According to her web site, the marvelous Martina Topley Bird is going to be supporting the Frankenstein's Monster, The Early Years that is Jamie Callum... Wow, a real-life musical gulag. I can't believe he's still around. I can't believe more people don't know Martina's still around. And I'm sure Callum's a really nice lad but that whole marketing / P.R. perception of 'jazz singer' is so naff and basically M.O.R. and just totally un-jazz-like.

Do people actually call it jazz just because it's got blue notes, a bit of swing and a bit of Frank in it? I mean I can't make a chord shape anymore without automatically making it a 9th / major 2nd {they sound much nicer to my ears and they're actually easier to play on a guitar} - but that doesn't mean we're jazz! Actually I was told it would mean we'd sound like Lionel Richie...

{That bit was maybe a bit too muso wasn't it? Sorry. This is a music blog after all.}

Picture the scene: record companies start coming up with facts {or 'statistics'} to show that jazz is going to be the next big thing. Real jazz. So they assemble a few teen wannabees, all the right image-consultancy / production values etc. and present to the world a For Real jazz ensemble: a bunch of troubled, egotistical, chaotic, anarchic, tragic, smug, obtuse, alcoholic, heroin-addicted, sexually subversive nihilists who wear shades 24 hours a day and have a general approach to the rest of the world that even make flowers angry.

They'll drink neat gin by the pint, brush their teeth with raw cocaine, wear the same clothes for months on end, and play music that is so loud, so fast, and so alien that it causes the kind of physical, psychological and emotional damage usually only suffered by the innocent, well-balanced 'native-folk' of distant, wholesome un-capitalist shores at the hands of crusading / marauding Christians. And the general public will find them freakish, offensive, frightening and generally 'gay'...

See when I get up on this, one of many soap boxes, I'm always told "yeah, Jamie Callum isn't really jazz but hey, he's turning on a lot of people to jazz" - but generally speaking I don't think that's true. The majority of the target audience for that brand of "buy this record so you can say you like jazz without actually having to listen to jazz, or go out of your way to find out about jazz, or actually buy a jazz record" won't be bothered to take it any further.

It was the same with New CoUNTry a few years ago. I'm sure it's been said on the schvtrn web site before, but it seems like the majority of music that's put out these days is providing a product for people who like the idea of owning lots of CD's and being seen as someone who likes music, but who don't actually enjoy listening to music. Anyway, I won't go on about it anymore {for now}.

I suppose it would at least be funny to see someone market a drone-rock pop star. Boy Blands dirging, whispering platitudes, getting visibly upset as they shake their battered-yet-vintagely-expensive guitars, looking glum / tragic / stoned. Playing non-rock instruments in a 'serious' manner. Actually Radiohead weren't far off. And I wonder if my dislike of them has more to do with jealousy rather than resenting the site and sound of them appropriate and drop grunge, Talk Talk style post-rock, Warpish abstractions etc. Even wealthy upper-class English white boys have a right to be miserable now and then, it just seems odd that they'd want to make a career out of it.

So I think I might be getting a cold. I've spent the week sitting here in a draft because I can't be bothered to leave my desk and put more clothes on, and I like having the window open because it:

a: it reminds me I live by the sea,

b: that summer is on it's way,

c: that the rest of the world is just as full of lost, tragic, mentally and emotionally disturbed drunks as the building in which I live.

In odder news, it seems that the new and 'improved' {i.e. full of 'neat' little lo-fi dynamic .html / Flashy bits that apparently serve no purpose whatsoever} Garbage site is useless unless you pay for it. Things like their discussion forum are only available to paying customers.

It actually all sounds like some kind of internet porn thing: paying subscribers get access to the "Members only web site featuring intimate, behind-the-scenes video...." Certainly, Shirley is a thing of wonder, but I don't need to watch the woman play with herself to appreciate what she does... I mean, it's a lovely thought, but still...

On the other hand, considering that people are just as likely to illegally / legally download your music as they are to go to a store and illegally / legally acquire your 'product', maybe it makes sense to attempt to recoup some of that loss. After all, we live in a world rife with capitalism, where if it's free it doesn't taste as good, where recycling expensive wine bottles is just as cool as wearing equally expensive trainers assembled by the hands of slave children. Cool. Yeah. Really cool. So cool it's cold.

Share the wealth. Share the ill health.

Rant over, I wonder if it would be interesting to 'release an ep' that is all-downloadable. The only hard-copy being the version you put together yourself. I wonder how many people, when downloading sounds, print off sleeves and inlays and stuff as well? I haven't even burned an audio CD for myself in ages.

See, I want people to play our CD's and listen to the .mp3's. But I hardly ever play CD's anymore, let alone go out or go on-line and buy them. I'm an .mp3 person I'm afraid - but I also still listen to analogy tapes, minidisk, and I really want to get a new turntable soon cause vinyl is the best quality format that your ears can take for the most extended periods without bleeding. I'm certainly listening to music a whole lot more these days.

When I first started making music in the late 90's I hardly listened to music at all. I basically listened to nothing but things like Main for years. It took me a long time to open-up to music again - particularly the idea that it's OK to have a 'tune'. I've said it many times but basically I think growing up in a house where the likes of Yes, Led Zep and Sabbath were on constant rotation at full volume really put me off guitars, and music in general, for a long time. It was only getting into Curve and The Chameleons that made me see / hear / feel that you could still make some fantastic sounds with a guitar.

So yeah, what if really high-quality .mp3's were available as well as artwork and 'sleeve notes'? A cut-out and keep ep? That's the thing I miss I think - the sleeve-notes, the obscure jokes, the overly-elaborate artwork. I grew up in a house where vinyl was the thing - big gate-fold things. Big artwork. Big concepts.

It's interesting now where you have generations of people growing up only having access to digital sound and images - what effect that'll have - in the sense that the ears and the eyes {and the rest of the body} can receive digital info for shorter periods than analog info before they start to get tired. So does it lessen interest, or do we adapt?

I've been listening to some of the more earlier / mid period Talk Talk stuff. I've always loved the sound of Mark Hollis's voice, their overall approach to sound, the sudden bursts of noise mixed with the real intimate quiet moments {Grunge anyone? Industrial anyone? Post Rock anyone? DrumNbass anyone?} but I often thought that - for the most part - the rhythm section was a bit plodding and unimaginative - defaulting to the vocal and the dronage {which is at odds with the way they talked about every instrument being equal, including voices}.

So it's a bit odd to realize that some of my beats sound like their early stuff - maybe just in terms of the production.

Note to self: stop listening to music when your ears start bleeding.


The Mekano Set

Hello. This will be short cause I am tired and in need of cake {the foodstuff rather than the 'made-up-drug'}. Last night we went to see La Frange who were inexplicably entertaining. We won but did not receive their CD in the raffle. By the time we found the winning ticket they let someone else have it. Doh!

Listening to P J Harvey's excellent Good Fortune {like Patti Smith much?} and some early stuff by The Chameleons. Oh and the brilliant soundtrack to the brilliant 'Company of Wolves' movie. Oh and some 'uncommonly good' The Steam Age remixes of some of our stuff. Will put .mp3's of these up soon.

Listening to a bit of the Throbbing Gristle concert from last year and waiting to see if I can hear me yelling 'hello' once too often.

More tomorrow. Tired. Cake. Sleep.

The Mekano Set

I told you I'd be back!

Well, i always sing quieter during the set than i do at the sound check, i do it deliberately to throw the sound engineer. Joking & sarcasm aside though, there's a big difference between singing quietly & the Mic being off completely. i don't mind fuck ups but when it gets to the point when we have to stop a song, it's a little embarassing & just brings my mood down a little. It doesn't help when we can't hear the track either. But mistakes happen & eventually i just closed my eyes, hid behind my fringe & pretended there wasn't anyone else there and got into it for the last few tracks. Anyway, I enjoyed hanging out with people & it's a gig and i'm thankful for any gig.

I've listened to the new Nine Inch Nails album. I really like it! It's still NIN & there's some really good stuff on it! The new single seems poppier than a lot of his stuff but i think it's great & i can't wait to hear it nice and loud at a club where i can have a little dance to it. I'm more uplifted by it than i was when i listened to the new Garbage album. Again, there's some good stuff on it, I think they're just dumbing down a bit though! I still have the world of respect for Shirley, she's still a classy girl & a great front person.

I'm listening to The Dreaming at the moment. Kate's production really is ahead of it's time.

Oh, and not to forget that the great La Frange are playing at the Albert on Saturday 23rd april!! Excellent!!

Anyway, more later


The Mekano Set

Phew.. looks like i might have remembered how to do this!!

This is just a quick thing, to say that Diamond Family Archive are playing upstairs at Audio in Brighton tonight. They are fantastic so, if anyone reads this, come along.

Will write more later..!





The Mekano Set

Right, I've been debating whether to post this or not, weighing up the funny against the not-funny, but I've decided there's enough comic-relief in it to be worth the effort. I know that none of the below is particularly important or even particularly helpful, I'm just including it for the curious, and because I can, and because it's all in-keeping with the 'crazy, misfortunate world' of 'Finn, Milk and Saint' .

And so, Ladies, Gentlemen, children of Dead Forever Earth, I give you, Finn... Milk... Saint... together they are... The Mekano Set. Beset by misfortune, alcohol and medication... if you need music, and you can find them, they will entertain you.

So last friday was another live one, and our first in London as The Mekano Set. Personally I was brimming with sass and fun, right up until we started playing and realized the sound engineers {there were three of them} had forgotten to turn the mics on...

The AllManna evening takes place in Kilburn, in a late 1950's style bar where you can easily picture the cast of Only Fools & Horses {a slightly offensive British Sit-Com centred around two 'working class' {Stereotype Number 64} London brothers}, Philip Larkin {a more than slightly offensive British writer {Stereotype Number 14}}, and Alan Bennett {a slightly lovable British miserablist, writer and performer {See Morrissey}} 'enjoying' a smoke and a pint of mild. Squarey furniture. Everything in beige / coffee coloured check. Kilburn actually reminded me of a quieter Handsworth.

Headliner's 100 Bullets Back cancelled, and Xyla split up, so the night was left to us, Steven Tyman, and Allmanna DJ John.

Everybody agreed that John seems to work really hard to put these nights together. Actually when we got off the tube @ Kilburn he was just round the corner handing out flyers. Star.

Steven Tyman was insane, a sort of Turretian Troubadour, occassionally singing so loud he didn't need the PA at all, stopping songs half-way through to make an observation or irrelevant comment, annoucing every song as 'this is the last song'. Exactly how I like my singer-songwriters.



Garbage are on TOTP now. Shirley looks bored. Or is she just behaving like a grown up? She still looks great but she didn't seem to have 'the sass'. Maybe that's what being on TOTP does to you. She looks bored in the video as well, even in the bits where she's not supposed to. They've gone very heavy-guitar-heavy which is a shame cause there's enough metal around already.

The Allmanna crew were a nice welcoming bunch and it was good to see a couple of old mates turn up. I was feeling really confident and full of fun and energy, but when we were sound checking it was obvious that the three girls doing the sound didn't really know what they were doing.

We went on and into AllWords and they'd obviously turned the mics off @ the mixer, and had forgotten to turn them back on.

A minute passed and they still weren't on. So we had to stop and ask for directions.

They eventually turned Beth's mic back up in the mix, but the monitor that had been nice and loud during the soundcheck remained virtually inaudible {to the extent that we could barely hear the beats and barely make one or two of the set's quick-change / false-ending type things}, and they decided to leave my mic off for most of the set {presumably because, as they'd said earlier, 'please stop him singing'}.

Oddly, after we were done, apparently the soundies told people {apart from us} that the problem was Beth, singing quieter during the set than she did during the soundcheck.

That is of course bizarre, and nonsense, {"the mics were simply not on man!"] and it's also irrelevant, because how would that explain why the monitor was so quiet, or how my mic wasn't on at all.

I can take the cheeky criticism, cause that was an ice-breaker, even if it's inappropriate, but blaming us for you having to work with dodgy equipment, or even your lack of expertise, that's too much.

Just say you fucked up, or the equipment fucked up. Don't blame someone else, least of all someone who's treated you with respect and humour.

Shame. There was a point where we were waiting for them to sort the sound out where we were deciding whether to carry on as normal or just go mental and scream and dirge away in protest. We just soldiered on, and by the last three or four tunes we managed to just get lost in it regardless.

Aparrently it didn't sound bad out-front, but it would have been nice to hear it ourselves too!

I actually think perhaps what we need is to have a mixer / sound-person as a fourth member, someone who knows how we want to sound.

Not using amps or acoustic drums leaves us so much at the mercy of the sound engineer. Vocals go through guitar effects, the guitar doesn't sound anything like a guitar for most of the time, we use samples of sounds like feedback so it wouldn't be an easy task. But anyone can turn a mic on, surely...

The 100 Best albums is on now. Sting has a really great voice. It's a shame he's so fake.

The last two gigs we've done {both @ The Providence in Brighton, two different sound engineers} we've let the house mix the mics and the bass, and that's the best we've sounded so far - and with 4ucking loud monitors and very-loud and very-quiet vocal parts. So it's NOT simply our funny set-up and it's not even because we don't use amps.

We also survived the trip back to Brighton and it's reassuring to know we can make the trip without difficulty. So it hasn't put us off and we're ready for more.

Oh there was a documentary and concert on BBC 4 on friday night about Ivor Cutler! I didn't get to see it, but hopefully it's been taped and I'll get to see it soon. Ivor rules!

Friday I was overcome by a need to sing {a lot of weird things have been happening in the building where I live and I've been trying to keep the noise levels down but I couldn't stay quiet any longer} and so I turned my kitchen into a vocal booth for an afternoon, insulating against mental neighbours by hanging a load of heavy coats over the door and doing the washing up at the same time. I sound particularly bad when I try and be quiet but I can't help myself. Funny, I'm totally care-free when playing stuff in-front of a crowd but when it's just me and the neighbours, or just me and other band members I totally clam up and bottle it.

While we look for some more gigs we're also putting the finishing touches to a couple of tracks. There are one or two things that have some more organic elements which I'm happy about - singalong chorus's and catchy bits but still full of quirks and noise. I'm also working on a couple more anthemic / urgent things that I've had lying around for ages but need the right sound and mix to really come across properly. Lots more tricks up our sleeves.

This song 'To the Dog House' we've been working on for weeks and weeks now has well-over 40 layers of sound and still doesn't sound big enough. I guess it's going to be impossible to do live which is a bit tragic.

Oh we saw Blanket upstairs @ Audio last week and they're starting to sound much more interesting to my ears - lo-fi drum machines rule! Wicked venue or what?

The Mekano Set

So friday was really great fun and really intense. A wicked night. I was sort of out of breath at the end of each song, and it's not like I'm doing anything particularly energetic. I want to post more but I'm in need of some sleep so I'll just remind you that we're playing live on friday night in London @ the All Manna night so come along if you can it's going to be an interesting and fun eve I hope.

I should also mention that, although we'll still probably do the odd night as a duo {and still have the odd novelty-guest-instrument or six} Patrick 'The Saint' Crean has been appointed our 'live bassist'. {that is as long as we can still get gigs!} Cool! So I'm now the only English member of The Set {and I'm only half English}. How Brighton is that?

The Mekano Set