Today in Were They As Good As I Remember? (And If So Why did I Get Rid Of Their Records?) Corner: Shriekback. Found myself thinking about them for the first time in centuries lately after reading that atrocious Observer Music Monthly article that rhodri linked to on Monday, "Schooled in cool: new literate British bands," and actually got around to listening to the MySpace pages of the new young bands being put forward as the greatest thing in the audible universe since Haysi Fantayzee*.

The Observer piece, if you're too sensible to read it, presents a ragtag group of bands as the New Eccentrics, a not-very-original name for "a new class of smart, literate British bands... challenging the lumbering louts of indie rock". This turns out to mean they're as pretentious and obnoxious as hell but can at least cross the room without vomiting or worshipping Paul Weller and John Lennon. Not being willing to dismiss new bands just because some wannabe Paul Morley has spilled a bibful over them ("an unfolding fusion of the pared-down explorations of modern jazz, the avant-garde textures of post-rock, and dance music's pulsing beats"**) I wanted to hear what they sounded like, because even at my advanced age I worry about missing the latest beaty thing just because their lead singer is called Tarquin and is a prat. And aside from Lightspeed Champion, who are actually rather good in a Prefab Sprout sort of way***, they reminded me mostly of all those bands that were being put forward as the Fabulous New Thing 5 or 10 or 15 years ago, whose names I've forgotten if I ever knew, and who sounded at best like Shriekback.

Which made me want to hear some Shriekback. Unfortunately the tracks I remember most fondly ("All Lined Up" and "My Spine is the Bassline") were recorded at a time when studio technology was at its most obnoxious, when everything aspired to the slap bass MIDI setting and adjectives like "gelatinous" and "spongy" are unavoidable. Which is a shame.

And the videos.... dear me, don't go there.

_____________
* The missing link between The Pipkins and The Fiery Furnaces. No, really.
** As you'd expect the band described this way sound about as far from this feverish description as you can get without being entirely silent.
*** Although his songs seem to be almost over before they really get going.

Listening to Boxcutter's Glyphic from last year and it feels both comforting and strange to return to a style of music I stopped listening to a decade ago. It's pretty much what the kids used to call IDM but with the emphasis on the rumbling dubstep mutation of drum and bass and soulful rather than the freakish vocal samples you used to get on Plaid, Wagon Christ and u-Ziq albums. I rather lost touch with the genre when it started to get a little too silly (circa 1997's Spunk Jazz compilation), leaving the albums untouched on the shelves and moving on to old krautrock, "electric period" Miles Davis and folk instead. But it's all cyclic (so don't throw anything away kids, you'll want to hear it again in ten years time) and although it doesn't make me want to shout "wow, this is the only music I want to listen to!" this skittering, moody electronica is pleasantly exhilarating stuff. It does come dangerously close to soundtrack music for extreme skiing though.

Here's a picture of something. I like the idea of taking photographs and forgetting what they are of. The infra red filter helps, turning cloudy skies and supermarket parking lot fixtures into alien landscapes.



Also listening to tracks from the reissue of Ze's Mutant Disco from 1981. This is what the hip clubs in Leeds were playing on Saturday nights around that time, mixed in with earliest tendrils of Goth like Danse Society, UK Decay and B-Movie. It's hard to believe there could have been a time when the fishnets and hairspray crowd would happily cavort on the dancefloor to Coati Mundi's "Que Pasa/Me No Pop I" (gosh, insanely fast version on YouTube - shame the sound sucks) in between "Happy House" and "The Passenger". Very schizophrenic, you could easily break a heel switching from exuberant Latin rap to the gloomy bedsit shuffle. Or maybe I'm getting my chronology messed up.