i'm still kind of ambivalent about bands reforming as a rule, but it's definitely better when it's amazing bands and/or those who were underappreciated the first time round (i'm still not condoning, say, The Who playing live with only two original members or whatever).
This year's been pretty great for amazing and underappreciated reformations so far: first Godspeed You! reassembled and even get to curate their own ATP, and now the almighty earthtone9, without doubt my favourite metal group ever, have got back together as well!
Staggeringly slept-on first time round, it's now been ten years since the Nottingham group released their best and final full-length arc'tan'gent, which mixed proper dirty riffing with calmer, reflective passages, wonderful soaring melodies with brutal screaming. Vocalist Karl Middleton (also of The Blueprint, Twin Zero, Blackstorm) is to my mind one of the best in the whole rock game.
These days their albums are as rare as dog parachutes, but the band have helpfully put together a freely downloadable career-spanning greatest hits package entitled Inside Embers Glow and available from http://www.earthtone9.co.uk to prime the unfamiliar for their return. i'd recommend it as an ace collection even if, like me, you've already got all the records.
There's only one planned live date at the moment, at Damnation Festival in Leeds, but with any luck they'll play a full tour before much longer.
"Tat Twam Asi", from arc'tan'gent and also featured on the compilation, is maybe the quintessential et9 song, featuring both the broodingly melodic and full-on furious sides of the band inside five minutes, as well as the sort of questing/reflective lyricism they regularly explored.
High time i put up some more lyrics from the first 30KB album. This one's fairly self-explanatory really.
[diss1] This is not a haiku. i don't need elaborate rhyme schemes to say i don't like you.1 And this is not a protest song, just a chance to answer back to those who hate and deliberately get us wrong. Purposeful misinterpretation shows we got 'em so nervous they must devise lies and slanders to obscure our true purpose. But verses shatter curses: the sword's still less mighty than the mic. Cypher frenzy read the final rites to biter-friendly psyche. Stick that on your front page. Fight me? i might let you if you ask me nicely. Defiant bratty gladiator on some Karate Kid/kung fu death trip shit. That's my 'fuck you' prerequisite. Human Newton's third on some gross exaggeration station making haters wish their disses were retractable: that's laughable. Really thought they could step to us and not get smoked? I say:
[AcheZen Pains] This is not a tanka. i don't think i need five lines and 31 syllables just to call you a... *ahem* Taking the time to trample the lines and run 'em right into your face. Dancing the beat like Kelly, taking you out before you've said Grace. A tender heart, broke, ripped apart and rendered ruthless, fruitless juices, easy bruises take offence. i see your brain is useless and then we get off and leave you for dead. See, that's our destination. [ssssshhhhhhhhh] It's gone right over their head! Fun is made to poke with cheeky motive if it's easy to provoke it. Fuck 'em if they can take a joke. And did anyone here even notice the river they drank from is dry? My name is Intelligent Thought, you killed my father, prepare to die. DIY style, like my name is Inigo Montoya. Turn me into 3D, i'll still be Doctor Claw's destroyer. Like some cartoon bloke.
*{"Fuck 'em... if they can't take a joke"}*
[sample parade]
[d1] Round three! We leave the water parted when we sail through. Don't expect a reprieve because your sense of humour's failed you. When the beat kicks in you can't offend me. Already tap-danced straight past you like Fred Astaire crack frenzy. [AZ] Smoke green with envy, joker friendly, black and blue repainters. The jury have come to a verdict: *everybody hates yer!*... A confiding, just for your information... [d1] The house that you reside in's built on sand foundation. Big Bad Wolf, takedown. Never met a rule i didn't like (to break). If somebody says 'no' it usually shows you which way to take. [AZ] So we make and shake the brake and broke you all intentionally. Think this sample's out of time? It's – meant – to – be. Concede each day you're at a loss so mark it as a fixture. [d1] We strike twice before you can hit us once - cuz we predict yer. Now you caught a fierce diss and wanna come and try and suck up, well here's my word of advice to you, yeh?
Got this today from a splitter hitwoman (a splitwoman?). Maybe like a female take on John Cusack in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank. i suppose that means it could actually be someone who can't bring herself to kill me cuz she still holds a candle for me. To be fair, i have been out with some people who could feasibly have been secret assasssins.
(i don't know anyone named Kathy Yarbrough, so i'm guessing this is a comandeered email address.)
Hello,
This is the only way I could contact you for now,I want you to be very careful about this and keep this secret with you until I make out space for us to see. You have no need of knowing who I am or where I am from.I know this may sound very surprising to you but it’s the situation.I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer. It’s someone I beleive you call a friend, I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusations he leveled against you. Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them,because if you do, I will know,and I might be pushed to do what I have been paid to do.Besides, this is the ist time I turn out to be a betrayer in my job.I took pity on you,that is why I have made up my mind to help you if you are willing to help yourself.
Now listen,I will arrange for us to see face to face,but before that, I need $30,000. I will come to your home or you determine where you wish we meet; I repeat, do not arrange for the cops and if you play hard to get, it will be extended to your family.Do not set any camera to cover us or set up any tape to record our conversation, my employer is in my control now. Payment details will be provided for you to make a part payment of $15,000 first,which will serve as gurantee that you are ready to you co-orperate,then i will post a copy of the video tape that contains his request for me to terminate you which will be enough evidence for you to take any legal action against him before he employs another person for the job. You will pay the balance of $15,000 once you receive the tape.
Warning: do not contact the police, make sure you stay indoors once it is 7.30pm until this whole thing is sorted out,if you neglect any of these warnimgs, you will have yourself to blame. You do not have much time, so get back to me immediately.
Note: I will advise you keep this to yourself alone, not even a friend or a family member should know about it because it could be one of them. Tick Tock.
do a picture of Rupert Murdoch with his teeth bared, head retreating into the thorax of a beetle, with dozens of long spindly tentacles protruding, and a speech bubble shouting "crowdsource THIS!"
i then promptly forgot that i had ever said this.
Obviously, he went and drew it.
i swear this guy is the future of political/editorial cartooning. Alan Rusbridger in this Radio 4 documentary seems to suggest that there is a modern-day lack of such cartoonists, which is pretty odd, but definitely leaves the door wide open for more stuff like this. Myself, i can't wait!
Does the Australian guy at 1:38 really say "cuz I'm sat on the bench, trying to jizz in my booze"?
If not, what does he actually say?
If so, how does he then rhyme that with "I'm very big down under but my wife disagrees"?
Composer and guitar-orchestrator Glenn Branca comes off inexplicably curmudgeonly and doomsaying in this blog for the NYT late last year, seemingly both claiming that creativity in music is dead (without really qualifying this rather sweeping statement) and also buying into the strange idea that music is some sort of linear progression of qualitative improvement, like the ever-decreasing time it takes to do a 100-metre sprint or something, which also seems pretty daft to me. Surely it's better understood like the outward expansion of an ink blot on tissue paper, branching outwards simultaneously in all directions?
For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”
Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.
The best answer to Branca's thesis comes from the comments section of the same article, from one Matt Penniman.
In the last half a century we've seen Philip Glass achieve rather remarkable levels of productivity and popularity, Arvo Part create a new sound for choral music, Yo-Yo Ma bring awareness of Asian classical music to America with the Silk Road Project (and generate some appealing confluences of classical and folk with Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor), and much more. Meanwhile, the larger popular music culture has developed whole new genres, like electronica and hip-hop, not to mention more esoteric experiments like procedural music.
Crucially, these achievements are most visible in hindsight; if you want to say "sure, but what's happened in the last five years?" I would have to answer "plenty, but we won't know what was important for a while yet."
Or, like the first Premier of the People's Republic Zhou Enlai is reputed to have said, when asked about the impact of the French Revolution: "It is too early to tell".
