B Is For Blog

Illustrating for Plan B is just one of the things artist Lady Lucy gets up to - news has just reached us of her latest film project, Ladies, All The Ladies, showing at Picture This in Bristol from 26-29 November.

Lady Lucy’s film is the result of her quest for women MCs, DJs, producers and performers involved in hip-hop, drum’n'bass, garage, reggae, dancehall, r&b, house and grime from Bristol and internationally, who also use the prefix ‘Lady’. Featured ladies are Diss Miss (Dutty Girl, Girl Wonder), Laydee Bird, Lady Free, Lady K & Lady Maximum, Lady Paradox, Lady Raz, and probably a few more. Lucy O’Brien, music critic and author of She-Bop, has contributed a specially commissioned essay to accompany the exhibition.

Events

Saturday 29 November 2008, 2pm
Lady Lucy in conversation with some of the ladies who participated in the film chaired by Bridget Crone, Director Media Art Bath. Admission Free.

8-12pm
A night of music from some of the ladies featured in the film: Lady Free - drum ‘n bass from Hackney, Lady K and Lady Maximum - the UK’s only mother and daughter DJ/MC duo, Laydee Bird and Dutty Girl DJ’s. Admission £5/£3 conc on the door.

For more information see Picture This.

Finished reading a preview copy of Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall, a memoir by Luke Haines of The Auteurs that, thankfully, is every bit as poisonous in its eviscerations of the Nineties music/media circus as you might hope.

Its arrival so close in proximity to German director Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex, a tale of the the rise and fall of the left-wing guerilla cell that terrorised Germany in the Seventies, prompted me to shell out for a used copy of Haines’ concept album Baader Meinhof, which I hadn’t heard in years. And what a weird record: tales of smuggling, kidnappings, and other clandestine operations delivered in Haines’ gaunt croon, set to bubbling tabla, squelchy keyboards and a stiff sort of funkiness, as if the songs were played at gunpoint.

Edel’s film has been accused of romanticising Baader-Meinhof. I haven’t seen it yet, but I can’t think of many similar movements that have been viewed through such rose-tinted glasses; in part, because these were left-wing Germans fighting a state that seemed to be sliding back towards authoritarianism, placing them somewhere indistinct on that sliding scale between freedom fighter and terrorist; but also, indisputably, because of its aesthetic presentation - think the photos of Astrid Proll, which depicted Baader-Meinhof as romantic figures - more rock stars than soldiers, or at least a blend of the two.

In Bad Vibes, Haines recalls the distaste that the record was met with on its release, which I dimly recall from the time, but which he details with some glee (Vox raises the possibility that he might be “a twat”). Much of the criticism, inevitably, hinges on the record’s morality (or lack of). Haines, for his part, insists that there is no moral to be found here, which is an interesting thought, music always being somewhat harder to disentangle from morality and intention than film, or literature. Maybe he’s being slightly disingenuous, I don’t know, but if you don’t mind listening to Baader Meinhof as documentary rather than, say, parable, then it stands up as something quite special…unique, even.

Bad Vibes, meanwhile, is out January and well worth a read.

New York’s High Places are set to return to the UK for a short tour before the end of the year. The tour will follow the release of their self-titled debut album in September, by Thrill Jockey on CD and by Upset The Rhythm on gatefold white vinyl.

The album’s ten new tracks were all recorded earlier this year in the band’s Brooklyn apartment, using everything from 12-string guitars and Kalimba to plastic bags and mixing bowls. High Places spoke to Nicola Meighan for Plan B’s Know No Borders feature, which you can read in full in the current issue, still on sale until 3 November:

I lived in a small city in the Midwest my entire life,” elicits congenial vocalist and orchestral loop seducer Mary – a trained bassoonist whose soprano reverie imbues High Places. “During college, my friends and I decided to stop being down on our town and to proactively make it into a more desirable place to live. We started organising and promoting events around town: house shows, potlucks, bike rides, book swaps,” she enthuses. “To this day, I feel most comfortable playing basement, warehouse spaces and living rooms.”

“I basically come from that same ethos,” harmonises rhythm alchemist and noise-exploiter Rob. “I grew up as a hardcore/punk kid – that was the most immediate scene for me to get involved with that had interesting ideas and politics,” he elaborates, “but I was really hanging out in a lot of different scenes…I really feel that right now is the best time in history for music – because there aren’t genres and boundaries between all the weirdos making art.”

“Yeah, I think this is a very ‘anything goes’ time,” ventures Mary. “The internet makes the whole world much more accessible, and it makes it harder to compartmentalise genres and influences.”

Do High Places consciously assimilate sounds from other cultures, other times?

“Not really, no,” reflects Rob. “We just filter and process what we hear on our travels and in our day to day lives,” he muses. “Although we hear so much music blasting out of cars and bodegas and park drum jams that are three blocks away – Latin, hip-hop, dancehall, and then, indirectly, legacies like Afrobeat – that we just absorb it all.”

Does this sense of context underpin your aural doctrine? The head-rush of natural ambience is all over High Places. “Definitely,” nods Rob. “Environmental context means everything when it comes to experiencing things.”

Read the full feature in Plan B #38, which you can order here, or find your nearest stockist here.

High Places on Tour
Nov 13th – London Old Blue Last
Nov 14th – London The Lexington
Nov 15th – Leeds Nasty Fest
Nov 16th – Newcastle Head of Steam
Nov 20th – Belfast Speakeasy

www.thrilljockey.com
www.upsettherhythm.co.uk

You may have met Alan Zweig already, perhaps through his homevideo documentary ‘Vinyl’ - i haven’t seen it, but the trailer above suggests to me that its exploration of record collectors’ lives is as much about what they (feel they) lack as it is the treasures they’ve amassed. A clip here dips even further into abjecthood. Since then, he’s added ‘I, Curmudgeon’ (with Harvey Pekar!) and ‘Lovable’ (about older still-singles). More an oof than a yay, but OH WELL.