jackrivet

...or is it just me?

Answers on a postcard please.

Restrung my guitar the other night. Was half expecting the intonation to go completely kafluey.

Quick lesson: Guitars are funny things; if you put a different guage of strings on a guitar, or even if it's the same guage by a different company the change of tension on the neck can pull it out of tune.

IE the frets won't line up with where the actual notes should be. The intonation, the space between the notes, will be a tiny bit off. Just enough that the guitar will sound ever so slightly wrong even to untrained ears (the musical equivalent to an outfit featuring two types of pinstripe: you know it's wrong even if you can't explain why).

Crazy temperature changes and the like will play havoc with guitar necks as well.

Bear in mind that my guitar hasn't been set up in nearly five years, and that was back in Australia. Brisbane weather is not London weather. In February it was cold enough in my room that I would wake up and see my breath. At the time my guitar was under my bed.

But no, I changed all the strings, tuned it up then checked the intonation with a digital tuner, all the way up the neck. It came in pretty much dead on.

The guitar in question is an LTD H-100, a midrange Korean made lump of wood designed to be played in standard E but bastardised into being a C# instrument. For it to hold up this well for this long is kinda impressive.

LTD's: they're cheap, they look silly and they don't sound the best. But dammit, they work.

Thanks to the magic of Spotify I'm listening to Speech Debelle's album.

And some of the stuff is nakedly honest enough that I'm halfway impressed, touched even. But...

...it really isn't that impressive. Let's face it, her rhymes are cliched and her story is dime-a-dozen in this town.

And her voice is kinda irritating.

The production is interesting but a) it's not anything that's never been heard before and b) her producer didn't get the Mercury, she did.

To be fair, Florence and the Machine is just Kate Bush with a worse voice and the Klaxons are just goth via Shoreditch. But if either of them had won it would at least make some kind of sense.

*shrugs* If anyone was in any doubt after the Klaxons won in 2007 this kinda clinches it.

Even in Pop Circles, The Mercury Award is irrelevant.

-J

BTW: any of you remember those two albums John Frusciante made when he was so fucked up on heroin nobody expected him to live to see Christmas? I just realised this reminds me of that.

Two bangs just rang out over Leytonstone.

Echoed like they were bouncing off a wall 150 metres away.

Didn't sound like firecrackers. Unless these firecrackers were abnormally big.

Dear England,

I've just found out that you've won back the Ashes, so by now you're probably running around like acting Jesus has returned with a Union Jack waistcoat and a carton of beer.

So I want you to know three things:

a) The whole concept of the Ashes is based around the assertion that if anyone is better at cricket than the British, cricket is dead. Which I for one think is rather unsporting.

b) Now that you've won that Ashes again, it is not like the whole world is going to suddenly say 'Wow! England is great again! Is it too late to rejoin the Empire? We really didn't mean it about the tea, taking back Hong Kong, the Non-Cooperation Movement or any of that.'

c) Laugh it up while you can. Eighteen months and those post-colonial relics will be back in our hands. Set your watch.

Yours,

-Jack

I just got off the phone from Australia. My mother called me to say that the aging family cat had passed away peacefully while dozing under his favourite tree.
( Some cat memories. I don't need you to read this. I just needed to write it. )

Positing a theory:

Since 1997 extreme metal and its musical cousins have in the main become to clean and clinical, too tight and technical and too divorced from the emotions that drive it.

I think it is time for a return to the vicious and raw sounds that are not necessarily perfectly performed or captured with absolute clarity but instead effectively communicate a sense of chaos and fury.

This is a time for progressive ideas. And by strange quirk it seems progressive ideas are often best communicated when weaved into reactionary sounds.

We're already starting to see this happen.

I wonder... if I got a tattoo of the hypercube would anyone know what it was?

Though a two dimensional representation of a four dimensional shape rendered onto a three dimensional body (mine) would make for an interesting irony.

Yep, this is the kind of stuff I think about dead sober.

Whatever algorithms they run at Spotify Central usually the record suggestions on my front page are so far off base as to be laughable. But every so often it's halfway right.

I just fired it up and front and centre was Friends and Traitors, a new track by Swedish Metallic Hardcore bruisers Raised Fist.

And it's not half bad. Much smoother than we're used to and some interesting touches in there, most notably an effected guitar line that hangs in the space over track like a silk scarf floating over concrete.

I think I heard Raised Fist the first time when I was driving to work back one Friday night in 1998. I was into drum'n'bass at the time, but I remember being struck by the way that between the monolithic guitars, the jagged and relentless rhythmic attack the overall effect was something so mechanical.

Not mechanical meaning redundant and lazy. Mechanical meaning a tank five storeys high, come to crush all before it. This was music made with no sequencers or the like that was still post-human. At least to my ears at the time.

Anyways: around 2000 the caught my attention again with their album Ignoring the Guidelines, their update on the New York Youth Crew template, complete with a ferocious cover of the Gorilla Biscuits anthem New Direction. From opening line 'I remember when this was a game!' this album is a densely packed 30 minutes of brutally honest and intelligent examination of the world the hardcore scene and even themselves that somehow manages to avoid sounding sanctimonious or superior.

The irony is that while they asked why so many bands are caught up in endless competition for speed and brutality or whatever, in Guidelines they had created an album that in terms of sheer force at the time blew pretty much everyone else off the map, with Hatebreed hanging onto the edges for their dear lives. Slashing barchords in C#, jackhammer drums, gang vocal backups on beat, the whole nine yards.

In essence, they weren't competing, they were just that good. Of course it didn't hurt that they had the balls to completely strip out everything unnecessary and hammer what was left from iron into steel.

Why was it this good? I don't know. I'm tempted to put it down to hardcore's modernist aesthetic as applied using the Scandinavian Protestant work ethic. Remember, Volvo's don't look cool but they are great for ram-raiding.

And that's what this album does. It's a ram-raid on bullshit.

Commitments in other places (university, work etc) meant that they have never really been that prolific with releases, nor have they really come up with an album as essential or perfectly formed since.

But I'm still going to check out the new album when it comes.

I'm feeling a mite down after reading about the latest on the RIAA v. Tenenbaum case.

For those who haven't heard, a grossly simplified version of the story: a student shared some songs on KaZaa and was caught by the RIAA, who decided to take him to court. For $4.5 million. For 30 songs.

You can read more about it in this open letter published in the Guardian, and on this website.

Okay, maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, but if I went to HMV this afternoon and stole 30 song (that would be say three albums or side A of an Anal Cunt record) and managed to play said albums to some friends before the black-shirted security dudes caught me, I really don't think that I would hear His Master's Voice demanding that I pay $4.5 Million recompense.

Hell, I could steal fifteen seven inch singles, put them in a pillowcase and use said pillowcase full of hipsterish vinyl to beat a child and I still don't think that the fine against me would be anywhere near that high (though to be honest, I 'd hope anyone who did this would get some jailtime with a side order of counselling).

Anyways, long story short, on day three or four of his trial he changed his plea to guilty and now has to pay $675 000. Better than $4.5 million but for the forseeable future he's still screwed.

So let me say this as a musician (albeit not one who makes a living from music):

Learning how the music industry industry works is one of the most disillusioning things a creative person can embark on, because the more you scratch back the layers the more you see that the industry is run by shysters, spivs and racketeers, all accompanied by the suckerfish that latch on to such things. In any other industry the book-keeping practises the labels use to ensure that the smallest possible royalty cheques are paid to musicians (eg cross collateralization) would be rightfully declared fraudulent. In any other industry the contracts used by the music industry would be laughed out of court as unconstitutional, unequal, unenforceable and just insane. In any other industry the business practises would be rightfully seen as bloated and self defeating. Ask Guy Hands.

I firmly believe the financial woes of the music industry are not just down to downloading. I believe it has as much to do with the shifting demographics of how many people of what age and how much cash they have versus what they are willing to spend it on matters more than the labels are willing to admit.

But if it was downloading that was gutting the major labels, I wouldn't call this a tragedy, and I wouldn't even call it criminal. I'd call it karma.

Because when you spend decades behaving like an ethical vortex you shouldn't cry like a bitch when history decides that your time is up.

I'd would love to issue a call to arms to all with the technical skills necessary to run all manner of attacks on the online arms of the RIAA, the organisation that bankrupts single mothers, teenagers and university students for what ultimately amounts to digital scrumping. But I won't. Because as much as fun as it would be to go all Anonymous on their asses if we're going to win this we need to keep the high ground.

To that end I say wherever possible (if you don't already) boycott the Big Four (Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI) and their one-two-three deep running dogs. This isn't just indie elitism any more. This is war.

-J

I feel like going to a gig.

(checks Stargreen)

Hanzel und Gretyl are playing the Underworld tomorrow. Who's in?

You know what I'd like?

A Twitter reader that would show you new posts in the order that the were posted, running from the last time you clicked in.

Trying to follow @reply conversations is currently akin to eavesdropping on the Sdrawkcab planet in Red Dwarf.

Anyone with coding skills to do make such a thing consider the gauntlet thrown down.

-J

Listening to Simon and Garfunkel on Spotify; right now Sound of Silence.

The arpeggiated guitar lead is off in my right ear, somehow distant and far away.

The bass and the drums (along with the aforementioned lead apparently added by Tom Wilson after the fact) sit in my left ear.

That's not the way we do it these days; I'm not an expert but as far as I know now the kit is mic'd and mixed so that the kick is up the middle, the snare slightly off to one side, the hats off to the left and the other cymbals placed around the mix. The bass is usually close to the kick, sometimes side-chained to a limiter so that it ducks if the kick hits at just the same time, guitars are panned left and right and leads are front and centre, providing cover fire for the vocals.

We do it that way now because over the last sixty or so years sound engineers and producers have been working out what sounds best.

Maybe I'm weird like that, but I kinda enjoy hearing how they did it as they were just figuring these things out.

-J

I just realised that based on the whole MJ digital flurry from last Thursday that to go with my Wikisecond there should also be a Twittersecond.

IE the time it takes for an event to reach pandemic level on Twitter.

In this case the Michael Jackson Twittersecond was was almost nothing.

Woke up at Stupid O'Clock (after going to bed at What-The-Fuck-Are-You-Playing-At AM).

Currently listening to No Fun At All on Spotify.

Something I always loved about NFAA: they way they took the jagged rhythms and staccato riffing of thrash metal and married them to major key tunes and soaring harmonies. I don't know if they were the first to do that, but they did do it as well as anyone and better than most.

I mean, everybody knows Bad Religion have been going since 1980, but I'm sure that their earliest stuff is straight up buzzsaw barchords rather than the stuttering micro-chug familiar to all kids who grew up listening to Slayer. (Of course such assumptions are dangerous, I'd have to cross check to be sure).

I wonder who I would ask if I was looking for a history of melodic hardcore and the cross-pollination with associated genres? I wonder what books have been written on the subject. Anyway, I digress.

Something I just rediscovered on Should Have Known off The Big Knockover (1997): the guitar harmonies at 1:39.  A simple melodic line doubled by another guitar playing one third up. Does the style sound familiar?

Remember that this album was recorded when the great majority of punks (among others) considered the first generation of NWoBHM bands to be incredibly cheesy.

It seems so much great music comes from two things: the willingness to be a musical magpie (grabbing everything that's shiny) and the craftsmanship to put it all together in a way that preserves that which made the original pieces special while making everything fit together to create a fresh and unified whole.

Anyways, that's just been bouncing around my head this morning to the breakneck pace of some classic Swedish skateboard punk.

-J

Wikisecond. n The time between something happening and the relevant entry on Wikipedia being updated.

For example the time elapsed between Michael Schumacher pulling off the white helmet and the Wikipedia entry on The Stig getting updated (and subsequently re-updated as debate raged). If I could remember exactly what time that interview was broadcast I could calculate the Top Gear Wikisecond.

Went to the Coalesce show. They were all churning bass, P-Funk-in-a-blender drums and jagged guitar. Jes the guitarist alone was worth the journey because every drum break he would dance like a Thunderbird whose ketamine had just kicked in.

In short the Coalesce show was brilliant.

Static-X would have been brilliant as well. Annoying how these things clash, isn't it?

-J

In the market racket I found an empty packet in my jacket pocket.

I'm writing subconscious poetry again.

HALP!

Ganked from his twitter feed:

Kieron Gillen interviewed about games journalism at Ready Up!

http://tinyurl.com/njauvy

-J

Friday night Coalesce are playing the Underworld.

Coalesce were one of the earlier bands to recast Amphetamine Reptile type noise-rock in the crucible of mid 90's Hardcore. If that is of interest to any of you out there you could do worse than checking it out.

Tix are about £11.

-J