Frank Serpico Was An Idiot

I hate to be defeated by a film when I know it isn’t a bad one. I avoid bad ones, obviously. I have known people in the past who love cinema so much that they’ll go out of curiosity or interest in film generally. Sounds insane to me, but there’s no accounting for the ways of folk and how they consume culture, eh?

  
I knew a girl (well, didn’t know, just worked with her...actually, not with her, but for the same company and she was alright, you know, in the way that some people at work are alright meaning they are among the least boring people in the place) – anyway, she had some cheap deal at a cinema and would go just for that reason. When she told me this, my amazing powers of perception suggested that she was not the greatest connoisseur of film. She loved ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. After she told me that I still talked to her. That’s how boring most of the people in that place were.

  
I’ve known someone who walked out of ‘Blue Velvet’; well, she was a sensitive girl and I could understand it. After all, Frank was a superior screen psycho, wasn’t he?

 
Now, watching films in the bunker, as I always do, the ease with which I can do so combined with the low cost of many DVDs equates to an easy-come-easy go scenario whereby I stop watching some. And I used to think of myself as a dedicated, ie determined film fan. After all, I bought the damn thing, didn’t I? The curiosity factor which made that girl go on her cheap cinema ticket has now entered my life. When films are £3 or £5 in Fopp, how can you resist making like a cat?

  
Buy a ticket at the cinema and you’re committed. Buy a cheap DVD and – huh – so what if you don’t finish it. I worry that as with music the easy availability is cheapening the film-watching experience. I have DVDs stacked up that I’ve yet to watch. Some have been there months. Is there a doctor of Easy Consumerism on the ‘net? I’ll have a look. I may need help. The admirable idea of perhaps limiting oneself to purchases and being very selective is a good one, but I’ve yet to make myself do it.

  
‘Synecdoche’ was so depressing I had to stop. It may be brilliant, but it was seriously getting me down. Now it sits there, taunting me, daring me to have another go, to prove my staying power, my ability to absorb that which is in no way uplifting. I speak as someone who loves ‘Stalker’ and recently enjoyed ‘Five Easy Pieces’, neither being feel-good in any way shape or form.

  
Now I’m over halfway through ‘Serpico’. Of course I’m a Pacino fan, who isn’t? But you know what’s weird about my reaction to the film? I started sympathising with the bent cops. No lie, GI. I began to see Serpico as a naive idiot and found the scene when he arrest the ‘made’ guy quite excruciating. I felt for the cops in the room as he beat up the criminal and had a tantrum with the office furniture. I felt as they did – what a jerk this Serpico is! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone a cosy relationship between cops and the Mafia, but we’re supposed to sympathise with Frank on his lonely mission in the name of honesty, aren’t we? Frank, c’mon, they’re not bad cops, just guys looking to put their kids through good schools and have a decent retirement.

 
Meanwhile, ‘Gainsbourg’ is going to entice me into the cinema for the first time in years. No chance of quitting on that. I’m sure I won’t want to either.

High Jazz - Madlib (Various Artists)

After Jyoti’s ‘Ocotea’ comes this, another excursion into places and spaces past and present in the great jazz continuum – no less.

   I’ve long been cynical about attempts at modern Fusion although a few tunes down the years such as Carl’s ‘Bassbin’ and Roni’s ‘Paper Bag’ did at least throw something of a fresh jazzy twist onto the ‘floor. But there’s seldom enough meat on the bones of all those breaks and techno tunes made in the name of ‘jazz’ as far as I’m concerned. No frightening the horses with such horrors as solos! Only mad people would dance to, say, 12mins 10secs of Jazz, called ‘Sayonara Blues’, as we used to do at the legendary Cutting Edge.

   There’s no time now to have to listen to players expressing themselves – what a bore! I’m waiting for a Jazz album for the Twitter generation – each track lasting no more than five seconds – a toot here, bass note there, one chord on the piano etc. Hold on, John Zorn’s already probably done it.

   So the arch crate-digger and maverick producer Madlib orchestrates, organisers and promotes this here new Jazz thing of various groups and projects. Dave (no surname given) tells us in the liner notes that when Madlib ‘was in the room, everyone was professional: smoke some weed, lay down the tracks, no distractions’. Hold on, ‘smoke some weed’?! Christ, if that’s what passes for professional behaviour amongst musicians these days, what are the unruly ones like? Smoking crack, shooting heroin and forming the beast with two backs between occasional attempts to play instruments? JB would weep. Now he was a hard taskmaster. He sacked Bootsy Collins...not for hedonistic behaviour, but for insisting on spouting The Pinocchio Theory whenever he got the chance...so I heard.

   There’s a wonderfully wayward feel to much of the music on ‘High Jazz’, which is not to say it’s unprofessional, but more the product of minds made hysterical, wandering the negro streets of LA, probably, listening to all that jazz and trying to (re)make sense of it in these times. Take Yesterdays New Quintet, whose ‘live’ ‘medley’ starts simply enough with an instrumental version of Stevie’s ‘Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing’, but after the applause (so it’s not really a ‘medley’) they’re off into a far freer form of modal contemplation lead by keyboards and for part three, another introspective excursion, but this time with bass to the fore. And as on many tracks, the spirit of Sun Ra and Herbie is never far away. Generation Match’s ‘Electronic Dimensions’ captures the mood perfectly, a marriage of rhythm and synth abstraction. This is a real triumph regarding carrying the torch of the electric pioneers of Jazz. And I haven’t said that very often during all my years of blabbering on about music.

   Poyser, Riggins & Jackson’s ‘Funky Butt Part 1’ does what you’d expect from the title, with added edge that distances it from most modern reworkings of the Jazz-Funk formula. And The Big Black Foot Band add another dimension to the collection with two tracks that admirably echo the ‘spiritual jazz’ tradition, complete with poetry that is neither embarrassing, nor too lengthy. In these tracks we hear all the influences, from The Last Poets to Ornette’s ‘Science Fiction’ and Shepp’s African sessions.

   There’s a lot going on here, a world of Afro-Futuristic-Fusion...grooves, improvisation, bursts of energy, righteous madness...various ways in which the past can be made present and correct. As the Art Ensemble used to proclaim: from the ancient to the future.

Liberation Through Hearing - Demdike Stare

Here it is, the new Demdike Stare release – make of it what you will. I don’t care. So there. My talking about it won’t make much difference, although part (a small part, buried in a tiny recess back of my brain) of me hopes that by posting this you might seek it out, have a listen, like or dislike.

   What are they liberating us from? The boredom of everyday life? The vacuous nature of mainstream Pop? Well, we don’t have to listen to that, do we? Although I’m old enough to recall times when we did, via Top of the Pops. We listened in the hope that our favourite pop act would make an appearance. How primitive it all seems...like cavemen huddled around a fire, entranced by the crackling flames – but hold on, there’s something poetic about that, perhaps, whilst there was nothing poetic about having to suffer Clive Dunn singing ‘Grandad’. Obviously. Starved of music on mainstream TV, we were thankful for the crumbs thrown to us by programmers. Hurrah for the modern world.

   DS don’t sound modern. Listening to ‘The Stars Are Moving’ is an experience akin to...what? A trip through some primordial state of mind, some unholy rite performed by ancients with a view to connecting with the stars – maybe – there’s a heavenly chorus amid the drone and fizzle of electronics which brings to mind some futurist religion from long ago...perhaps when young people listened to Clive Dunn...no...older.

   DS like to include an element of tribalism, worldly percussion, a shamanistic performance designed, no doubt, to liberate us from something through submission to their sound. It’s possible. I really mean it is possible to hear ‘Bardo Thodol’ and feel a kind of release – release and captivity – that’s the trick. DS captivate and release, possibly. DS bring on the dark stuff – which in itself is a form of liberation, to move away from the relentless cheer of showbiz news, boy band reunions and all the stuff that supposedly provides a lift for people – which people? They are not my people. Who are ‘the masses’? And are they really as stupid as their listening/reading habits suggest? I leave that one with you.

   Liberation – this isn’t wallowing in misery, more submerging yourself...wilfully becoming immersed in darkness – is that it? Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain, as Frankie Beverly (after Khalil Gibran) once sang – so the sun breaks through whilst ‘Matilda’s Dream’ plays...it seems contradictory somehow but the light enhances the sombre beauty of this music....the power of contrasting elements? Or one complimenting the other.

   Yes folks, I feel liberated from something, even if that something is only the mass of mediocre music that exists in the world today.

The Sound of Surprise and Double Trouble

I think it was Mingus who said that jazz should be the sound of surprise – well, you could apply the same sentiment to all music, assuming that just occasionally you want to be taken aback by a track that says something new and unexpected. Oh I love the sound of a well-tuned genre piece as much as anyone, but after what feels like a few centuries listening to music, the sound of surprise is still something special. Yeah, you get jaded by everything from time-to-time having heard it over and over, although I should say that Mingus has never made me feel jaded.

   Anyway, Gultskra Artikler’s ‘Kasha Iz Topora’ album surprised the hell out of me, partly because it’s not in the electronic mode of ‘Qwerty’, but mostly because it sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard, although there’s a mood about certain tracks which recalls what you might call Modern Classical. That’s probably put you off. A bowed cello haunts ‘Begushema Vpered’, but not to the extent that it dominates because there are all other manner of scraping, rustling and creaking, along with a one-not bass motif towards the end.

   You see, beginning to describe what’s going on here is virtually impossible. As for slapping a genre on it, I refuse (mainly because the only one applicable would probably put you off). His does get rhythm going on ‘Slovami Poeta’, a string-driven rhythm, but he’s too wrapped up in the idea of surprise to let that run for long. Strange things go bump, whizz, clang all over this recording, and they rattle, clunk, hiss and thump too – but lest you think this is some kind of Improv affair, think again because it’s all orchestrated, organised, placed precisely to create an atmosphere of other-worldliness and, of course, dreams or nightmares, of a mythic world, perhaps; one which we can visit but never fully enter because it exists solely in Artikler’s head. It’s not Improv (I say again) or Jazz or Rock or Electronica or anything so simple. It is what it is; a work of brilliance.

   A Russian (Khrushchev) crops up again in ‘Double Take’, which had me all excited at the prospect of a film in which Hitchcock meets his double to a backdrop of Cold War footage which, I thought, was going to tie the whole story in – well, it didn’t. Not to my eyes anyway. Turns out the story by Tom McCarthy is good (Hitch meets Hitch to discuss Life, Death, Time, Film and all that), but the use of the footage made little sense. ‘The Birds’ is used extensively, although I don’t know why in relation to the story. Perhaps they couldn’t get access to all the Hitch films. Khrushchev and Nixon’s meeting is used a lot, but again I couldn’t see the relevance – at which point I began to think either the director’s smarter than me, or not as smart as he thinks he is. That old footage has been seen a million times before to illustrate the absurdity of the Russia vs America scenario, along with old TV ads or public info films etc, you know the kind of thing. The best is definitely Hitch’s wry quips to camera taken from his TV shows. In the mix is Ron Burrage, the Hitch lookalike used, shown getting ready for filming, or talking about life as a Hitch double. All that did for me was to ruin the illusion. You can’t have it both ways, the fantasy and the workings of it, not in my book. Perhaps, fittingly, I should watch it twice because it got such good reviews.

   Funnily enough, I’ve got my own doppelganger. He looks so much like me that he fools the police, so he must be quite a resemblance. Or, conversely, I fooled them and bear a great resemblance to him. Well, who owns the copyright in this double-take game?

   Anyway, the law stopped me in the street about 30 years ago, to ask how long I’d ‘been out’. Out of where? The nick. It took me half an hour to convince them that I wasn’t the criminal they thought I was. Imagine it. I’m on my lunch hour, being grilled, in a jocular manner, about my identity. I wonder if my double’s ever been stopped and congratulated on having a book published, or praised for playing a blinding set the previous night? Not that either’s happened to me.

   As if that wasn’t enough, about twenty-five years later, I’m walking down the street near our flat when a car slows to a halt and out come three beefy blokes, the one in front reaching for his back pocket as he crosses the road until he stops just feet away. By that time I was primed to run but he apologised, showed me his badge and said they were looking for someone. The law, again. Had my double also been seen in London, I wonder? The previous incident happened in Aylesbury. Perhaps he’ll turn up on Crimewatch one night. Then I’ll be in trouble.

   Finally, whilst crossing the forecourt of the local garage a few years back I heard someone calling out a name, not mine, obviously, but he persisted until I turned around and he apologised. Can I have three doppelgangers (is that a contradiction in terms?), or just one who gets around? It seem incredible, but I’m starting to think it might be true.

The new limitations are the human ones of perception

"Somebody will ask those of us who compose with the aid of computers: 'So you make all these decisions for the computer or the electronic medium, but wouldn't you like to have a performer who makes certain other decisions?' Many composers don't mind collaborating with the performer with regards to decisions of tempo, or rhythm, or dynamics, or timbre, but ask them if they would allow the performer to make decisions with regard to pitch and the answer will be 'Pitches you don't change.' Some of us feel the same way in regard to the other musical aspects that are traditionally considered secondary, but which we consider fundamental. As for the future of electronic music, it seems quite obvious to me that its unique resources guarantee its use, because it has shifted the boundaries of music away from the limitations of the acoustical instrument, of the performer's coordinating capabilities, to the almost infinite limitations of the electronic instrument. The new limitations are the human ones of perception."

Milton Babbitt, quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music

Ocotea - Jyoti

So I had downloaded Jyoti’s new album ‘Ocotea’ and was listening for the first time whilst surfing the ‘net when a track struck me as a homage to Patrick Gleeson’s work for Herbie Hancock, then I checked the title to find my player had moved on to Morton Subotnick’s ‘Silver Apples Of The Moon’ – ha!

   Well, funnily enough, it was a great follow-on, the kind of link I might have made when I was DJ-ing, had ‘Ocotea’ been released 15years ago...and I played CDs, which I didn’t, but MK Ultra did, and I recall him spinning Herbie’s ‘Rain Dance’. For those of you unfamiliar with our club, The Rumpus Room, you may gather that it wasn’t your average four-to-the-floor all-dancing kind of night, not early on anyway.

   I wouldn’t have played all of ‘Silver Apples’, of course – how much would I have dared to air? I’d guess about three minutes before mixing in...oh...maybe T-Power’s ‘Turquoise’? That might work. Shucks, such talk almost makes me wish I was behind the decks again...

   Listening to ‘Rain Dance’ again, it’s pretty obvious that Georgia Anne Muldrow (Jyoti) has also paid it close attention and that certainly is no bad thing. I do recall a time back in the mid-90s when every music-maker seemed to namedrop Herbie...or perhaps I just read too many interviews with Ian Simmonds.

   One of the pleasing thing about ‘Ocotea’ is that it doesn’t feel the need to always placate restless beat-junkies and, let’s face it, that’s quite a temptation. I’m sure it would get her more attention. In this respect, ‘Thread’s First Stitches’ and the brief ‘Psalm Of Rubble’ are great examples of moody, spaced-out ambience over slavery to rhythm. On the title track the synths (one impersonating a flute!) dance to a rhythm that’s nicely off-kilter. The slow-jam of ‘Blessed Matches’ is offset by some good piano-playing, which sums up the LP in that it’s not a solo in the traditional sense, but weaves around, adding colour.

   It’s an impressionistic take on the space jazz genre, bereft of players demonstrating their improv skills, but no worse for that. Perhaps she strikes just the right balance between jazz for the Flying Lotus generation and the more adventurous modes of earlier pioneers.

(With thanks to Kevin Pearce, who put me onto this record)

Irrational Mechanics from Alexey Devyanin and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Futurist Prose

I imagine Alexey Devyanin making music from a Moscow tenement block where he lives on a diet of vodka and borscht whilst ‘Stalker’ plays constantly on the 17-inch black and white telly in the corner. His equipment is rusty and there’s always a tap dripping...

   In reality, he may be a wealthy suburbanite surrounded by the latest technology, but he can’t make much money from music like ‘Qwerty’, his latest release as Gultskra Artikler on Cluster. It’s not going to be charting anytime soon...except in your ‘Top Ten Avant-Electronic Classics of the Year’...well, it’s in mine anyway.

   This Russian thing began with ‘Stalker’, the track by Alva Noto from his superb ‘For 2’ album, which captures the mood of the film brilliantly. I’ve played it a lot over the last few weeks...

   Fast forward to Highgate’s Oxfam bookshop which I had just left empty-handed, wondering why the god of second-hand book supply had deserted me, then steeling myself for the rare task of having to buy something new. So I entered the ‘proper’ bookshop, scanned the shelves for a while and ‘ping’, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s ‘We’ sprang to mind, being something I’d intended to read for years (you know how it is, this back-catalogue of things you intend to buy sitting in your noodle). There it was, as the author’s name dictates, sitting towards the end of the bottom shelf, one copy – good.

   I retired to a cafe to read the foreword by Will Self, which reminded me of the time he bought a copy of ‘Tough Tough Toys’ for me and signed it, which makes him a thoroughly decent chap regardless of how he comes across on TV sometimes (erudite moody smart-arse...which, actually, does not negate the possibility that he can be kind-hearted and generous, does it?). He also wrote to a friend of mine, a budding author (who never flowered fully, but that’s writing for you) with words of encouragement.

   I recommend ‘We’. It’s a tale of the future written in 1921and banned in Russia. It really is like no other sci-fi novel (and I’ve read quite a few), just as ‘Stalker’ is like no other sci-fi film. The prose (allowing for translation) is distinctive, sometimes surrealistic; the story is set in the One State where everything is done by the book and exactly on time, every day (socialising, sex, work etc). People march in time to ‘the pipes of the Music Factory’. Comparisons with a real totalitarian state being obvious, we might also consider our own willingness to march to the same drummer in the supposedly free world.

   Stan Kenton’s ‘City of Glass’ suite might make a good soundtrack to the book, considering much of the architecture described by Zamyatin, although perhaps it’s a little too abrasive. Jeff Mills might be more appropriate, in keeping with the regimentation of life in the One State. Devyanin’s ‘Qwerty’ is too radical. Unlike Zamyatin’s ciphers (as people in his world are called), it does not conform to regularity, although intermingled with all manner of electronic emissions there are subtle rhythms, patterns played out by ticks, clicks and other unnameable sounds. To enter it fully is as unnerving as going into Tarkovsky’s Zone, or living in the world of ‘We’, where all music is a matter of ‘rational mechanics’. The sound of Devyanin’s ‘mechanical’ output is, thankfully, irrational and unpredictable.