I’ve been going to conventions a long time now, certainly long enough to have the occasional bum one. The event that you turn up to feeling out of sorts and where you never manage to engage with the event. Where you linger on the periphery while everyone else is having a ball or trawl the dealers tables too many times just for something to do or sit through a programme item you have no interest in or stay in your hotel room until the biscuits run out or spend hours out exploring the environs of some dismal district of a town you would never otherwise have chosen to visit. I’ve not had many conventions like that, but they do happen. And sometimes you ask yourself why you go to them at all.
Well, it’s the people, obviously. The old social networkings is brilliant for keeping up to date with friends, but nothing beats the Saturday night conversations that encompass everything (yes, I went to Fantasycon and had excellent conversations about football and songwriting, bite me!) and swallow the hours. Nothing beats seeing one friend win an award and then hearing that another has sold their first story, and being equally pleased about both. Nothing beats HAVING to break your own limit on how many books you were going to buy because there are so many beautiful, intriguing ones there and the people selling them are so persuasive. Nothing beats those truly original thoughts that spark out of those long conversations:
SOUND EFFECT: A long, lazy, snuggly, underwater yawn.
VO: “And when Cthulhu wakes up, all his friends wake up. Hastur, the rag doll. Blind Azathoth, the carved wooden bookend in the shape of an abomination. And all of Shug-Nigurath’s thousand young on the mouse organ wake up too.”
Everyone looks at the found “thing” that has been placed before Bagpu… Cthulhu. The “thing” screams in unimaginable, mind-shattering terror.
But there’s more. It’s the creative boost too. The recharging of the writing cells, the topping up of the story tanks. And there’s the occasional shot of nitrous to the mix too, the belt that sends you home fizzing with ideas, with the knowledge how to fix this story, how to complete that one, and the germs of five or six more.
At FantasyCon this year, my nitrous came afterwards, when I read a story from Patrick O’Leary’s new collection from PS, The Black Heart. I love O’Leary’s work but he is published so disparately that I miss a lot of his stories when they come out, so this was a must-have for me. And on the homeward journey it was my first choice for inflight reading. Spurred by James Morrow’s introduction, I picked a beautiful, gentle story called “The Dreaming Bird”, that would have enchanted me enough on its own even without the *incredible* four-page paragraph at its heart that encompasses much of the tragedy of modern living in one gorgeous feat of writing skill. After I finished the story, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the simple act of thinking about what I’d read.
And I stepped off the plane with such renewed ambition you wouldn’t believe. And that’s why I go to conventions. They heal the writer’s soul.
I like Thursday night gigs. If you’re lucky and the bands are good and there’s a merch table, it means new music to listen to on a Friday while the live performance, the personality of the band is still fresh in your mind.
Last night found me at Sleazies to watch the always excellent 2storeys. It was one of those lucky bag nights with four eclectically chosen bands each bringing something different to the evening’s entertainment, and the last band on stage were a touring outfit from Los Angeles by the name of Fol Chen. The six piece line up including synths, guitars, occasional trumpet and as many as five vocals suffered a little from a weak live vocal mix but their songs, musicianship and self-deprecating sense of humour won the crowd over.
Thus it was that Friday morning’s been all about “Part I: John Shade, Your Future’s Made”. In short, I’m loving it. It’s a hugely varied album with notes of clashy introspection in songs such as You And Your Sister In Jericho and The Believers alongside genuinely hooky slices of radio friendly electro such as The Idiot and Cable TV. A lot of thought and effort has gone into the sound design. It’s reminiscent for me Grizzly Bear’s Veckitamest, more synthy but still blending the electronica with natural percussion, strings and brass in interesting ways. At it’s best this gives us the superb stomp of Winter, That’s All and SergeantPepper-esque maelstrom of Red Skies Over Garden City. And it’s best is very good indeed.
Don’t think I’m ever going to get bored of listening to this one.
After a bit of a break – small fanfare on a child’s plastic trumpet – the return of New Album Friday!
Feeling a bit jaded this morning after two nights out in a row. A little crusty, a little crunchy, can’t quite get rid of the aftertaste of bubblegum and beer. Generally out of sorts.
Thankfully, then, that one of the CD’s I picked up from last night’s Bubblegum Records launch was the irrepressibly cheerful “Good Foundations” by Tesco Chainstore Mascara. A proper, bona fide slice of Twop, reminiscent of B&S’s Trevor Horn-produced Dear Catastrophe Waitress, but if Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne had snuck into the studio when everyone had gone home and fiddled with the masters.
I was promised, as I made my purchase, that five or six of the 11 tracks would become instant favourites. On first listen, I’d say three or four really stand-out and, of those, top marks go to opener, Writer’s Block, with its timpani roll and Spektorish stomp, and Just The Weight You Are, which has the Beach Boys tucket snuggly in its hip pocket (actually, for me that track, and a few of the others, are closer to the songs Paul Williams wrote for The Juicy Fruits in dePalma’s Phantom Of The Paradise – which is meant as a compliment, honest).
So, overall, the kind of music that puts a smile on my face. Thank fuck.
Had a just-as-braw-but-in-a-different-way time holidaying in North Ireland a couple of weeks ago. First few days were spent in a charming converted station halt up on the North Coast. Lots of paths to be walked, scenery to be seen, old shit to be ogled at. Then we followed that up with a slightly more interactive weekend visiting friends in Belfast. We had Craic, and it was, of course, good.
And suddenly, there’s stuff coming up too:
Music stuff – if you’re a fan of The Smiths you might be interested in this night coming up tomorrow at King Tuts. I’ll be joining San Fran And The Siscos once more for a few songs. Should be good fun.
Spoken word – if you’re spending more of your time in Edinburgh than Glasgow at the moment, I can recommend making your post-dinner entertainment pick Underword spoken word night. We were royally entertained by Andrew C Ferguson on our visit last week, and the remaining line-up looks awesome. Great change of pace from the “edgy” stand ups and manic musicals. Of special note, of course, are tomorrow’s show by the mighty WordDogs and Sunday’s double-header featuring Hal Duncan and Richard Mosses.
Gigs – really, really, REALLY looking forward to seeing Miss Amand F. Palmer in Edinburgh on Saturday.
Cabaret stuff - the Bongo Club Cabaret is an Edinburgh Fringe institution and next Friday the 28th will see the Fringe debut of Miss M. de Saw and Mr B. Finkle esq. Come along and be bewitched, but bring a hankie.
Book stuff – first new publication to announce for a wee while is my inclusion in the charity flash fiction anthology Last Drink Bird Head. Edited by the Famous Vandermeers, authors were instructed to come up with a story suggested by just those four words. An interesting exercise, resulting in a very strange story from me indeed. Really looking forward to reading what other authors made of the challenge – especially given some of the names on that list. Copies will be available from around the end of October, but I’m sure they can be ordered somewhere if you look hard enough.
That’s it for now (but isn’ that enough to be going on with?)
I had to buy this album because of the band name. I’ve seen it on gig listings around town for a while, and love it for it’s simple truth. Where’s our future? it says. The one with personal jetpacks and flying cars and cool simple space age stuff, instead of all this complicated, contemporary shit we have to live through instead.
There’s a sense of frustration about the tracks on this album too. There’s a lot of crescendo going on, a jitter of guitars and thrashing of cymbals. That makes it sound like there’s a lack of sensitivity, and that’s not true, the tracks are cleverly assembled with special attention paid to dynamics and there some moments of real beauty, but it’s just that the crash and slash seems to dominate.
Might be a grower though, so it’ll stay on the MP3 player, and I certainly want to see them in the flesh at some point soon.
Broken Records are a band I’ve heard snippets of recently and have been looking forward to checking out. They were on my Hinterland shortlist, but I ended up being somewhere else during their timeslot, and it turns out the played Tut’s just two days ago, so it seems I’ve missed them again. Never mind, to tide me over until the next opportunity comes around I’ve picked up their debut release as this week’s New Album Friday album.
First impressions (and first impressions are what NAF is all about after all): This is a big sound, but then it is a seven piece band. In a manner reminiscent of last week’s NAF band, Grizzly Bear, the strings, brass and piano are used here to sculpt dynamics on an epic scale. There are soaring walls of sound and there are moments of beautiful intimacy too. Not a band for hooky, catchy songs, rather (and again reminiscent of Grizzly Bear, and also The Decemberists) this is an album intended to be heard as an album. Everything from the concretised typography of the tracklisting to eschewing of intra-track gaps tells you this is constructed musical entity. And it’s a gorgeous, richly textured one.
I hope to catch them live soon, but until then, as an added bonus, I have a free live CD recorded at a session in Avalanche Records to mark Record Store Day.
Yay for proper record stores, and the bands that frequent them!
Bloody Nora! How’d you sum your first impressions of an album like this? It’s just so full of music that I don’t know where to start. In fact, if the vague impetus behind NAF was initially to convey that first-listen feeling of your newly purchased piece of plastic, this particular entry is going to suck. It’s an impossible task (in fact if you want a genuine metaphor for what your first listen of this album does to your head, skip on down to the video below, that’s all you really need to know).
Possibly best begin with what’s not, eh? After hearing single, Two Weeks, on the radio and catching their performance on Later… I was expecting something a bit poppy, left field, sure, maybe a tad on the eccentric side, but – without going anywhere near the kinder-egg encapsulation of something like The Hoosiers – definitely poppy.
It’s not. Or rather Two Weeks is about as pop-song oriented as it gets. Without wishing to denigrate the single – I think it’s a great wee song – the rest of album is simply less interested in melodic hooks, concerning itself instead with exploring what can be done by four guys with some guitars, drums, pianos, strings and, most of all, the human voice. I could listen to this for the next month (and believe me, I will be) and still not run out of new textures to appreciate, new facets to wonder over. If you’re looking for reference points I’d toss up Fleet Foxes, Brian Wilson, The Decemberists, Bon Iver, but that just reflects my recent listening and doesn’t even scratch how varied, knowledgable, self-confident and adventurous this collection of music is.
And that final song, Foreground, might actually be genius.
For reasons that only a few people will understand, but which will take too long to go in to here (next time it’s a dark and stormy night, ask me to tell ye the tale…), I found this discovery by the Vandermeers in their latest expedition in the incredible repository of paperback entertainments, the Chamblin Book Mine in Jacksonville, both extremely amusing and frightening.
Really, really, REALLY enjoyed Nina Allan’s “Microcosmos” in Interzone#222. It’s thoughtful and immersive, and builds a complicated family backstory around the young narrator through hints at things unspoken and things that are spoken being not fully understood. Loved it.
This issue of the magazine was one of those quirky, varied issues that just throws stuff at you because, when it feels like it, that’s what Interzone can do. It’s all very subjective, but I also particularly liked Kim Lakin-Smith’s steam-punk T-Birds and Aliette de Bodard’s mythical, drowned city Ys.
On the other hand, while I thought Sean McMullen’s story was extremely well executed, I found the premise silly to point of embarrassing. But then, I’m not the sort of person that thinks that cats are all that. Others will disagree, many of them – for a reason I’ver never been able to fathom – writers. Why is that? Answers on a postcard.
It’s the Friday afternoon before the late May bank holiday. The sun’s shinin’. And we’re in the mood for something light and breezy to while away the last few working hours before the long weekend. Just as well the new Camera Obscura’s new release is on the feature rack in FOPP.
My Maudlin Career carries on where Let’s Get Out Of This Country left off. Sweet songs in an old fashioned vein, lush arrangements and that deep reverb vocal sound that they’ve made iconically their own. There’s the occasional Western Swing, er swing, going on among the Dusty moments and the more contemporary-indie tunes, which make for a very pleasant listen experience all in all. Perfect whiling music in fact. If only we could arrange a pool to dangle our feet in and a supply of cold beers, we’d be sorted.
Also worth checking out is their recent BBC session in which they made Sprinsteen’s Tougher Than The Rest into a genuine thing of beauty.
