As the property ladder eats its way further and further along Kingsland Road, the area pervading the junction of Old Street and City Road is the district’s most commercially malignant, answering to the higher calling of last year’s Cameron-fronted ‘Silicon Valley for east London’ proposals. The antidote, it would appear, to an area once comparable to the bric-a-brac DIY artistry of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant pocket, unapologetic glass-lit verandas apprehend the bordering skyline like the greediest of magpie flocks.
The City Arts and Music Project (CAMP), a dwelling in the basements of an indistinguishable office block mesh yards from the station, is one of a few rallying cries for EC1’s restlessly prosperous arts scene. In a number of ways, CAMP is similar in feel and location, rather than scope, to The Haçienda (or how I have imagined it): Huge, redundant utility pipes sag from a fettered concrete ceiling, illuminated by flickering green and red lights recalling the intersection’s veracious scuffle.
Similar in tone again is the bubbling, distinctively murky techno of London’s Darren Cunningham, known by his hourly-expanding army of followers as Actress. Draped from toe to nose in custom black, Cunningham’s presence, silhouetted in front of a white screen, is both mystical and electrifying at first sight. Leading the crowd by example, his perpetually bobbing and twitching hoody-cloaked head, driven like a Black & Decker through favourites Hubble and Maze from last year’s critically screened Splazsch LP, made for compulsive gawping.
(Photo: Vanessa Govinden)
Live, the songs we have come to recognise were lengthened and scrutinised, flattened out by Cunningham’s extensive creative artillery. Movements were as subtle and infrequent as strikingly stimulating, breathing life into a perpetual ebb and flow of low end digitalism. Bass was not merely a texture in this setting, but a function: Oozing into the gaps between dancers, the holes in the floor and the beer bottles on the bar, the drone was a key unifier, infecting even the most reluctant of dancers with a pensive twitch.
For one of, if not the, token dubstep-related recluses of last year, it was perhaps surprising to see just how keen a boot-shaker Cunningham is; flickering his arms to one side like Vishnu one minute, pounding his sweat-saturated face in and out of view behind his equipment the next.
Surely a focal point for the dub/funky community and all its extractions in the coming months is Darkstar’s debut album North, released on London’s alt-electro hub Hyperdub; renowned for tapping into the capital’s freshest, most forward-thinking beatsmithery. More than that, the label’s output has defined itself as a set of feelings and atmospheres in noise rather than genre prerequisites. Down to the notable inclination towards noiry, minimalist packaging, that Steve ‘Kode9’ Goodman sound is midnight, lamp-lit London boroughs, the purple rain through a night bus window and the heave of a smoggy rave; drenched in sub and chemical exertion. Epitomised so definitively by Burial’s In Mcdonalds in 2007, Hyperdub has established itself as more of frame of mind than a record label.
It comes as no huge surprise then that North - down to a finely filed tee - is quintessential Hyperdub. Punctuated by chunky, futurist synth chords ripped straight from Ambient 4 era Eno, progressive beat modifications and an ethereal, persuasive vocal from James Buttery, Gold - which covers a Human League obscurity - evokes the same earth-shattering street realism as any of the label’s best releases. Like a dysfunctional android outing words from its stuttering, crashed face in a factory dustbin, Buttery spits heart-torn emotion over microsound electro and a Mark Hollis piano loop.
Deadness is notable for elongated synth grooves and its meandering pace; musical themes scattered in and about the record. A highlight of many a dubstep-minded audiophile’s day-to-day life for a while has been Aidy’s Girl is a Computer. Filling in for its Philip K. Dick-esque title is Darkstar’s staple, champion moment: beautifully pitched monologue, interjecting hints of androgyny beside floor-friendly 2 step and achingly Balearic, baking synth lines. It all works marvellously, amounting to no less than anthemic levels of originality and euphoria.
The heart and angst bubbling at the player’s heart rises to the fore further in, and towards the end. Ostkreuz is a reflective, post-apocalyptical synth piece, painting scenes of devastation in droning canvasses and Dear Heartbeat builds upon a tastefully poignant piano accompaniment.
James Young and Aiden Whalley have developed a sound so distinctly Hyperdub that some feared it would soon become vacant in the mire. The album’s focus on textures, subtly blended vocal melodies and 80s cinema synths is more than enough to raise them above and beyond these expectations and in doing so, they have set the flavour for a winter of expansive snow scenes, drenched shelters and the distant noise of bustle, finance and office light.
(Working my way round a wretched ex-industrial factory whilst hairless, vacuum-waxed asexuals unleashed terror upon themselves in every corner wasn't a usual Friday night out. Though it was a very entertaining, and at times refreshingly self-depricating smorgasbord of fetish talent, I can't tell people what went on there as they wouldn't like me any more.)
ACT ART showcase twisted, debased fetish art like no-one else. Inspired by the Viennese Actionists and Marina Abramovic's infamous Rhythm projects, founders Oliver Frost and Marc Massive take their work seriously. Their eighth event, this Friday, aims to stir perceptions of censorship, coercion and marginalisation through a variety of gaudy and salacious shows at Angel's Islington Metal Works, once a 19th Century horse house. In exploring the cerebral shades of fetishism, the night offers a selection of outlets for the 100+ pool of artists, many of whom have never set foot in an installation: From arthouse and world cinema screenings to 2 and 3D pieces, spoken word features and music sets, the display is spread evenly in effort to, as Marc and Oliver claim, 'decompartmentalise' conceptual art. Dazed Digital caught up with the provocateurs to discuss cummy pig heads, vaginas, voyeurism and the method behind the madness.
Dazed Digital: How did ACT ART come about?
Marc: I came on board the ACT ART ship when I met Oliver six years ago, and we’ve produced events and club nights ever since. As live artists, we felt there were lack of opportunities for emerging cross-discipline artists to show their work alongside more established individuals. In attempting to break down the elitist programming system that artists often have to operate in, the project was born.
DD: What were you hoping to achieve with it?
Oliver: Our agenda has always been to show experimental, radical, confrontational and non-mainstream art alongside less challenging and more entertainment-based works. The last thing we want to do is to produce a freak show or be seen as sensationalist just for the sake of it, but we do realise that some of the work we exhibit is quite thrilling to watch. Our aim is to programme work that is often overlooked and difficult to get commissioned.
DD: What can we expect from the night - what will guests see, feel, touch and smell?
Marc: If you like your entertainment to be safe and comfortable, ACT ART is not for you. There’s a unique energy created when different pieces of work run simultaneously - the building is usually exploding with creativity. There are more extreme shows on the main stage like Mouse who sucks up fluids with her vagina and sprays them all over the audience, Alex Fear’s show that sees him splashing about in a paddling pool of offal whilst fucking a mutated pigs head, and other less provocative and interactive exhibits.
DD: Are there any other similar nights going on in London that you feel you compete with?
Oliver: As far as I know we are the only movement that showcases work from all artistic disciplines in single night events, from the extreme performance scene to intimate one-to-one live shows and more traditional art works.
DD: Is there a balance between people who turn up for voyeuristic kicks and those approaching it from an artistic point of view?
Oliver: There probably are some who turn up for novelty and sensationalist reasons, and others who appreciate the event for its diverse programming. We’re not against spectacle for spectacle's sake - not all visual work needs to be deep or political, sometimes it's fine for work to be visually stunning and nothing else. We want to bring the unexpected to the forefront, and present works that are challenging, thought-provoking, emotional and sometimes uncomfortable to watch.
DD: Any other projects in the pipeline?
Marc: After Friday, I'm looking forward to working on a new album with my band Massive Ego. We’d love to open up a space for regular nights; using it maybe for a combination of purposes that allows us to have an art-space that can operate on a day-to-day basis rather than just occasionally, but it's a big project and it all takes time. One day though, hopefully!
Massive Attack are in a difficult position. Their output now varies between classic beatsmithery; otherwordly sonic meanderings that seem to define an era of pre-millennial dread, and miscalculated, slightly off-kilter dinner party repetitions. Like 100th Window before it, a lot depends on Heligoland, Robert Del Naja and Grant Marshal's seventh studio effort in as many years.
Their focused beat-mongerings are so often cast, very wisely, against voices that accentuate tonal qualities of the music rather than drowning them, alluding both lyrically and atmospherically to darker depths of the human psyche. Staying true to this, Naja and Marshall have drawn a very recognisable list of contributors, from regular in-housers Martina Topley-Bird and Horace Andy to the almost omnipotent alt-boy of the moment, Tunde Adebimpe (TV on the Radio) and Guy Garvey. Four tracks in though; I'm struggling with this list...
Opener 'Pray For Rain' is over-complicated, and sets Heligoland's enduring tone. Where previous outings were experiments in reserve: 'Group Four's seductive choral chants and economic guitar trimmings, for example, Adebimpe's clinical monotone is used to dulling, meandering effect. Same too with 'Splitting the Atom'. Horace Andy's usually affecting voice wobbles are stripped back and don't work well on their own, resulting in a song that, at best, sounds like a Mezzanine era cast-off.
'Psyche' is a refreshingly laid-bare loop piece; tunefulness soothing the dull resonance of the player's first half. When Massive Attack refrain from indulging in ideas so self-consciously muggy, their potential for stark originality is revealed once again. 'Flat of the Blade', original mix of 'Bulletproof Love' (which appeared on the underwhelming Splitting the Atom EP) is a skittering, macro-melodic love song similar to Thom Yorke's 'Cymbal Rush'.
Length is once again its crucial pitfall, though: songs here are typically twice the length they need be, and Garvey's reserved, lovelorn ramblings end up fogged in the mire. Despite erring on the side of excellence with 'Paradise Circus'; an extroverted, toe-tapping romp which revives its subject's expeditions on 2001's Bavarian Fruit Bread, Heligoland is a largely failed return, or merely a glimpse at what was once a tremendous source of inspiration to thousands who looked.
Rather than doing what Portishead did with Third, and using their time to record something of steadfast beauty - textures enhancing what are, at heart, exceptional pieces of songwriting – Massive Attack have wasted an opportunity to grow. Songs teetering on the edge of substance are muddied with conventional uses of tension, build and rhythm and vocal use that does nothing to retrieve the album's detractingly self-referential nature.
Eno: one small word, three letters, huge connotations: Ambient music; Roxy Music; the shape of modern music; the shape of analogue and digital electronic music; forty years of pop music; forty years of experimental music. Brain Eno has laid the touchstone of groundbreaking pivots in noise and pop: his mystical, omnipotent presence on U2 albums in the transcendent negative space between notes or the darkened figure appearing in the back of Roxy’s early music videos, subtly ego-battling the front man with subversive, futurist synth. Even the droning notes that colour the opening credits of the classically long-standing BBC profile show Arena are Eno’s.
To mark these achievements, Arena has explored a linear and lovingly attentive reflection of the man’s journey. Brian Eno: Another Green World is an insightful, selective account of the events that shaped Eno’s idiosyncrasies and particular musical brand. Rather than focussing on topic staples such as his notoriously tempestuous relationship with Brian Ferry in the early 1970s, director Nicola Roberts leads Eno into a-typical and occasionally awkward territory as a means of revealing unexplored aspects of his persona.
It delves deep into his early fascination with fashion and glamour: “I love the idea of selecting various clothing styles - references from moments in culture and time - and putting them together,” and his self confessed under-achievements with the fairer sex. More pertinently, Eno discusses how his music is ultimately rooted in industry ideals: if a record hasn’t sold well, he attests, he avoids using similar methods twice.
For many veterans, Eno’s commitment to commercial projects, most recently Coldplay’s Viva La Vida, has sparked confusion and dismay. Crucially, the show explores this topic in detail. Eno fuses his innate interest in gospel music; its ability to reach people on a communal and transcendent level, with Chris Martin’s obsession with uniting large masses of people in song at festivals and in arenas. It sets in contrast his own understanding of music as an ideological reason d’etre to the modern day fascination with music as a means of sharing: blogging communities, mp3s and music television.
Viewers are treated to revealing archive footage of Eno at the mixing desk during the recording of The Joshue Tree. “I like the moment when your voice fades to an eerie whisper” you hear him tell Bono. Interviews with he, and dusty industry hacks like Paul Morley offer insightful asides, tacked onto the side of the footage. “U2 didn’t go to art collage, we went to Eno. He is a mind-expanding drug,” the singer asserts.
But Another Green World’s real strength resides in the space it leaves for reflection. Philosophical conjecture is neatly broken up by long segments of Eno’s music, cast against beauteous shots of sand canvasses, sprawling deserts and caves. In totem, Roberts’ hour long documentary is a vital and deeply revealing update to a wonderfully attuned and unique story; full of wonder and awe. Her method of drawing the subject into unconventional territory provokes feedback worthy of any ardent collector’s entranced attention.
As painstakingly documented as the phallus-beard itself, a Chino Moreno lyric will focus on one of five, maybe six themes: Masochism, voyeurism, lovelorn, libido, fetish-taboo or boredom. 'Digital Bath''s protagonist realises sexual enlightenment through snuff flick-style electrocution porn; 'Deathblow' orbits autoerotic asphyxiation; and '7 Words', Deliverance-style sodomy and bloodlust. When Chi Cheng, the Sacramento experi-metalists' four string favourite, was seriously injured in a car crash in November 2008, Moreno and the band were faced with the possibility of tragedy. Musically, Moreno's propensity for hyperreality took a turn for the macabre; informed, rather vividly on this month's Diamond Eyes, by the situation that befell him, songs such as 'Royal' adopted a new kind of sincerity: a closer layer of empathy, somehow.
Meeting the band in their make-stay in Marylebone, there is a look of acceptance on their faces nowadays, but the shock is still raw. The Quietus went to find out how the accident affected the music's construction, mechanics and emotional dimensionality, and what working with Sergio Vega, Chi's current stand-in and formally of Quicksand, has been like.
For the record, what is Chi's condition at the moment? I understand he's not in intensive care anymore...
Chino Moreno: Yeah, he's been out of his coma for a while now, which is great. He's still in a minimally conscious state, which means he sleeps a lot, wakes up, opens his eyes and looks around but he's yet to communicate. He's got some good doctors around him right now, but it's gonna take some time, y'know? He's been fighting for over a year and a half now. So we're still just waiting, being patient and hoping that he comes around soon.
What has it been like playing with Sergio? He filled in for you back in 1999...
Chino: Sergio's great, man. We were always big Quicksand fans. He's a great musician from a great band and he's a good friend of ours. We've known him for a number of years. He filled in for Chi as you said, so it's feeling fairly natural really. As soon as he came in, we hit a creative stride. We started writing the day he arrived and a couple of months later we had a record's worth of material. It felt really good, actually. He helped with the writing too, from the very beginning.
So you just asked him outright?
Chino: Yeah, we just called and asked him. Once we got together as a band again, we instantly felt the need to play music. It just felt like the most natural thing to do. At that point, it had been a good year and a half since we'd played a show. We wanted to perform, and that was the initial reason for asking Sergio to come down. As soon as he got to the studio, we started getting creative. We practiced a few old songs with him, but after that we began writing as one.
Frank Delgado (turntable and keys): 'Royal' was written on the very first day we practiced with him again, actually. It was as quick as that.
Chino: It was like: "This feels good, let's keep doing this."
You had Eros written, but not recorded, before it.
Frank: Yeah, pretty much. Chino was still doing vocals on half the tracks (before the accident), but music-wise it had been finished for a while.
You've mentioned how Eros has a strong experimental bent. Can you elaborate?
Chino: Well, the songs were simply a little less reined in: more 'jammy' I guess and less focused. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but with Diamond Eyes we jumped on the song's original idea and were able to hone it in and build around it. These songs are just little gems, really. Frank: Yeah, and with Eros we really hadn't found much of a work ethic yet. We'd go in and start jamming and somebody would have an idea, but it would start 'here' and end up somewhere completely different. This time we found a way to go back to the essence of the song and discover what we liked about it in the first place. That's where Nick Raskulinecz (producer - Foo Fighters, Velvet Revolver, Goatsnake) really helped. He just showed us how to be natural again and kept things focused. When we were in the studio recording Eros we'd be sitting around not doing much, and once we'd start playing we would communicate purely through our instruments. There would be little talking and the jams would go off into many different tangents, which were kinda cool but it's not an easy environment to work in. A lot of that stuff we weren't even recording, either.
Chino: I think it's been a continual thing through the last couple of records, too: piecing our stuff together and writing as we played. But it's kinda cool to be prepared before going into the studio and that's what makes Diamond Eyes a cohesive thing. We feel like we've captured this energy - this lightning in a bottle. We were having loads of fun during Eros and a lot of it we like, though. Frank: All the songs were recorded in a two month time frame. We had this tremendous burst of creativity when Sergio came, and we just jumped on it. A week later we went to LA and that's when it happened. By this stage we'd been in Sacramento for well over a year, and we just made a clean break from it. We went to the studio with what we felt was a completely clean pallet. As opposed to patching up Eros, teaching Sergio Chi's parts and touring it, we felt like we just needed to completely rebuild our infrastructure: start from point A, and see where it took us.
This is perhaps your most consistently textural album to date, exploring drone and soundscaping in parts. Latter-day Deftones records have always shown strong elements of musical dimensionality, but this one seems to fall headlong into layering from the start.
Chino: Well, we love drone and stuff like that. The majority of the music I listen to is purely instrumental. Not that I don't like singing or singers, it's just that I feel that there's so much optimism in wordless music. The idea that it can take you wherever you want and not confine you to these thoughts or words...It's just music as a feeling, you know? Bringing different soundscapes into our music is always something that we've tried to do. I mean, that was Frank's whole role in the band when we brought him in. At that time, he was just a DJ and his only instrument was a turntable. White Pony was when we really started to experiment with sound more. We were trying to create this disgusting sound with the instruments on that record.
You seemed to be operating on a totally perverse level to your contemporaries during the start of the 00s. Chino: Ha ha! I like that. Frank: It was pretty perverse...
Above: Chino and The Phallus
In the past your words painted various bizarre situations and characters. But Chi's accident adds a fresh splash of rawness, and in turn, new obstacles to climb when sifting through the lyric sheet. There is simply a deeper feeling of ambiguity to the music now...
Chino: Yes, definitely. I like to be ambiguous when writing to a certain extent, and throwing something so brash (as Chi's accident) against that and playing with it. And also making it sound dimensional. Giving the feeling off that it is raw and it is emotional, but it's not just connected with our personal story. It's not merely about our career and our lives, it's bigger than that. When I hear the music, I get inspired to paint the lyrical pictures you describe, but I'm not always talking about myself.
Did you feel like you werealmost trying to speak for Chi, who was still in a coma at the time of writing? Or even as an attempt to communicate with him in some way?
Chino: Well, possibly. I feel, going back to this dimensional thing, like our music is disconnected from just living on this planet. There are many other realms that music travels to. It's hard for me to say exactly what I'm referring to at a certain point of a song because I don't like to confine it (conceptually). They are just stories and I don't like the idea of deciding on one before I write something and being forced to stick within the confines of that. When I go to write, I like to feel it can go anywhere it wants to. But of course you can't help but notice when it's done that certain elements of your reality are effecting it. The most important thing is to try to create in an organic way and avoid contriving or forcing it.
What inspires the lyrical themes the most?
Chino: I get inspired by all sorts of things. I kinda like talking about things that are, y'know, taboo, and mixing it with the feel of the music. It relates with some of the movies I like, like old film noir and the imagery of some of those movies. David Lynch too: dark and violent in some ways, romantic in others.
A blend very much like Deftones' music: Dark with a hint of blood, vomit and a strong musk of love and mystery...
‘Judge not, and ye shall not be judged’. Easy to say, but upon opening the case adorned with a surreal collage of eagle-eyes, lazer beams, rainbows and mushroom clouds, a sachet of antibacterial hand wash drops out, with a press release explaining how Vernon Wonder Showzen Chatman’s new faux fetish romp Final Flesh will challenge conceptions of religion, sex, philosophy, fashion and “reality”… hmmm. For all its chaotic misappropriations of sexual symbolism and plotted ambiguity, the film, comprising four motif-driven, intertwined plots, dulls after the first half. How scenes that include an anaemic, hysterical middle ager fellating a sock full of dice, breast-feeding a raw steak and ‘Mr Pollard’ attempting to climb into his wife’s womb amount to an ultimately forgettable viewing experience is impressive.
Salut. Jack Mills is my name and text wrangling is my game. I've written for local newspapers, online zines and national mags - Esquire, Dazed and Confused, Dazed Digital, Artrocker, Bizarre, Wonderland, London Planner and The Stool Pigeon to name a few. After a few years on the scrape and narrow (though some things never change...), I now deputy edit Kensington and Chelsea Review and am The Hub magazine's associate entertainment editor. Shamelessly self-promoting enough for you?
(Photo: Vanessa Govinden)
