chateau/The Cuckoo and The Stolen Heart feat. Tigs
Mardy four-piece The Brute Chorus sound like bluesy cotton-pickers transported by fairytale pumpkin to a skiffle party in a garage: these boys might reside in London but their music heralds from the rural dirt of their provincial origins. It’s pretty glorious to behold, too. ‘Chateau’ evolves from heartbeating bass into the drunken stutters of guitar over filthy string bass, exploding into vocal fury as the Brutes lyrically conjure a nightmare nursery tale before swaggering back to brood, like a lover scorned, in the dark corners of the castle. ‘The Cuckoo and The Stolen Heart’ confirms the band’s gift for ingenious name giving whilst moving musically up-tempo. A growling Kazoo introduces a blues band complete with hillbilly banjo that titters away through dizzy rounds of 8 bar blues. Meanwhile vocalist James Steel and featured artist Tigs spin yarns and spit accusations of absorbing folk-intrigue. The Brute Chorus are dirty drunken troubadours etching out an overdue remedy to the sugar-sick, mindlessly slick pop fodder of our spurious musical age with the strut-thump of jutting garage pop genius.
4/5

Operahouse – Born A Boy
Operahouse are Camden-town skinny-jean clad kids bravely attempting to catch a sniff of the melodic jittery pop that the Maccabees excelled at last year, but they remain sadly unconvincing. ‘Born A Boy’ is infected with post punk angles that are so of the moment they happened yesterday. The single is a headlong hurtle through wanky basslines and watery guitar solos that whine through the instrumental. This is then punctuated with a hideous assault on a high hat mid-track, leading into a finale that sounds like the drummer had an epileptic fit on the crash cymbal. The lyrics are barely comprehensible and frankly disappointing when they emerge over the racket. High-energy north-London punk-pop habitually comes with ladles of pretension, but Operahouse smack a little of desperation. The B side, ‘Telescopes’, is marginally better and slower in tempo, giving the band a greater chance of holding the constituent parts of their limited musicality together. ‘Telescopes’ ends on the repeated wail, ‘I don’t care anymore, I don’t care anymore,’ a rather apt pre-emption of the creeping apathy induced by this release.
1.5/5

Gabriella Cilmi – Sweet About Me
Born to second generation Italian parents in Melbourne a mere sixteen years ago, this pretty little lady and her dust-covered bluesy vocals will be invading your headspace with pervasively jaunty jangle-pop anytime soon. She repeats, seemingly incessantly, for nearly the entirety of her new single, ‘there’s nothing sweet about me,’ but it doesn’t take more than a myspace to see that this mechanically exported industry product is the musical equivalent of a Nigella Lawson dessert involving three kilos of sugar and a garnish of gummi bears. Expect heavy airplay from major radio stations as her label, Island, try to market their pop sweetheart of choice ahead of contenders for the 2008 pop-princess crown (and there are a lot of them) including Duffy, Adele and old hats Lilly and Kate. She’s already performed on Later with Jools Holland (But then, who hasn’t these days?) and recorded the title music for ITV drama ‘Echo Beach’. The year’s off to a good start for Gabriella, with ‘Sweet About Me’ a sure-fire pop hit.
3/5


Butterfly Bangs – Junk Sky
Butterfly Bangs fall into the ubiquitous four-man band bracket and aren’t the most ball-grabbingly original outfit to flutter around the edges of indie-rock mainstream. Their second single, ‘Junk Sky’, is melodically elusive, perhaps tactically avoiding the descent into guitar-riff stadium anthem gore, but failing to replace this with a sense of musical direction, and this is a bit frustrating. There’s something in there, but it never quite happens. The guitar work is impressive, invoking a sound reminiscent of The Rakes or a cleaner Art Brut. An Idlewild-inspired static-filled spoken recording adds interest mid-track under a pleasingly tight 16-beat splashy high-hat, and a trumpet makes a brief twiddling appearance. Lyrical limitations are apparent in the rather boring refrain ‘It’s sad, sad, sad, being alone,’ probably the most disappointing part of a single from a band that should be capable of big things. This isn’t the record that will make Butterfly Bangs. ‘Junk Sky’ is a jigsaw puzzle of a great brit-rock track, but this time the pieces just don’t quite fit together.
2.5/5

Subliminal Girls – Hungry Like The Wolf/Self Obsession Is An Art Form
Subliminal Girls created a bit of a buzz with last year with their rainbow hued ‘Burn KOKO’ that sounded like mashed 80s electro injected with a relentlessly annoying football anthem chorus about how terribly awful it must be to be indie. They return with a double A side comprising of a sad, synth-led reflection on modern times in ‘Self Obsession Is An Art Form’ and a Duran Duran cover from 1982, ‘Hungry Like The Wolf’. The latter is dragged screaming into 2008 with a faster tempo, though thankfully retains the endearing, hiccuppy eighties electro-blips and a good bit of synth. It’s inoffensive, but was the world really yearning for a subtly souped up version of a mediocre Duran Duran track? Meanwhile ‘Self Obsession Is An Art Form’ moves down-tempo, following in the same lyrical vein as ‘Burn KOKO’ minus the cocksure arrogance. Its fizzy synth-imbued charm hangs over chugging guitars and breathy eighties keyboards: a kind of introspective pop-sensible number, not genius, but actually pretty good. This self-proclaimed ‘nu-pop’ has an obvious shelf life, but taken as lightly as the Subliminal Girls intend, it’s also got the potential to induce a bit of an eighties-electropop revival amongst those pretentious indie kids this year.
4/5

Book Review - Stories We Could Tell by Tony Parsons

When he’s not busy scribbling populist musings for his weekly column, Daily Mail right-winger Tony Parsons spends his time in the ring with Nick Hornby, battling it to be ‘king of lad-lit’. His latest testosterone fuelled man-book, ‘Stories We Could Tell’, is a semi-autobiographical account of Parson’s time working for the New Musical Express in the seventies. Back then, punk was a growing phenomenon that screamed anarchy in the face of the fraying hippy movement, prompting the NME to rapidly hire a gaggle of young talent off the back of a gunslinger ad to capitalise on the new scene. Parsons and his first wife, Judy Burchill, were both among this first round of punk critics. Whilst Parsons avoids directly penning the story of their reckless rock and roll romance, he has clearly garnered much of his material for the bread-and-butter working class Terry and his slippery, aloof girlfriend, Misty, from personal experience.

As Terry tries to keep a hold on the wayward Misty, his two best friends – also new recruits on ‘The Paper’ (as the NME is renamed) – must grapple with their own coming-of-age conundrums. Leon, a bourgeois leftie, tries valiantly to disassociate himself from his happily middle-class parents at a time when privilege was something to be ashamed of, and ends up hiding from gangs in disco halls and squatting in disused buildings. Meanwhile Ray is still long-haired and lost in a sixties hippy haze and must get a golden interview with John Lennon or face losing his job for being out of touch.

The whole story takes place over the course of one day and night: 16th August 1977, the night that Elvis Presley died. Rather conveniently this also happens to be the night that Leon’s squat gets shut down and Lennon is passing through town, which makes the plot seem rather contrived. However these converging plot elements force the narrative forwards and avoid the festering sentimentality that Parsons sometimes lapses into in his novels.

That’s the thing with Tony Parsons: all the male characters are muddled softies – the narcissistic reflected fragments of Parsons’ self confessed sentimental side – which can get a little dull, as can transparent symbolism and predictable plot lines. There is enough here to keep music lovers amused, if not only in spotting Parsons’ parodies of the big names of the NME in the seventies: Kevin White is Nick Logan incarnated whilst Parsons’ hero, Nick Kent, appears as the lovable Skip James, perpetually locked away in the mystical review room. Though clichés abound infest his writing, the result is a strangely pleasing sprint through the early days of British punk, spruced up a bit for commercial appeal.

Book Review - I'll Never Be Young Again by Daphne du Maurier

The beginning of a new year habitually brings with it some reflection on times gone by. Suddenly, the hopes and worries of the future are laid out before us will frank immediacy, and we are left peering into the past to wonder how we became the people we are at the start of 2008. What was it along the way that moulded us into the individuals that now stand on the brink of another year, and must push on into the unfolding uncertainty of the future?

Inevitably, the formative years of youth are pivotal in the making of the individual – those troubled and treasured memories of our first forays into the adult world. Many a prolific writer has tired to capture the agonies of that difficult no man’s land between childhood and adulthood, a literary genre know as bildungsroman. The intriguing thing is that no matter what era the author comes from, the same set pieces always seem to surface. It’s as though life’s little recipe for those last gasps of childhood contain certain indispensable ingredients.

Although ‘I’ll Never Be Young Again’ was published back in 1932, du Maurier’s evocation of the slow ebbing away of naivety is timeless – testament to her extraordinary storytelling ability. It was one of her first novels – she would go on to write her masterpiece, ‘Rebecca’, some six years later, which was eventually adapted for screen by Alfred Hitchcock. Neatly divided into two halves, ‘I’ll Never Be Young Again’ tells of the fumbling beginnings of a young man, Dick, as he tries to forge his identity in the shadows of his father’s fame. The first half takes him on a glorious journey through the wastes of Scandinavia, showcasing du Maurier’s talent for conjuring terrifically vast landscapes. Dick’s travels with his strange friend, Jake, are full of adventures, from their vagabond mountain treks on horseback, to gangster violence in back street bars, finally ending in shipwreck and death off the coast of France. Du Maurier has a strong masculine narrative voice that never falters throughout the novel, making her portrayal of boyhood adventures utterly convincing.

The second half of the book explores first love: an indispensable part of any bildungsroman. Dick catches sight of an orange beret in a Parisian café one day as he struggles to write his first novel, and from that moment is lost in the emotional pandemonium induced by its owner, a beautiful young musician, Hesta, which can only end in heartbreak. What surfaces from these neat plot pieces is the restless search for identity: an exploration of the formulating moments in Dick life. But du Maurier is also a mistress of suspense and a first rate storyteller, and it is Dick’s trepid adventures into emotional and physical wilderness that stay with the reader after the last page has been turned.