RECENT DECENT ALBUM DOWNLOADS ...

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EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

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Extract from the Bella Italia waiter training manual:

SECTION TITLE: EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

1) Think about your worst ever experience as a customer. How did it make you feel? Did you ever use that company again?

I WRITE: Bad. No.

2) What do you think we mean by 'Exceeding expectations'?

I THINK: Is this some kind of provocative Magrittean language game?
I WRITE: Nothing. I become so baffled from this point onwards that I genuinely can't muster any kind of response.

3) Pretend I don't understand 'exceeding expectations' and explain it to me so that I could go away and deliver it.

...

4) Do we have a manual on how to exceed expectations? If not, why not?

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5)Who benefits when expectations are exceeded?

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THE TREE IS REALLY ROOTED IN THE SKY

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Ay ay, that Simone Weil was pretty good wasn't she?

'When science, art, literature and philosophy are simply the manifestation of a personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible, which can make a man's name live for a thousand years. But above this level, far above, seperated by an abyss, is the level where the highest things are achieved. These things are essentially anonymous'

'A RECORD WITH NO WORDS, ONLY SIGHS'

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Chris Moyles's actually pretty perceptive summation of 'Creep'.

Aside from the fact that this is, from a certain viewpoint, a remarkably poetic and lovely evocation of a relatively mediocre tune, Moyles also picks up on an issue that I've been mulling over for some time, namely: that Radiohead's great tragic flaw consists in the perennial non-rythmic amorphousness of Thom Yorke's vocal phrasing.

Listen to any given 'Head tune with this fact in mind and I promise you the nagging question that has been gnawing away at your musical psyche for years ('I adore my Radiohead, but why can't I truly love him?') will be instantaneously demystified.

'Bullet Proof', 'Airbag', 'No Surprises', 'Knives Out', 'Pyramid Song': WHERE IS THE FUCKING RHYTHM IN THE VOCAL PART?!?!!

When Mr Yorke does bother to inject a bit of gumption into his writing for voice (bits of 'Paranoid Android', 'The Bends', 'Just', 'Ideoteque', the much-underrated 'Wolf at the Door') the results are nearly always gratifyingly good, so I really don't understand why he spends so much time failing to rise above his default ethereal sigh (top marks for this on a purely melodic level, but a good songwriter really must be consistently hitting the bullseye on both targets - melodic and rhythmic).

Anyway, all of this merely serves to confirm my longstanding suspicion that Chris Moyles is the modern-day Samuel Johnson.

But more on this later.

THE BEST HOUSE TUNE EVER IS ...

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... 'What Else Is There?' by Royksopp (Thin White Duke Remix)

A title that is the very definition of negative capability, and a tune that defies verbal summary, this is, as Byron would've had it, the thing.

Shite cover though.

A SMALL POINT

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Cambridge vice-chancellor Alison Richards said last week that British universities are not 'engines for promoting social justice'.

Surely that's precisely what they are?

VIS A VIS

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'It's my opinion that a manager must have the right to manage and that clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want.'


'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.'

THIS IS THE WEEK THAT WAS

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The Week That Was record is fantastic.

I've always been a big Field Music fan, however I've often found the relentless melodic modulations very frustrating, particularly over the course of an entire album, and the sonic palette has always seemed a little weak and one-dimensional: the adventurousness of the music itself not really done justice by a relatively trad instrumental line-up.

The School of Language album seemed to replicate these shortcomings (augmented them, even), but TW2 seems to have channelled all the restless cerebrality of the first two Field Music albums into something a lot more compact, focused, and ultimately engaging.

There is a wonderful colourful variety of tone here: marimba and archaic synth intertwining beautifully on the gamelan-esque 'It's All Gone Quiet', brutalist machinistic drumming meeting a spiky string arrangement head-on in 'The Airport Line', female b-vox supplying nice pentatonic interludes, 'Sound and Vision'-style, on album high-point 'Come Home'.

Production-wise, TW2 is also a big improvement on the retro mustiness that often left Field Music offerings sounding slightly wet. Everything is just a little bit punchier, drums and acoustic guitars in particular, with each instrument granted a crystal-cut hi-fi autonomy, which in turn emphasises the eclectic daring of the arrangements.

Length must also be a factor. The Field Music b-sides collection Write Your Own History still seems like their best record, partly because it's only half an hour or so long. TW2 is similarly brief, a fact that compounds the sense of ideas reigned-in and fused with a very welcome new-found immediacy.




Why not 'That Was the Week That Was' though? Can't help feeling they pussied-out on that one.

Mackem bastards.

LYRIC! - 'BONAPARTE SAID'

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Bonaparte said:
'I got lost on the way to my bed
I got stuck back in the day with the dead
Bait for all the people I hate'

Bonaparte said:
'I must lose some of these skills in my head
I must chisel me a beast made of lead
Prize my demands from the vice'

I crossed plains for you, plains for you
Marched to the Dnieper
And ravaged the people
But blew too soon

You say the night is coming on
I deem the mountains passable
Midas and you are happy
In the house of fire

You say the world is spinning on
Change if you can you idealogue
Tie the rhymer to the budgerigar
And sing old hymns

Bonaparte said:
'I'm obscure as the eaves of the shed
I've got pieces of eight instead of pence
Guys tripping drunks in the night'

Bonaparte said:
'I will stick to my beliefs til I'm dead
And I reject with my feet what you suggest
Boy, you don't know the sound from the noise'

I crushed Ukraine for you, Ukraine for you
Sped to the Dnieper
To salvage my people
Fired guns to soothe you

You say the night is coming on
I deem the mountains passable
Midas and you are happy
In the house of fire

I thought the world would gather round
I put a devil in the ground
Love is just another hand-me-down
For you, my friend

GOOD PIECE

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in the Guardian today by David Cox

Especially like the tag: 'too many films today are literally meaningless'.