Sam Fox reviews The Fall and The Smiths: "very depressing"

Feast your eyes on this reviews section from a 1986 edition of Smash Hits magazine (see below). I've inserted the image below this post rather than aligned alongside the text because Blogger's fancy new user interface has made a right royal mess of image manipulation.

I'm not sure where this image came from as the original tweeter from 2016, who I think must own this scan, has disappeared. The clip was posted again a few days ago, which then got a signal-boost from movie reviewer Mark Kermode who then, in his words, heard from "a load of sanctimonious, humourless, preachy, self-pitying whingebag" Morrissey fans.

Because music editing was once my full-time job, I can only see this reviews section with the eyes of an editor / writer. It's totally the kind of silliness I would have wanted to put into Smash Hits magazine. The angle is clear. Get someone stereotyped for being vacuous to talk about indie bands so that the unwashed guitar kids can snigger into their sleeves. Classic 1980s music magazine humour. 

To be fair to Fox, her Duane Eddy comparison is a pretty fair one, and in that final sentence of the Panic review, she's got Morrissey's number. Even now, he really does go moan, moan, moan, but no longer in a fey 1980s wilting gladioli way. In a more sinister way. Yeeugh. He gives me the shivers.

In summary, (1) listen to that Fall single because it's really great, (2) listen to the Smiths but don't listen to the Morrissey bits and (3) Blogger, sort this interface out – having this image swimming in white space looks rubbish. 

Okay, I admit it, this was a blog post about Blogger. Ignore anything I said about Sam Fox, The Fall or The Smiths.

Further Fats: Hammer time for Fatty Bumchops: how to blog properly (2011)

Chosen Words: T is for 242

Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

Front 242 were my first introduction to a more industrial side of electronic music.

They were an example of EBM (Electronic Body Music), and indeed their releases No Comment and Tyranny For You could be seen as bookending the popularity of the genre.

EBM rose from the industrial movement, which is still propogated by the likes of Einstürzende Neubauten, Nine Inch Nails and Nurse With Wound. That scene took much of its feel from the darker side of human nature. It's for this reason I'm surprised Simon Cowell isn't the world's leading industrial musician.

EBM was known for its primitive beats, barked vocals and electronic repetition. Basically, imagine Mark E Smith if he'd become part-android, doubled the amout of fags he was smoking, then began recording inside a metal pipe.

I came late to EBM. In fact, too late: my first introduction was Front 242's twin albums 06:21:03:11 UP EVIL and 05:22:09:12 OFF. You can only understand those titles if you use the A=1, B=2 code.

I was too busy listening to 18:09:03:08:01:18:04 03:12:01:25:04:18:13:01:14 at the time. Tragic, really.

Top five sexiest industrial or post-industrial band names:

- Android Lust
- SPK (Surgical Penis Klinik)
- Thobbing Gristle
- Armageddon Dildos
- Revolting Cocks

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.

A LoneLady among these dark Mancunian mills

LoneLady

Warp's wicked love affair with the guitar continued recently with LoneLady's debut album Nerve Up (LoneLady pictured above). I always wondered what happened in those smashed-window remnants of Manchester mills... well, here's the result.

Nerve Up is low-fi and immediate like the xx, and like that album it carries off the impossible task of sounding retro and fresh. Hear, if you will, the spirit of The Fall, Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division and, to a larger extent I think, Gang Of Four, and yet it somehow explodes with potent energy.

Intuition is the immediate post-punk classic here, while If Not Now has the insistence of Tricky vocalist of Nicolette set to an unashamed '80s vibe. And she's not afraid to speed it up either, with the stomping disco of Army and the jangly, hand-clappy Early The Haste Comes.

Sharing a producer with My Bloody Valentine certainly helps LoneLady's album groove and ride and wiggle its way into your memory. Much of the record is reverbed to hell, I guess to reflect the huge mills in which it was created, and so adding a nicely apocalyptic touch.

My concern is if Warp can't convert this album into a sure-fire smash hit (the xx broke the top 40 last summer), what hope is there for any of their artists? I insist, dear reader, that this album is your guitar-rock purchase of the year.

Loscil

One for the guitar-phobic, now, and an album that is as equally atmospheric as LoneLady's long-player. Loscil's fifth album Endless Falls will envelope you, smother you and send your fuzzy mind spinning into that joyous place just before you drown with suffocated lungs.

Seven tracks of warm, glitchy looping ambience (nine tracks on the vinyl) make way for an epic closing piece of, um, spoken word poetry. Not a single string section, not the tiniest crackle, not a single moment of muffled melancholia is out of place on this beguiling ambient highlight of 2010 and a true successor to Global Communication's early work.

Mark E gets it on with Mouse On Mars while Amon Tobin gets it on with a spoon and pans of varying sizes

If you slashed me in half, maybe with a machete or a surprisingly sharp no-entry sign, you would realise the word MANCHESTER is written through me like BLACKPOOL through rock.

So when guitar electronistas Mouse On Mars (pictured) teamed up with the legendary Manc combo The Fall to form a whole new group called Von Sudenfed, I was bound to froth at the mouth whether or not it was any good.

Thankfully, it is any good.

Their debut album Tromatic Reflexxions is a clattering, shattering mess of bleeps and beats and Mark E Smith yelps. The LCD Soundsystem-style bedding is not as experimental as other Mars material; it is immediate and urgent and fits so well with Smith's distorted ramblings.

All counted, The Fall have released over 90 albums. Von Sudenfed's album stands as a highlight in that swaggering legacy. If you like The Fall, buy it.

Less successful is Telefon Tel Aviv's Remixes Compiled.

This is a tottering pile of production work stretching back to the days when they were in short underpants. It includes a Nine Inch Nails remix, but only because Aviv were bumming studio space from Trent Reznor. It's an adequate compilation, but it won't last more than a handful of plays on your bright green Tomy CD player. (What do you mean you haven't got one?)

Thirdly, Foley Room is Amon Tobin experimenting with 'found sound'. In other words, he has been capturing noises with the magic of microphones rather than ripping from other records.

The result is a collection of sporadic sheep bleats and cutlery clinks that goes on for two hours.

I am, of course, lying. It's the usual blunted cinematic denseness from Tobin, keeping your head in the reefer clouds and your feet in rock and roll hell. Bar a few extra oddities (lions!), there's nothing new here, But that's the point; he's not allowed to change because he's good.

'Though it does include kitchen utensils, so I was almost right.

Crouching at the base of a cardboard themometer muttering something about there being too many guitars

Manc convention insists I be excited about the Manchester International Festival. If I had an oversize cardboard thermometer with 'not much electronica' written at the bottom in black marker pen and 'lots of lovely electronica' written on a piece of star-shaped yellow card blue-tacced to the top, I would hum and haw and then stick my strip of (Top Gear style) card saying MANCHESTER INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL quite low on the chart, perhaps very near the bottom.

So no trendy experimental music for my tastes. I will have to make do. arms crossed, lip curled, with Lou Reed (old man's music), Kanye West (hmm, maybe not) and PJ Harvey (oh yes yes and thrice yes).

Or I could save up my pennies for the holy Mancunian marriage of the Fall and the Happy Mondays (record cover pictured) shambling through a joint gig. There'll be nothing civil about that partnership, I can assure thee.

All the events can be seen on the events calendar, as quite rightly they should be.

Oh, incidentally, one of the debates featured in the line-up is called 'Is TV good for society?'. Well, let me just start the debate by giving an in depth opinion on the subject:

Yes.

Does any of the Festival take your fancy? And shall we go together? I've got a megarider, so we'll have to get the bus in.