We're pretty stoked to be going on tour with our friends Peggy Sue next March and April, in Europe and the UK. You can check out the dates in the Live section, here:
So, some time ago I discovered, through the long arms of the internet, the basic back story of the Norwegian Black Metal scene, as it originated in the 90s. I got into listening to a number of the more famous bands from the 1st wave of Black Metal, and a couple that were more recent. This also led me to discover some of their more progressive offspring in US Black Metal, such as Liturgy and Wolves in the Throne Room. I don't know anything more about it than most, and metal of any sort is not the principle genre of music I listen to, although I've always had a soft spot for it.
All that explains a little bit why I was interested when, fairly recently, Varg Vikernes, the man behind Burzum, was arrested in France, said to be under suspicion of 'plotting a massacre'. I was already aware that the man was an unpleasant human being, given that the one thing everyone knows who's heard about him is that he was responsible for the murder of his band mate Oystein Aarseth (aka Euronymous) whilst the two were playing in Mayhem. Doing a quick bit of reading, I learnt that he owned several rifles with ammunition, and had been sent a copy of a manifesto by Anders Brevik, who is responsible for the horrendous attack in Norway, 2011, which claimed a total of 77 lives. A cursory scan of Vikernes' blog reveals that, whilst he publically disowned any involvement or sympathy with Brevik (he wrote that he 'hoped Brevik would kill himself', and that he had 'made a big mistake'), he is also a massive racist and an anti-semite.
Prior to this, I had only listened sparingly to Burzum's output, although I had liked some of what I heard. The band I have mostly listened to within Norwegian Black Metal are newer, and are called Gorgoroth, meaning 'Terror', (which sounds bad-ass, but actually it means terror in a made-up language from Lord of the Rings, which is possibly less so). Their image and attitude is expressedly 'satanic', and anti-Christian, which incidentally is not something I have a problem with. They have attracted their own share of controversy, for example for a gig in Prague, where they performed behind rows of severed sheep's heads and flanked by naked people standing on crucifixes, with their heads covered.
Their frontman Gaahl has been jailed in the past for assaulting someone over a long period of time (some six hours), although he claimed he acted in self-defence. An interesting fact about him is that he's openly gay, which I believe is a rare thing in a scene that apparently contains a lot of homophobia.
Anyway, the whole thing with Vikernes made me think about what degree of dick-headed-ness it's acceptable to tolerate or condone in musicians whose music you listen to. At what point does someone tip over from being personally disagreeable to being someone whose music you will not support or listen to out of principal? Perhaps for some people there isn't actually such a point. I'm interested to see that it's possible to buy Charles Manson albums on Amazon, which to me seems a rather fucked up/morbid thing to do, but it's not my place to interfere with anyone's right to buy or sell them, obviously.
Another example might be the widespread homophobia present in dancehall and ragga, the most famous case of which being Buju Banton's 'Boom Bye Bye', which contains lyrics allegedly supporting the murder of gay men. He did write it when he was 15, so perhaps he's changed his views a bit, but he was also charged in 2004 with being part of a group of 13 men who beat 6 allegedly homosexual men, one of whom lost an eye, so perhaps not, (he wasn't convicted).
Surfer Blood frontman John Paul Pitts was arrested for domestic battery in March last year, accused of beating up his girlfriend, which she alleged had happened before. I wasn't a Surfer Blood super-fan prior to this, but I definitely liked their music, and the incident has definitely affected how I listen to it now. I don't know for sure what I think about it.
However, there's a lot of music that deals with murder or generally horrendous behaviour in a more general sense, that I obviously wouldn't censor or refrain from listening to. Swans famously have a song called 'Raping a Slave', and Swans are great. It seems like there's a blurry line somewhere that needs to be drawn.
I would say that the obvious measure to use is the apparent intentions and character of the musician and how you feel about them. Take those things and react accordingly. There are bands and record labels that I'm always going to want to support, because I respect their stance and attitudes to things so much, like Discord or Constellation bands, and there are people that I'm friends with who make music, whose music I'm always going to have time for because I know they're such awesome people.
Some people whose music I love have probably behaved like dickheads in their personal lives, (eg. Dylan), in terms of relationships and stuff, but I think I'm fine with that. I would start to draw that line when I discover people believe in fascist madness obviously, but also when I learn of or see people being dickheads towards others.
But what about all that great music made in extremities of emotion by unpleasant people? Is it puritanical to suddenly stop listening to it, if you might have enjoyed it to start with? Perhaps a compromise would be to listen to it, but not support the artist by buying their albums or attending their shows, but I reckon that's just an unnecessary amount of double-think.
In the final analysis, what we listen to reflects how we feel about the world and the people in it, and to listen to someone's music and enjoy it you have to get inside their state of mind in some way, and I guess with the music of Burzum, for one, that's not something I'm prepared to do.
We had an awesome time playing End of the Road, as well as hanging out and catching a load of amazing bands. Personal highlights for me were Angel Olsen, David Byrne and St Vincent, Braids, Savages and Bo Ningen, and of course our friends Landshapes, Laish, Rachael Dadd and Ichi.
We'll have some more shows lined up soon, meanwhile we're organising the release of our debut album, which should be out at the end of this year or the start of the next.
In the mean time here's a fan video of David Byrne and St Vincent, in honour of their set, which was euphoric and awesome:
WORD. So, we released our single,thanks loads to everyone who made it down to the launch.
Since then we supported Torres at the Lexington, and Trixie Whitely at the Southbank Centre, in the Purcell Room.
I went to watch David Thomas Broughton play twice, because the man is incredible. He has such a great baritone, and some awesome moves.
This weekend we play Secret Garden Party, on the Forum stage, at 8.30 on Saturday.
(secretgardenparty.com)
Our next gig after that is on the 22nd of August, supporting Ducktails, which is mainly Matt Mondanile from Real Estate. This song is a couple of years old I think, I love it:
There are also a limited number of copies on cd, with a screen printed cover.
I'm happy to announce that we will be supported on the 3rd by Keebo, for some frustrating reason I can't get blogger to embed the video, but this is a link to their song 'Native American', which is a big tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZajLVp_tw
We are very excited to be releasing our debut single on Willkommen Records on the 24th June. It will feature two songs that we've been playing live for some time, 'If No-One Else Saw It' and 'Flying Machine'.
To celebrate we're playing a show at the Shacklewell Arms on July the 3rd. Our friends Wild Palms are going to be dj-ing, and they'll be an as yet undisclosed support band playing too. It feels great to finally be releasing something, and we're stoked about the launch as well.
This is the link to buy tickets for the launch: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/223236
You can buy a ticket for £4, or you can buy a ticket and a copy of the limited edition 7" for £6, which we felt was a nice deal.
So this is basically a post where I get to pretend that I'm on Front Row (on radio 4 yes?), and talk about the things I've been thinking about and reading and watching and stuff. Also, I just wrote a new song which is all about this stuff, which is why it's sort of Eyes & No Eyes related.
I recently read an incredible novel by Philip Roth called 'American Pastoral', set in New Jersey during the Vietnam war, and watched a film called 'The Baader Meinhof Complex', which is based on real events and tells the story of the Red Army Brigade, a faction of left wing terrorists active in Germany, primarily during the seventies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Pastoral http://www.baadermeinhofmovie.com/
The two things feel connected and are both pretty good, (the novel is really really good actually). Both deal with young people during the late sixties and early seventies who were strongly opposed to the war in Vietnam, and connected it to a broader view about American imperialism and the capitalist society of America and Western Europe. And both sets of young people decide that it's justifiable and necessary to reply to the injustices of the state and 'the military industrial complex', as people sometimes used to put it, by using violence.
I don't want to give too much of the plot of the novel away, but it comes at it from the view of the father of someone who resorts to violence, to terrorism basically, and it's pretty heart-wrenching, seeing his agonised bemusement as to why this has happened. He represents the 'establishment' side of things, but the telling thing for me is that he is the one in the novel with whom I have the most sympathy, not the 'revolutionary' youth. Similarly, in the Baader-Meinhof film the terrorist gang are protagonists and sort of anti-heroes, so you kind of feel sympathy for them, but the stuff that they did is straight up wrong as far as I'm concerned, and fairly horrendous at times.
The thing I take from the film and the novel is that any view of the world that divides people into two camps, some of whom are morally virtuous (revolutionaries, the proletariat, etc) and some of whom deserve whatever they get (capitalist oppressors etc etc) is just too simple and is useless, and also dangerous. Stuff is always complicated.
Also, violence is not cool. It doesn't solve anything. Music solves, if not everything, then some things at least, for sure. I actually ended up watching 'The Baader-Meinhof Connection' because of my general interest in German music at the moment, which come to think about it, is what I should be telling you all about, and is probably way more interesting. Oh well. Soon.
It was a pleasure to play this last Friday, in Brighton. The line-up was a great one to be on: us, Soccer 96, S.O.N.A.A. and Damo Suzuki, who was accompanied by a band consisting of our very own Tom and Marcus, on drums and guitar respectively, Patrick and Alistair from Sons, on bass and synth/trumpet, and Danalogue and Beatamax from Soccer 96, on synths and drums. Everyone sounded great, the headline set in particular was incredible.
Also, Innerstrings Psychedelic Lightshow made the whole room look awesome.
Here are some photos: http://brightonmusicblog.co.uk/2013/03/03/willkommens-echo-featuring-damo-suzuki/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/southcoasting/sets/72157632896231722/with/8521036818/
We returned on Sunday from our European tour with buddies and awesome musicians Sons of Noel & Adrian. We had an amazing time and played some great venues. All the promoters and audiences were really nice, and the landscapes and the cities were pretty great. There's a few reviews and photos that people have put up since we passed through, mainly from the first non-UK show in Brussels. The venue, Botanique, is a big arts centre situated next to a park, where, as it happens, our drummer Tom proposed to his wife Sarah, whilst they were on holiday.
Anyway, here's a couple of reviews of the show, fed through google translate, which always provides amusingly weird turns of phrase: http://concerts-review.over-blog.com/article-sons-of-noel-and-adrian-eyes-no-eyes-rotonde-du-botanique-bruxelles-le-16-fevrier-2012-115460227.html
We also had a really nice show the night after Brussels, in Munster, in a venue called Pension Schmidt.
Here's a review, with a few photos as well: http://fietscher.de/?p=837
Also, there are some nice photos of us and S.O.N.A.A. playing on the Pension Schmidt facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/schmidt.pension/photos_stream
I'll flag up anything else as it appears, we are now getting excited about our gig in Brighton on Friday, supporting Soccer 96, S.O.N.A.A. and Damo Suzuki (formerly of Can). Kosmische!
The 1st date will be this coming Friday at the Lexington in Angel, supporting Sons of Noel & Adrian, and also our friends Landshapes, who used to be called Lulu and the Lampshades. This is a video of an older song of theirs:
I am very very pleased to announce that we will be supporting Sons of Noel & Adrian on a European tour starting on the 15th February. It's mostly a tour of Germany, with one date in Brussels and one in Ebensee in Austria, with a London gig on the 15th to start us off. Sons are a band that I've loved for a long time, and I'm pretty stoked to be going on tour with them. This is the video for their song 'Come Run Fun Stella Baby Mother of the World':
In terms of dates and venues, the tour looks like this:
