Blog - Page 2 of 6 - MÜ Magazine

(i.m Peter Ronald Brown, 25/12/1940-19/5/2023)

His words will resound for as long as there are films

And Rock music, for just as Scorsese savours

Sunshine Of Your Love in his films, so do the fans

Of Clapton, Baker, Bruce, Procol Harum, and his own

Unique oeuvre rejoice in the voicings that spumed

Words of fire from within Pete’s poem kiln.

Pete Brown was the original English Beatnik, and more,

A North London Bluesman. Psychedelicist, Progster,

And one part West Coast by the sea. He was like all

Of those bright jewish boys, who spilled out of London,

From Pinter and Wesker, to Berkoff and Kops,

Each dreamt free, and each of them shaped their own

Special corner. Pete with his jew-fro in 1969

Could dare rooms. He told me that he learnt to sing

Later on, and crooned, after his Broken Ornaments

Shattered, before raising Piblokto! to a cultish peak

Where songs loom over all other art through what

They engender in others, and Pete’s energy and invention

Sustained and remained despite cancer’s pain.

It was only a few weeks ago he talked of the plans

He had on a phonecall, our friendship having flowered

After meeting on a Hastings bound train. Born in Surrey,

Soho was his stamping ground in the 60s. And before

That, in the 50s, in polo-neck and waistcoat,

He was part of the new poetry and with Michael

Horovitz, New Departures, defining British voices

To capture and let each line float. He sent me plays

Of his from that time; free associations on Alice,

With each moment more playful and in some ways

More charged than even Lewis Caroll’s chorale

Of disguised desire; Pete’s work was more carnal

And more open, always to art’s cards. But imagine

A man who elevated the poem and who then did

The same for the lyric practically the next year.

Starting and stirring for Cream the linguistic mix

In their menu, moving from bright blues to near metal

The White Room becoming a place to defeat each dark fear

With majestic music and words bound to both the heart

And the bedpost, and to the streets beyond, as evolution

In verses and lines became aim, and Pete always scored.

Those Thousands On a Raft sailed beside him as each word

Released oceans from which even those on dry land

Could still gain. But unlike Reid, or Sinfield, Pete became

A performer; a vanguardian using the avant-garde,

Rock and blues to conjure fresh colours from Brown,

Whether with Graham Bond, or Phil Ryan, whose death

Left Pete decimated and yet in counting the ways,

He stayed true. For as each partner passed, from Jack Bruce

To Ginger, this brightly bound Beatnik knocked on the door

Of intent; whether that was in Hollywood, or in an A&R

Office. Pete gave his time sweetly; short and adorable,

Shuffling, he was song’s soldier patrolling the poem

Parade to invent new ways to be, and fresh ground

To conquer. He was always on tour; Europe had him,

At nearly 80 years old on the stage. I saw him in ‘18

At the Cream 50^th Anniversary concert, as Malcom Bruce,

Kofi Baker and Will Johns played their Uncle and Dads,

While Pete in his prime sang, singed and blazed beside them,

Restoring at once that explosion. To quote the Cream song:

‘Í’m so Glad,’ Pete was the designated mourner also,

For that whole generation. A BBC Four commentator

On all manner of albums and styles. A documentarian, too

And Scrosese subject, a Go-to for the info on the high

Beyond those eight miles. He found lasting love

With his wife Sheridan and seemed to have the largest

Garden in England. His home in Hastings was both

Country seat and Sea view. Where we once talked

All night about films and politics, music, Leonora

Carrington and Viv Stanshall who he also knew

And helped: Noble Jew. Who while being born on

Christmas day was as in Jonathan Miller’s old joke,

‘Not really a jew, just jewish.’ Pete was for Palestine,

Peace and freedom, and for each life and line

His thoughts flew. So, read his books, hear the songs

And listen well to those lyrics. ‘Íts getting near dawn,’

Pete. We miss you. The colours are running.

Its stunning, this sudden loss. Friends, fans, kids

And family kiss you, and we will always keep asking,

Where are you, Brownyboots?

Look:

we’re blue.

David Erdos 24/5/23

Photo credit – https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pete_Brown.jpg#mw-jump-to-license

By Giles Sibbald

Maybe I’m a dreamer, maybe I’ve lived out a childhood where dreaming was possible, but I wonder where all the playfulness went, the fun of entering a world where you can imagine, be curious, explore, make observations, create stories. On our own or with others, it doesn’t matter.

Savagely insular and capitalist rhetoric where meritocracy is played out on a ruthlessly imbalanced playing field. Ah yes, that’s where the playfulness went……

Storytellers open eyes. Storytellers open minds. Never underestimate the power of our imagination, our resilience and storytelling to bring about change and rebuild lives.

Storytellers are visionaries.

Duets tell stories: Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald – April in Paris. Johnny Cash and June Carter – Jackson. Elton John and Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. Diana Ross and Lionel Richie – Endless Love. Each of these is timeless and transcends ego.

The debut album from Galen Ayers and Paul Simonon, ‘Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?’, is a collection of timeless duets that tips its cap to the essence of what matters – living life itself. Galen and Paul freely explore their own global musical and cultural influences, their own observations, their own voices in life. The album is sung in English and Spanish and cements the inclusivity of the duet. Luminaries Simon Tong, Seb Rochford, Dan Donovan and (occasionally) Damon Albarn flawlessly evoke the glory days of French chansons, English sea shanties, reggae, Hank Marvin, Del Shannon, film noir soundtracks and traditional Spanish. It’s all anchored by the spacious production of the legendary Tony Visconti.

The result is a wonderfully imaginative storybook that is sophisticated yet playful.

Music is one of the fabrics that weaves Galen and Paul together. Galen was born in France and raised in Mallorca. In her formative years, she spent time on tour with her father, Kevin Ayers, and wrote and played music in vibrant multi-cultural and bi-lingual environments. For Paul, growing up in Brixton and Ladbroke Grove amongst art, books and the creative forces of the nascent 1970’s punk scene informed what’s accompanied him through life: musically through The Clash, Havana 3AM, Gorillaz and The Good, The Bad & The Queen and artistically through painting and, latterly, wood carving. Indelible influences for both of them, undoubtedly.

Let’s dive in.

Giles Sibbald

I really love the idea of a traditional duet. I think it’s underused.

Paul Simonon

We’re overusing it now.

Galen Ayers

Do you mean we’re over using it or we’re overusing it? {All laughing}

Giles Sibbald

So, Paul – you took had taken yourself off to Mallorca in the summer of 2020 and were shacked up in a remote fishing village and you spent 18 months there painting, writing songs, busking outside cafes and re-evaluating before coming back to London. You guys have known each other for quite a few years now, so did the idea to record together feel like a natural, instinctive thing to do?

Paul Simonon

Well, the thing is, when I was in Mallorca, I did have the idea of getting a friend there to actually sing the handful of songs. But then, I came back to London, and nobody had been rehearsing or anything, so I thought, ‘Okay, I need to think again’. But then, by chance, a good mutual friend told me that Galen was in town, so we met up and had a conversation. At that time, it was really more about me playing bass on a record, because Galen was working on some songs, too. But then, after a few days, it all just clicked and we were both like, ‘well, you know what, we’re both here, let’s give it a go’. So, yeah, it just fell in naturally, really.

Giles Sibbald

Some mischievous serendipity going on?

Paul Simonon

Well, this is really interesting, because the whole process of making the album was hanging on a thin piece of cotton. There seemed to be so many issues stacked against us – Simon Tong was in the middle of a tour as was Seb (Rochford, drums), Tony (Visconti, producer) got Covid and he wasn’t able to come in on the first day and there were other mishaps. But somehow – magically – we all held it together to complete the record.

Galen Ayers

Paul and I hadn’t seen each other for years, so when we met, we just happened to both be available in the same place – mentally and practically – where we could actually, well, experiment at first and then when we realised that we actually wanted to go all the way and make the album, we experienced what Paul just said. But, all through that, we always turned up. We have a roundtable at Paul’s house and every day we showed up and were constantly songwriting. We had a good, solid, I would say, six months of that, so whatever happened, we would have a bunch of songs.

Giles Sibbald

Did it feel like a bit of an experiment doing this?

Paul Simonon

Every record is a bit like an experiment. But it was nice, because we like trading ideas between us and if there was something we were both a bit stuck on, suddenly, there’d be a third idea that we would never dreamt up without us having a conversation.

Galen Ayers

Yeah, I guess it depends how you define an experiment. But I think we had a similar intention, which was to create something neither of us individually had done before. We were both very open, I think, to how we got our outcome.

Giles Sibbald

This has probably been written before, but the record feels like observational pieces of life. I think that kind of storytelling is so compelling, you know, where you can see yourself in that story and how it plays out. Did you feel like you were the characters in those stories or being the narrator of what you observe?

Paul Simonon

I think the characters of the songs begged it. I can’t help but make observations of what is around me. We’re both like that, you know. Galen’s got the talent of weaving words – like a poet. I’m just more straightforward, I guess.

Giles Sibbald

You’ve both got this vast love and talent for music, written words, art, physical objects. And another thing that ties you together and ties your art together is your activism.

Paul Simonon

That’s us, exactly!

Galen Ayers

Not dragging Paul down with me {both laugh as Paul crumples}, but I think we both have a holistic approach to life and I think what you’ve identified is that, I think. I think we both agree that activism doesn’t necessarily have to be a big gesture, it can be your everyday decisions. And it’s the same with my favourite albums growing up – and still growing up {laughs} – are those that invite you into a world. So, to create that world, right, you need to really be mindful of the details in the artwork, in the lyrics and this all becomes one holistic view. Then, I hope, when the listener actually gets to the record, they’re able to enter a world.

Giles Sibbald

That’s a great way to describe it, Galen, and I think you’ve done that really effectively with these songs, introducing these influences. I was talking to a guitarist recently and he was saying how important it is for him and, he believes, all musicians to go travelling and immerse themselves in different cultures.

Paul Simonon

They’re like ingredients, really. I suppose we’ve both had different sorts of experiences and some of the same experiences of listening to music ever since we were young. Those things lock into the back of your mind, so when a new idea for a song comes up and we work on the lyrics, then suddenly the idea says, ‘I need a tambourine’. And you say ‘right, this track needs a tambourine’ or it’ll say ‘I need a cello’ or something. So anyway…..{with a mischievous look}…..I’ve said no to the cello {laughs}

Giles Sibbald

Dammit! I play the cello!

Galen Ayers

Oh no…..I’m sorry! The cello is beautiful.

Giles Sibbald

I thought I was going to get the call!

Paul Simonon

Save it for your own album! {laughs}

Galen Ayers

The aesthetic that we ended up wanting to create was quite a simple one. It’s not simple in the kind of derogative way, but just with a lot of space and allowing Tony Visconti’s production to provide that space. All my friends have said that you can hear every instrument in its own place, having its own pivotal role, you know, coming in, being the star of the show and then backing out. Just being able to have our two voices together for the first time, we got very excited about how to showcase them differently. In some of them, I’m just doing the backing vocals and Paul’s doing the lead, and some we’re very much doing a duet in the traditional sense. And some I’m taking the lead.

Giles Sibbald

What did you learn about yourself while you were working together?

Paul Simonon

Well, for me, it was like challenging myself to do something that I might not normally do. Taking myself out of my comfort zone. Making this record was definitely that. The singing was the part that was taking me out of my comfort zone. Writing the music, that’s always a struggle one way or the other – you’ve got an idea, and you have to work out how to put across what you feel.

Galen Ayers

I agree, I felt the same, I’d also say that it was a struggle at times, but it was a learning curve to be able to embrace all of Paul’s influences alongside mine and also to make up our own. The other learning curve was singing in Spanish. Now I don’t, in any way, pretend that I can sing in the tradition of the beautiful, amazing voices of Spain, like flamenco, for example. So, I’m not in any way assuming that I sound like that. We spent a lot of time playing around with tempos and simplifying the words so that they could actually hit in a way that I felt were true to the tonality of Spanish singing, if that makes sense. Spanish – not as much as English – has a very physical aspect to the way it communicates. So, I wanted to bring that across in the singing. What I mean by that is not try and put too many words in one verse, for example; or allowing for elongated vowels, you know, to sit on a vowel for a while and create that emotion without having to explain the emotion.

Paul Simonon

Fine tuning the writing process, really.

Giles Sibbald

I think lyrics are just integral to the song and I like that approach of giving them their own space and to allow listeners to make their own interpretations – it makes you think more and hopefully has a deeper impact. And my interpretation is going to be different to, you know, my next door neighbour.

Galen Ayers

Yeah, and sometimes you read musicians’ memoirs, and they actually explain to you what they were thinking of when they wrote the song, what they actually meant, and in a way it, it adds something, but it cuts the wings in another way. It’s so weird. A bittersweet thing when you find out.

Giles Sibbald

Galen, you mentioned that singing in the Spanish language was a learning curve. Were you worried about how your Spanish language might be perceived?

Galen Ayers

I know what you mean. I didn’t give much thought to the perception, really, although there was the time where I finally played it to some Spanish friends. And they went, ‘Oh, we like your accent.’ And I was shocked! I thought ‘No, I don’t have an accent! What are you talking about?!’ I grew up with a transatlantic accent, I think they call it. You can hear it. Spanish was my first language and I used to speak Mallorquin too, so I’m used to my accent being all over the place. So, you either embrace it and accept that this is how you sound or you try and fix it.

Paul Simonon

It adds good textures. Like when we’re singing ‘It’s another night to catch the bus’, it’s like yelling, it sounds like I’m on the bus. It’s just two voices that both go into Soho.

Galen Ayers

It’s great that we’re zoning into the different languages. One of the things that we’ve spoken about before is that this is a post-Brexit, post-Covid album so this is a celebration of Europe in the shadow of Brexit. Not one person has told me anything good that’s come out of Brexit.

Giles Sibbald

Lonely Town, particularly with the video, gives you a reminder of what a real community means and when you’re singing about when tourists come in, create their carnage, and then they leave again, I think that image accentuates how important the community is and especially in light of Brexit and xenophobia.

Paul Simonon

Yeah, and then that same situation applies to villages around Great Britain too. Pubs close down, then the post office goes, then the bank’s gone and so on…

Galen Ayers

Now you have ghettos in the middle of London created by people with their fifth or sixth home that they never come to. Nothing can survive if there’s nobody walking around or living in those areas……

“Ya nadie vive aquí

Todos se han ido

Oh pueblito

¡Has perdido tu corazón!”

Translated from the English words of ‘Lonely Town’ by Galen Ayers and Paul Simonon

‘Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?’ is out now on Sony

See them live:

7th June 2023 – The Tabernacle, London

11th June 2023 – La Maroquinerie, Paris

www.galenandpaul.com

Photos by: Dan Donovan

New Limited Edition Art & Lyric book from the legend Peter Murphy released 31st July

The Flood Gallery are proud to announce a new official Peter Murphy deluxe art and lyric book “the line between the devil’s teeth and that which cannot be repeat”. This unparalleled document of Peter Murphy’s work is limited to just 600 copies, with each copy individually numbered and signed by Peter Murphy.

“the line between the devil’s teeth and that which cannot be repeat” is an epic tome that for the first time ever collects all of Peter Murphy’s lyrics, from the groundbreaking 1980 Bauhaus debut album ‘In the Flat Field’ to Peter’s tenth acclaimed solo album ‘Lion’ in 2014. Lyrics from ‘The Bela Session”, which was recorded in 1979 but not released until 2018, are also included.

“Lyric writing is a dive into the never-ending internal depth of your sea of being. You’re writing to, from, and for your fellow beings and Earth friends.” – Peter Murphy

With an introduction by Peter Murphy, the book also features personal hand-written journal entries and previously unpublished paintings and illustrations by Peter. Amazing photography is included throughout, including rare and unseen pictures from lens legends Fin Costello, Paul Cox, E Gabriel Edvy, Kevin Haskins, Rob Sheridan and Justin Thomas, producing a true visual feast.

The book is a 288-page, oversized deluxe hardback housed in a slipcase with gold foil design and comes with an exclusive giclee print painted by Peter Murphy.

Peter’s spellbinding voice and the lush romanticism and depth of his lyrical style continue to enthrall his fans old and new alike, creating a richly woven tapestry that perfectly balances meaning, melody, and rhyme. This is a must-have for all fans of Peter Murphy, Bauhaus, and Dali’s Car

The book will be released on 31^st July but is available to pre-order exclusively from:

www.thefloodgallery.com/products/the-line-between-the-devil-s-teeth

Shocked to hear of Mark Stewart’s death.

The undisputed Don and main man instigator of the Bristol Dub scene and a huge innovator, inspirational artist and Post Punk legend with The Pop Group. A physically huge man with a great fire of spirit, he seemed indestructible.

Super intelligent, Informed and articulate, especially when it came to politics, counter culture and the avant garde and any radical ideas.

Was a great experience and honour to work on “The Politics Of Envy” with him. Most artists are quite precious about their recordings and ideas but Mark was the opposite “Do whatever you want, destroy them if necessary! “ completely fearless.

Everyone from Lee Perry to Primal Scream came out for him on that album and it’s rightly considered a classic, as is the single “A Very British Coup” where Mark is featured along side Jah Wobble and Keith Levine.

Mostly I remember constant laughter and hilarity, a very sharp eye and dark humour throughout every session.

Fly high starman and cosmic peace warrior.

Words from Youth

Photography from Maryann Morris

How Tragic… the duality of the name and the singularity of the impact.

‘The Fear’ is your punk rock sweet spot. A soaring, euphoric anthem that snarls, spits and caresses. It’s a bloody film noir, a slice of retro kitsch that respects the trailblazers of the 90s but covers new ground. Thunderous drums and a ripping bass anchor each other. Head protagonist Paige Campbell’s seductively raw vocals create a melodic tension in a narrative that’s amplified by sweeping chord progressions. The middle eight puts an arm around your shoulder, dousing you in saccharine and blood before the buzzsaw guitars break free to twist the truth-seeking knife for one last time.

“You’re going under and taking me with you I knew this was too good to be true”

Emotional, visceral, raw, empowering. This is the sound of the truth.

https://www.instagram.com/1.800.howtragic/

https://www.youtube.com/user/HOTTglam

https://www.facebook.com/howtragicnyc

https://ohmyhowtragic.bandcamp.com/track/the-fear-radio-edit

https://www.howtragic.com/

By: Giles Sibbald

In September 2021, I interviewed A Certain Ratio just ahead of the release of Loco Remezclada. They had already written 1982. Restlessly creative, respectful to their influences and history, always looking forward.

First of all, the stunning album design by Trevor and Craig Johnson. Classic, clean, modern typography and a passionate colour palette that unlocks the door to the ten track kaleidoscope of creative overdrive.

Samo moulds a delicately percussive hi-hat funk groove with nods to the hedonistic years of Basquiat and graffiti influenced NYC art and music – rap, funk, jazz – and some of the incredible sounds coming from the Puerto Rican and Cuban population and, of course, Fela Kuti. The edgy, steamy and complex groove of Waiting On A Train oozes claustrophobia but Martin Moscrop’s sparse ascending and descending guitar licks give us space, whilst taking us into the twilight. Ellen and Chunky are hypnotizing with their languid yet uncompromising vocal pairing.

I was really excited to hear the title track, 1982 – “a fuckin’ stonker” as Jez described it in that 2021 interview – floats an Afrobeat electro-bass groove that has me reaching for my intergalactic passport. It really is a fuckin’ stonker. I get my Planet Earth passport back for the Afrodubby A Trip in Hulme. Tombo in M3 is a freeform instrumental fusing acid jazz and afrobeat to whisk you away on its sublime, meditative groove. Constant Curve is possibly my favourite and, in true Ratio style, is an epic collaboration – the middle eight groove is a beautifully sweaty slice of underground euphoria. Having said that, Afro Dizzy is pretty euphoric too. And psychedelic. The sleeve notes tell us that the drums are from a Tony Allen sample pack. It’s a fantastic, deep, complex groove with killer guitar licks, electronic psychedelia and some truly wondrous brass. Glorious. Holy Smoke channels a freeform shake of the grooviest hips and the dirtiest, squalliest sax and Ellen’s flute elevates the experimental (hey, yeah, of course, its ACR!) Tier 3 to a celestial otherworld. Ballad of ACR surprises you with its traditional (whaaaat??!) melodies that makes you wonder if you’ve gone through the looking glass into a compilation of Wire downtempos, but no, it shapeshifts into a freeform jazz experiment that squeals, honks and bleeps before the sultry trumpet brings us back down to earth.

ACR’s power is in their collective being, the sum of their parts, their absolute open mindedness. They’re about being fearless, in love with music and bloody fabulous at creating it. With 1982, their renaissance continues.

1982 is out now on Mute Records

https://www.acrmcr.com

Words by Giles Sibbald

Photography – Paul Husband

"Brixton is God" 

The school kid scrawling it on the wall of the boys’ room all those years ago had it right.

If they’re reading this, well maybe they’d be proud of the longevity of their proclamation. Because Brix Smith is still a rock god. She’s back amongst us with her first solo album – yeah, right, hard to believe! – called ‘Valley Of The Dolls’. A nod to a passion for Russ Meyer films, perhaps.

Co-written and produced by Youth, it’s an honest and vulnerable storybook told through her inimitable hook-laden surf-grunge lens that we first saw with the underrated The Adult Net.

It’s magnificent and addictive.

And it gets better and better with each listen.

Opener ‘Livin Thru My Despair’ is a full on grunge banger powered by Brix’s riffs and emotive chord progressions. This is no despair, though. Catharsis maybe, but it’s raw reality. It feels imperious and resolute with a delicious middle eight as she catalogues the unspoken desolation of that fabled, life changing Manchester experience.

‘Fast Net’ is so catchy it’s unfair. Another middle eight to die for that gloriously bridges the power chords.

Brix’s trademark major/minor chord progressions sweep through ‘Aphrodite’. The pure California chorus and the subtle Stupid Girl synth has the hands of those festival crowds in the air.

‘California Smile’ is a picture perfect day of that glistening Pacific Ocean. Or is it? Bam. Brix sweeps away the luscious to reveal the underbelly. Don’t always believe what you see, it’s probably superficiality. This is as strong as fuck.

‘Changing’. The sloweeeeee! An evocative Crystals/Velvets tambourine here, a subtle orchestral accompaniment there, gigantic angst laden power chords follow the gloriously melancholic melodies. A song for making difficult choices, to pull off the mask, face who we really are, it recalls a 1960’s shifting from early morning dreamy haze to the insistent sunset and the underbelly of a reality that we might not want to – but must – face.

‘Black Rainbow Sky’ crosses a pulsing 60’s surf with Brix’s Cali spoken word rhymes over tight chugging riffs. Live fast and die.

‘Say I’m Ur No.1’ is the Hey Hey Hey Hey surf pop classic. A modern-day ‘Denis’ with Destri-style synth harmonies. Is there anything better?

‘Valley Grl’ pays homage to where she grew up. Another punch the air chorus with growling riffs

‘All My Luv’ – A nod to the Zep’s ‘The Ocean’ riff with staccato vocals that precedes full on psychedelia and wigging the shred out.

‘Black Butterfly’ is a 7 minute cinematic closer that sweeps across the windswept plains from chrysalis to redemption – “take me out of this reality, take me from this place of pain”.

The mask’s padlock has been conquered.

Stand tall, spread your arms. It’s the rise and rise of Brix.

Out now on Grit Over Glamour

www.brixsmith.com

Photo Credit – Paul Scala

Royal Albert Hall, London – Sunday 12th March 2023

KK’s Steel Mill, Wolverhampton – Friday 10th March 2023

Review: Nigel Wallbank

Featured Photo: Sara Louise Bowrey

There is no other band quite like Killing Joke.

Born out of ritual and fire in 1979 they continue their journey through the ages.

Our journey to the RAH began 2 days before with a trip to Wolverhampton to witness the final warm up gig. The venue was small and intimate. The set list consisted of the first two albums – the eponymous debut followed by What’s THIS For? – back-to-back in strict album order.

The synth pulse of Requiem and the abrasive beat of Wardance kicked it all off. These songs are still as relevant as they were back in 1980. The brutal instrumental beat of Bloodsports was relentless. My two favourites from this album are Complications and Primitive and they were at their brutal best.

It wasn’t long before we were into What’s THIS For? The Fall of Because starts it all off with Big Paul Ferguson’s brutal tribal drumming and Youth creating his authentic sound from this era through the beloved fretless Fender bass. His bass that night was so loud it literally got inside your head.

The highlight from this album has always been Unspeakable for me and it was at its best tonight. The night closes with an encore of early singles/B sides.

The band were in fine form. It was a great prelude to what was to come.

Fast forward to Sunday night and the vast temple that is the Royal Albert Hall. The faithful are gathering for a dose of catharsis through those first two albums back to back. The energy levels were reaching critical.

It’s maybe a little strange to see KJ in these grand surroundings, but you have to realise that their power appeals to many generations now.

We meet friends old and new, many who have travelled U.K. wide and from across the globe to witness this spectacle. The Gathering is a worldwide network of loyal fans, a family and the the gig is as much about meeting others as it is seeing the band . No other band has a following like Killing Joke. The Gatherers are a support network for each other, a university of knowledge. A Gathering is like seeing close family you haven’t seen for a while, a chance to celebrate and maybe reminisce about days past.

The crew prepare the stage. Diamond Dave, Damon Head and the other faithful servants look dwarfed by huge venue. Dave is a Joke fan transformed into Geordie’s ever present technician. An integral part of the Gathering, Dave can always be seen distributing setlists and other souvenirs to the faithful at the end of the gigs. Damon has grown up with the band and is now tour manager.

A leather jacket with Killing Joke artwork painted on the back is handed to Diamond Dave to place at the side of the stage. The jacket belonged to Mik Raven who sadly passed last year after a battle with cancer. Once a Gatherer, always a Gatherer.

As the Eyes Wide Shut intro music came on, the full scale of the venue became apparent. The synth riff to Requiem blasted out. The band look at home here, filling this temple with their incomparable sonic fire. The accompanying visual fire is courtesy of Michael Coles’ subversive visual wizardry, tonight projected onto a large screen at the rear of the stage. Feast your eyes on the stark images of riots, war and aliens. Mike and his work are peerless.

This is going to be a truly magical experience.

Requiem pulses out again and Wardance is positively nuclear. The first album set was just perfect. The highlight for me was the brutal rhythm of Primitive, but everything was a highlight to be truthful.

We move into What’s THIS For? and The Fall of Because is again a sonic attack. Big Paul’s tribal drums drive it along. Tension, Unspeakable, Butcher follow. Follow the Leaders seems as relevant today as it was back in 1981 with war and global pressure all around us. Madness followed and Who Told You How is a mixture of funk and driving guitars, an instrumental that has a haunting feel to it.

Exit is the final song of the set. Geordie, Youth and Big Paul hit the groove. Jaz, as ever the ringmaster, orchestrates the audience into clapping to the beat.

Then, that’s it .. the band leave the stage. They return after a few minutes and a blistering version of Are You Receiving? kicks off the encore It was the first song they ever wrote together and it still sounds as good today as it did back then.

The punk/funk of Change follows, Geordie’s guitar sounding like a one man orchestra in the middle part. Turn to Red follows, a pioneering dub/punk fusion. Killing Joke have never played it by the rules. Then,Youth`s howling wolf call kicks us into the finale of Pssyche.

All too soon it’s ended. Youth, Jaz and Big Paul take their bows, and stand together in a show of unity. Geordie, maybe not one for the limelight walks off quietly. They have been together since they were teenagers, and now in their 60s they show the brotherhood that has always been present.

Killing Joke’s alchemy of dub bass, snarling guitar, tribal drums and, of course, Jaz’s fierce vocals and spellbinding presence, made it a truly amazing spectacle. They have always stood head and shoulders above the rest of the post-punk crowd. No one else has the Magick that they possess. It is a unique combination.

They have been a part of my life for so long and have shaped my thinking in so many ways. My wife and I have travelled widely to see them and we have met so many amazing people. Long may it continue.

www.killingjoke.co.uk

“Life is the lake of existence. It is as turbulent as you make it. As calm as you allow it to be. It forms around you and your thoughts about yourself. Therefore, make sure your thoughts about yourself are consistent with the life you wish to live.”
Sananda Maitreya

On July 8^th, 2022, Sananda Maitreya celebrated the 35^th anniversary of Introducing The Hardline, his iconic, timeless and intensely seductive debut album that sold 1 million copies in the first 3 days of its release and rocketed him to international success. Following a very public schism from the music industry and the sacrificial altar upon which he argues he had been placed, Sananda has flourished as a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and writer.

His creativity is reflective of his expansive, curious and questioning mind, an untamed soul that is free from shackles and restraints that are imposed on us. It is his mind to own. The rules are his own. Imagine how powerful that must feel….

I wanted us to have a conversation about the here and now and where we go from here. We acknowledge and talk about the past, but in a way that informs us. So, what follows is a fascinating and unique conversation to explore the world view of one of the most talented artists of our generation with a majestic voice that can – quite literally – stop you in your tracks.

Giles Sibbald

You’ve done a lot of writing over the years. How do you see that and your music contributing to this debate of how to get more people to think for themselves and stop this, let’s say, not-so-creeping corporatization of our lives?

Sananda Maitreya

I don’t really see separation as an artist, I see different departments and things that I have to do. I’m an artist, and I’m a writer, whether you’re writing Hallmark greeting cards, whether you’re writing essays, whether you’re writing novels, whether you’re writing songs, writing is writing. And not everything fits into a song. It’s the moment that tells me what avenue to pursue with a view towards following that train of thought. I’m a massive Beatles fan and the late, great maestro George Harrison. His song Think for Yourself ‘Do what you wanna do. Go where you’re going to go. But think for yourself because I won’t be there for you’. It’s beautiful. But it’s the reason the Beatles only lasted 10 years. Somehow their situation was infiltrated. Things were introduced to keep those guys from making an even greater contribution to our life. I saw them as New Testament prophets – just like I saw Dylan as an Old Testament prophet – who came back to serve more time. Take some time off, come back, do some more work, because the work of humanity is never really finished. We’re always on the move. And, you know, for me, Dylan always had this cadence of an Old Testament prophet and this sense of authority that he brought into our time. I actually saw The Beatles as modern day saints, spreading messages of love and peace and to think for yourself, don’t just mindlessly do shit. They opposed the war in Vietnam. The British establishment created a monster. And at some point, they realised that that monster was having a greater influence than just selling Beatles wigs and amps and guitars and things with the Union Jack label slapped on it. But, they were promoted precisely because they were promoting Britain. I believe the Beatles were an example of one of the greatest soft weapons ever created. They had such an impact in countries that the British Government was able to move military and industrial policy objectives in after The Beatles had opened the doors. I think at some point, they came to realise not only their power – clearly – but what was being done in their name. And John and Paul were both very, very uncomfortable with this idea and began to fidget and speak out about it. And I don’t think that their eventual separation was just a matter of the guys getting tired of one another. I think it was a deliberate attempt to bring to a close something that was becoming a threat to the very establishment that had espoused its benefits. So they weren’t allowed to grow beyond what they were becoming. Once they were denuded and no longer a political threat – you couldn’t turn into any corner without being smacked in the head by some Beatles shit. It has become a religion. You shouldn’t even say anything against the greatness of the Beatles – it has literally become a state religion. So now it’s safe to make it a household brand. Conversely, I’m a massive Stones guy. And this is not an any level of criticism of the Stones…but, you notice that the reason they’re still going is because at some point, they turned off all the politics. Mick is a very, very clever guy. And Keith is nothing if not a survivor, by definition. After those guys were thrown in jail in the 60s, it didn’t take much for them to realise, ‘okay, yeah, maybe we need to, like dial this shit back and just be the world’s greatest rock and roll band.’ So they spent their time as velvet revolutionaries. And that’s why they’re still here.

Giles

They blunted their own subversiveness for their own survival?

Sananda

Right. I was taken from my perch for the same reason. I was considered a political threat. This is the point. You don’t have to be talking about politics to be considered a political threat. All they have to see is your capacity for bringing disparate peoples together that they’ve spent a fortune separating. I remember being told by a Sony executive that at that time, ‘Michael Jackson might have sold more records than you up to this point, but your demographic is as wide as anybody in music.’ They used to have all their boxes. And I ticked every single one of them: bikers, conservatives, liberals, grandmothers, children, boom. That’s alarming for them. The revolution is not in what you’re singing about, it’s in the barriers that are being erased and the disparate people you’re bringing together. And of course, my music has always had an element of nonconformity. It’s not willing to be contained in anybody’s convenient little box. Music is extremely convincing, even to the point where there’s a reason why we push music with vocals more than we push instrumental music. Because instrumental music means a guy could be polish, a guy could be South African, he could be Nigerian. Without words to get in the way everybody can understand it. The moment you write in the language, you’re already limited by that particular language. The MTV era was also a massive exercise in mind control to limit the perception of what a song was about. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the creative effect of videos as their own art form.

Giles

This is a very good point.

Sananda

The establishment prefers it if you’re very political because you’re easier to marginalize. ‘We’ll take this black nationalist band because we like the idea that they’re trying to keep black consciousness away from our shit’ or ‘We like white nationalism, because it marginalises and it’s easy to all know that that’s white nationalism. We don’t want that near our shit either.’ So they actually encourage marginalisation exercises because it’s then easier to pin you into a space.

I mean, I love the music of Rage Against the Machine, but as powerful as they are, the state prefers them being a very pointedly political exercise, because they can keep them walled off as exactly that.

Giles

Do other art forms, such as body art, marginalize? I’ve used it later in life as a self expression of how my life has changed. But is there a wider issue at play here?

Sananda

The bottom line is, what we’re seeing with body art is entirely a projection and commensurate with the fact that we are going through phases of nationalism and phases of identity whereby we’re resorting and reverting to tribalism. Because ultimately, race is a completely political construct. We’re tribes – there is only the human race. There isn’t a black race. Or a white race. We’re tribes. The human race is comprised of various tribes. Even the way we talk about cultural appropriation is complete bullshit. Evolution has always been tribal, peeking over at other tribes to extract, diversify and upgrade their own experience. So, you know, when I hear people go on about cultural appropriation, I think ‘So at what point do we only allow Japanese people to eat sushi?’ Or ‘only certain tribes of black people should have sweet yams’. By that logic, you can’t say all black people can have sweet yams, because all black people didn’t come from the same tribe.’ Where do you draw the line? Highly ridiculous. It also shows the degree to which we’ve reverted to being mean spirited, stingy bitches who carry misery for allowing ourselves to be bunched into such a thing as ‘I’m French because I grew up in France and I speak the French language because I’ve been colonised by language.’ So, a lot of body armour is a return to tribal identification whereby we undertake to identify ourselves as belonging to a unique set of circumstances, that basically we’re redefining ourselves. And then being forced into this sense of patriotism that says, right or wrong, this is my country where, quite frankly, most of us don’t really have a genuine consciousness that extends much beyond our neighbourhood.

Giles

When does appropriation become exploitative?

Sananda

Humans have been exploiting the human experience from the beginning of the human experience. We exploit shit. It’s who we are. The question is always ‘have you stepped over a line for me?’ But to say that a white guy can’t dress in a sombrero and Mexican costume because it disrespects sensitive Mexicans is, again, part of the culture war that is being perpetuated by the system to continue to divide and conquer. Colonisers are really nervous because we keep showing evidence that we want to go beyond the smaller definitions of ourselves and our humanity to join into something greater. The point is, if I see a white person with cornrows, do I give a shit? And what right do I have to give a shit to claim that ‘Well, you’re stealing from them’. Nobody’s stealing from anyone. We’re only looking at what inspires us, what moves us and what we wish to take upon ourselves. Especially when you consider that a white person might only be politically defined as a white person for a couple of generations. They may be blacker than me. They may have more black people in their past than I do. But in the last couple of generations, they might have bred white. So now they can join this white people’s club, where they’re now supposed to forego all of the ancestral knowledge within them, and pretend and act in a certain way, prescribed by people nervous of the idea that we interchange and exchange with one another and always have done. But that culture war makes us stingy and mean. When we’re stingy people, we squint and when we squint, that narrows our vision. We see things much, much more selectively. We are living in an age of the politics of meanness which creates greater isolation. The truth is, the trick of colonialism is always to marginalise every group, but under the pretence that it’s in fact trying to elevate it to a point of recognition. We need to talk about human rights, everything under that umbrella is a marginalization exercise, meant to divide us from the greater larger issue of simple human rights. Marginalizing, slicing and dicing means further control and manipulation and it puts a target on the backs of those communities. Marginalised people will be much more protected under the simple umbrella of human rights. Our right to self-determination is a human right.

Giles

Where do you see this going? Because it feels like there’s a long journey, you know, to get from where we are now which is here, to anything approaching equal human rights which is way over here.

Sananda

It’s gonna go right into a wall where they meant it to go. If it goes into a wall, then we can be more easily shot. It’s a colonising exercise. The life that I live now as a 60 year old is just a portion of the greater life that I’ve been observing for the centuries that my bloodline has existed. I’m coming from Native Americans, whites, Scots, Irish, Spanish and North African Berbers. My consciousness is wide because my male ancestors have been spread far and wide. And we have access to all of that. If we choose only to recognise ourselves as this entity we call ‘ourselves’ in this moment, that’s our prerogative and it’s often for the benefit of what we’re here to do right now in this space, but we also have the right to zoom out and see that we belong to something that has been part of the marks of time forever. The other part of your question (about the journey) is that the journey, regardless of where we’re going, is always wrong. Because that’s the whole purpose. Get to your ‘destination’ and then ‘oops, what now? Boredom?’ Okay, I had an experience when I was 29 years old, where basically, because of various meditations I had undertaken – I’m being honest, I’m not exaggerating – after 10 days, I experienced a blissful nirvana. I had actually attained this blissful state. This wasn’t anything hallucinogenic. I wasn’t even smoking pot until I was 33. For 10 days, I was literally walking around in a state of higher altered consciousness and experiencing complete bliss, freedom from thoughts and worries that controlled my actions. It was an incredible experience. But the wonderful thing is that, at some point near the end of the experience, I began to panic and go ‘okay, now what? What the fuck am I going to do with this for the rest of my life? I have shit to do, I’m a creative person.’ For those 10 days, I didn’t have any real thoughts towards creating anything because I wasn’t agitated towards any sense of resolution, problems or worries.

Giles

When you were emerging from that state of nirvana, did you start to think differently about your purpose in life? And what impact did that experience have on your creativity? Did you find your creative mind in a better place?

Sananda

People have near death experiences and they see that there is no reason to fear the hereafter. But that only allows them to get on more with what is here now. This is what happened to me: the world was created from chaos and crisis is the opportunity for new birth and new forms. But literally, nothing can be created without friction. But as long as there is no crisis, as long as there’s nothing pressing upon us creating that friction, that dynamic of urgency, things just tend to stay stagnant as they are. So, when I was in the state of nirvana, I wasn’t thinking about sex, I wasn’t thinking about sitting down writing something because there was no motivation to do anything but remain in this state. So, nirvana is a state of existence that is real. I don’t need it right now.

I didn’t find my creativity necessarily in a better place, because my creative mind is not mine, it’s something I’ve inherited, but I’m grateful to have it. I listen to it and follow it, it doesn’t follow me. But again, once you verify the realities beyond your existence, you can just appreciate the value of why chaos exists. See, basically most spiritual and religious practices encourage us to judge ourselves. And they maintain control of us by selling us the idea that we are imperfect beings. Of course, we’re fucking imperfect! What the fuck are you gonna do?

Giles

We know our brains and our behaviours are flawed, but why do we not find it easy to accept that?

Sananda

Our main flaw is our need to judge ourselves. We’re easy to manipulate if we chase a perfection shadow and as long as we’re chasing it, we’re never going to catch it. Basically, the shit is what it is. We inherited the bag of circumstances that we’ve agreed to incarnate and take on. So, it’s in the judging of ourselves as imperfect and flawed, as opposed to accepting the value of why we have these various characteristics to work through. That’s the main problem, not the flaws themselves. I’ve said to people who have asked for advice that the biggest enemy of relationships has always been our idea of relationships. It’s not the relationship itself. It’s the ideas that two different persons bring about what a relationship means, what it’s supposed to mean and what you’ve been conditioned to believe.

Giles

My parents’ generation, for example, would often have friendship relationships for life. I guess life was much more linear for them in many ways. I’ve lost contact with friends – sometimes through my choice, sometimes due to my childhood issues with trust – but I’ve noticed that my friendships and relationships have changed even more over the last 10 years than they ever have and it’s no coincidence that they’ve changed in parallel with the biggest changes in myself and how I live my life. I need people whose values are much more aligned with mine.

Sananda

Since our external reflections are always a reflection of where we are right now, does it not make perfect sense that as you change, your reflection changes, and as your reflection changes, those that you reflect around, you will also stand to change? It makes all the sense in the world. We should never be alarmed that as we are undergoing changes, our surroundings are undergoing a reflection of those changes. I only need a few people. Anyway, frankly, some people are much more outgoing than others. My wife is a very, very outgoing person and my sons have tons of friends. I’ve never had more than a couple of friends at a time, for reasons I can say also pertain to issues of abandonment and moving around a lot as a child. But I also am willing to understand that I might have taken on those issues precisely to save me from too much outside influence. I actually don’t like listening to a lot of people’s opinions. I don’t really need a lot of external confirmation of what I need to do with my energy. But not everyone’s like that. You have the type of people who draw their energy from being amongst other people, my wife being one of those people that recharges her battery by being amongst people that are friends. I’m the complete opposite. I recharge my batteries by being alone. And gathering my strength and my energy in silence and being, not worrying about other voices and opinions. But as we change, our reflection will change and, and our friends reflect where we are now and what we need. So it makes all the sense now that as your values deepen, you are going to want people around you who reflect that.

Giles

I’m an only child and I got very comfortable being in my own company when I was a kid, so I completely understand and empathise with what you were saying there about recharging by being alone. I think I get a lot of my power from solitude and people I love and respect. Otherwise, the vast amount of “opinion” gets overwhelming.

Sananda

And that’s totally mature. It’s healthy and commensurate with just recognising what your nature is. Again, not everyone is like that. People are consensus types by nature. I’ve never felt comfortable being a consensus type. One thing I’ve learned about leadership is you can’t lead and follow and you have to be arrogant enough to presume that you know where they need to go. And just fucking take them there. The best way for a parade to begin is just to start walking. And if you walk convincingly enough, you will get people to join you just based on curiosity, right? But you have to know who you are. And of course, you’re gonna be called arrogant. Of course, you’re gonna hear – which I’ve heard my whole life – ‘who does that guy think he is?’ My answer has always been that my lifetime has been given me to answer that very question. Who I think I am might not be revealed until the last breath I take. But in the meantime, I just go towards it anyway. Because, again, I’m blessed and cursed with not giving a shit about really what other people think about what I do.

Giles

Has that always been the case, or is that something that you’ve had to learn?

Sananda

I was raised in a very, very strict religious environment, in a very narrow minded way, surrounded by a very small minded, racist community that prescribed very precisely how people were supposed to behave, in order for others to feel comfortable accepting them. All that did was further confirm that I hate consensus building. I don’t trust it. It’s usually fear based and it’s usually the need to control the minds of others. That’s not who I am. Even to this day, I can’t wear shirts that fit me too well, because it reflects a time when I was just kept in too straightened a situation where I couldn’t express myself without the risk of censure or without the risk of someone being butthurt and offended. And it took so little for them to be butthurt and offended anyway. As soon as I was able to live on my own and start taking care of myself, in fact, as soon as I left the military, the idea of any authority other than my own authority ever controlling me again was a foregone conclusion.

Giles

Interesting paradox with consensus from that interpretation to the one when it’s used by genuine consensus builders who believe in the harmony of bringing people together…

Sananda

Consensus obviously isn’t controlling when it is something like a law that’s necessary for our community, you know, like theft or assault. Most of the laws that our society agrees on are absolutely self-evident. There has to be some essential basic consensus that we will all agree on – like that we should have clean water – for a community to exist. But we’ve grown used to the idea that a community should be able to tell me what the fuck I can smoke.. So, when I talk of consensus meaning control, I’m talking about where it reaches into our own personal space to basically dictate how we should live as individuals and as communities. As long as I’m not harming others, I should have the right to decide what I do.

Giles

If we could talk about language for a minute. I find Chomsky fascinating, particularly on anarchism, but I was interested to read his views on linguistics and that our speech is just one tool we have of externalising our internal language – writing, touch and sign could be others. I do feel that we are passively accepting the meaning of some words being re-defined much more overtly now to fit a controlling agenda. How do you see this and how does this impact what you said earlier about how music and writing are different channels for your expression?

Sananda

Right. And Orwell was already speaking about this doublespeak and things of this nature, warning us that at some point language would be used to limit and not to express. Language is being used now as a dangerous political tool. As a writer, it has all at once made us much, much more married to the idea of precision. But it’s also emboldening to say that, you know, if it’s this easy to get a rise out of people, that also has great advantages. At the end of the day, you know, often whoever gets offended by reading or hearing something should be fucking offended. Often, being offended is the only way we pay attention to things and examine them and allow ourselves to look at something. Human nature tends to settle for the lullaby, not for the melody that kind of sends you on exploration.

Giles

Yes, this tension between staying in your comfort zone and the familiarity that affords versus the big, bad and dangerous unknown that you need to grow and not stagnate.

Sananda

I wrote a song many years ago called Tension Inside The Sweetness. I’ve always subscribed to the theory that exists in the ancient spiritual teachings of the mystics about divine dissatisfaction. Because, for me, I still am looking for the perfect song to write, I haven’t really nailed it yet. I don’t even listen to my music after I’ve recorded and mastered it. Even when I go into rehearsals, I have somebody else listen to the record, just in case my memory forgot something. Part of the reason for that is to protect the part of my nature that’s hypercritical, which I inherited from my upbringing. But the other part is to do with my rising sign of Capricorn – the mountain goat. The mountain goat represents ambition, but it also represents the inability to turn around, look back and see how much you’ve already done. For me, I’ve got a lot of mountain left and I’m still eager to explore the rest of that mountain. So, this is what I call my divine dissatisfaction where I don’t want to be too satisfied or too fulfilled and to use that hopefully to my advantage.

There’s a reason why I used the cosmology of Mount Olympus for the last several projects and that’s because I very much identify with Prometheus. The catchphrase for the Prometheus and Pandora project was ‘Prometheus was banished from heaven and borrowed from hell, because both God and the devil knew him well’. So, the bottom line is the gods of Mount Olympus got tired of Prometheus. Zeus, who was extremely fond of his son, Prometheus, was given the ultimatum that he was going to have to get rid of the small fucker because if he didn’t, the gods were going to rebel against him. His whole message was ‘Guys, you created this humanity that you use, abandon and leave dwelling in darkness, caring only about your wealth, your estates and your riches’. And so merely for holding them accountable, he was banished. And again, I wasn’t talking about any political subjects in my music, but the problem is what we popstars are there for is to sell capitalism’s idea of divide and conquer – buy this, these are the new shoes, these are the new tracksuits, this is the new car. And most importantly, if they’re trying to contain the fear of black power, then an independent, free thinking person who refuses to be contained with the establishment’s idea of what being black is about, is not the motherfucker they want all the other black boys looking at looking at. They want them to identify with the guys who are basically espousing black nationalism, or black pre-appropriated identity – I was none of that. I even heard criticism that I thought I was a white dude. I mean, in fact, I do have a white heritage. And why the fuck not? I’m not going to let you tell me how much of my blood matters to me. One of the things that I always respected about my dear, dear friend George Michael was his refusal to play this macho heterosexual game. He was told that if he didn’t play the game, they were going to out him. You notice even when he did the girlfriend thing, he got an Asian girlfriend. He said, ‘Okay, I’m still going to subvert this and I’m not going to let you make me into a typical white Englishman.’ I always respected how he chafed at the idea of what he had to be in order to please to the corporations that were using him to keep the rest of the guys in the closet so they could be contained and used for their own purposes. I’m very proud of him that he eventually set himself up to be caught in that bathroom incident in Beverly Hills, which was clearly – at least subconsciously – his need to free himself from that bullshit.

I appreciate you giving me this opportunity, Giles. Thank you very much for your support of my work. It does matter tremendously. It encourages trust in what you’re doing and trust who you are.

The digitally remastered and spatial audio edition of Introducing The Hardline, overseen by original producer Martyn Ware, is out now.

www.sanandamaitreya.com

Photo Credit – Manuel Scrima for Treehouse Publishing

Are friendships for life a thing anymore? Does our unsettled world give us the right habitat to grow older together as friends? I’m not so sure. But maybe that’s just me. It’s the sign of a deep friendship when you can see someone after, like, forever and it’s like you’ve never been apart.

Frankie Cosmos had already made the decision to go on a hiatus ‘from touring and the rat race’ before Covid struck, a hiatus that ended up lasting almost 500 days. The decision to get together again and start work on new music threw up a few questions: How would they feel? Would it work? Would the space afforded by the hiatus and no live shows allow new influences and ways of working to be embraced into their world?

Greta Kline, Lauren Martin, Luke Pyenson and Alex Bailey are sat together, looking relaxed and joking like a bunch of friends that are locked in for the long haul. There’s warmth, humour, openness, observation and candour from them all and a very definite excitement and pride in their excellent new record, Inner World Peace, a sparkling storybook about inner reflection, curiosity, perception, times past and times to come all delivered with alluring harmonies and joyful brevity.

I start by asking about their individual perceptions of what this record means to them.

Greta Kline

The writing process was definitely affected by not being on tour for the first time in my adult life. I’d been on tour non-stop since I was 18 pretty much. Being able to write in a still moment where I’m in one place for a period – we didn’t have a single show booked – was really cool. It also made all of us appreciate being together and able to make music together after, like, 500 days apart. When we finally got back together and played music in a room together, I don’t know, it felt magical….

Lauren Martin

We were much more relaxed than other times when we were arranging. We were having fun together, cooking dinner and watching movies. Whereas before, we’d have to arrange three songs and then a week later, we were leaving on tour.

Alex Bailey

For me, it was more like I had a list of demos, and I’d sit there and be like, okay, I gotta make a part for this kind of a thing.

How did having that headspace make you feel?

We had like 500 days off, so when it finally came time to ‘Oh, my God, we’re going to be a band again, this is going to be who I am again’, it was so intoxicating from start to finish. When we started arranging to the moment we were done recording, I was just completely drunk from start to finish, but really, I was like, oh, fuck, actually who am I?

I don’t wanna speak for you guys, but for me, the best part is working together on it. The harder part is the touring element that we have now had all this time and space away from. This was the most concentrated time working on new music together that we’ve ever had.

And also, we have always had to carry 30 songs around with us to play live.

Yeah, and the other thing is, we really had the time to dissect each song, talk about every aspect of it, talk about the lyrics, talk about the inspiration behind the lyrics, the mood that we want it to conjure, and we maybe could have given ourselves the time or made more of an effort to give ourselves the time to do in previous sessions…

We considered everything a lot more.

By having that time to dissect what each song means to you, do you feel like it brought you closer together even more?

Yeah, I think so. I felt that it was more inclusive in general. But I always feel like I get a little more willing to delegate and share responsibility and stuff. The fact that I allowed Luke to write a lyric is huge for me. (Tons of laughter) Normally, I go ‘No, this is the format of the songs’. And with this, almost every single song changed format.

Yeah, the intros and outros. There’s a phenomenon on this record, where we literally were having so much fun and we would add space on the songs for us to just like jam, there’s a bunch of places where we would just say, ‘Okay, now there’s like an open area’ or ‘just kind of lay into it’ for our own enjoyment.

Yeah, normally I’m like, ‘no, no, no, this song’s a minute and a half’. And that’s it. It’s just the lyrics, no other parts.

I find it interesting that we definitely created space for ourselves.

Until now, you’ve had most of the creative input, Greta, in terms of song format, lyrics, so was this approach liberating?

I think, like, after having a year and a half of just making demos where I had full control over them, I didn’t feel like it was difficult to like, go in and collaborate. That’s exciting to me. I used to be stricter with wanting the final song to be the same format as the demo.

You’re very flexible. A lot of the songs are really different from the original version. I mean, obviously, all of Greta’s lyrics and the melody are the same, but yeah, we cut things up and changed the order or stuck part of this song on the end of that song. It’s like we were all collaging.

There’s only one line that someone who’s not Greta contributed, and it wasn’t even out of thin air, it’s a kind of a rephrasing of a line that occurs earlier in the song. It was more of an edit than a completely new line. So lyrically, that’s not really a place where that kind of thing happened. I am also an editor and I feel like now having worked with Greta for such a long time. I feel like I can kind of inhabit her voice a little bit. A little bit. I feel like the job of a writer and editor is to try to, well, you shouldn’t be seen or felt. You have to make sure that it’s that person coming across.

Actually, we haven’t really talked about this, but I think it feels like the most that we worked on an album, where it’s one thing. In the past, it was like, here’s three songs, arrange them, here’s another three songs, we’ll arrange them. This time, it was like they were connected.

It feels more cohesive.

There’re consciously no solo songs, which is weird for an FC album. Usually, there’s a couple acoustic numbers.

I feel like I have my demos as a place that I can do that acoustic thing, and they now don’t need to be part of a Frankie Cosmos album. I also think not having shows planned allowed us to make the arrangements thicker than they normally would be. How we are going to achieve that arrangement live, that’s a problem for future us, which we’re now dealing with. When we play the show, we’ll be thinking about how we are going to get all six guitar parts to happen at the same time!

I remember distinctly with previous albums being very concerned about how we were going to play the songs live. But this one was like, well, we may never play this live. It was pretty bad. Like, when we were making this, bands hadn’t necessarily started touring again. So, we were like, we’re never gonna tour again or play a show, so it doesn’t matter. Of course, like, I never really thought that! It was just more freeing to do it without the live thing on our mind.

It’s funny because it sounds like what we’re describing is actually a fairly normal process. We just didn’t used to operate like that.

We’re all practical people and we don’t want to create problems for ourselves in the future. So, we’ve all been like, let’s make an album that we can play.

How has the experience of knowing each other and being in Frankie Cosmos changed you as people?

Well, I guess the first thing that popped into my mind is that Lauren and I got married during the process of making this record

{Loud whoops and applause from everyone}

I feel like our closeness and our shared wavelength just blossomed. We’ve been in the band together and, I don’t want to say that that influences the music necessarily. We also have very similar music tastes and influences, and we live together, so we’re listening to the same stuff for the past two and a half years! We’ve talked through everything we’ve listened to, so I feel that has definitely been a theme for us.

With each album, I feel like we all get better at making music together and closer as friends and then Luke and I got closer as partners. I think what we’ve all gotten better at and what Greta’s gotten so good at is letting go of expectations of what the song has to be.

I think the hard thing about collaborating is also the point of collaborating, someone else is going to have a different thing that they are impulsively, intuitively, drawn towards. I always say that the harmony that I write for myself is going to be so different from the harmony that Lauren or Alex writes, or the way that I hear the tempo of the song is going to be different than how Luke interprets it. And it’s like, that’s the point of collaborating. If I wanted it to just be the way that I see it, I would make it all by myself, like a lot of musicians do. But, you know, there are parts on this album where I didn’t really like how those parts were changing and didn’t really like to do them. And maybe Lauren would feel strongly about repeating this part. And I would say that I hate repeating stuff and then I would just go ‘okay, well, let’s try it. And then, hey, it would really grow on me.

I always felt like I could just play my part and you guys don’t tell me not to play! With my part, you get to do whatever you want {everyone laughs}.

I mean, ideally, everyone just gets to play a part that they like to play, and nobody’s telling anyone else what to do. But of course, when it comes to like the format of song, that’s where we have conversations of who feels the strongest about it turning out this way or that way. There are moments of, you know, compromise but those can turn out to be things that you end up really liking.

The person we recorded with, Nate, who was an engineer / producer, he did shape the album as well. He had opinions and would direct us and say, ‘ok we’re gonna do this now because that’s enough takes and stuff’.

Bringing ideas is all done with extreme kindness, like no one’s feelings get hurt feelings. We’re just like ‘are you sure we should do that?’ or ‘maybe we should try that’. It’s all very kind of like, fun.

There’s ‘play’ – not play like playing music, but play like fucking around and finding out, so it’s an attitude. That’s why we ended up maybe playing the song a bunch of different ways.

To me, this all shows your open mindedness to try different things, and it also shows your trust in each other. I mean one of the hardest things is if your ideas get rejected, isn’t it?

Ha, yeah! They’re all in the control room, and I’m recording by myself, and I get a little ding and they’re like ‘can you play something else?’ {everyone laughs}

It’s like a vocal part that I latched on to from a demo and it was to do with this last ‘again’, in a pause. And everyone’s like, we don’t like that last ‘again’. And I was like, but it’s part of like, the pause, otherwise, it’s…. a pause. And then when we got in the mixing room, we just turned it down. And then we turned it down. And then we turned it down until it was gone. And I was fine with that. As long as it’s as long as I think it’s there somewhere {everyone laughs}

I hear it even though it’s not there anymore {everyone laughs}

Collaborating is obviously complicated. That’s why most people don’t do it. There’s a lot of nuance involved and this is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: nuance, for whatever reason, doesn’t sell. There’s this element of like, ‘are listeners going to get this, or are they just gonna hear this and just not listen to it, the way that a lot of people sometimes do’. Often, you have an expectation of what something’s gonna sound like or what something means, so you just decide it’s that before you even hear it.

It’s a common behavioural bias, isn’t it? Confirmation bias, I think. I think what, you were saying earlier about the album as a whole album feeling more cohesive, I like the idea of an album feeling like a storybook, where there are whatever themes or narratives holding it all together

Right now, particularly the way the music industry is going it’s a very single track focused business right now. Personally, I don’t often listen to full albums. I mean there are albums that I love but I’ll more often pick up my favourite songs and put them on a playlist. It’s a playlist culture that we’re living in. And that’s difficult when you’ve got an album like ours where every single song is a hit…..{pause, then everyone bursts out laughing} Ha, no, it’s hard because I’m like ‘I really hope people listened to track five on this album’

This is like our first big interview for this cycle and I’m just loving this preview of how Greta’s going around with no filter {laughs}

There’s so much of everything. I was just thinking recently about being a person who loves music is like being someone who’s like polyamorous. It’s like yes, there’s infinite love – and for the record I’m not polyamorous so this is not…

….she is actually polyamorous and wants you to put it in the article…. {everyone laughs}

{laughing} I know about polyamorous people because I’ve read about them….no, it’s like there’s no limit of how much love you have in your heart. But there’s just not enough hours in your life to listen to all the music. But every single day, it’s like ‘new single, new single’ from different bands. You have to decide, ‘I’m gonna give this album the time of day, I’m gonna care about this musician’s whole album and devote 38 minutes or whatever, as opposed to filling those 38 minutes checking out 38 different bands or whatever.

You can decide based on how nice the album cover is. And how good the band’s PR is….

That’s a very neat segue – I’m grateful! What’s your view on the relationship between the art that goes into an album design and the music? Lauren, you’re a visual artist, so over to you!

Yeah, I drew the album art, but we all worked on the concepts and vibe together. I felt that there was kind of an obvious vibe based on the music of a little bit of mystery, a little bit of sparseness. A lot of the visualisations that we created to inform how the songs sounded were based on collections and collage. I’m inspired by artists whose work is informed a lot by found objects and putting things together that don’t necessarily go together. It was based a lot on the emotions of making the album and then using visual inspiration, then we all collaborated on what the object should be based on lyrics in the songs – not entirely but there are a couple of things in there that are mentioned in songs and just yeah, this like, it feels like a still life that would have emerged if we could walk through the songs and pick little items from them.

The press photos that we took were in a super cluttered space that had all these cool collectors’ items, it’s the ‘your eye could go anywhere’ kind of feeling and that there’s a lot of like depth to pick out from it.

We made visual mood boards for each song. But this is the thing I’m very aware that I don’t have. Lauren can make a connection, as a visual artist between music.

I’m not a musician who can read music, so I just think about songs in a visual way, like through shapes and colours. I think more so than other albums. I was really vocal about how I felt the songs could be and I use a different language to try to explain those things to the band. So, I was like, why don’t we make mood boards, and we can show how we think the song could look.

I think like that too, but I’m maybe not as good as at turning it into what Lauren does. I would say that we all talk about music in a way that’s not your standard music theory way of thought.

I play classical guitar a little bit and I can read music and stuff. I think like in standard music ways, generally. I’m very aware of this thing that like visual artists that make music have that I’m maybe kind of lacking or something. I do try to access it but…..

{To Alex} Once in a while one of us will say something, like what if there was like a tinkly – I’m just making this up – guitar part. And you’ll play it exactly how we’re describing it. You have that real skill to bring it to life.

I think this is beautiful how we’re all wired differently, and we can bring all of these wirings together to create music…

And similarly, to what you said about us having all trust each other, we have to also trust the listener. We’re trusting them that they’re going to feel it too

Do you feel your songs are relatable for old and new listeners?

Well, you can never control how the other person’s going to interpret it, I’m just used to that. I’m never trying to write something to get you to feel a certain way. That’s not possible. In the same way that I know that when we have a conversation, you might be hearing something totally different to what I’m saying.

I think a really good example is – I was obviously younger at this moment – when I put out Next Thing, I thought I was in a normal relationship and that it was a normal album. And then all these people on the tour were like, wow, I just like left an abusive relationship because your album inspired me. And I was like….what??

Sorry, but it was really obvious.

It was obvious to everyone apart from me! {laughs} But the point being that you might interpret something from your own song years later that you didn’t know you were writing into it at the time. I’ve had a lot of people notice stuff that I hadn’t even known that I was trying to say. Like, I’ve had a lot of people say, ‘Oh my god, your song’. ‘This song? Really?’ ‘Yeah, I relate to it because I’m nonbinary’. And I didn’t even realise that this was about nonbinary.

Greta, I think, by contrast to a lot of artists is very private and doesn’t share a lot about her personal life in our PR or in interviews. And so that leaves a lot of lyrics open for people to find what resonates with them and…

…figure out what it means in relation to Greta. You’ll never know.

Exactly. And I think that’s a strength in the music and how the music’s presented to the audience because, rather than obsessing about Greta as Greta outside of the band and Greta’s life. It’s somewhat of a conscious choice on her behalf and also, as Greta’s bandmates, I think we’re thankful and appreciative that it’s not like an obsession with personal lives and selling the personal life and selling the personal stories. We do try to keep the focus on the music as much as possible, perhaps to our commercial detriment.

We’re a multi-hyphenate influencer musician. Yes, that’s where we’re different {laughs}

One of the reasons we started MÜ Magazine was to bring more attention to the counterculture movement. I think we’re seeing much more mind control in the arts – like music and social media platforms and also the corporitisation of art through sponsors, collectors. Do you think this is reducing our ability to think for ourselves and use our imagination and curiosity?

It’s selling you that feeling. Yeah, actually, I was just thinking that counterculture…there’s a culture of that too, which is like, ‘I’m special for knowing about this or listening to this.’

And gatekeeping it.

It’s so bizarre what’s happened to this thing that we call indie rock. Like when I was a kid, or whatever, we had Animal Collective and Deer and we had this weird sounding music. And now Indie Rock is something completely fucking different. It’s weird to me what it is, because basically it’s just like pop, everyone has the same plucky bass tone. The weird thing is that it’s completely changed into this, like synth rock thing where it used to be this freeform freak show.

I almost feel that too. Like, in terms of music and art, is this all conforming to algorithms where it’s like, ‘this worked, so we’re going to do it like that?’ I don’t think consumers are allowed to be genuine to their real feelings about what they like because they’re being fed an algorithm which is telling them, ‘Well, because you like that and they’re similar, you should listen to this’. I feel lucky that we were a little bit before that algorithm culture and we got to pick organically and go to record shops and have the cool owner be like, ‘here’s a new album that you’ll like‘ – the ‘staff recommends’ section where you pick up something you’ve never heard of. There used to be this paper in New York every two weeks it would print every show that was happening, and Greta and I would be like ‘This one sounds cool, let’s just go’.

It was just listing all ages shows, all DIY, only at DIY venues. And there were tons of DIY venues in New York when we were growing up

So, you got to meet a lot of bands and a lot of cool people who introduced us to cool music and we were able to, without judgement, form a taste without it being formulaic

It wasn’t a homogenous culture where not everything was trying to sound like one thing.

So, all these bills, there would be like four bands who were all completely different. Nowadays, I’m just like, wow, that’s three of the same band.

It feels too safe, doesn’t it? And perhaps this is the commercial pressure that bands, promoters, agents feel now to create a bill that is less risky in its appeal?

It makes it so hard to create music and all the stuff that we’re talking about now is what we felt burdened by and with this release, we just weren’t thinking about this.

It’s like ‘this is my last shot. It’s got to be successful.’

I’ve never thought about that. I’ve never listened to enough music or paid attention enough to feel that I have any clue where we stand within a culture. It’s taken other people, young people coming to me and saying, ‘Oh, you are like, a pillar of this kind of culture or something’. Really? I don’t know. I don’t. Every time we make an album, I have no idea how it’s going to be received.

But the culture of music and touring has become so much about making money. It’s not about creating an experience anymore. It’s just like what’s gonna sell the most tickets? We’ve just never been like that. Obviously we all need to make money and live, it’s just that we’re more about music

We also don’t have manager, so these questions have very much always been in our hands: who do you want to take on tour? What bands do you guys like? We toured with Lomelda and like Ian Sweet probably four times each because I love them but maybe some people see that as our travelling circus too where we take our friends .

Before I joined, I always thought there was something cool about you guys bringing these commercially unsuccessful bands in front of people because you always had big crowds and you would take these freaks and you were aligned with them.

I don’t know. I mean us choosing to not have a manager and not kind of play the game maybe means we haven’t been as commercially successful as we could have been, but I just think kept it all in our hands and it’s just felt so much better. We’ve had no pressure from SubPop or our booking agents to do it any different. And also, we’re all control freaks and I feel like it would take a very specific kind of person to be able to fill that role in a way that we would find satisfactory. What it means didn’t happen is that we didn’t have some super strong personality advocating really hard for us to be on late night TV or like on Spotify billboard in Times Square all that…

All these labels that buy like a billboard for their band, and it’s just so that the band can go like take a selfie with the billboard, and it’s literally just theatre for other musicians to go like, ‘damn, they’re more famous than me’. It’s literally just more debt. There’s absolutely no upside to feeling competitive in art.

Or in life. Winning is getting to do this as a job. It doesn’t really matter if we’re the most successful or not.

Familiarity makes us feel comfortable, right? But it doesn’t help you grow as a person, and I think a lot of people will probably accept that. But a lot of people won’t do anything about it.

The need for familiarity does not fit well with the commodity of newness that we live in, where you have to post something every day, you have to put out a single. Everything has to be new. If people could just be like, ‘Wow, I love something familiar to me. I’m going to go back and listen to it. I don’t need a new one.’ I mean, I appreciate that people are hungry for new music and I’m excited to put out this album, but I’m also like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot of stuff already out that you could go listen to fill the gap!’ I think a lot of people, myself included, hear music and attach their own personality to the stuff they like. It’s like ‘I identify as like a Frankie Cosmos fan and if Frankie Cosmos puts out something that’s different from that it might make me confused about my identity’.

I’m not to go into a tangent about my favourite band The Strokes, but I don’t need a new Strokes album. I love it when there’s a new Strokes album, but I’m not desperate. When you love something, you could listen to it more than once. There’s a weird commodity of newness which is one of the things that’s really toxic in our culture right now. I don’t mean to sound jaded, I just wanna fight against that by being an artist.

Inner World Peace out now on Sub Pop Records

https://www.frankiecosmosband.com

Photo Credit Pooneh Ghana

BROWN, THEN BLUE

Galen Ayers and Paul Simonon – Bringing tomorrow’s dreams to life

Peter Murphy – New Limited Edition Art & Lyric book

New Limited Edition Art & Lyric book from the legend Peter Murphy released 31st July

Mark Stewart 10.08.1960-21.04.2023

Shocked to hear of Mark Stewart’s death.

The undisputed Don and main man instigator of the Bristol Dub scene and a huge innovator, inspirational artist and Post Punk legend with The Pop Group. A physically huge man with a great fire of spirit, he seemed indestructible.

Super intelligent, Informed and articulate, especially when it came to politics, counter culture and the avant garde and any radical ideas.

Was a great experience and honour to work on “The Politics Of Envy” with him. Most artists are quite precious about their recordings and ideas but Mark was the opposite “Do whatever you want, destroy them if necessary! “ completely fearless.

Everyone from Lee Perry to Primal Scream came out for him on that album and it’s rightly considered a classic, as is the single “A Very British Coup” where Mark is featured along side Jah Wobble and Keith Levine.

Mostly I remember constant laughter and hilarity, a very sharp eye and dark humour throughout every session.

Fly high starman and cosmic peace warrior.

Words from Youth

Photography from Maryann Morris

How Tragic – The Fear

How Tragic… the duality of the name and the singularity of the impact.

A Certain Ratio – 1982

In September 2021, I interviewed A Certain Ratio just ahead of the release of Loco Remezclada. They had already written 1982. Restlessly creative, respectful to their influences and history, always looking forward.

Brix Smith – Valley of the Gods

"Brixton is God"

KILLING JOKE – FOLLOW THE LEADERS

There is no other band quite like Killing Joke.

Sananda Maitreya – In Defiance of the Gods

Friendship, happiness and Inner World Peace – Frankie Cosmos