Welcome to Big School

Maybe it's just Iceland's position on a fault line, but I have dug Björk for occupying a peculiar territory on the brink of the mainstream as much as for her music. Thanks to her my adopted uni-town hero Chris Corsano has been on Letterman, Matmos have met Metallica, Konono No1 have been heard on MTV, and she also gets to open the Olympics and remain popular with RZA and Mr Butler. Creating that territory where refugee elements from disparate sources can make a new life being bawled over has allowed her to make some rare jams indeed.

Treatment of sources is tricky, with social concerns to navigate as well as engaging with the sound. I remember uber critic Scott Seward digging the Konono No1 record's release, but gently pining for the era when ppl like Talking Heads would hear African music and try and rip it off rather than release it. The point wasn't that it was anything less than necessary that credit and money is properly given, but that curating can be dull, and canny rehousing of a sound is a more satisfying method of integration. Through her collaborating, Björk has done a pretty great job of both putting the spotlight on artists and incorporating them, and turning it into an event. Her £s and peculiarly visible position allow her to rotate her collaborators on stage as she chooses; laying into her for trend-hopping plays down what a rare talent she has for it, what a sympathetic and imaginative band leader she makes.



So you can see why I'm pleased to see after their collaboration with that good lady earlier in the year, Dirty Projectors have been imported by Solange Knowles. Dave Longstreth's long made use of RnB moves in his singing, the band cited big sister Beyonce as a favourite. and they pulled off a languid, robed dance routine on top of a mountain for their video for Stillness Is The Move. So it makes a kind of sense for Solange to cover it, but it's still quite a significant step up for the Dirty Projectors. She's somehow got in trouble with Universal Records for this despite the fact it's not being released, and as she's specifically asked for it to be spread around, enjoy with a clean conscience: ["Solange - Stillness Is The Move"].




Thing is, performer's aside, this is less of a synthesis and less novel than the original. It's significant that Solange doesn't really have to stretch to convincingly repatriate Amber Coffman's vocal part as pure RnB. Longstreth's glassy alarm trill is replaced with slowed samples from Erykah Badu's Bag Lady, itself sampled from Dre's XXPlosive, the effect cool enough but kind of unremarkable. Which is, yknow, considering what this is, remarkable. It might be unreleased, but Solange's gesture is promising and will keep me going, but damn I would love to see Solange incorporate Longstreth riffing away on a hillside, silently rotating like a wizard. In fact if you guys could make me an animated gif of that, ideally on a tshirt, that'd be fine.

Highlights from the Comments Appended to a YouTube Video Entitled "Exogenesis Symphony Pt 1: Overture by Muse"

this song gives the feeling of a black planet sized ship hovering next to a destroyed planet and on the other side theres a huge sun (GoldenEagle911)

Everytime I hear this song, I want to explode into a happy nothingness. (dewey4evur)

I think this is one of the most emotional, amazing, hard-to-believe-that-a-human-w rote-them songs Matt has written....I thank God for his life.... (Mintbubblegum95)

day-to-day troubles burns away to this song (doopydoop123)

this sounds like a love scene taking place in the sky..or heavens...in the roman era....very sensual (yerm669)

THE BEST (jasmn09)

Dr Ciaran and the Space Sickness

I went to see my doctor. Dr Ciaran.

He is a bad doctor. Whatever is wrong with me, even if it's nothing, he prescribes Muse videos.

I hear it's the same for all his patients.

Watching them, I got a weird sense of deja vu. I realised it wasn't that they sounded like Queen or ELP, it was something more profound than just the style; there was some deep spiritual affinity I couldn't place.

Muse were trying to realise a vision, and with every video I watched, I got closer to working out what it was. I felt that I was recognising some common experience or history with Muse, and I wondered if this was what Dr Ciaran had foreseen, if there was some suppressed memory hidden in the music he wanted me to discover.

Then one evening as I watched Muse's symphony, Exogenesis, it clicked:



Well done, Dr Ciaran, well done.

Wilco (the gig)

I went to see Wilco in Leeds and they were so good I may never need to see another band again. I’ve been waiting so long for this I’m not even sure I was there.

Three songs in and Jeff Tweedy throws someone out for filming the gig.
This is the wrong foot we have got off on.

“I’m sorry you had to see my scary face,” he tells us later.

Someone shouts, “We love you Jeff!”

“Oh, good!” He replies. “We love you too! We wrote a song about it. We played it already. We played it first.”

They opened with Wilco (the song) as we all knew they would.

I’m very sweaty. We had to run for the train. I’m there with Chris and he spilled coffee down his shirt an hour before our originally intended train. So he went to a dry cleaner then bought a new shirt.

In Leeds we are looking for food. We see a Nando’s.

“We’d have to sit in…but shit, for Nando’s it’s worth it, we have time,” I convince him, or I would have if not for the prices. We settle on Subway.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask when he sits down.

“Aren’t we eating in?”

“Are you fucking kidding? You think we have any fucking time at all?”

“But 10 minutes ago,” he begins.

“That. Was. Nando’s!” I tell him.

“So in America, when we play this song, everyone sings along and we all take a break,” Jeff Tweedy is telling us. He's talking about Jesus, etc

“I don’t expect it to happen here, but you want to sing along, feel free. If I think you’re doing a good job I’ll just step away from the mic, like this.”

It’s more a sway.

“This is a soft sell; we’re not a hard sell rock band. You don’t have to sing along!”

Almost immediately he’s stepped away from the mic.

He seems more into the gig now, swinging his mic and throwing it so high it looks un-catch able, yet he does.

The first encore starts with Poor Places, the psychedelic ending building and tearing ahead taking us to some immense and unrecognisable froth of distortion.

When I feel as lost as I ever have, I recognize the simple drum beat from Spiders and Wilco are concentrating so hard on making this music.

Everyone should be able to go and see Wilco whenever they need.

Jeff gets us to clap; he wants our arms as high in the air as possible. But my armpits stink from the sweating.

In the second encore, during Impossible Germany, the band members gravitate towards each other. Jeff and his second guitarist, Pat Sansone, I believe, face each other and John Stirratt drifts over to Glenn Kotche whilst Nels Cline, who never speaks, plays a solo that might have been going on forever. His face is constant motion. Only Mikael Jorgensen doesn’t move, since he’s at the piano.

All gig I’ve been looking over at this one sound guy, who wears the beard of a metal band. I can see him enjoying it, maybe taking some ideas, but he never nods his head along with the rest of us.

“Ok,” says Jeff, “do you want to hear something from A.M or Summerteeth?”

We cheer for Summerteeth.

“Man,” he asks, “why does everyone pick on A.M?”

Soon they’re playing Can’t Stand It, the song I wanted.

Chris and I stay with Eleanor. Inside her house I can see my breath. I watch Beetlejuice and spend time, instead of sleeping, just going in circles of I can’t be a writer, I can’t be an illustrator, I can’t grow old.

Jeff Tweedy screams like no one I’ve ever heard. It is exactly what I needed.

Ted Leo, optimist

Ted Leo seems very smart. His music, the actual music, feels very earnest and whilst his lyrics can be self conscious, sometimes angry or bitter, the earnestness remains. Ultimately he seems very knowing, and his songs often feel hugely melancholy but optimistic. This is what I like about him and his songs.