Day: September 1, 2003

blissblogLone White Guy Strikes Again. Never noticed it before but there is a classic one in the R. Kelly ‘Ignition (remix)’ video (one of the very few Kelly songs I’ve liked actually)

yeah I spotted this and assumed it had already been noted.

Ignition is fantastic, probably my favourite record of the year, you really want to sing along to those “boop boop, beep beep” bits in the car to get the full effect! I wonder if you can get it on vinyl. I wonder if there’s an accapella so I can do a suitably braindead jungle remix. The way some of the choruses double up to build the tension is fabulous. Wonder who wrote it?

Oh, while we’re on the subject: Timberlake. Asking if the man himself is any good as anything other than a dancer seems to me to be kind of redundant. The fact is he appears on some very good records. Rock Your Body is great. It’s all about the producer, innit?

blissblog: “come to think of it, a lot of industrial pierced-dick types ended up making techno-ravey stuff, didn’t they, so maybe it’s not so odd (remember psykick warriors of gaia?”

Very funny characterisation Simon! FWIW I think the link from industrial to acid house is seminal, as much because of the crowd as the musicians. My memory is that much of the industrial scene formed part of initial audience for acid. If you think of the milieu being more important than the leadership, which of course it is, then the industrial scene had a fair bit to do with the emergence ofdance music, a especially the Clink Street end of things — so maybe there is a conventional link to hardcore and jungle that way. Certainly the industrial / Some Bizarre crew were among the very first to get heavily into ecstasy, particularly therough Sleazy’s connections. And of course Soft Cell and Matt Johnson were making records on E long before most.

PWOG made some ace records (especially — oh the irony! the drum club remix of Exit 23) and were pretty fantastic live in a minimal techno nothing-happens-and-it’s-really-exciting-tweaking-with-their-atari sort of way.

tHAT wAS a nAUGHTY bIT oF cRAP: “In the meantime Coil are EVERYWHERE. Everyone who’s anyone is giving them the nod and the wink.”

Oh, and while I’m here: I get the impression that Coil are The Industrial Band You Can Listen To Between Meals. Not surprising cos in many ways their records are a lot more accessible, and probably better overall, than most of those by their peers. Mind you, I was a teenage “Coil Boy”. I read Penman’s piece on them in the Wire which was admirably fan-tastic though I’m not sure whether he could get away with all those puns outside of a Coil review. It’s great that he gets the whole English Romantic thing.

BTW a good track to check out is their remix of Nine Inch Nails’ Gave Up, which is kind of industrial jungle-hardkore with power chords. I like it a lot, but then I like Led Zeppelin. And Nine Inch Nails, for that matter (oh yes, an On-U connection means I can forgive almost anything!).

The Coil video for Windowpane was once on a late eighties TV pop show but for the life of me I can’t remember which one, anyone care to remind me?

tHAT wAS a nAUGHTY bIT oF cRAP: “Had to bite my lip when this LP came up in conversation at Uncarved recently. Put the record on the deck and switch it on. Look closely for one minute at the swirling pattern. Then look at something else. SCARY! This bit of Flash performs the same task perfectly, and will spare you a few bob on a really ropey record.”

Hey, I thought you were saying that “Veneer” was better than “Cowardice” but I probably wasn’t paying enough attention.

Don’t believe a word of it kids, it’s a frighteningly good record, and Matt’s opinion is a (very rare) lapse in taste IMO. Mind you, I don’t know how old Matt is, but for us old 8Ts duffers Tackhead / On-U were so crucial to our well-being that it is almost impossible to describe what an oasis they were, and that undoubtedly colours my view of them.

Still, top bit of Flash. Shame more of the blogerati don’t have Matt’s visual flair.

On a vaguely related note:
Eden has been filing a spotter-ish 10 Best LPs of the Industrial Scene series (which I understand is to be printed on gold leaf and buried at Stonehenge when he completes it in 2117),

… which is ace, but of course it won’t be buried at Stonehenge, that’s for johnny-come-latelies and druids, I think he’s planning a concrete bunker in the middle Arbor Low or possibly Boscowen-Un That should wind me up!