Monday 28 January 2019

Misanthropic Musicology VII

WELL..it seems the world's most important train-based musicological weekly has betrayed its roots already and become a home operation. That's right, I write this to you not from the quiet carriage screaming towards The Unutterable but from the stinking hot confines of my flat on Brisbane's inner south. I could of course just wander up to Fairfield Station and ride that Beeno shit-dragon up and down this dusty heatwave dome of a town all day every day at present, but I won't. Instead I write here, enveloped in silence while some sparky (that's an electrician for you of the confused) fiddles with a broken powerpoint in my kitchen, fixing it and leaving within 5 minutes. Unheard of. Thank you, whoever you were you beardy high-vis wonder you. Now distraction free I listen intently to Rebecca Clarke's works for cello and piano, beautiful impressionistic gothicary filling my head. Who is Rebecca Clarke? Well a composer and violist/violinist of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries to be precise, and I dare say a proto-goth goddess too.


You see, this week's Misanthropic Musicology focuses largely on the work of two great composers who somehow came into my mind at the same time, that being Mlle Clarke, and Siouxie Sioux. Do they have anything in common? Well surprisingly more than one might imagine. Siouxie is of course the original punk rocker par excellence, famous for her notoriety amongst the Bromley Contingent, a gang of punk rockers who followed the Sex Pistols everywhere, Siouxie thus becoming a household name in the UK after the swearing-on-tele incident incited by the host being a filthy pig towards her (at age 16 I may add) during an interview with the pistols.


Thing is though she also happened to be a musical genius, forming Siouxie and the Banshees around the time of this ridiculous film, a band whose incredible free improvised punk prayer "the Lord's Prayer" live in some dingy shithole in London or something inspired countless punk bands to form and go in new angles, directions, inflections, you effing rotter. The Banshees laid the blueprint (along with Nick Cave et al) for Goth, their lengthy discography is well worth a plunge, from the post-punk revelation of their debut The Scream, to the sophisticated multi-layered darkness of Juju and the in-between-these-two absolute fucking brilliance of Join Hands featuring one of my personal Banshees faves 'Love in a Void'. Here is not the Banshees playing it...


 ...a hint to next week's Misanthropic Musicology.

Anyway, listening still to Rebecca Clarke's works for cello and piano I sit, sweating and thinking of the similarities between Siouxie and Rebecca. Both grew up in Britain, both grew up in abusive households, both have been overlooked due to their sex/gender and given nowhere near the credit due as usual. Both also do Romantic, gothic, exotic, mysteriousness very very well indeed.

Image result for rebecca clarke composer
Rebecca looking forlorn and Gothy as fuck with her viola


Siouxie looking similarly forlorn.














Rebecca Clarke's compositions for viola have become, to an extent, standard rep for performers on that instrument, with a selection of inventive and beautiful viola sonatas well worth checking out. She also wrote this stunning hallucinatory ballad for violin and piano with the evocative title 'Midsummer Moon', sounding right out of the songbook of her contemporary British composers such as Ralph Vaughn-Williams, her French contemporaries such as Ravel, but with a voice all her own which is severely under-rated as I'd never heard of it until I started searching hard for it.

\

Siouxie also has the interesting though not that appealing to this here writer band The Creatures, whose percussiony thump under Siouxie's trademark Goth wail is an interesting listen though nowhere near as revelatory as The Banshee's extraordinary legacy. What a legend.


Amen. So do yourselves a favour and delve deep into this. I'm going to go back to listening to Rebecca Clarke and bad underground cult heavy metal accompanied by a washing machine I did some very dodgy repairs to some years ago (and it still works thank you) and two pedestal fans, which despite their best efforts are doing very little to decrease the ever increasing heat as the sun beats down on Brisvegas at high velocity, intensity: total genocide of all living things. You think I'm joking, but think on this, 1/3 of an entire species of flying fox has just been wiped out by the heat in Victoria, and basically the entire fish population of the Murray-Darling basin has just died. None of these places are anywhere near Brisbane, but it's still a worry, actually think I might spend my arvo wading in the pool and looking up bunker-building on YouTube.

Next week...Gylve "Fenris" Nagell aka Fenriz...

AND IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT BOOM VACUUM BOOM VACUUM BOOM VACUUM 15 15 15 FIFTEEN AT JUNK BAR TOMORROW 30 JAN. BE THERE. 7PM.

And some bonus Doro Pesch...



Hahaha "Metal Tango"....

Monday 21 January 2019

Misanthropic Musicology Part 6

Well a rare site indeed at present, that being the inside of the 7th Locomotive Wonder of the UNIVERSE on it's rusty lumbering way towards the Unutterable. I'm not going to work though, as I have no job now (yep), but rather to rehearsal with as yet unnamed band who may or may not ever play live but what a pleasure it be with some excellent musical comrades in tow you bastards (since writing this line it is quite likely said band shall at least for one gig be named Exaybachay and said gig will likely occur on 24 Feb 2019). But this rambling nonsense isn't about my music, it's about composers and shit, and this episodes was promised to be Sean O'Riada. Problem is I got bored with a lot of it because despite how great he was, it's only his works for Ceoltóirí Chualann that are worth listening to (sorry, in my humble opinion that is), and there's only about three records worth of that marvellous stuff. And it's the same marvellous stuff on all of them! 







 So yes I listen now, as I have of late voraciously, to Billy Childish in all his ye olde Wild permutations instead, and what a legend he is. Folk songs in drunk twilight delirium. Well dressed mod psych with all the laddish toffery of that Rolling Stones video of Mick and Keith, drunk at a piano spilling vodka all over it and propping themselves up no doubt with methedrine alone!


Yes it's all that fantastic. This then whirls into record after record of garage punk delight with all its gritty Thatcher-smashing righteousness. Buff Medways and 1914 trench-war gas mask rock stomp. Over the edge to bayonet once more in blood and mud and endless pints of cider made from the blood of the Bosch. Bloody oath.






Well then. I've spent very little time of late on that bastard train and I don't mind. Perhaps location is not so important for this here endeavour. And a quick game's a good game. To bring it back to Ireland here's a song by Planxty, sung by the great Christie Moore. Next time....I dunno...It's a surprise!

BOOM Vacuum #15

THE 



BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM



IS 




B       A                           C                                                           K



30 JAN
7pm
the Junk Bar
$5-$10 (whatever you can afford)
Brisbane

The Quartet for the End of Time
Danielle Bentley & Adam Cadell
Duo Imply (Charu Mani & Hannah Reardon-Smith)


Sunday 13 January 2019

PAGANS!



Features a track featuring yours truly and the mighty ARTUS! Will be part of an upcoming digital release from PAGANS of a long improvisatory session, me + ARTUS, in Gascohna, in 2018. I'll blather more about it when the record is in the works, but for now listen to the incredible recent and upcoming works from this great label NOW.

Also NEXT BOOM VACUUUUUM 30 JAN, Same time, usual place. Get ready.