SolarPlexus

Chum Mat Ranson has been creating some very atmospheric electronic music for some years. His project, Fisk Industries, features some free downloads to picque the curiousity, and links to the record label that supports his work.

Mat also happens to be a graphic designer, so the images are all his own, and display a playful desire to assume and mix styles at the drop of hat - something that is supported by his approach to musical arrangement and orchestration. Top stuff: keeper downloads.

Oh, and for those of you who do MySpace (Baron, I is speaking at you) here we go…

…well, yes, but a bloody good one.

While idly viewing this here Flickr slideshow I had some mp3s playing on random. As the show kicked off Dave Gilmour’s On An Island started, but then the blighter’s lyric included the word ‘moonlight’ mere seconds in. Spooky.

It doesn’t quite save a smooth but otherwise lifeless offering from Mr Gilmour, however. Blimey, there’s no pleasing some folk.

Accompanied Jez, The Baron and Lady Baron to the Academy 2 last night, and met RussL briefly (who’d valiantly retraced his journey due to a forgotten ticket). We’d gone to see a certain Mr Dolby on the Brum leg of his UK tour. As noted by Jez, there were a heckuva lot of chaps in the queue sporting smoking blazers, bald patches and practised stoops. I guess that goes with the territory when you’re off to visit an artiste who’s been active from around the late 70s.

By going I was attending to a part of my personality formed in my teens. If I’ve got one thing to say to Thomas it’s that he was probably responsible for me getting some good beatings at school: when my peers at a Scottish secondary school were sporting white socks, drainpipe trousers and donkey-jackets, I was garbed in a smoking jacket, waistcoat and baggy flannels, oh, and the round specs. Thanks Tom, no really, it didn’t hurt at all - I could’ve conformed but I decided to stay a RetroNerd against all odds ;)

I’ve not witnessed much live music in recent years, but clearly the days of leaving a venue with ringing ears are gone to a certain extent? I guess the more accessible venues are strictly governed by health and safety legislation. Volume was good, the bass was deep but the lighting rig in the room had trouble dealing with some frequencies, and resonated quite badly.

The music? Well, I’m a fan so I loved every minute. It was interesting to hear him build up the loop layers, presumably rendering them subtly different with every performance. When your music relies on electronics it’s good to see performers at least trying to inject some craft back into the live set. It’s certainly not a new technique, and indeed stems from very early electronic music performances, but it does set apart the musicians from the karaoke brigade.

Like many in the audience I feel he could’ve spun out a few more tracks from The Golden Age of Wireless, but instead he decided to play the crowd with more funked up stuff from Aliens Ate My Buick. The encore of May The Cube Be With You was infinitely better live than on vinyl: it’s a track I’ve never really enjoyed, like Bowie had the Modern Love album, Thomas Dolby had the Cube EP. Finally, Hot Sauce was as squirmy and dirty as the lyrics demanded. Nice.

A suitably quirky and intelligent performance, solid groundwork for the promise of a new album next year and another tour.

I had the bonus of being ‘razzled’ by a hoodie on the way to the choochoo station, who ran up behind me and advised me several times to ‘never look back man’, daring me to start something I’d hazard. In situations like this I’m quite a low-reactor, and I think my lack of response started to make him more agitated, but fortunately my purposeful gait won the day and he opted not to follow me into the station. What a tool.

I stumbled across two interview with John Foxx recently whilst googling for new musical output. Of late he’s been more active than his previous incarnation in the 1980s, when he dreamt up such gems as Underpass. He was the front man of the original pre-Ure Ultravox - a band now seemingly deemed uncool. How many of Ultravox’s critics have listened to the original three albums? Ultravox!, Ha Ha Ha! and Systems of Romance consume punk with a huge pinch of salt, chew over it and spit it back at the listener replete with a smooth coating of glistening innovation. Go out and buy the remastered CDs now.

How can we describe John’s current music? Well, he creates some haunting soundscape material, represented by the Cathedral Oceans sequence, and is accredited for taking Kraftwerk’s electronic bent and bending it further with Ballardian pro-concrete lyrics. His “electropop” output is hardly “pop” at all, though the keynote single Underpass achieved small success everything since has existing in a hazy world outside of commercial restrictions, and intentionally so.

Personally I find some of his material so twee it doesn’t pass the window-down-while-driving test. I recall that Underpass was sent-up by a Radio One DJ at the time who said it sounded more like “Underpants”. Whether Mr Foxx aims at this cringeworthy-style deliberately as an ironic statement, or not, is open to speculation. However, most of his material enjoys a warm, cosy place in my collection. He has a knack for conjuring up the most unexpected mental landscapes, probably due more to his jarring use of words than his musical arrangement.

Read the interviews here
http://www.ballardian.com/john-foxx-interview http://www.sleepybrain.net/john-foxx-seductive-whirlpools-part-2/
with many thanks to Simon Sellars, the interviewer, for his efforts.

Does he relish spouting philosophical clap-trap? Is it some sort of elaborate Braniac persona that he’s created, in due deference to the Eno and Gabriel-types of the musicsphere? Or are these the genuine musings of a man that was born into the wrong skin, and has always been aware of this? You decide if you can stick with the transcripts…

The Hearing Aid has been relaunched in a new guise, solely piloted by The Baron. The new address is http://www.thehearingaid.blogspot.com

Um, ‘twould appear that The Hearing Aid is no more. The Baron is on holiday right now, but I’ll quiz him about his site’s disappearance when he’s finished getting his yearly dose of vitamin D. It’s very dark in Baron Towers…

The Hearing Aid

Stonking blog from my mate The Baron - what’s hip, what’s not, and what’s being listened to in Baron Towers…