Book art piece for Insight

Since early 2008, including the amazing Blood On Paper at the V&A, there's been a really pleasing growth in that whole book art thing. In June 2008 we decided to cover its impact in Brighton.

A new generation of book artists have been quietly redefining everything you know about the tied and bound for over a decade – and judging many a book by its cover. With an international event on our doorstep in July, Charlie Jones has a pressing engagement.
A new global generation of artists are basing work on the printed and bound – remaking novels, rescuing pulped fiction, printing on potato and fur and creating fine art from £5 paperbacks. For these artists, the printed page is a way of creating art itself, rather than a means of reproducing existing work. It’s a broad church, ranging from Dieter Roths early experiments stuffing crap lit into sausage skins, to David Shrigely’s horror-drawings to Denise Hawrysio’s bound Union Jacks to Sam Winston’s word remodeling. It’s subversive, quaint and literate art in the midst of a renaissance that recalls the installationist’s rise in the early seventies. Most exciting of all, many leading lights are coming to Brighton this month for a one-day symposium.
“Eight years ago, no-one had heard of book art, but now almost every art school will offer a course in it. It’s a very exciting time,” says Sarah Bodman, editor of Artists Books Yearbook, the definitive international journal on the form. Sarah, who was introduced to book art when she happened across a handwritten stream of consciousness inside a novel in her university library nearly twenty years ago, is speaking at the Books That Fly event this month at the University of Brighton, a conference and two-week summer school bringing together typographers, artists, academics and writers from around the world. This exhibition comes hot on the tails of last months Phoenix gallery collection, Press and Release, a show of independent and small scale publishing, including many Book Artists, and one of the country’s leading Book Art shop is on Bedford place – Permanent, a group who specialize in small run art books. Lee Shearman of the shop: “It’s been huge recently! It’s exploded, just in the last year. Every month we hear of more event, more artists, more places. I really don’t know what has created this, but that’s the way with inspiration, isn’t it? Someone does something amazing, that makes people go ‘wow, I could do that’ and so these scenes happen.”
Brighton is one of countless hubs worldwide. Sarah Bodman:“Is it a global movement? Very much so! There are practitioners based on every continent, with incredible regional variation. With the new possibilities of internet publishing, it’s easier than ever to get works made – twenty years ago it would cost £100 to make a book, but today you can make one for a fiver, meaning that the person on the street can take home an piece of art.”
permanentbookshop.com
bookarts.uwe.ac.uk

Brighton bound – our list of local bookies

John Dilnot
Through his beautiful re-renderings of milk packaging designs, bad-apple guides and the like, John Dilnot’s work is both weightily political and playfully subtle, and that's all for the better.

Illustrator's Elbow
A newly formed group of 20-odd artists currently studying at the University of Brighton, working in drawing, printing, painting, photography and book-making.

Borbonesa Publishing
A collective of writers and artists who design and make conceptual occasional papers, currently working with filmmaker Jeff Keen to republish RAYDAY, a private broadsheet from the 1960s.

Advertising piece for BlowBack

This little wonder featured first in BlowBack, a sadly missed street-style publication.

Late in 2005, everyone’s favourite monobrowed monkey Noel Gallagher was spitting blood at Jack White for writing a song for Coca-Cola. "What the f**k is he playing at? He dresses like f***ing Zorro on doughnuts! What the f**k is that about? He ceases to be in the club. He's supposed to be the poster boy for the alternative way of thinking… I'm not having that, it's f***ing wrong.” A song! For Coca-Cola! Cue a great deal of hand-wringing and finger-pointing from the indie fraternity. “Sell out” was thrown about on blogs and broadsheets the world over. Principles not price, man! So far, so standard, just another easy tirade. The weird world of music licensing – when a track is allowed (licensed) to be broadcast – was made a little weirder a few weeks later. When all the dust had settled and Oasis made a quiet announcement. Their All Around The World had been sold for a AT&T ad.

There is an imagined time, somewhere before that Phat Planet Guiness ad, even before Kurt was horrified to find out Teen Spirit was a deodorant brand, when advertising was a filthy word. When no cool, alternative musician would consider letting a dirty ad man at his or her songs. When Babylon Zoo or Stiltskin could be laughed out of town for jumping on a Levis TV spot. A lot of this must be hazy nostalgia for a vaguely “realer” time, but a quick look over who’s been licensing what so far this year raises a few eyebrows. Bands on ads in 2007? They’re cool. Commercialbreaksandbeats.co.uk - an online database of music used on UK ad spots – reads like a Dazed and Confused contents page, with turns by Devandra Banhart, Black Keys, Fujia & Miyage, New Young Pony Club, Colder and Roxy Music all listed this year alone. Artists that were once spoken of in hushed, reverent tones by musos, like Vashti Bunyan or Arthur Russell, now feature on phone adverts. Most surprisingly of all, hardly anyone calls them a sell out.

Not to say that every licensed band out there are willing to drop their trousers for the next adman that calls. Far from it, these bands are reacting to – and acting in – a world that’s incredibly brand savvy. For Ayla Owen, Director of Music at Leap, the music licensing and publishing house behind Levis’ and KFC’s legendary soundtracks, “these bands are very aware of how their music is presented. Some brands are more attractive than others, but they don’t just want to know about the brand itself, they want to know about the director and the script.” This is one of the reasons that bands are happy to be used in commercials - their sheer quality. We all know that Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer and Michel Gondry started out directing adverts and we’ve all cooed over Sony’s coloured balls and paint splashes. Advertising is an established step on the trail for almost any ‘creative type,’ whether you’re a writer, a director, a musician - or indeed a music exec. This removes both the stigma of the dreaded corporate dollar and the fear that the ad might turn out a bit, well, shoddy. Abla El-Sharnouby, head of publishing at Five Missions More, a music publishing and licensing consultancy with MTV and The Beeb in their portfolio had a few words to say on the subject. “Creatives [at advertising agencies] speak the same language as musicians: they’ll want to make a cutting-edge ad with the best underground music. Even if that’s not exactly what the clients themselves want,” she laughs. Music selection is an incredible creative process in itself. Sam Reid from Hear No Evil, a Soho music consultancy could be talking about DJing when he says “it’s a very fun but subjective job. You really can’t put your finger on what makes an ideal track – some songs just fit.” Needless to say, most bands don’t have an issue with “fitting in.”



Bands aren’t selling out: they’re buying in, and are very clued up about how they’re doing this. This is the "myspace generation", after all: image is everything for a new band, and its kissing cousin self-promotion needs a tight control over how images are used. Fine for The Clash to finally reach number one on the heels of a Levis ad, with Should I Stay..., but when Joe Strummer’s image was used for a Doc Martins ad, heads rolled. Using images from photo library Corbis, ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi showed the icon in heaven wearing DMs underneath a toga – a clanger so bad it lost Saatchi the contract, and the person responsible for distributing the picture had their employment “considered.” Promotion and control are the key, but it’s got to be the right situation, the right ad and the right product. “Association with a ‘cool’ brand is great for a band, and it’s not seen as working for ‘the man’ in the same way as it might have been. Look at how many kids there are wearing Puma or Nike T-Shirts – they are essentially happily wearing an advert,” says Ayla. “It’s brand association.”

Punting your track out to an agency is more than locking onto a ‘cool’ brand – for an even vaguely alternative artist, it’s a way of contacting and connecting with a far, far wider audience than an independent or below-radar label could hope for. Abla: “a prime-time ad reaches literally millions of people, millions of people that might never come into contact with that artist. Just look at Nina Simone: thirty seconds on a Muller advert and a new Best Of is released” Whatever misgivings a listener might have about an artist’s five decade-long career being crammed into a thirty second yogurt ad, it didn’t lose her estate anything: 2006’s Very Best Of Nina Simone’s first track was Ain’t Got No, I Got A Life, and was one the year’s best sellers. While bands selling huge quantities by being “that band off that advert” is nothing new – just ask Babylon Zoo – the need for publicity is far bigger today than it ever has been, simply because it is harder to make a the same splash in the far bigger ocean. The price of launching a band in 2007 is astronomical – The Guardian set it at a cool £594,000, with each TV ad weighing in at £10,000. Abla: “we really try to promote music that wouldn’t be heard otherwise, that would be pitched otherwise. More independent, alternative, underground, whatever, artists are being featured on ads. It’s now far cheaper to feature a song by an up-and-coming artist than it was even two or three years ago, because of increased demand and there are also just so many bands out there.”

The digital revolution has provided a multitude of different places for advertisers to associate themselves with ‘cool’ bands, from viral marketing to podcasts. “There are so many avenues you could go down for entertainment,” says Abla. “Which means that people are very sophisticated about what entertainment they consume.” Ayla of Leap agrees. “I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a purely digital superstar – someone who side-stepped traditional record companies and was marketed entirely online.” The story’s subtext is the much publicised death of the record industry. June saw the closure of the country’s biggest “independent” store, Fopp, and the release of Prince’s new album, given away with every Mail on Sunday, and the ongoing nosedive of album sales. The industry is in dire straits. Advertising might just be part of the solution. Before music is declared D.O.A., let’s raise a glass for the ambulance chasers. Sell out? No sell out!

Foals FACT 7 of the year

In which I get very excited about Hummer, Foals' unmistakably brilliant single, and interview the singer Yannis, for FACT magazine
Hummer dropped in April, and – to be frank – it wiped the bleedin’ walls with us. Eight months on, it still leaves us gasping. Despite being an attempt to transcribe minimal techno’s precision and rigour to fuck-up the peculiar mixture of try-hard laziness that infects today’s dull-as-dishwater indie scene, Hummer is as sonically breathtaking a call-to-arms as rock’n’roll ever has heard. Yes, it is precise and unnervingly accurate from conception to execution, but it’s also a breathless, sweaty affirmation of youthful destruction, snotty arrogance and rhythmic raw power. Rather than the measured, perfection it was aping, there is the furious, vainglorious tumult of ideas – its drums alone bring to mind Don Cabellero, Topper Heddon, The Field, Neu, Timbaland and Fela Kuti – that only the most thrilling singles have. Just ten seconds are allowed to pass before the tugging hook snares you – this song is so desperately full of fresh ideas, impertinent diffidence and ruthless unwillingness to conform that seizes this hour, this minute, this second by the jugular before it skids, grazed, to a halt. Hummer is an obnoxious, snotty record, a song which head-butts every tepid, lazy stylistic cliché that surrounds modern indie; and that, ironically, is the most perfect an argument for independent guitar music I can think of.

FOALS INTERVIEW:

Foals have had a pretty damn good year. In summer 2006, they were a twinkle in the eyes of a set of Oxford mathrock and techno-loving student students. Eighteen months later, they’ve wowed crowds at stadiums to squats from here to Texas, dropped Kompakt mixes and had their choons played on Skins – all this at just two Transgressive singles (there’s the third, Balloons, out on 10th December) and a live EP old. To top it all, they’re received the coveted (and entirely imaginary) FACT 7” Of The Year gong for their April single Hummer. With a new, Dave Sitek of TV On The Radio-produced album in the bag, we chatted to their tea-sipping vocalist Yannis.

So, you’ve won the 7” of the year…
Yeah, we’re really surprised. We really like FACT, you’re quite discerning. We haven’t quite accepted it.

2007 went pretty well, eh?
Yeah, it was pretty wild, I guess. A year ago we weren’t yet signed, and yeah, we’ve come a long way I suppose. The thing is that it doesn’t really register when you’re in the middle of it, but it does feel like we’re getting more reactions at shows, which is weird because we only started this band to irritate our friends by trying to write pop songs and be banal. You know, show that music is about communication, not just displays of virtuosity. We just wanted to make fresh and authentic pop music.

Do you feel like you’ve done that?
We don’t know – we’re a small family and we stick together, it’s hard to see outside of that. The angst, self-doubt and criticism are still there. We’re quite agitated, so we have to keep moving.

How was the recording of Hummer, and how do you feel it matches up?
We wanted it to sound very clinical, like we were trying to be tight, not slapdash, drawing influence from every single note and piece of sound, so the overall big “sound” was constructed out of lots of little sounds working against each other. When we were recording it, we were shacked up and getting drunk, playing horseshit and making pop songs. The irony is that I don’t ever listen to it know – it’s not my favourite song. I must have listened to it 700 times when we were mastering it, so by the time we heard it finally we couldn’t tell if was good or not. We just wanted to get it out before we split up.

What music have you enjoyed this year?
Cornelious’ record was amazing, such sumptuous production. Yeasayer are so fucking tribal it’s unbelievable. Fuckbuttons are awesome, so are Metronomy and Cut Off Yr Hands. I know it’s a bit old, but the whole Dubstep thing is awesome, especially Burial. There’s a really cool noise thing happening in Oxford – it’s like a reaction against all these really technical bands, just like punk reacting against prog. There’s lots of bands who just don’t give a fuck and just want to make loads of noise. Timbaland is breathtaking, still. It’s like, with all these amazing things happening, why fucking bother making music that sounds like it is ten years old?

What have been the highlights of your year?
Doing an album with Dave Sitek in New York – just incredible, he’s a fucking genius, so playing and getting high all day in New York… and playing on Jules Holland was great. Generally though, it’s been playing and touring which has been amazing and not having to work a shitty job. This music is like knives; we’re making knives to cut things with, and people reactions seem good. We still love playing house parties.

What are the reactions like?
It gets very energetic. Jimmy broke his tooth one time… There’s also something that comes out when we play – people rip down and kick though walls. It’s like this weird, primal urge that comes out when we play. You see someone fucking up their house because they’re so wild, which is always odd. You’re like “Why are you hanging off your light?”

What are the lowlights?
Never having enough time to read.

Nancy elizabeth review for Fact

Nancy Elizabeth
Battle and Victory
Leaf

Nancy Elizabeth sounds like the most extraordinary hit-your-head-off-your-desk, whimpering-like–a-demented-man-child minimal folk that comes out of nowhere, like ghosts from the battle of Hastings playing samurai harps made from widow’s hair, and it’s awesome, till you realize she’s on Leaf. When you’re share a label with Murcof, Colleen, Susuma Yakota and Efterklang, that’s kind of taken as given. Still, it’s a damn good album, with the kind of imaginative folk that is giving the north-west (she’s a Wigan las) such a good name at the moment.

What strikes you about Nancy’s music is how spectacularly poised and still it sounds – unlike Seth Lakeman, to whom she is oft compared, nothing is rushed. ‘Hey Son’s’ swirling harps are played almost Satie-slow, with her voice – a soft yet throaty howl not a million miles away from Beth Orton or Joni Mitchell – ripping the fuck out of the chorus with the supreme, practiced gravitas. ‘Coriander’ is another revelation – though the key instrument is hand-plucked Thai Khim, and other instruments on Battle and Victory have similarly alien tones, from Appalachian dulcimers to Celtic harps, her music is refreshingly grounded in the music of our Scepter’d Isle. This album was recorded entirely in a stone cottage in Wales, and Christ does it show – if, like me, you occasionally like to pretend to be a medieval Welsh freedom-fighter escaping with your ragged band through the valleys while running for the tube, this is the album for you.

Arthur Russell doc piece for Dazed

A news piece in Dazed and Confused’s October 2007 issue

“Another Thought: The Arthur Russell Revival Peaks With New Documentary”

Arthur Russell has always cried out for a biography. An obscenely gifted classical cellist, singer and disco producer, he was a student of north Indian music in Buddhist communes who moved East to NY when disco was bubbling under and collaborated with everyone from Phillip Glass to Larry Levan In eighties New York, he perfected his mix of outsider pop and spectral, mutant disco until his tragic, AIDs related death in 1992. While Soul Jazz and Rough Trade’s superb compilations, and Jens Lekman’s recent EP of Russell covers have brought him out of the cold, much of the man behind the music remains obscured by myth. A new film is set to change all that with a documentary about his life and times. “I wanted to take a fairly experimental approach to Arthur’s music. What I ended up doing is closer to a documentary with a full story told by Arthur’s friends and family, one that’s saturated with lots of visual material and archival clips,” says director Matt Wolf. “Arthur’s story is about more than just his experience as an individual—it’s about a particularly fertile period in downtown New York’s cultural history, it’s about the experience of being gay and living with AIDS, and also it’s about the cathartic process of making art and pursuing popular success at a time when those two things seemed possible and within reach. Arthur could certainly be perceived as an eccentric figure—but I was also really drawn to the ordinary moments in his life: watching the Muppets Show with his boyfriend on the couch.”

www.arthurrussellmovie.com/
The film will be released in early 2008.

[ends]

Radio review, ThreeWeeks

A theatre review, published in ThreeWeeks, Edinburgh, August 2006:

Radio - Kandinsky
When I was 6 my dad told me that the gold sheet around the lunar module that sent those to the moon in 1968 was thinner than the plastic film round his packet of B&H. For some reason I remembered that halfway through 'Radio': the idea that something so everday and simple could be trusted to perform that beautiful and dangerous action. 'Radio' does not walk that fine line between lightness and depth as fly ten thousand miles above it: it is a one-man play about radio, love, family, duty, space travel, dreams, youth, the 60's, America. A colossal talent has arrived in Al Smith: this is such an elegantly written, acted and directed piece of theatre that it transcends theatre itself. Remember this play: Radio defies gravity.
Smirnoff Underbelly, 3-27 Aug, 4.30pm (5.15pm), prices vary, fpp200
tw 5/5 [cj]

Taher Deghayes, Insight

Taher Deghayes’ brother Omar was illegally held in Guantánamo Bay for five years by the US military, and I drank tea with him on the day on after Omar's release, in his Saltdean living room while his brother slept upstairs in his bed for the first time in half a decade. One of the most surreal and, I'm almost ashamed to say, moving interview's I've ever done. Insight, March issue:


Community
For the last six years, our lives have been Omar. He has framed every family debate we have had. Our mother is the centre of the family and there has not been a night that she has not thought of Omar. However, it’s made us stronger as a family, because we have stuck together throughout all of this. The sense of community has been incredible – I never realised how many caring people there are around you, until this happened. I would always look at those people who handed out the Socialist Worker and I would think that they were nutters, but it’s these nutters who have been ensuring that our democracy is safeguarded that our basic values and human rights are observed. The sancity of human life and the appreciation of our fundamental rights and values is what makes us civilized in the so-called West. It’s the best system that I believe to exist, is this thing – above anything else – that makes me proud to be British.

Moral strength
As a family, we were always brought up to differ, to disagree, to hold different opinions. In Guantánamo Bay, it was the members of al-Qaeda who were released one year in, because they knew how to keep their head down and not anger the guards, they knew what to do in prison, but my brother, because of how he was raised, and because of the fact he was English and held a law degree, would not bow his head, he kept on criticizing the guards and pointing out abuse where he saw it. This is why they did not let him go. When I saw him, I was so worried that they would have broken his spirit – I mean, there were days when I thought that I could not cope with it – but when I saw him in court yesterday [we spoke to Taher the day after Omar was granted bail], and I saw that he standing proud with so much to say, I knew that they could not break him.

Faith
What has kept us going? Three things: our faith, our community and our belief in the rule of law. It is destiny. It is hard to explain, but if you believe in your destiny and accept it – not in a complacent way – then you can keep waking up in the morning. It is like when you have a bad day and nothing is going well, what keeps you going is the knowledge that one day things will be better. The community that the campaign has brought together, our friends, and the friends we never met [has been incredible]. I feel proud to have been a part of this.

Family celebration
We had a bottle of wine and a family meal last night. A bottle of champagne – non-alchoholic champagne!

The moment we saw him
Really, really good.