Current mood: WOO BAD
Category: WOO BAD Music
RIGHT...
I'm ranting away again on cdtimes.co.uk. On this occasion it's against Indie Rock and in particular a band called The Rain...
Here's the piece in full
The word on every musical street i know is that the big record companies are doomed. And whereas it might sound like a new era of golden unarsehole music love is on it's way as a result of this fall, we all know if we're being serious that new tyrants will replace the old and that nothing fundamental has or will ever change in the music business..
Music attracts arseholes because aresholes like the cool ticket music has, and no ammount of myspace pages or cdr releases is going to change that by even a tinsey little bit...
What I'm saying is don't be as naive to think that if Warners goes bust, it's employees and directors are gonna become unprofit minded lo-fi fans. Businessmen are businessmen and they're savvy enough to know that if they can't sell cds and cream artists that way, they need to be buying shares in telecoms or in internet service providers or modem manufacturers...
Anyway, once again I digresss (and yes this time I am killing time). What I'm getting around to saying is that if there's anything that can save the majors from becoming back catalouge managers it's them signing good new talent and I'm afraid bands like 'The Rain' aren't it..
So why bother reviewing them?
Well, I asked to review 'The Rain' because I felt there was some vague chance this band might be in some way organic. I tried checking myspace to elminate the possibility of them sounding like they do, but there were about 30 pages of possible matches and this better than anything else illustrates this album and this acts niche and problem..
In short, there is nothing happening on this record that hasn't happenned on many others, most of which have either done it first or executed it better...
Yes boss, Involver is another indie rock record that says 'Come On' too many times. It's another indie rock record on a fake indie rock label. It's another indie rock record made by three lads: guitar, bass and drums. And though it's well executed at what it does and all the boxes are ticked, it has nothing to mark it out and above any similar acts of which there are thousands..
So though I perhaps should, I'm not going to waste my time going into anymore detail than that. If you like anthemic indie rock in the tradition of Muse, The Bluetones, The Charlatans etc you might like this
Otherwise don't bother...
It's pieces like this that generally get me into trouble with music magazines etc, so I'm hoping CDtimes can cope with it without throwing me out with the water..
If you find it a touch negative and want to know what it is that I do want to see from music I've included an old review of the Richard D James LP by the Aphex Twin....
CLASSIC ALBUM REVIEW :::::: APHEX TWIN - RICHARD D JAMES
Current mood: WOO BAD
Category: WOO BAD Music
This is madness, I cried, regretting ever turning the radio on This isn't fucking music! This is just stu- and then from complete chaos of whips and bangs, the essence of it broke clean. Fingerbib made sense. And from that point on I've never thought about music in quite the same way again...
I'm talking about the first time I heard a track from The Aphex Twins – Richard D James LP.
Before this fine day, I'd heard a lot about the Aphex Twin: I'd heard he was some kind of bearded freak from the West Country who made interesting Rave music. That he owned a tank. That he made his own instruments. At least these were the rumours curried by the NME and at the time the NME was about the only paper tool available to expand ones musical horizons.
Yes boss, it's hard to believe, but it's not so long ago (as all us old gits know) that the internet didn't exist in any meaningful way. In fact in 1997 in an old fort on the very edge of a cliff on the south western most tip of Wales, it didn't exist at all...
There was no myspace, emule, itunes, internet radio or youtube. To hear new stuff you relied on John Peel, Steve Lamaq, the NME and well educated friends.
So, that particular night, I was listening to Steve Lamaqs Evening Session and fascinated and confused by what I'd heard from the so called Aphex Twin, I repaired to London a few weeks later, bought the album and was soon entranced....
Richard D James is a ground breaking LP in many different ways.
For a start, it's one of the first 'dance' records that didn't rely on sequencers. Indeed, up until then, with few exceptions, electronic music (short of the real abstract end of things) was regimented and religiously rhythmic - It was all 4/4 straight beats. It was Orbital and Underworld and 101 hands in the air imitations.
Richard D James was and still is grating, jagged, but melodic and sublimely beautiful. It's casual yet religiously strict and clever. It has feel and liquidity, but liquidity that swings between crystal clean melodic and raw sewage effluent baad! It's not a cakewalk: Parts are difficult and aggressive, random and disjointed. But it's a piece of competent and groundbreaking music that has been copied so many times since, it's more or less formed it's own genre..
So influential has this LP been that since it's release, people like Thom Yorke have gone on about Aphex Twin and Autechre defining this last musical epoch far better than Radiohead ever did. Yorke goes as far to say that LPs like OK Computer are irrelevant, that they won't be remembered, but Richard D will. (Hence Kid A and those other albums where Thom and the boys tried to get a piece of the Warp action)
Well for once, I agree with the Oxford miserablists 100%. Like the Velvet Undergrounds first album, Richard D James will be referred to time and time again. And in 40 years, people will laugh at how the idiots of the day didn't buy it, about how it peaked at number whatever in the charts, about how obvious it was that it was great from day 1.
So if you've not heard it, don't be caught in numpty land, go find it and be there now!!!
 | Currently listening :
Richard D. James Album
By Aphex Twin
Release date: By 28 January, 1997 |
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