Inside Nokia Music

I don’t hate football.

That might come as a surprise to some of you, but it’s true. It’s a fun game. I’m not especially good at it, but I genuinely enjoy playing it. Actually, I am surprisingly good at keepie-ups. I can do them with no real effort. Just keep the ball in the air? Simple. It’s only when you introduce other people into the mix that I fall apart. And that’s where my problem with football begins. People.
Football, in and of itself, is a harmless, benign thing. But professional footballers are, to a man, the most awful people who have ever walked the Earth. Preening, smug, overpaid thugs who would just as soon launch a violent attack on you, as they would sexually assault your girlfriend. Look at John Terry. The man is a walking photo-fit picture of every bully you ever went to school with. His eyes make me nervous. They’re tiny and filled with nothing the but cold, black hatred of the damned. And the worrying thing is that people – good people, rational people, intelligent people – tend to become a little bit more like John Terry when they watch football. You can see their IQs dropping as the whistle blows. They huddle together in packs, snarling aggressive, xenophobic epithets and – most damningly – start shouting at TV screens, apparently utterly unaware that the people on the screens can’t actually hear what they’re saying.
Now, I realise this is not exactly revelatory stuff. You’ve probably heard similar bleatings from a million whey-faced, sports-shy non-men in your time. Fine. I’m not trying to be controversial here. I’m simply trying to make you understand why the World Cup leaves me utterly unmoved.

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So, the UK general election is finally upon us. And, what with this being the closest-run contest in twenty years, it has had the politicians beating a path to our very front doors, desperate to prove – against all evidence to the contrary – that they are really just like us.

The focus groups and image consultants have clearly had a field day in the run-up to this election. Just look at the main three contenders when they’re out and about, talking to the public. The ties inevitably come off, the sleeves get rolled up and the pointlessly over-effusive hand gestures would make an epileptic weather girl blush. They desperately want to look normal. They desperately want to look cool. The only problem is, they clearly don’t know what ‘normal’ or ‘cool’ is, having all been raised in diamond-encrusted castles by posh swans. So they let other equally ill-informed people tell them what to do, which always makes them look wildly out of touch with the people they’re meant to be connecting with. I wouldn’t be entirely shocked if my doorbell rang today and I answered it to find David Cameron, dressed up like Keanu Reeves out of the Matrix films, smoking a fag and rapping the main points of his party’s manifesto to a backing track of M.I.A.’s ‘Paper Planes’. That’s how bad it’s got.

The thing is, this is one of the most important elections my generation has seen. I grew up under the Conservatives, then came of age under Labour and it’s always been a clear-cut choice up until now. It was never so much a question of who you wanted in power, more a question of who you didn’t want. But now, with the three main parties being so close in opinion polls and with the televised debates bringing their policies and personalities into sharper focus, it’s the first election that many people of my age have had to really think about. Our actions this week will have major repercussions for years to come. If we choose wisely, we stand a chance of being a truly progressive nation and maybe, just maybe, being happy. But, if we choose wrongly, it will be decades before we can right ourselves again. It’s a genuinely frightening prospect. And, in all honesty, it’s almost too much to think about. Which is why, this week, I’m going to be mainly talking about saxophones.

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Futility is rife.

Have a look around you, right now – I guarantee that there are at least three things occurring in your immediate surroundings that are utterly and irredeemably futile. We live in a world full of worthless activity. And let’s not kid ourselves that it’s a new phenomenon, either. People have always been driven to do utterly pointless things. That’s why mountain climbers exist. And people who buy anti-aging cream.
Personally, I’ve always considered the ‘concept album’ to be one of the most pointless and futile endeavours mankind has ever poured his limited ability into. I guess it’s because I don’t really understand the principle behind them. As far as I’m concerned, all albums should have a concept – a loose set of musical or lyrical ideas running through the songs that brings them together, forming something greater than the sum of its parts. Without this binding thread, all you’ve got is a collection of unrelated songs. That’s not an album. That’s a bad mixtape.

One of the issues I have with the whole idea of concept albums is that, more often than not, it turns out that the “concept” is either unbelievably vague, or not actually a concept at all. Take two of the most famous examples: The Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon”.

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If you haven’t yet heard the name Alex Gardner, don’t worry. . .you soon will. With coveted support slots for the likes of Paolo Nutini, Mika and Paloma Faith already firmly under his belt, this 18 year old from Edinburgh is on a fast track to success.

If you were to ask most 18 year olds about their musical heroes, they probably wouldn’t be able to name any artists that were around before 1980, but Alex reels off a veritable who’s who of old-school legends such as Frank Sinatra, Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley. Marvin Gaye stands out for him at the moment, but he laughs, “If you ask me again tomorrow, I’ll say something completely different. My mp3 player has a bit of everything on it – from Mos Def and Kanye to Sinatra”

Born into a musical family, he says he never felt any pressure to be a musician. “I just always had music around me as a kid. I’m a 90s child, but I had all these different influences from different ages floating around and that kind of rubs off on you”.

As far as inspiring contemporary acts go, his response is immediate, “Miike Snow”, he says with no hesitation, “they are just amazing. I’d love to go on tour with them.”

His rapid rise is in no small part thanks to Brian Higgins, director of Xenomania, the songwriting and production team behind a multitude of hit songs from Cher, Pet Shop Boys and the vast majority of Girls Aloud’s output.

It was only a year an a half ago that Alex went on a failed audition to join a band in London. “It was weird”, he remembers, “I looked around and I was ten years younger than anyone else. They all had haircuts and these real fashionable clothes. I turned up in jeans and a tshirt. I didn’t get it”. Despite not being asked to join the unnamed band, the audition was a turning point in Alex’s career. “A couple of days later, I got a call saying that I didn’t get in the band, but that a guy named Brian Higgins had been there and wanted to see me again”.

Eighteen short months later and Alex is signed to Higgin’s Xenomania label and is nearing completion of his debut album. Despite the fact that Xenomania have a proven track record for writing hits, he says he’s not interested in just being handed a fully-formed song to perform. “Obviously, I know how amazing Xenomania are at what they do, and what a priviledge it is for me to be able work with them, but one thing I insisted upon at the beginning was being a co-writer on this album. I know I’m only 18, but I still have a story to tell. Some of the songs on the album use recycled lyrics from songs I wrote when I was 13.”

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So Mark Linkous has joined the long list of musicians I love who have committed suicide. Over the weekend it appears that the man who was Sparklehorse took an overdose with the express intention of ending his own life.

Now, Linkous never became a household name, even amongst ardent music fans – and even after suffering a potentially career-enhancing, near-fatal overdose back in 1996 – but Sparklehorse became a cherished part of my music collection over the years. Linkous’ strange, delicate voice and sparse, fragile arrangements were the first thing I reached for when I wanted to wallow in, or be lifted out, of my own misery. Nobody wrote sad songs steeped in Americana quite like him, and nobody seemed willfully experimental enough to pepper his albums with odd, harsh noise or bizarrely evocative lyrical imagery (his frequent mentions of horses and teeth bordered on the obsessive) like him.

Songs like “Homecoming Queen” and “Saturday” from the debut Sparklehorse album “vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot” are masterclasses in quiet, restrained, and deeply sad beauty.

But the song I’ll remember him most for is “Sea of Teeth” from the album “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The first time I heard it, it opened up something inside of me that I can’t really explain. It’s quite simply one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.

If you’ve never heard any Sparklehorse, now is as good a time as any to start listening, and this is as good a song as any to start with.

R.I.P.

I don’t know how anything works.
There, I said it.
Technology is something I use every hour of every day – I would frankly be lost in a sea of utter pointlessness if it didn’t exist – but I really don’t know how any of it actually works.
I mean, OK, I understand the vague overall concepts of binary, electricity, light and sound, but getting me to explain how stuff like computers, phones, mp3 players and televisions work using those concepts would be like asking a bluebottle to explain the finer points of Euclidean geometry. The very best it could do would be to vomit on a piece of rotting meat, then suck up the resulting, semi-digested, viscous fluid through its proboscis, which you’d have to agree, probably isn’t the most full and accurate of explanations.
The thing is, I don’t think the vast majority of us are meant to know how these things work. Our brains don’t operate that way. Just look at the way people act on planes. It’s easier and much less distressing just to switch off the part of your brain that whispers in a panicked voice, “Heavy. This thing’s really heavy. How the hell is it staying in the air?” and just enjoy the pretty, pretty clouds. Look, that one’s shaped like dumb ignorance. Beautiful.
The thing is, the way I feel about technology is, I reckon, the way the vast majority of people feel about music. It’s everywhere. It’s essential to our lives. We love it, and our existence would be infinitely less interesting if it didn’t exist. But we don’t know how it works. And thinking about the mechanics of it leaves us cold.
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Right, you lot. You’ll be glad to know that this is the final blog posting. I’ve got to find some way to condense all these posts into a manageable 600 words for Venue magazine now. Yeesh.

Have:

Friday 4th February

Last night was one of the quietest gigs we’ve done so far. The actual place was lovely, but there was a big gig in a club just 200 metres or so down the road, so it was pretty empty. Still, they had a piano, so I got to vary my set a little. Thomas also asked me to play piano on his song “Razorblades”, which I did. Was worried that I was doing too much over what should have been a beautiful, sparse, looped song, but Thomas reassured me that it was all good. I seem to be flitting between arrogant over-confidence and crippling under-confidence at the moment. Welcome to my brain.

I don’t know how Tom managed it, but he sounded great last night, despite the hole in his mouth.

I sell one CD, which I’m OK with, given the paucity of the crowd, then get in the car for the long drive back to Hamburg.

Today, we woke up, had a delicious breakfast at Thomas’s studio, then wandered around town while Thomas got his face filled in at the dentist. We go into a cowboy boot shop – Geoff’s been thinking about getting a pair for ages apparently. The guy in the shop is a German, but is dressed like an American. Well, he’s dressed like the idea of an American, anyway. But he does speak very good English. He shows us lots of boots that are WAY out of Geoff’s price range. Then Eddy picks up a pair of beautifully crafted, but frankly hideous boots. He taps the soles and says, almost to himself, “is that a wooden sole?”. The salesman instantly bursts out laughing. He mercilessly mocks Eddy for the next five minutes: “Oh, ahahahaaa! Is it wood?! A wooden-soled boot! HAHAHAHahahaha!”. Apparently it’s HILARIOUS to him. And it soon becomes pretty hilarious to me and Geoff too. All of a sudden, I can’t stop laughing. The shop owner thinks I’m laughing at Eddy with him, so it just encourages him. “Wood! Haha. He’s gone quiet now hasn’t he? Hahahahaha. Wood!”. My face hurts from laughing so much. I find it odd that something so niche could be so funny to him. It’s the equivalent of me getting all hysterical at someone thinking my Boss Rc-20 loop machine was a Boss Rc-50 loop machine. “Ahahahha! He thought it was the Rc-50! Hahaha! But it has no midi functionality! Hahahah. He’s an idiot.”

Weird.

When Thomas comes out of the dentist, he looks like he’s in agony. There’s only a few days left of the tour now. I hope he can hold out for it. It would be really weird if he couldn’t play, even for one night. . .

He seems to be OK for driving though, so we head over to Bremerhaven. We’ve got a gig in a cinema tonight, apparently.

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Yeah, it’s been ages since my last one. Bite me. I’m on tour. You’re lucky I haven’t just got some willing, nubile groupie to write this.

God, I can’t pull that off at all, can I?

Tuesday 18th January

When I was about 9 years old, I made a remote control car. I used to dismantle electrical goods just to see what was inside. I had no intention of putting them back together or fixing some imagined problem. . .I just wanted to make low grade, and ultimately pretty shabby, toys out of them. To this end, I broke open two Walkmans (which I got in serious trouble for – my Mum rarely shared my radical ideas for product enhancement), took out their tiny motors and attached wheels to each one. Then I mounted them on a piece of balsa wood and ran tiny wires out of them – one to each hand, where I held an AA battery in each clammy, youthful paw. The resulting “car” would go forward when I touched the bare wires onto both batteries, and off to the side when I touched the wires to only one battery. It was great, and had only two major drawbacks. The wires were short, so I was often to be found running around the house after my bit of wood, bumping into furniture and generally making a nuisance of myself. They were also – as I mentioned – bare wires, which meant that every time I wanted the ‘car’ to move, I would burn my thumbs quite badly. 

Still, that piece of electrified balsa wood was at least 20% more ergonomically designed, and at least 50% safer than the flying coffin I am writing this in. 

There are 18 people on board this flight to Bremen, Germany. 18 businessmen. The sort of people who refer to each other only by their surnames and say things like “This is Hardacre from the Bristol office. People who upset him don’t stay alive for long”. I honestly, genuinely heard a man say this tonight. What with the turbulence, the single, seemingly overwhelmed steward, the businessmen and the tiny plane, I’ve been contemplating death over Europe quite a bit over the last couple of hours. 

The conclusion I’ve come to is this: if this plane should plunge into the ocean, at least I’ll die doing what I love. Hurtling towards the ground in a big metal tube, surrounded by dicks.

First gig tomorrow. Amsterdam. Let’s hope I make it.

Wednesday 19th January

Well, I made it. Got picked up at the airport by the guy who’s putting on this tour. He’s a man called Heiko, and without him, I (and the other musicians on this tour) would be lost. He’s booked the gigs and told us how to get there and what to expect. There are two other acts on the same circuit as me – a band called Outroads from Sheffield and a solo act called Astrid’s Farm from Hamburg. It looks like we’ll all get along, I think. 

Well, they didn’t seem instantly disgusted by my sarcasm and potty-mouth, anyway. That’s a good start.

Thomas (Astrid’s Farm) has a beaten up old Volvo, so we’ll be using that to get from gig to gig. First stop is Amsterdam.

I always thought it was just tourists that smoked themselves senseless in Amsterdam, and that regular Dutch folks kind of looked down on that sort of thing. Not so, apparently. The owner of the cafe/bar/bike rental shop that we are playing in tonight appears to be half-baked at 3.30pm, even managing to set fire to a tea-towel during our soundcheck. 

As it happens, the turn-out is pretty low tonight, which is no bad thing, as the three acts have a chance to suss each other out before the three week tour starts properly. I immediately get nervous. The other two acts are purely acoustic. Astrid’s Farm is a guy with a beautifully clear voice and a song-writing style that leans towards Paul McCartney. Outroads normally play as a six- or seven-piece, but for this tour they’re stripped down to two – a gravelly-voiced guitarist/singer named Geoff and a slide guitarist/harmonica player named Eddy. It’s a simple set-up, and they’re really very good. I, on the other hand, have an electric guitar, a synth, two midi-controllers, a laptop, three loopers and a sackful of cables. So. . .how is this going to work?

Thursday 20th January

Gig last night was OK, but not great. Think I need to rethink my approach to this tour before it starts properly. Resolve only to play the big electronica set when it’s appropriate. Need to come up with acoustic versions of some songs pretty cocking quickly. After the gig, as none of us particularly wanted to get wasted, we decided to head down to the red light district to see if we could make some quick money busking. Now. . .I’ve never busked. The idea scares me, frankly. Don’t particularly want to be that close to the people I’m playing to. . .what if they really don’t like it? Anyway, I was persuaded by Geoff and Eddy. They’ve done it before and are up for doing as much playing here as possible, which is a good attitude, so I think I’ll adopt it too. 

Turns out that busking is great fun. And a bit of a money-maker. We made more money in 40 minutes of busking to pot-heads than we did from the gig. We’ll be doing this again, I hope.

We were joined today by a lovely girl from Estonia called Katri. . .she’ll be documenting the tour for a blog, taking photos and filming us and generally capturing all of our disgusting habits for posterity. We should have lots of footage from this. Looking forward to making all my friends sit down and watch it interminably.

Today is a two gig day, both of which are in a beautiful Dutch city called Groningen. The one in a record shop in the daytime goes by pretty uneventfully. I try a couple of acoustic versions and a couple of semi-acoustic ones using two loop pedals. They seem to go down OK, so I’ll keep that in mind. Tonight’s show is in a club called Platformtheater. . .

Friday 21st January

Wake up late. Really late. We’ve got a gig in Germany tonight and we need to go back to the club and pick up our stuff. Dry mouth. Very dry mouth. Last night turned into a big party. We all played well I think. I did a full electronica set that seemed to go well. One small downer: after my normal set, they asked for another song (an ‘encore’, I believe it’s called). . .I wasn’t prepared, and did an ill-advised, just-guitar version of my song “Target”. Shouldn’t have, I don’t think. It wasn’t very good. Should have left them wanting more. Must remember that too. We all had a few tequilas after the show, then the owner asked for more music, so Outroads did another short set and I joined them onstage for a few. Sang the chorus of one of their songs – “Gravey” – with them. Brilliant fun. Sold a few CDs too. Then we sat up drinking until the small hours together. We all seem to get on really well. This tour’s shaping up nicely. 

In Schwanewede tonight. No idea where that is. I have no sense of direction, and I’m not about to start growing one now. Luckily, Eddy doesn’t seem to have one either, so I don’t feel so bad. Thomas and Geoff, on the other hand, seem to be able to find their way around without our help, so it’s fine. It also appears that Eddy and I share a love of bad puns and jokes that don’t really work. I think we’re going to start annoying the others soon. . .

Saturday 22nd January

Sweet. Baby. Jesus. I feel rough. I haven’t got out of bed all day and now it’s time to go to Hamburg for another gig. It’s 4.30pm. I feel like death. This tour is going to kill me. Last night was amazing. It was the first one that Heiko has been to, so he was quite keen to see how we were getting on (and whether he’d made a massive mistake booking us!). It was a strange venue. . .I think we’ll be playing a lot of strange venues on this tour. It seemed to be a high-class eating establishment, not too far from the flat that we’re staying in in Bremen. They’d put us in a beautiful room, and Heiko had made it look lovely with lights and decorations. I did a purely acoustic set this time, with lots of looping. I also managed to persuade Thomas to play guitar with me on one song (with no real rehearsal) and Eddy to play harmonica on another. They both did brilliantly, raising both songs to something much better than I could do on my own. Thomas and I both joined Outroads for “Gravey” again. We’re mixing and matching so much now that, by the end of the tour, we’re probably just going to be one big band.

Last night we all played the best gigs of the tour so far, and made a fair bit of money through CD sales and the hat that always seems to get passed around at gigs over here, so we decided to celebrate by getting a few beers and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. That was a mistake. I feel awful now. We stayed up til 4am drinking. Do not drink a quarter bottle of Johnnie Walker after a couple of beers and two big glasses of red wine. I cannot stress this enough. You will hurt inside. Tonight we play in Hamburg and I can barely move my head. Not sure about this. Not sure about this at all.