I Know You Are But What Am I?

A few days ago, my phone stopped working on a whim. The last time that happened to me, I rushed to the friendly neighbourhood phone- and utilities shop and bought the cheapest phone they had, called the Samsung Guru, which had a photo of Aamir Khan on the box and cost me a grand total of Rs. 990. This time, I was travelling so it was far worse. Turns out my phone battery, barely over a year old, had crashed. So I’ve had to buy a new battery for a shocking 1300 bucks, and it’s not even a Duracell.

But this is not a rant about inflation nor the increasing dependence on expensive technology because it’s something I accept as a part of modern life. It’s useful and I love it. And, this isn’t even about how far behind cell phone battery technology is lagging when placed against cell phone technology. You have twenty thousand things on your phone, but the battery will only last you like a handful of hours. No.

Instead, this time I’m off on SIM cards. I managed to acquire a spare phone, but my SIM card, which has been chopped to half its size, wouldn’t work on that phone. I miss those simpler days when all SIM cards were the same size. Back then, if your phone stopped working, you could very easily pick up an old phone lying around and slot the SIM into the replacement phone. Most of your contacts also stayed intact, since they were saved on the card itself. Today, in an era of iPhone 6 and Samsung S7 and HTC 8+, you have like your full-sized SIM, a mini-SIM, a micro SIM, a nano SIM. They all serve exactly the same purpose, but different phones developed by different companies require a different-sized SIM for it to work. To that, I only have one question: Why?

Isn’t technology supposed to make everything easier to use? Is it like an ego battle between techies that makes them develop their own unique specifications for a SIM card? They’re already doing it with chargers and I’ve learnt to accept that – in my home itself, my iPod charger doesn’t work on the iPad, so if one of them breaks or gets lost, that’s a heavy investment. I get that – capitalism is great and evil and corporations want to maximize profits this way. But readjusting the size of the SIM card and cutting it to fit the design of the phone is a free process. What is the end game here?

I have a Samsung today; what if I buy an iPhone tomorrow? Then I’ll have to go to a bloody Vodafone outlet, deal with their call centre specialists in person, show them all kinds of identification to prove that I am, in fact, me, and get a new SIM card. If a week later that phone packs up on me and I have to get it fixed and use the older Samsung for a few days, then I have to repeat the entire process, and once it gets fixed I’ll have to repeat the whole thing all over again.

Do phone manufacturers have some kind of a tie-up with network and service providers? Did Vodafone make a call on their crackling network and say: “Hey Apple Tim, we have to justify the salary of all these fucking idiots we’ve hired to work at our service centres so why don’t you send a few people our way and we’ll give you a free caller tune for Rs. 35 a month?”

Before I’m shot down, I do realize that you have these cool little SIM card adapter-type things that you can buy at any shop that sells recharge coupons and phone covers and chargers and stuff, that too for like anywhere between 30 and 50 bucks which, compared to multiple trips to a Vodafone service centre, is pretty much the greatest deal imaginable, even if they often don’t work. (They’re a small attachment to your SIM, making it compatible with devices that support a different-sized SIM.)

Basically, you get a regular-sized SIM card, then you get it sliced in half, then you buy an adapter to make your SIM card bigger again. I don’t get it?  

The Big, Big Problem with Jazz Musicians, AKA Fu*k Your Ionian Isodylliac Scales

I remember reading this interview of the fat guitar player from early ’90s punk band Pennywise. He mentioned how his punk rock guitarist friends would laugh at him and call him a wimp because he used such a thin plectrum (the pick you strum your guitar with), while they would pound on their guitars with heavier picks. He would then have to explain to them that he was, in fact, way more punk rock than them even though they used much thicker, fatter picks – the reason being that he had to use super light picks because he would hit the strings SO hard that anything with a thicker density than the kind he used would break the strings so he had to downgrade.

Way, way over on the other side of the plectrum lies a certain sophisticated breed of jazz musicians. A lot of them don’t actually play jazz music. Instead, it’s a crude generalization for those supremely talented, virtuoso musicians who play and understand technique and their instruments really well, way better than anybody has any right to. And they seemingly play music exclusively catering to the tastes of people who like authentic, bland Italian food in five-star hotels and actually know the difference between a pinot noir and a chardonnay. Basically, the kind of music written for and by pretentious asswipes who use words like Confluence and Aplomb in everday conversations without a hint of self-awareness, or irony for that matter.

But that’s just to paint a picture of the kind of people I’m talking about. I don’t necessarily begrudge the music itself; in fact, I happen to quite like a lot of fancy jazz music and a talented instrumentalist is always a delight to hear or watch live. Surprisingly enough, this is not a one-sided debate on the uselessness of skill and its role in writing meaningful music. That’s a subject I’ve gone back and forth on for years and am further off from an answer with each passing year, with a sitting-on-the-fence conclusion likely in 2015. If you like your complex time signatures and exotic scales that you’ve memorized by studying your Big Book of Musical Notation repeatedly, then that’s fine too, as long as the music itself sounds good.

Instead, what I want to talk about is the intensity of the live performance. I’ve come to understand the importance of the performative aspect of music, and the act of playing your music (boring smooth jazz with rehearsed self-loathing vocals or otherwise) on a stage in front of people. As much as I may hate metaphysical psychobabble of any kind, I do believe that there happens to be some kind of an exchange of energy between crowd and performer in a live show. Otherwise we would all just watch YouTube videos all day.

So the other day I went out somewhere. Incidentally, there was a gig happening there. Some super fancy musicians were on stage, and they were playing jazzy-bluesy kind of music and playing it really well. So I made the effort of walking from the outside section to the inside section to check them. Without naming any names, a couple of the songs were quite decent from a non-fan perspective. A couple of others were the equivalent of a maths genius reciting five-figure tables to a clueless audience aka zzzzz. But it was all spot on – not a note out of place, not a pocket missed, almost machine-like in its consistency.

Intrigued and disgusted in equal measure, I moved closer to the stage to see what those guys were doing. This is a fairly packed pub we’re talking about, in the month of September in the city of Delhi. The minor spell of rainfall for the season is done and dusted, so all we’re left with is piercing heat and the occasional bliss of some humidity in the air. Yet, there’s not even a fleck of sweat on any of these musicians. Not even the drummer. It’s like they’ve just finished a heavy breakfast and all that’s left to the day is a nice long indulgent afternoon siesta. I’m not saying they should be soaked in their own perspiration and look visibly uncomfortable or anything, but how about just a little more commitment, even of the feigned variety?

Which set me off on a broader chain of thought. The drummer played every song like his drum kit was made of expensive crystal whiskey glasses and his sticks were steaming hot. All across stage, instruments were treated like they were holy idols, always to be revered and never to be fucked with. Sure, I get the value of intricacy and dynamics and volume control and impact. But fuck your “nuance” for just half a second, please? If I want a whole hour-and-a-half of filtered and controlled emotion where wanking and virtuosity is almost as important as form, then I’d much rather watch a foreign film with subtitles, learn some jargon, and then discuss it with film school graduates who think they’re Kubrick.

A mistake here or there, while not exactly welcome, isn’t going to bring the universe to a sudden halt. People aren’t going to boo and hiss and point and laugh at a solitary error. Maybe, and this is up for debate, it may even add a slight human element to the proceedings. Vulnerability and intensity seems so smoothly and subtly replaced by posturing and pomposity – not in this specific case but generally – that you almost don’t feel it. But when you do, you can’t see anything else. Again, I’m not even saying all fancy musicians do this – just listen to Miles Davis and try for a second to accuse him of faking sincerity in the midst of showmanship or virtuosity – but there is that side to practically every musician out there and it’s almost sad and almost pathetic when they fall prey to it. It seems like the conviction and passion with which the jazz vocalist delivers her/his wandering words in front of the band gives the instrumentalists some kind of license to remove themselves from the spiritual quality (UGH, spiritual quality) of the music, allowing themselves the liberty to be concerned entirely with the mechanics of the sounds coming out of their instruments, and how perfect and gently caressed those sounds are, as opposed to actually engaging with the soul of the music and allowing some kind of openness and vulnerability to creep in. Break a string, drop a stick, miss a key on the piano, hit a bum note if you really must, but just don’t be robots. I wouldn’t call it dishonest, because that would be unfair. But calling it objectively and conclusively pure and honest seems a stretch too, doesn’t it? You don’t have to jump around or be animated – get a chair if you want and do your best Robert Fripp impression – but please, virtuosos across the world, please stop boring us with your insincere, uncommitted wizardry. Or don’t. Because who knows; maybe it's just envy. 

Tool’s Chinese Democracy and an ‘It’s Complicated’ Relationship with the Band

The other day, entirely due to an unfortunate accident and nothing else, I happened to hear the first few seconds of The Grudge, this supposed monster of an opening track on Tool’s something-defining opus Lateralus. I turned it off in disgust – of course – but then I went back to a simpler time in history, a time when I not only loved but harboured an unhealthy obsession towards the band. The obsession reached its peak in 2006, coinciding with the release of 10,000 Days, the last Tool album to have released, before it withered away bit by bit. Incidentally, that album released 10,000 days ago.

In that same time period of eight-and-a-bit years, another one of my favourite artists, Thurston Moore (formerly of Sonic Youth), has managed to release 31 (31!) albums including collaborations, improv, and live albums, with another one due soon. Thom Yorke has released four albums, in addition to hundreds of one-off-or-more collaborations or singles. Four albums plus some other releases for Mogwai. Even Isis, a band heavily inspired by Tool, a band that doesn’t even exist anymore, has two albums in that period. Merzbow has 63 albums since 2006, and that’s not even including live albums or EPs or singles or splits or remix albums or albums he’s written under his real name (although Merzbow may not be a fair comparison). I think even Nirvana got a couple of albums out.  

Our friends over at Tool, on the other hand, have a grand total of ONE album in that period – 11 songs including two which are essentially filler tracks. I’m not saying that releasing music is a competition (if it were, then Tool would be so far behind that it would cease to be so). I don’t think musicians owe their fans anything. Except for one thing. It starts with an M.

Instead of writing 1.375 songs a year over the past eight years to complete a paltry 11-track album (filler included), Tool have instead given this particular frenemy of theirs only shattered illusions. Their super-cool at the time lyrics about evolution and the pineal gland and perception of reality – even “Goddamn, shit the bed” – the mystery and this aura of superior understanding, the irreverent live shows where the vocalist did a weird drug dance and stood at the back in the shadows (WOW, SO COOL), their hypnotic music videos and artwork (3D and everything!); their whole image, as gimmicky and pretentious as it may seem from the outside, worked well for them, giving them critical attention and a cult following and even relative mainstream success. It didn’t seem contrived; there seemed to be integrity to it, maybe. They got briefcases of dollars and street cred too for it – the dream. And it all worked for them because of one very critical element – all their hijinks and gimmickry worked in aid of the MUSIC. There was music, and then there was a bunch of drug-lit/stoner-culture/evolution/philosophy 101 stuff assisting the music in some indirect way. It made sense. Remove the music and the whole thing goes to shit.

And gone to shit it has. Today, we have Adam Jones playing the American national anthem at a WWF event. Fine, so he’s a fan of wrestling, as are the other guys in the band who also appeared on the show apparently. I used to be too (before I outgrew it in my early teens). Oh, he also proposed marriage to his girlfriend at a WWF Summer Slam or Royal Rumble. Cheap little YouTube teasers announcing the potential release of a new album, recorded in a whispering robot voice by associates of the band are “leaked” online leading to deep spiritual discussions breaking out all over the Tool Army forum. Interviews of Adam Jones and Kirk Hammett discussing their everlasting love for each other are made available online. Interviews of band members providing contrasting details of this hallowed release surface, followed by a very amusing blame game between the instrumentalists and the vocalist about why the album isn’t nearing release. By amusing, I obviously mean pathetic.

I get that, apart from the airing of dirty laundry in public, none of those things are good or bad, really. My real problem is that I know these things that I don’t necessarily need- or want to. Especially about a band like Tool. I get that their personalities are not and should not be my concern so it’s fine (although I wouldn’t mind them reeling it back in just a little).

But then I hear about that sniveling little shit, the self-confessed savior of rock ‘n’ roll and all things holy and beyond, the messiah himself, Maynard James Keenan: Hobnobbing with the cultural elite (“I was friends with Bill Hicks, don’t you know?” “Milla? Yeah, we chill often.” “I’m not short; I can kick your ass.”), owning a vineyard and making his own wine because, you know, he’s rich and sophisticated and educated and he knows his way around a spittoon, and just being an obnoxious tool. Wearing a wig with his other band because one’s his anima and one’s his animus (obviously). And then there’s Puscifer. He even snuck the word “pussy” into his solo project band name – he’s so clever, he must be a genius. And with that project of his, he writes experimental rock and pushes the boundaries. One of his albums was even called V for Vagina, which is such an edgy title. Applause.

Maybe they have a genuine reason for this extended period of inactivity in terms of new material. If not, then they can always admit to being has-beens and announce that there is no new album and that the obsessive fan base can move on with our lives. An extended creative block is sad but understandable and no one would judge them for it – they’ve written a bunch of great albums that fans can always go back to. Maybe they should come out and admit that the six or so years of touring after their last release – with roughly the same setlist with the occasional cover or old favourite thrown in – were mostly about filling their pockets with more and more cash and a little about playing the music they wrote live in front of an adoring audience. Or they should just shut their mouths for a while, not show their faces anywhere unless absolutely essential, watch some wrestling and listen to some Metallica, and finally finish this album that they’ve apparently been working on for ages. Even Axl Rose did eventually put out Chinese Democracy. I can guess that they need this album as much as their fans do, possibly even more. 

The Misguided Counteraction against Apathy through the Bakra Principle

I saw this video online a few months ago where a couple of guys – north-Indian looking from what I can remember of the hazy footage – were harassing a girl from the northeast on the street. They were actors hired to do that, while a whole bunch of non-actor real life people walked past, most of them busy not caring about the racist remarks being thrown about with a few turning around to check what was going on (out of curiosity more than concern). I don’t remember if there was a hero in the story who stood up to the fake bad guys, but the purpose of the video was to either highlight the searing apathy of the average Indian citizen to injustices being doled out on the streets, or bring out the spirited sense of humanity and compassion that some people still have in this big, bad world. In any case, I watched part of the video – it was really long – and moved on with my life, not learning anything new, just reinforcing the fact that some people can be assholes and that the bystander effect is a very real thing. The headline for the video went something like “This Girl from the Northeast was Getting Harassed on the Streets by the Fine Gents of Delhi. You’ll Never Guess How People Passing by Reacted”. As sure shot a way of getting eyes as any.

This concept has seemingly become a legit thing to do as, in the coming months, I saw a spate of similar links. One was where a couple of actors re-enacted part of the Delhi gang-rape from a couple of years ago, playing the parts of the victims to gauge how people passing by in their big shiny cars would react. I didn’t watch the video but, judging by the headline, I think most people just ignored the whole thing and didn’t stop or bother to help. Another was of guys surrounding a girl at a bus stop, presumably in a threatening manner. Again, didn’t watch it. But the headline seemed to suggest that someone did actually step up to help the girl. After which (I’m speculating), they told the guy that it was all a prank and he looked disbelievingly all around, looking for the hidden camera, and then they all laughed and hugged it out. Because it would have been a great victory for mankind and a touching moment, right.

Well-intentioned it may be, since it’s probably designed to highlight the inherent flaws of the average human being of India while still hoping to discover a feel-good angle to the story through a Good Samaritan moment. But this whole sting operation business, or “Social Experiment” (many thanks to The Dark Knight for popularizing that particular nauseating gem of a phrase – although, usually, it’s not the phrase itself but the tone in which it’s used that’s revolting), wherein hired actors enact some kind of tragic or loathsome situation on the street, and the reactions of the innocent bystander or passerby are gauged and scrutinized, is a misguided sham of an exercise at best, while a worst-case scenario could have implications in the real world. It is literally just an elaborate prank, designed (unintentionally perhaps) to make everyone who’s not acting look really stupid, regardless of whether they step up or not.

For instance, if I see a battered-looking man soaked in blood begging me for help on the street, my initial reaction would normally be either to help the guy by calling the cops/ambulance or actually helping him physically (whether I, or anyone else, would do any of those things or not is a different thing), or to assume he’s a con-artist who’s going to mug me and may threaten me with dire consequences so I leave. Unfortunately, having watched at least one of these lovely viral videos doing the rounds, a third option has been added to my list. Am I being punked? Should I search for a hidden camera? Is Cyrus Broacha hiding behind the bus stop in a wig? Should I quickly hide my face so that when the video inevitably hits the internet, no one can recognize me? Should I smack the actor in the head for his woefully misdirected enthusiasm? (By “I”, I obviously mean a generic I for the sake of the argument, and not me specifically.)

Admittedly, I could also get scared of the potential online shaming that would come my way, and that fear may just propel me into action against the perpetrator or assisting the victim. Or the very apathy highlighted in those videos may just inspire me to step up to the plate, and those are legitimate ways of looking at it too. Then, this essentially becomes a way to highlight the downside as opposed to rejecting the entire premise of the concept.

Again, with these videos, I do think that the intentions are, if not pure, then at least positive – they’re coming from the (somewhat) right place, which is why I’ve tried to refrain from calling them exploitative or opportunistic. There’s some marketing acumen in there too, I suppose, since the guys producing the Social Experiments would have some expectation of hitting the jackpot of Likes and Retweets and Shares and Clicks and Hits followed by Hype and Buzz and Ads and Lots of Money while still doing the Right Thing. They’re not trying to fuck things up deliberately, I don’t think they are. And obviously, this is not something to joke- or be snide about, or trivialize – even the most seasoned of anti-feminists know that (unless they’re politicians). But, ultimately, all they’re doing is appealing to the voyeuristic, vicarious side of people online. The appearance of doing the right thing while not actually doing anything productive at all. It begs the question of whether they're inadvertently making things worse by trivializing the issue or adding further variables to an already fragile system which has comprehensively re-wired itself against the victim in need of assistance. Sure, it leads to outrage on the internet, and outrage can just as easily lead to real, tangible change (not always, not necessarily). But equating outrage to actual change does seem to be a slippery slope.

The Complete Uselessness and the Inherent Necessity of the So-Called Parking Attendant

Parking attendants may have a pretty well-defined job description, but if we go back a step further, why does the profession even exist? If it were purely a matter of money, the government could have simply hiked up service tax by, say, 0.3 percent to recover their cost and private contractors would have been busy finding other ways to dupe the public. No, it’s because the average human being is so fundamentally stupid and selfish that he cannot be trusted to drive into a parking lot on his own, find an empty spot, and park there without a) taking up three spots, b) blocking someone else’s way in or out, or c) getting into a 20-man brawl because someone looked at him funny (kya dekhra hai bhanchod?). The average human being is so daft that he cannot navigate the most insignificant of tasks without regulation and supervision, which is also why you have those guys who are specially hired to stand inside the men’s bathroom and hand out paper towels and awkward smiles to patrons.

If we look at it, the issue of parking itself evokes some pretty serious debates. Like how malls can charge 80 bucks or more just so you can leave your car and spend money on things you don’t need. (Is it just because of that fancy computerized ticket they give you, a ticket which, if lost, leads to a further fine?) I could talk about my own poverty, or the poverty of the guy who drives to Emporio mall in Vasant Kunj in a big car with AC and everything and spends upwards of Rs. 8k of his family money acquired through potentially questionable means on those ridiculous pointy shoes and then proceeds to complain about the high parking prices. Then there’s the guy who does the same thing but doesn’t even bother complaining about parking, and theoretically, he should be the hero of this little morality tale, but let’s be honest, we all hate that guy. But this isn’t about the pointy shoes and Ray Ban wearing chump, it’s about the guys (barely) standing on a rung much lower in the class ladder (oh no he didn’t.), the parking attendants.

Now, these guys are usually young-ish – in their twenties – with names like Ravi or Anil or Vicky or Raj or Vijay. Or, if they’re older, they’re called Yadav Ji or Sharma Ji or Gupta Ji or Pandey Ji or Mishra Ji. That’s all speculation really, because I don’t actually know their names, and I genuinely don’t care either. And why should I? First, I don’t entirely subscribe to the school of thought where you need to know the name of your service professional in order to boss them around and get your job done (not that these guys are ‘service professionals’ in any way). Secondly, they don’t care about my name either. At lots I frequent, to them I’m probably the silver Brio guy, or the checked shirt guy, or the guy who first litters then looks around sheepishly with guilt or embarrassment. So why should I be their friend? Is there any reason why I should allow some latent middle class guilt to rise to the surface? I don't have to be nice to them; it’s not like they’re waiters who directly control my external spit intake in a given week or pilots who are responsible for my future existence one million feet in the air. The worst they can do (besides stealing my car, which would totally suck) is to scratch the car a bit, something that I’m also quite the expert at. So why should we be pals?

It’s not a class thing (“I’m not classist, I know lots of poor people.”), it’s that these guys are complete assholes. They’re opportunistic slackers enjoying the benefits of a prolonged case of disguised unemployment. They sit around, sing songs, get into the odd fight or two, they jot down your number and hand over a slip to you, and then they ask for the money they’ve earned with pride. In fact, they have so little to do that they’ve universally mastered this technique of ripping out the receipt from the receipt booklet in such a way that the parking amount is expertly left behind in the booklet so you can never know exactly how much you’re supposed to give them. Oh, and when you park, they will always, always ask you to move the car forward, like, just a little bit more, and then they’ll tell you to stop. You know, because those extra four inches are the most critical part of parking a car, and it’s absolutely imperative that you stop when they tell you to stop and not when you think it’s OK to stop because they’re professionals and they don’t tell you how to do your job, right?

There is, of course, a percentage of employees in this fairly unskilled industry which tries to add a degree of skill and sophistication to their work. They’re the ones who’ll tell you exactly how to parallel park, or maybe even do it for you, and maybe even handle your car keys if you trust them enough. They’ll calculate the number of hours you’ve left your car parked at a spot and the money you owe them in real time so that you don’t have to.

(As an aside, the progressively increasing rate of parking bothers me. Yes, you’re blocking a spot for too long, but you’re also reducing your and in turn your country’s carbon footprint by not wasting fuel and taking up spots elsewhere, you're directly and positively contributing to the road rage woes of the city by making sure you're not on the road getting into a fight over lane changing. If anything, the longer you park, the lesser you should pay.)

And, as in the case of the main lot at Khan Market, they’ll create a zig-zag compendium of intricate shapes and patterns, expertly handling the flocks of cars coming in and out at an express speed at par with McDonald’s home delivery. These are the Mozarts and Picassos of the parking attendant world, which isn’t saying much. But it is saying something, but not much.

But on a whole, they’re a mysterious breed of humankind. You can honk at them and yell at them and ask for their help and gesture frantically and they have this smooth ability to completely ignore everything you’re doing, only to mysteriously appear just as you’re about to finish the process of parking, where they’ll tell you to move your car four to eight inches forward before heroically asking you to stop. Then they’ll make sure to give you the receipt with your car number on it. Then, when you’re leaving the lot, they’ll again be absent, probably off somewhere perfecting their ripping techniques. As soon as you reverse out of the lot and somehow manage to reach that last point in your journey before you're off, they’ll be there, knocking on your car door, asking for your money.

You could argue with them about their incompetence and how they don’t deserve to be paid, but somehow, at that point, they seem to be looking right into your soul. It’s an oddly embarrassing moment when they knock – they’re giving you an understated look that implies that you were about to speed off into the sunset without paying them even if that’s untrue although it usually isn’t – and you feel like you should just get it over with and go back home and not think about them. So you give them 10 bucks and they ask for 20. If you give them 20, they ask for 30. You give them 40 and, make no mistake, they will ask for 50. You give them 50…

Where Mogwai, Rave Tapes, Satan, Bands That Mean Something, Pitchfork, Music Reviews Collide

In summary of the first section that follows, a mistake was made, a beautiful mistake (to use a cliché that isn’t used nearly enough).

Mogwai’s new album, Rave Tapes, was heard, about a month before its actual release, around Christmas ‘13. To be fair, it wasn’t the result of some devious search of the deepweb – the leak was an accidental discovery following which a lack of will power kicked in. Rave Tapes was heard and reheard and reheard on repeat for the next 25 days; it was absorbed and internalized to a great degree. See, Mogwai, by virtue of its music and all the peripheral Scot humour and mystery and everything else, is a band that Means Something – with the appropriate capitalization, as reviewers, particularly the Pitchfork guys, have been so wont to point out in the past fifteen years, ever since Young Team first came out and confused listeners. So yes, the music of Rave Tapes does Mean Something to this writer, Something so significant that all surface layers of irony and facetiousness and self-importance are peeled off to reveal a deep, personal connect with a piece of art. It’s a connect that I and Only I share with the music – sure, the simmering tension of Heard About You Last Night is for everyone to consume, but not in quite the same way as I would (and vice-versa as applicable).

Cut to present day, where most of the reviews for Rave Tapes are out. Starting with Pitchfork and one Nick Neyland, who says: “Rave Tapes is the work of an oddly conservative band, turning away from the openness they once embraced.” Fuck you, Nick Neyland, and fuck you, Pitchfork.* Then, as I trawl the internet for further reviews, I realize that my well-formulated thoughts on Rave Tapes were in great contrast to the rest of the reviews on the internet too. Writers liked, disliked, hated, remained on the fence about the album, depending on personal taste and deadlines, but essentially, almost all of them agreed that this wasn’t that great a step forward for a band of Mogwai’s stature, that they’d played it safe (once more) and done more of the same and then some. That the tricks are getting old, the jokes write themselves, the dry humour is predictable, dated. Forget how different Rave Tapes sounds when placed against Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will, Earth Division EP, or Les Revenants, their past three releases because that’s going against the party line (or those three albums were anomalies and this is status quo). Fuck them all.

* Nick Heyland is a quite fantastic writer; even the Rave Tapes review, if looked at purely from a point of view of aesthetics and turn of phrase and language, is brilliant. Pitchfork, leaving aside their ridiculous taste in music (leaving aside their love, traditionally, for people like Godspeed You! Black Emperor or William Basinski or old Mogwai or Radiohead and so forth), is by far my favourite music publication. The pristine writing, the insightful analysis on every single review, the level of research conducted for even the smallest commission, Mark Richardson, their stature as Pitchfork, I love it all. But fuck Pitchfork.

Coming back to reality and the matter that’s being tackled here, I do agree – very, very begrudgingly – at some of the criticisms directed at Rave Tapes. Actually, I don’t agree with the criticism at all; what I’m trying to say is that I can somewhat understand the thought behind it – I’ve accused bands of repeating themselves plenty of times in the past and not moving forward musically – the cop-outs, if you will, who stumble upon a musical formula, repeat it ad infinitum, rake in the big bucks (or not), and disintegrate or slowly fade. So it’s only fair that that would come back to bite me in the ass.

But Mogwai is not your regular garden-variety band. It’s the kind of band that provokes deep, often extreme, reactions in people, the way that, you know, bands like Radiohead or Tool or Nine Inch Nails or Deftones or Miles Davis or Burial or Meshuggah or Pantera or Slayer or extreme metal bands or John Cage or Sonic Youth or Rihanna would. They fall into that category of musicians who just Know So Much More Than The Average Human Being. By ‘knowing more’, I don’t mean instrumental proficiency or an understanding of music theory or knowledge of current affairs or intellectual supremacy in matters of theology or political analysis or a degree in bio-engineering or intricate surgical chops.

Nope. They just have an understanding of that elusive Something Greater. It’s meaningful beyond this writer’s comprehension, and it manifests itself through the music. Like when Remurdered shifts focus and treads into a bouncing, dancing synth sequence, there’s still that ominous feeling that something’s got to give. It has to. And it does, as the drums collude with the wailing tones in the back. Or when the melodic guitar interplay reaches grandiose proportions such that it becomes overwhelming to listen and easier to shut off but impossible to shut off at the same time. Sure, it’s Mogwai doing what they know best, but they do it better than most. And while most other bands are not allowed to retreat as easily as Mogwai do in the transition from the red herring of Remurdered into Hexon Bogon, Mogwai are allowed. Because of that whole some people are more equal than other people thing, if I may get a little Dostoyevskian about it. And then there’s Repelish, once more reeking of the trademark Mogwai humour and their creepy obsession with Satan. Sure, it’s poking fun at the so-called subliminal message about Satan on Led Zep’s Stairway to Heaven – as an aside, the song is a recreation of a recording from a ’70s Christian Rock Radio where the anchor is utterly shocked and very angry at how these rock musicians are obsessed with the devil: Gotta live for Satan, Master Satan; the band wanted to use the original recording but they couldn’t identify the owners of the recording so they got a friend to re-recite the radio broadcast and chopped it up and placed it alongside the music; this is not first-hand information but I don’t have the source where I read the info originally to cite here and if this weren’t a blog post then this non-citing of sources would probably be called out as not ideal and some stickler for convention might even toss the old plagiarism word around – but there’s so much more to it than that.

It’s an old trick to laugh at people’s shock about the mythical singing in reverse on STH. But the point here isn’t to laugh at that and just that itself. The point, at least the point that’s been interpreted by the writer of this rambling blog post, is the unease, the absolutely chilling tension of the music, and how it works perfectly in sync with the surprise in the tone of the narrator. Ignoring the content of the spoken words in the song for a second, the complete shock and exasperation and earnest alarm and amazement that the speaker professes, interspersed with the fluttering on-off dynamics of the song add a degree of ominous fear and trepidation, a degree lower than the kind of fear you experience when you hear a loud noise inside your home post-midnight. The humour of the piece comes across as a secondary gain, not the primary one – as in, you experience the important emotions of the song first, and then you also laugh at how flabbergasted the guy speaking seems to be.

Also, there has to be an overarching meaning to the song names, especially as we have a song called The Lord is Out of Control, coming close on the heels of This Messiah Needs Watching, which was one of the many standout tracks on last year’s Les Revenants soundtrack.

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Moving on, the plodding snyth lines that appear often here, especially the slow, deviant lines as on Heard About You Last Night and the seventh song, which song’s name I can’t remember right now, showcase a Les Revenants hangover in the best way possible. Les Revenants was a landmark release (sort of) for Mogwai, exploring such unpleasant and yet such endearing spaces musically, so the new approach that was employed on last year’s release does find its way here, as does the token Stuart Braithwaite-sung number about train lines going nowhere (or trained mice, I can’t say for sure), and while old motifs that Mogwai have used – and possibly patented, only for God is an Astronaut, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, and many others to dilute that original dynamic, but I digress – in the past (vocodered singing on the album closer) do appear here sporadically (or often, if you read all the other reviews online), but there’s a lot of lateral progression, evolution versus revolution, and a cultivation and a very careful nurturing of a sound handcrafted by the Mogwai guys over like 15 years and more. And what a fantastic name for an album Rave Tapes is. 

Rating: 9/10