Tour Dates

So your “Council of Nine” label is back up again.

It is indeed, yeah – after what feels like a very long break actually.

Would you take me through what’s been happening in this break?

Where to start! I’m one of the co-developers of a specialized music teaching system which, funnily enough, is called the Music Skills System™. It uses a lot of rather interesting accelerative learning techniques and quite a few ideas that we have developed ourselves. Which means that people get to learn to play musical instruments very quickly – they usually go from beginner to band proficient in under a year. I’m one of the main developers for the system, and it seems to be starting to catch on. We’ve got quite an unusual approach but it works so well we have just this last year started a broader educational study that is giving us some fairly interesting results.

So what is this approach?

Ah, well they’re top secret and the other co-developer would shoot me if I told too much! He is keen not to have it copied and watered down. But here is the general idea any way. We started by throwing out the books on traditional teaching methods and asked ourselves, “what has to be there for someone to be incredible”. At first all that did was cause us to have more complicated questions to answer around how, why and even when.  Because a lot of the techniques we use now aren’t normally found in music teaching. Some would be recognizable in the field of elite level sport coaching, the world of bio-mechanics and a host of diverse areas. But it’s a really nice system and it’s really wonderful to be involved in it, and although it’s certainly taken a while to get it up and running, it’s definitely catching on – to the point where in January this year, one of our students was one of the finalists in the Young Drummer of the Year competition in the UK. So it certainly works. But saying that, my passion musically has always been the ambient and atmospheric stuff, and that’s always there – if not in the foreground.

You say it’s “always there” – your last album .74 was released in 2004 wasn’t it?

Yeah, 2004/2005. So it was a fair while ago. I can’t remember who said it – I think it was a fairly popular musician like George Michael or something – he said that you need to live enough between albums to have something to say. And obviously I’m not “saying” anyway because it’s all instrumental and atmospheric, but I definitely feel that I need to experience something to be able to put that across – just because of the way I write and what I write about I suppose.

So do you feel that your four or five years away has fuelled you with the experiences and emotions to produce this new record then?

Yes, absolutely. It seems like the right time to bring it out. I’ve started to spend a bit more time in the studio on that. I do a number of other projects in the studio too, and I also do library music for people like BMG and Universal, so it’s nice to get some time to focus on the new record. The way that I write music, and I think this is the same for a lot of people, means that there has to be something to write about. It’d be nice to create an atmosphere and explore that, but for me it tends to be much more visual. I need to have a particular image or scene that I use visually to write about. So I’m “capturing” something I’ve seen. For example, I did the E-Live festival in the Netherlands, and as soon as I came back from that I was straight in the studio again and really captured some of the visions of being in that place – the sights that I’ve seen and the feel of the place as well. When I was hiking through the French Pyrenees as well – the track “Isolat” on .74 is very much about that sweltering heat, and that sense that you get this “humming” in the air at that kind of temperature. That’s something I was very aware of when I was writing that track.

I can actually picture that sound you’re referring to on “Isolat” – it runs through the whole track. What about the new record? Are there any particular visuals fuelling that?

Well it’s been a very different period of my life actually. I won’t bore you with the details of that, but there have certainly been a lot of changes – not only in my personal life, but also in the types of places that I’ve been. So the kind of atmosphere that I’ve been creating in this Zone of Cold album – I’ll have to wait and see if this comes across to the listener as well – it’s like a story exploring that idea of there being this “zone of cold”. To me, that’s a concept very much about a down-time or a time of reflection. Not necessarily stagnation, but that kind of plateaux that occasionally comes in life, and the movement or change in direction. So the narrative of the album should really reflect that. I hope that comes across. It’ll be interesting to see if people pick up on it.

In terms of textures and dynamics, does it pick up from where .74 left off? How does it differ from your previous work?

The difference between the way that I write and other ambient composers is that some ambient music is very much an atmosphere that gently evolves, ebbs and flows, rises and falls. But with me, it’s about a piece of music which has some form of movement to it. I don’t know whether it’s because I get bored easily. I always get to that point where I’m like “right, something needs to change here, something needs to happen, something needs to evolve”. And I think that the new album does hark back to Telluric Waves – the pieces are almost like conventional songs in terms of the structure and form of it, if you get what I mean by that.

As you say, you do approach your music in a different way to a lot of musicians. I mean if you compare your stuff to someone like Steve Roach, who creates 70-minute pieces that barely move within themselves…

Beautiful stuff, yeah. I very much like his album Slow Heat. You put the album on and you’ll get a particular theme that will last 10 minutes or something, that just gently rises until its repeated again after that. I think that in itself is very skilful. Steve’s very good at that.

I think he calls it “sonic incense”, which is quite an interesting way of looking at it. I can see how your stuff is like a conventional song – but it’s just that the atmosphere is always changing. There’s more of an explicit narrative to it.

Yeah, perhaps comparing it to a conventional song is a bit misleading – it doesn’t have an intro, verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus. There’s a time and a place for it, just not in the ambient music world!

What kind of environment or atmosphere do you tend to record your music in?

I’ve got a really nice studio here that I use. Like a lot of people, I tend to write a lot of it in the early hours of the morning or very late at night, so you’ll often find me here at two or three in the morning. I don’t know whether it’s because there are less distractions, or perhaps the atmosphere is perhaps just a bit more conducive to writing music. So yeah, sometimes I’ll find myself awake at four in the morning, drive over to the studio and start playing with some sounds and start capturing the feeling of that time of day. I think that definitely comes across.

Does that also reflect in the environment in which your music sounds best? Is there a particular listening environment that brings out the best in your music?

That’s a really interesting question actually. I think nowadays a lot of people will listen to music on an iPod through headphones. Certainly I don’t create a lot of music using headphones – there’s a lot of layers and detail in the type of music I create and in the music of similar artists. There’s a lot of depth to it, so if you’ve got a system that really captures the best of that, it can be really good. I do enjoy listening to music on the main monitoring system we have in our studio – it sounds fantastic because you really get all of that exquisite detail in the music. I think that really does typify ambient music anyway. There are so many layers to it, and you can let it wash over you if you want to, but if you want to focus in on it then there’s a lot more detail to be found. I have been known to listen to ambient music in the car actually, but wouldn’t necessarily advise it! I think it’s fine – but in terms of keeping yourself alert and awake, perhaps it’s best not to.

Yeah, I guess it’s a bit like a sedative. Back to this new album – it’s being released under your own name. Is there any reason why you haven’t reignited Maitreya?

It feels like a good time to bring it out under my own name this time. I’ll be quite straight about it – there are quite a few other artists that use the name Maitreya, and I thought it’d be good to differentiate myself from death-metal and hip-hop. I’ve been using that name for about 15 years. So it’s with fondness that I say farewell to the name, but I think it’s fine to bring something out under my own name this time. I do understand that “Maitreya” has a certain mystique about it, but I think it’s the right time to do it. Quite how I’d quantify that I couldn’t tell you, but it just feels right.

So is Council of Nine going to be for your releases exclusively, or are you planning to take other artists on?

I’d never say never to taking another artist under our wing. The intention at this stage is to release my own music, and use it as an outlet to get my music to the people that want to listen to it and enjoy it. But if we found the right artist then we’d be more than happy to take them on.

Are you releasing all of your old albums on CD too?

They’ve already been released – they’re still available. Some of them are quite limited stock I believe. I’ll have to check with our distributors. Although recently I noticed that you can buy some quite expensive imports of .74 – I think there’s a copy going for as much as $40 in the US, which is a lot of money for a CD of course.

As a final question – who do you enjoy listening to? Are there any really prominent influences for your music?

It’s quite varied. I play a number of instruments, so I seek inspiration for different instruments from different artists. I’d listen to anything from Thrice through to Elbow – those more conventional kind of artists. Even with something like that, what I look for is an atmosphere or a feeling that provokes something visual. Certainly with something like Elbow you can find that, and within the lyrics of the songs as well. But in regards to ambient and atmospheric music…a number of different things really. I’ve always been a great admirer of Biosphere – particularly around the time of his albums Substrata and Cirque, which I think are two of my favourite albums. And again, I just think that the atmosphere that’s captured in that is just masterful. I also really enjoy Brian Eno and Harold Budd’s The Pearl – that’s perhaps my favourite albums of all time, and gets a spin at least once a week. 

I’ve got their Plateaux of Mirror album actually.

Ah, I invested in that one recently. It’s not one that I’ve been that familiar with. I think that really hints at the potential they had, which they then fully exploited with The Pearl. There are also a few tracks on the Gattaca soundtrack by Michael Nyman that I think are just absolutely exquisite, and started my interest for a little exploration with using strings in my music. It’s something I’ve explored on previous albums, and something I plan to explore in more detail very soon. 

Will we see that on the upcoming album?

It will be on something a little bit different after Zone of Cold. Zone of Cold is very much in tradition of my previous albums – very atmospheric, synthetic and elemental samples. But I think this is a separate project that demands its own exploration at a later date.

Council of Nine

Music Skills System

The pitch-shifting, gnat’s-chuff-tight drumming and all out awesome quartet will be supported by Geoff Barrow (Portishead) and his side project Beak>, The Field and Tweak Bird.

Release The Bats is on October 30th, tickets can be bought from ATP.

Influences seem to be worn on sleeves here – and big ones at that. Neutral Milk Hotel’s love for rootsy instrumentation is obviously shared, as it Broken Social Scene’s adeptness at crafting tender noise-pop. But don’t get into your heads that this is some mere fanboy record. At no point does TPCatTTAC seem any less than the sum of its influences. More that it appears to digress from track to track; different gasses bubbling to the surface of the same muddy pool of soft, soothing electronics, organ washes, organic sounds and mumbled vocals.

Opener “A Sea in a Shell” takes all the ideas of the nu-folk scene (spits on floor), i.e. nylon strings and a glock, but subverts them with subtle studio hiss and modulated vocals. “Hidden Tapes” really is the black sheep on the whole record, a spiky New Waver that is just about pulled off, yet never matches up to the lustre of the other tracks.

“Descent from Animals” is where everything gets into stride, and is never broken. It is at once the epitome of an epic juggernaut of a song, and yet also its antithesis. pounding rhythms and a droning organ are offset by the softest of vocals.

“Love Times Eight” and “Lion Lion” are by far the stand out tracks. Two wedges of pop loveliness rising from the murk. The rest of the album slithers through in a more avant-pop fashion, with the now signature organ and squeezebox recurring as a leitmotif to the overall texture.

TPCatTTAC is, then, an album for wet weather days. To sit inside and cotton wool the ears with sounds of simple hope.

Myspace

You started from a background of education in the fields of both science and art.

Yeah, it was a bit mixed really. I did an art O-Level because I was interested, and then I kind of shifted back into the sciences. So art was a strong interest but it wasn’t “happening”. I was doing things in the background that kind of grew and grew irrepressibly when I was at university. I started reading zoology. And then I couldn’t hold back really – I felt a strong urge that if I didn’t go for it at that point then I was never going to get a foothold. I became very attracted to make art and that was what I’d do in the holidays and any spare time I had. And then I broke away when I was at Durham University – I just left towards the end of the second year and decided that I had to do it now or never.

Your artistic work is largely based around science. Was it a conscious decision to fuse both science and art or was that something that just came naturally to you?

Well it didn’t happen for a long time. I left Durham in the late 70s, went to Goldsmiths and made different sorts of work. And that went all the way through until 1990 – so I’d spent all that time making work that was not science-based. I went through various stages – when I was at Goldsmiths I was a sort of “object maker”, then when I left Goldsmiths I went to the Royal College of Art and did painting. Then I started doing sculpture, and a lot of these were made from suitcases. People were jokingly saying, “you’re getting a bit obsessed with suitcases” so I felt I had to do something else. And so in the background I started making some photographic works around science issues and going back to my interests in that kind of world. That’s not to say that all of my other words were devoid of connection with nature, and the land and environment – works like “Patchwork”, “Hedge”, “Fossil”, “Pearl”…there was a lot that was quite organic. I think the changing point was around 1996. I was making a few black and white photographic pieces that are in the show – “Breath”, and “Whistle”. And then the photographic work started creeping up a bit, until I made Magic Forest in 2002. Then I stopped doing all of the other work. Up until that point I was still shifting back and forth – still doing a lot of computer-driven images up until the late 90s as computing and art were just fusing at that point. So I was doing a lot of work using the replication of photographic material as a form of sculpture almost. The computer gave the opportunity to use photographic ‘material’ over and over, so I had as much suitcase material as I could ever want.

Some of your pieces in “Dendritic Forms” exhibition are from 1994 and 1996, and then you’ve got works from this year or the year before. How have they all been united for “Dendritic Forms”?

In a sense that’s down to Robert Devcic who runs the gallery (GV Art). The slot for the show came up, and there was a bit of debate about what might show, as there was a notion that I might show earlier work – early paintings and things – and then there was this thought of “well why don’t we thematically it around “Magic Forest” and go back through all of the work and search through where the tree motif occurs – where the “Dendritic Forms” come in. It was always meant to be a show that was fairly straightforward to put together. “Magic Forest” had just been in the States, and a copy of that came back that was fairly new and in a good state, and all of the other photographic works were here in Winchester where I live, so it was a matter of sorting through those. But there were certain tree/root-shape pieces that we didn’t select because they were larger and slightly more inaccessible, that would have fitted the subject matter but weren’t accessible at that point. And there’s the up-to-date ones – there had been a period where I was doing a project around perception, and my motif for that was based around trees, so there was a lot of current work that fitted in as well.

You say that Robert took part in the selection process for the exhibition. How much were you involved in this, and are you happy with the selection on display?

Yeah, I’m very happy. I’ve worked in more “non-commercial” spaces over the years where I’ve had more control over what was put on, but in this instance I was very pleased that Robert came along with a very clear eye as to what he wanted. So basically, I presented things to him that I was happy to show and then he selected from that – so in a way, both bases were covered. There were a few pieces I made in acrylic boxes that got left out, but that was understandable in a way, as I don’t think they’re completely resolved. The images are, but the way the boxes are made and are hung isn’t. So I think he made a good call on that.

When you say that they’re “unresolved” – do you mean that in reference to the way they’re produced? Is there more to be done on them?

The actual images are all done – they’re all photographic prints, and there’s nothing on those I would go back and change. It’s just about how they’re presented and how they work as objects now. I’ve got a couple of issues about how they connect to the wall, and yeah…I’m still not comfortable with the final realisation of that. So they’re resolved in terms of content – just the hanging system is not working.

So presentation is an issue – obviously as an artist, you want your pieces presented in the optimum environment. In the case of something like “Magic Forest”, which is very dependent on the location in which it’s presented – is that often an issue?

Yeah, it can be. It’s toured around quite a lot since it was made. In terms of Robert and the space he runs, GV Art…it’s a moderate space in comparison with some of the big spaces it’s been shown in. What I try to do every time is to adjust the screen size so it works within that particular space. Ideally it’s shown as a bigger piece. I believe the screen size at GV Art is about 2.4 metres…well, really what I like to see it on is screens that are a minimum of 3 metres across, up to 5 metres. A couple of the shows I’ve done in the states – at Exit Art and the Williams College Museum of Art – would use much bigger screens. Another thing that happens that I don’t fully appreciate is that the smaller the space, the more light that gets scattered around. When “Magic Forest” works ideally is in a large, cavernous space where you don’t see the screens so much…the images float a lot more. When it was first shown at the science museum in London it was in a rather tight space, and it kept getting smaller as the other works were added into the show. It certainly didn’t work as well as it did in my studio in Hackney, as that was a big space and it really floated.

ANDREW CARNIE - "MAGIC FOREST"

Is that where a lot of your work is produced?

It has been in the past. When I moved away to work at the Winchester College of Art, I was still travelling back and forth to begin with from Hackney. But because of all the early testing I did, I have a fairly good idea about how effects will work, so quite often now I operate from a sort of glorified office. I mean I’m in there now…I’ve got some paintings on the go, some acrylic boxes on the floor, there’s a computer workstation and a couple of big monitors, and this is where I’ll work. And sometimes I might come up with a different screen configuration that usually works even though I haven’t ever tested it. Some of them are getting quite big now – the screens for “We Are Where We Are” are 6 metres by 6 metres, with 8 projectors standing 4 metres beyond that on every side, and I don’t have a test area for that. It needs a space some 16 meters by 16 meters. That’s always been quite nail biting really – going along and setting up quite complex things and just hoping it works, and then sitting down afterwards and being like “phew”. So that was true for “We Are Where We Are” and “Around Here”. It’s probably time that I spent a while in a larger space just testing things out again.

Has that always come through for you? Has there ever been a situation where you’ve set it up and it hasn’t been presented as you would have liked it to?

Well the major difficulty in these spaces tends to be what people understand by the term “blackout”. And that means to me pitch-black, and they always think they can get away with quite large gaps or entranceways that aren’t covered. That’s always been difficult to negotiate. And if you’re in a mixed exhibition with quite a lot of other people, you don’t want to be too pushy about getting technicians to do things and take things on, but it has been a difficulty on a number of occasions. But then what you have to do is throw a black cloth over their heads and get down really close to the projector and say “look – this is what it’s meant to look like”, and then they go “Oh right, that looks better. I see what you mean.” But other than that, I think it’s always worked pretty well once you’ve got the blackout. We’ve done it in some very large halls and small spaces and it’s been fine. I’ve had some technical problems in terms of projectors and dissolve units. That’s sometimes quite tricky when they don’t operate. The first time I went over to America, I took projectors and a dissolve unit from here (UK), and set the projectors to the American voltage unit and thought that would be fine. And after 5 minutes it just blew up the projectors basically. And that’s when I learnt about American equipment – I had to find some American projectors, go to an AV place, borrow some equipment and get it to work another way. Apparently it’s because the hertz – or frequency – isn’t the same, as the dissolve unit was made for this country and not America.

Would you say you’re now acquainted enough with the equipment so that you can realise these works more effectively?

Yeah, definitely. I went through a big learning curve in the beginning finding out about equipment, and in the end I started getting equipment made for me. I have these small slide dissolve units that don’t have any buttons on them, so that a curator could come into the space and turn on the projectors, and it would set all the slides back to zero and then work all day. That’s good stuff when that happens. Old fashioned projectors are difficult enough as it is – if the bulbs go…you need someone who knows what happens when the slides jam. I went through a few problems at the first show at the London science museum – stuff like contractors drilling holes in the security cases without taking the projectors out and getting sawdust in them.

I guess reliability is a big thing. If you go into your exhibition and realise that it hasn’t been running properly for the last 6 hours or so then I guess it can be quite traumatic.

Well I guess it’s the same with musicians. You have to know what equipment works and stick with the less fancy things if they’re going to be more consistent. The old Carousel projects like the Elmo ones made in Japan – they’re just workhorses really, just made to run and run.

You have these exhibitions running all day long. How long would you say is sufficient to see something like “Magic Forest” and absorb what’s going on?

That’s a good question. It’s a difficult one. “Magic Forest” lasts about 20 minutes, and I think you need to sit in there for the duration but I do realise that people don’t. There’s an issue about how you manage this as an artist – could I make the pieces easier, shorter and quicker – but my tendency tends to be “no, this is what the work is, it lasts that long – if you catch it you’ll begin to see why it’s that long and get absorbed in it”. One of the things that I really like that doesn’t happen that often is when I show in a collection of rooms that all inter-relate, and then set two or three works up. I think that quite a lot of the works have quieter moments that are quite difficult to get through if you’re not in the mood in terms of viewer perseverance. If you set three works up all in different stages of development then you get caught up in one or the other. I did a show in Winchester at the Art and Mind festival, and I had three works set up in three separate rooms – a group of three people came up off the street and stayed two and three quarter hours, having just nipped into the building. And that was just a case of them watching one, and getting caught up by another one and realise that it had developed…I kind of like that idea of having more than one piece going. The piece “Seized: Out of This World” which is about Temploral Lobe Epilepsy is kind of based around that. One of the parts of the syndrome is that you get deja vu, so the piece plays with six projectors in sets of two, so there’s three different things going on, but they overlap quite considerably. They’re like the same chapters of a book but told slightly differently, and that allows for some of the slower passages – which I still think are really important – to be present. So you’ll see something in one of the other screens, and then go back and think, “oh, that’s the same as the other one…but no it’s not, as images are back to front or the head’s gone horizontal now or vertical”. So utilising that has been quite fun.

ANDREW CARNIE - "SEIZED: OUT OF THIS WORLD"

That’s brilliant. How long do you take over constructing these “narratives” for your work?

Quite a long time. When I was starting off… “Magic Forest” took about six months I think, and that was fairly heavy on the production and drawing side as all of the drawings are created on the computer in PhotoShop. But all of them are about six months…I mean “Seized: Out of This World” took a year from me starting it, as I was interviewing people for a while, talking to scientists, and I just had real problems with it. But I think it worked out really well. There were certain periods were I just didn’t know what was happening with it or where it was going, but it all seemed to come together in the end. So I usually count on it being at least three months and possibly more. But when I say six months, I mean working three or four days a week as there’ll be other things I have to do in the meantime, mainly teaching.

Back to “Dendritic Forms”. You’ve got a talk with scientist Richard Wingate coming up in August. How do hope that this will compliment the exhibition?

Richard and I have given talks together before. He’s the scientist that I talked to in getting the first bits of information for Magic Forest. We worked on one other piece together, “Complex Brain: Spreading Arbor” some two years after “Magic Forest”, various other little bits here and there, and then worked on several applications for money but never been successful with them. So we’ve touched base quite a lot over the years that I’ve known him, and that’s probably going on nine or ten years now. I think it’ll be a chance for people to question what the relationship to the science is and how it works – what the differences are in approaches and work. Richard has gone on over the years talking and being interested in that sort of interface, so it’s just a chance for people to unpick that a bit, and query and quiz it. There are many people who are sceptical about the area and sometimes I’m sceptical about that interaction. I think the difficulties are when you simply repeat the pretty pictures of science. I don’t want to be doing that – I want to make something that’s an artwork that’s in a different kind of space. The science that I’ve seen and explored are embedded in the work but they’re not they’re not always what the piece of work is about. Usually it falls into some other area, and I don’t even always know what that is. “Magic Forest” is a slide-dissolve work and being a series of slides in a carousel, it forms a continuous loop. It goes from start, blackness to a finish, blackness; it is a kind of life cycle of life. Growth, death, repetition. But that’s true in the brain as well, so that’s quite interesting.

ANDREW CARNIE/RICHARD WINGATE - "COMPLEX BRAIN: SPREADING ARBOUR"

So does this scepticism you occasionally have over the concepts in your art ever come through in your art?

Not as much as some artists I think. Some people are very critical of science practise. I’m just enthralled by some of the things that we know and how it’s been unpicked. I just think it’s extraordinary. I’ve started a project about ageing up in Newcastle recently, and I was there in the science labs last week. I know about DNA replication, but I never knew that we had these whole systems in our body – when our DNA gets broken, we have these enzymes that go around and patch it up and mend it. That’s kind of amazing. And just seeing some of the constructs that they understand. There’s a rich patina of proteins that are all working, and that all have jobs at a cellular level, and an atomic level too – some of the proteins are just small variations on each-other. And just about how when DNA is put into a cell, the cell will just replicate the protein and that protein will get to work – like when you put a green florescent protein in a cell, it will immediately start producing something florescent. And that’s just extraordinary.

You’re forever discovering and learning about stuff like this. Would you say that your artwork documents your continuation into science?

I don’t see it working quite like that. What I’m interested in is the ideas. Molecular chemistry at detailed levels – I can’t really make-work about as it’s just so particular, I just don’t know where I’d go with it. I’ve been to places where I’ve just walked away in the end and thought “given the choice, I’m not going to go to that lab, as it’s just so detailed – it’s amazing stuff, but I just don’t know what to do with it artistically”. That was certainly true for the Medical Research Council Centre in Bristol, for the Study Of The Synapse – I came away fascinated by the details they knew, the molecular structures of the synapses, the chemical formulae for the chemicals involved, but it was so detailed I couldn’t make work about it though. I can make work about the more generic ideas about movement and change but not about that. And it’s not the only kind of work I make anyhow – I make science pieces, but then I also make work about psychology or pieces that are just completely non-science. “451” is a piece about burning things, the end of everything…“Around Here” is about various different ideas thrown together – it’s a visual feast in a sense. There’s always these other works that I’ve done that I’ve made for quite different reasons. Everything strikes me as being grey rather than black and white – there’s a lot of merging of ideas, and it’s not clear that I’m completely engrossed in the science.

So science is just one factor that you find interesting enough to express artistically.

Yeah. For me it just gives us very interesting ways to reflect on who we are and what we are. Central to “Magic Forest” is that science was blowing away this concept that the brain is a static thing, it’s all wired like a computer, or washing machines or whatever – no, it’s an organic thing that’s altering all the time – laying down memories…they’re all processes, little signs of growth and change that are happening all the time. And I thought that was just fascinating really.

I saw the exhibition a couple of week’s back, and “Magic Forest” is a great work to be immersed in.

When it works properly you can sit through two or three cycles – I certainly have – in a mesmeric state. I quite like the meditational aspect. And coming back to your question about how long people need to see it for – in a way I was a bit defiant. I could have made it shorter and quicker. But in a way I think… scenes in cinema are quick and fast and over in a flash. I wanted a different experience in what is primarily an age of quick satisfaction. You can just sit down and ponder the work and absorb it.

A lot of people complain that when shopping from a high street brand you’ll end up coming across someone else in exactly the same outfit, but it’s what you do to this outfit that makes it your own. No point trying to centre your outfit around what you see on the catwalks because in reality, a lot of the stuff you see there isn’t practical attire. You can simply stick on a belt or maybe a flashy pair of earrings to make your outfit just that little bit different.

As much as I love fashion for its eccentricity and originality I’d hate to see it all over the streets. At the end of the day I’ll stick on a baggy t-shirt, roll up the sleeves, pair of ordinary leggings and some boots and I’m on my way. I don’t buy into all the hype because back on earth, people don’t usually have the money to spend on designer, and if you do you’re usually left there at the end of the day with fluff in your purse instead of money, wearing an expensive top that you just spilled food down and feeling sorry for yourself.

Surely no-one even knows its designer unless its plastered across the front; so who cares?

ATTN:antifashionista

ARTWORK BY BEATRICE PEDICONI

It is with a severe level of excitement that I present my review of the new Swans LP – My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky.

Incredibly, it’s been 14 years since the release of the last full-length. Soundtracks for the Blind was a daunting and thorough two-disc collage – a seemingly conclusive statement, appearing to wring out the last of what Gira wished to express under the Swans moniker via an extensive array of means – soundscapes, live cuts, drones, electronic beats, post-rock, deceptively pretty synthesisers, spoken word passages, with Michael’s distinctive singing voice a haunting and recurrent theme.

In terms of sound, My Father… doesn’t exactly pick up from there. Nor would it slip comfortably under Gira’s Angels of Light project, which has been running since the initial de-activation of Swans. There are strong elements of both, but as Gira said himself, the Swans idea was revived as a means to move forward, and ultimately, the album does just that.

Those who picked up I Am Not Insane (a collection of Gira’s initial album ideas, presented as solo pieces for voice and acoustic guitar) will be soon to realise just how skeletal those versions were. Their transformation is astonishing – although most of the melodies and lyrics remain just about intact, these early sketches are almost unrecognisable in amongst the heaps of instrumentation and collaborative ideas that have been piled on top by the rest of the line up. A towering atmosphere has gathered to decorate the bare bones of what Gira brought to the table, and it’s unmistakably Swans – clattering and rickety and unstable – forever ominous and occasionally plainly terrifying.

“No Words/No Thoughts” was my easily my least favourite track from I Am Not Insane, but here it’s a brutally brilliant opener, exploding from the initial introduction of glistening chimes as a thundering one-chord catastrophe. It’s left as a pummelling loop for a full three minutes, featuring warped electronics, backwards cymbals and what sounds like trombones screaming in piercing slides, before breaking down and allowing Gira to finally makes his vocal entry. It’s at the point that his perfectly executed baritone drawl enters the piece that it becomes beyond doubt that Swans have continued to maintain the high standard left by Soundtracks for the Blind back in 1996. He is on blinding form.

Elsewhere there’s “Jim”, lurching forward on a heave-ho rhythm that rattles and thuds on piano and guitar battered in unison. Personally I hear a likeness to “All Souls’ Rising” by Angels of Light for the way in which it almost stops and starts in these hefty lumbering steps, with an organic intensity that arises out of the musician – the velocity and anger behind each hit and strum, not just the timbre of the instrument.

“You Fucking People Make Me Sick” is the only track that wasn’t present on I Am Not Insane and it’s probably the most unnerving piece of the lot.  Contorted vocals from Devendra Banhart are echoed in a twisted child-like tone and scattered across minor-chord guitar jangle, before the piece cuts abruptly into a brilliant interplay between percussive stomp and a juddering flourish of piano dissonance. After countless listens, I’ve yet to fully “get” the nightmarish and bizarre first half, but find myself in absolute awe of the harrowing noise of the second. A lot of these pieces are left to spiral off on their own accord, often giving way to freakish atonal experimentation and leaving the sound of a band completely enveloped in their own grooves, playing off of each other with an unspoken musical understanding. It’s fascinating to hear, if not always immediately accessible.

After the thudding locomotive of “Eden Prison”, “Little Mouth” closes the album on a weary melancholy deeply rooted in Angels of Light, with a thick chorus of backing vocals guiding it forward. The final minute sees the instruments away to leave Michael singing into silence – a particularly beautiful highlight from I Am Not Insane that was thankfully retained for the final product. In fact, it’s these closing stages that highlight a particular worry I had prior to going into my first listen. Would the full band versions of these tracks do justice to the strength of the song-writing at work on I Am Not Insane? I needn’t have given it a moment thought. Swans Are Not Dead.

This Alone Above All Else in Spite of Everything

But I’ll be honest. The first track still fails to click with me. I can sense the melancholy that runs through its sparse melody as it plods mournfully between two chords, and I can admire the beautifully recorded piano, with the soft patter of piano hammer on the strings and various mechanism creaks. But that’s about it. I imagine many people will be able to “tap into” and enjoy “Bought Me a Cat O Nine”, but unfortunately I’m unable to really connect.

Thankfully it’s a different story from here on in, with most of the remaining seven pieces proving to be completely captivating and each of them lead by Sweet’s brittle, hushed vocal delivery. “Absolutely Null and Utterly Void” carries a melody that seems to drip blissfully from Sweet’s guitar, whilst “They Get on Slowly” leaves a simple drum loop to run behind the deep hum of pad resonance and meandering bass line. Everything feels up close, with the natural imperfections of each instrument left as glaring as they should be. It’s not an escapist experience – rather, This Alone… seems to come to you, leaving you tangled up in a very dreary, greyscale perspective of reality.

“Decapitation Blues” is arguably the strongest cut for the way in which it mercilessly rips its own atmosphere in two – a delicate vibraphone loop becomes a fierce rock-out groove in seconds flat, announced by a harsh snare drum snap that ruptures the warmth that lingers and builds across the first two minutes. It’s an abrupt and unexpected transition upon first listen and caught me completely off guard, but it’s one that sits comfortably within the dynamic narrative of the entire release.

When you reach the end of This Alone… you realise that it’s as complex and undefinable as any good introspective record should be. Whilst it may refuse to streamline itself into one particular sound, with each track drawing from a different texture palette from the last, it succeeds as an unforgiving self-portrait – a comprehensive depiction of all the different forms and colours that comprise a single personality. I get the impression it’s been composed in complete isolation, oblivious to audience and outsider expectations, with even the dark and suppressed elements of Sweet’s soul plucked out and thrust into the light.

It started to rain, that annoying non-committal rain that doesn’t soak you but leaves a layer of water on you. You’d planned on a cigarette, but this had ruined the plan and so you were a little more on edge than perhaps you should’ve been. You wore blue jeans for the first time in about four years. Someone told you a few weeks before that because all your jeans are just different shades of grey you seem to come from another planet, which seemed ridiculous until they then related it to why you cannot meet a woman who isn’t insane or drugged. You were drunk at the time they made the remark but even sober it makes a strange kind of sense, and so you wore blue jeans to go meet this girl.

You’d forgotten your headphones and so your mind wandered on to all kinds of things. It was only a ten-minute walk, but it’s impressive how much you can get through in that amount of time. A raindrop hit the top of your spine, sending a chill all through you, and it reminded you of that time you took amphetamines at what wasn’t billed as a family party but turned out that way. You missed doing things like that. Now you just drank and fucked, and back then you didn’t really think about sex. That led you to think of having sex with the girl you were walking to meet, imagining what she might look like naked, if she’d still be as beautiful as she was now at thirty. You figured probably not, but you had a pointless hope. Nobody you knew romantically now would still be with you at thirty. You thought maybe you’d prefer to save the next time you have sex for when you’re in love, but that just made you think of ‘Girls And Boys’ by Blur. You had a second thought, and realised that there is so little pleasure in the world that you couldn’t possibly make a commitment like that. You smiled at the inanity of yourself and stopped under a shop overhang to light that cigarette you needed.

You received a text message from her, it simply read ‘not long now my love’ and even though your mind read it in a cockney accent, as you were sure was intended, you started to read far too much into it, thinking about how feasible it was that you might fall in love with this girl. You threw your cigarette to the floor as a car drove past, splashing a puddle that missed your feet by a few inches. You took this as a good omen and, as you turned to continue walking, saw what you immediately knew to be the girl, Sylvia, walking towards you about 50 metres away.

You knew it was her by the stretched-diamond shape of the body. The way that she was backlit meant you only saw her as a black shape, but your stomach started to turn immediately. You were trying to think of the last attractive single woman you didn’t actively try to sleep with. You realised right then, under that shop overhang sheltering from the rain, that you had become that guy. That guy whose approach to love is ‘throw enough shit at a wall and some will stick.’ And you only had a matter of seconds before Sylvia was greeting you, to convince yourself otherwise or to compose yourself.
She hugged you in a platonic way, and you suggested a bar just down the road that stayed open until 2am. She agreed, and walked on your left side far too close. Your hands brushed more than once, and so, deciding you wouldn’t sleep with anyone who didn’t like the exact same things as you any more, you put your hand in your pocket. Although you had come out with thoughts of another throwaway night with the bedsheets clinging to your entwined bodies, and must quite clearly have given away this intention to Sylvia, you had changed your mind. And you were sure your mind would stay that way until the alcohol spilled into your bloodstream, at which point it always became a battle against a drunken gut feeling.

Mostly you missed being at the centre of it. You missed being the one who was wanted rather than doing all the wanting. Maybe that was the trick – back when you didn’t think of women and just went to fancy dress parties on drugs girls wanted you. Even girls with boyfriends wanted you; driving you home and causing car crashes half-parked on the pavement with no lights on snaking their hands up your thigh when you were too unconscious to notice you were even kissing somebody.

As you walked with Sylvia you talked of the day. You had done nothing, typically. She’d been at one of her ex-boyfriend’s houses that evening, watching a film and drinking wine. This revelation sparked a chill in you; you’d even shivered realising what was going on, what the situation was now. You’d been in this place probably five times before, and three of those five times had ended how these women like Sylvia had wanted, leaving you empty and them filled with ammunition for the ex to get back with them over. You thought about it, and all men go through about six months of ‘I don’t want you, but I don’t want you to be happy with someone else’ before they genuinely don’t care. You had no real proof of this, but you had seen it in so many friends. You’d seen it in yourself too, of course. The nights you’d had avoiding women at bars, avoiding women on dancefloors, avoiding women whilst with other women. Some of them were fun, you felt like you were on the run. Most of them were crushingly horrid, but that itself was a kind of fun.
When you had finally reached the bar it was almost empty. It was a small, clean bar, with sofas made of old cinema chairs surrounded by tables and small stools. This was a good place for this kind of meeting you thought in retrospect, as you could never get too close to someone. The cinema chair arms acted as static chaperones.

Of course, with this evening you could never have won. Either way she was going to tell her ex-boyfriend she went out with you. She definitely didn’t like you as anything more than an accessory to jealousy. The ex-boyfriend would then think about how someone else wanted her, in turn making him want her back. This is how it works, you thought. You’d thought maybe you could just walk out; leave her there when she goes to the bathroom. At least then you would have won, in your mind. You were kind of sick of all the contests you invented in your head, but it was all that motivated you to do anything at the moment. You wondered how deep this went. If you dared yourself to be a successful doctor, would you have done it? Probably not. A contest only counts when there’s a loser.

You had looked at Sylvia for a while whilst ordering drinks. She had this face on that was a mixture of nerves and assuredness. Simply by getting you to come out she had already succeeded in getting her ex back a little bit. You jokingly said she owed you a drink, and the speed at which she agreed to buy you a double vodka and coke confirmed all your beliefs. You only had to be here for a while for her to get her way.
You walked over to the jukebox whilst she got the drinks, and you thought it’d be funny to put on a short playlist relating to the situation. You always do this, even for sex. You and your friend Greg used to dare each other to play various songs during the act. ‘You’re The One For Me, Fatty’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’ were your crowning achievements. Greg had only managed Interpol, which you argued could be a little bit romantic. You hate yourself for doing this, but its really cinema’s fault.

Sylvia sat down at a table in the corner and beckoned you over. The beckoning wound you up. It was one of those things that you could have ignored, or found cute if you had any doubt that her whole aim was to make someone else jealous, but because you had known she was guilty you wanted to sabotage everything she did.
You had walked over after putting a few tracks on. You had been excited to hear ‘She’s In Parties’ by Bauhaus. Not excited as such, but you hadn’t heard it in a long time and it was there to be played. You never got excited any more.

She had started talking about a film you hadn’t seen, she said it was French and about some manic-depressive teenage girl. She started having an affair with a teacher, et cetera, you drifted off. You always attracted this type of girl, with delusions of being cultured but really only partaking to look cultured. Like that girl who went on and on about Harmony Korine but also wore four layers of foundation and a push-up bra. That girl who would rather have sex than watch Eraserhead. You laughed thinking about that. You think a lot of people would rather have sex than watch Eraserhead, but most would have the thought of sex a million miles from their mind halfway through Eraserhead.

You continued to feign interest in this French film, asking the usual questions. You downed your drink and then went and bought two more without thinking about it. You hadn’t eaten in a few days, picking starvation over exercise and so that one drink had hit you a little bit. You dared to ask what the guy she watched it with thought of it. Just to put a bump in the road.
‘He thought it was good, yeah. He suggested it actually.’

The film, at that point, in your mind, became her talking about her ex-boyfriend. Every time she said how great the film was you took it to mean how great her ex-boyfriend was. You found it kind of amusing, to a point. That point was when she muttered an interest in going back to yours. You had managed to bat it away without referencing it.
‘So how long ago did you break up with him?’ You asked, staring down your drink.
‘About 3 months ago now. He didn’t see it going anywhere.’
‘Oh right. And you did?’
‘No, not really,’ she lied.
‘She’s In Parties’ came on and you whispered a ‘yes’ in appreciation. She asked who it was, and when you said Bauhaus she said ‘like the art movement.’ You sighed and nodded. You just wanted to go home at this point. You couldn’t explain why her knowing they were named after an art movement annoyed you. But it was at that point in your interest’s demise, where every little thing felt like a pinch. It got worse when she had tried to touch your arm to see if you were okay. Those touches felt like the duvet when you’re ill, a dull pain that hurts as much as it annoys. You said you were fine, just tired. Tired is endlessly the way out. If you fear you’re being boring, or nothing is being said, you always say you’re tired.

She finally started asking about you, but unfortunately you now had your mind made up that this woman was hateful, manipulative, and you didn’t want her to know anything about you that could be impressive to her ex. You didn’t want to help her. If anything, you wanted to help her boyfriend get over her. He was probably as sick of her posing as you were after her French film synopsis, but he was still vulnerable, in the middle of that six-month buffer. You decided to make yourself look awful, with absolutely nothing for her to boast about. You went to the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror, giggling a little bit at the thought of this. She could of course have made stuff up about you when referring to the night to her ex-boyfriend, but that didn’t matter. Just don’t help her, and make yourself an atrocity, you had thought.
You went back out there, and she was on her phone, staring at the screen and typing rapidly. She had looked up at you and smiled as you walked back to the table, her face suddenly evil. It’s funny how your mindset effects your perception of things.
‘So what do you want to do now? This place shuts fairly soon.’ She had asked.
‘I want to go home I think.’
‘Yeah? What’s back at yours? Have you got any drink?’
‘No. Just Irn Bru.’
‘Oh right. Well, shall we stop at an off-licence and get some wine or something?’
‘No, I’m fairly tired. I’ll probably just go home and sleep immediately.’
‘Shall I come with you?’
How blunt, you thought. Not even masking it any more, just desperate for the story to unfold as it should to your ex-boyfriend, you thought.
‘Probably shouldn’t. It’ll be very boring watching me sleep.’
‘Well I’ll walk with you anyway.’
‘You live in the complete opposite direction, that’s stupid.’

You laughed a little after saying this. You didn’t want to offend her all that much, just to make it known that you knew what she was up to. Plus, you had already let a girl walk home with you once before and it ended in everything the girl expected. You hadn’t actually expected it yourself until you reached the road you lived on. You knew she wasn’t going to walk back on her own at 1am. And the talk you had on that walk was insane; she was basically you, down to the last inhibition. The difference was that that girl had been beautiful in every way, and she only wanted the physical to feel closeness to someone. Sylvia was different – disgusting. She didn’t want you at all, in fact you thought that maybe if she bumped into someone more willing at the bar she would’ve gone with them. She was all too happy to use her body as a utensil in getting what she wanted, and could avoid the truth long enough for her to do what she needed to.

‘You are not coming home with me Sylvia. You are in love with your ex-boyfriend. You need to sort that out before you look for someone else. If I would even be so much as a rebound, it would still have been a mistake. But I’m not even that. I’m a way of making your ex-boyfriend jealous, aren’t I? You need to talk to him, not sleep with me. It’s offensive, and what’s worse is that I don’t think for a second you’re the only girl who has tried this. You think of me as a means to an end and that’s disgraceful. So, I’ll see you later.’

You had left her with a look of confusion, and you walked out feeling like James Dean. The rain had stopped now. You lit a cigarette and walked home laughing. You had known it wouldn’t be the last time you saw Sylvia, and she would use your self-righteous speech against you soon enough. And maybe then you would sleep with her. Maybe she had caught you on a bad day or something. Maybe you had overly darkened what was a perfectly normal platonic relationship. But you doubted that. You doubted that more than you’ve doubted anything ever. Message after message came spilling through from her over the next few days. Some sorry, some angry. Some loving. Sylvia was a sickening creation of the late 20^th century, and you had her in the palm of your hand like a bloodied sneeze.

M.I.A has recently: said that the C.I.A controls Google, posted a libellous journalist’s phone number on Twitter and released a music video so violent that it was removed from YouTube within hours for quite some time. But does /\/\/\Y/\, the third album from one of the world’s most talked about popstars, rise above the controversy?

Opening with ‘The Message’, a short paranoid rap over industrial drumming, you can immediately tell that this is the star’s war album; the album which will be loved or loathed with equal amounts of lactic acid. The drills and ground-up beats of first track proper, ‘Steppin’ Up’ (produced by UK dubstep man Rusko), sounds more like Nine Inch Nails than Bhangra. The song conjures images of not-so-peaceful protestors, Molotov cocktails, murder ending in a dubstep basement.

For the most part, this is the album. Fairly regular M.I.A collaborator Diplo recently tweeted that the album was ‘a turd’, sounding too much like Skinny Puppy. The industrial influence hangs around for the majority of the tracks, but the overall sound couldn’t be mistaken for all-out industrial. M.I.A’s ear for a chorus and pop sensibilities, as is always the case on her albums, use what could have been overpowering influences and samples to create something totally different. This album will not appeal to fans of Skinny Puppy.

Lyrically, Arulpragasm has always been politically charged. A cheeky track ‘Lovalot’ has the line ‘but I really love a lot’ repeated over and over in her characteristic Cockney accent, and ends up sounding like ‘I really love Allah.’ She really doesn’t need any more controversy, living in America with the right wing press’ open Islamophobia, but the track feels like a subtle flick of the Vs to those institutions.

The final third of the album slows down and seems to have no real order of business. Sampling Suicide, hipster sweethearts Sleigh Bells (signed to Arulpragasm’s own N.E.E.T Recordings), having a member of Pantera drum for you – so far, so Maya. Only one crushing disappointment exists on the album, and unfortunately it is the album closer ‘Space.’ Supposedly recorded in the wee small hours with Rusko, it sounds like a demo of something bigger. With all the industrial-pop mastery present on the album, it feels like M.I.A has just recorded a space-based lullaby. It never goes anywhere, and leaves you on a bit of a down note.

Overall, this album stands up with both previous M.I.A albums as classics for the people who want to hear them. The fans gained on the back of ‘Paper Planes’ won’t find much here, just as they wouldn’t have on either previous release. The issue with this album is, as great as it is, it can only preach to the converted. If you don’t like her, you don’t like her. But she probably doesn’t like you either.