Akron/Family gone

A brief post about losing work

For the sake of my sanity I am going to think of losing my piece on Akron/Family's album Love is Simple (2007) as a blessing in disguise. I wasn't entirely happy with what I'd written, but I was glad to have got something down and had decided to post it anyway. Then the file got corrupted and is lost forever. To satisfy my need to update this blog at least once a week, I am writing this to advise anyone reading to back up work.

If there's anything you want to keep, go back it up now. Even if it's a crappy 500 word essay that you don't really feel good about, just think what it would be like for someone to come and destroy for no good reason whatsoever. A bad first draft is a wonderful thing.

Don't put it off any longer: back it up now.

To make up for this mishap I'll be writing two pieces this week. One about Akron/Family and one about another band beginning with A.

Air - Talkie Walkie (2004)

Bought in HMV in Reading, most likely in 2006

What’s strange about this record, for me, is that it’s the only Air album I’ve ever owned. Despite Air being pretty constant on my radar ever since their debut single, ‘Sexy Boy’, I didn’t take the plunge and spend my cash on them for eight years. I was still in the death throes of my exclusive love affair with guitar rock in 1998. Why would I buy exotic, retro-futuristic gallic pop when I could buy yet another Manic Street Preachers album? Pocket money was an easily depleted resource; I couldn’t risk it on the French.

I can recall very clearly seeing the video for ‘Sexy Boy’ for the first time in 1998. I believe it was on the Chart Show (it must’ve been one of the last episodes). I remember in particular how I thought the video, featuring a massive monkey and comic-book-like images of members of the public remarking on the sexiness of said monkey, was cool and mysterious. And very French. It took my friend Stephen to point out to me that the video was actually hilarious and wacky. And very French.

The follow-up singles and the whole debut album Moon Safari (1998) were outstanding, but I never bought it. Then came the soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides (2000), but I didn’t buy that either. I started my job at HMV in June 2004, some six months after Talkie Walkie came out, but it wasn’t until about 18 months later that I got it. What really convinced me that the album was an outstanding one was its irregular but frequent appearance on the HMV stereo.

A senior member of staff would have the privilege and responsibility to pick 5 CDs to play on rotation for a chunk of the day. To my mind, the trick was to play a good mix of blatantly commercial music and more leftfield and esoteric tunes, with the ultimate goal of creating a decent shop atmosphere and, of course, shifting some units. For example, Sticking Godspeed You! Black Emperor on the stereo would last about 30 seconds before the manager would step in. But playing the same NOW compilation again and again would win you no friends amongst the staff either. One of my favourite members of staff for picking a decent playlist was Jon, and one of his usual picks was Talkie Walkie.

Up until this point, Air were one of the bands I admired and respected, but didn’t love. My puritanical attitude to music was truly a thing of the past, but Air were not lovable; at least I thought that at the time. Talkie Walkie went from being a relatively new release, to a healthy chart album, to a pleasant dance section representative. Before long it started cropping up in sales sections. Each time we had a dozen copies or more, on it would go. And in it would go to my head.

The album has a soft texture. It manages to be both floaty and dense at the same time, like a comforting fog. Along with this, each of the tracks a pulsing beat. This combination makes it ideal for working to. I must have put tons of stock out on to the shelves to this album. And walking through the massive store whilst ‘Run’ is playing was a simply beautiful thing to do. I could forget I was in a soul-crushing job for a few minutes and instead believe I was in a futuristic French supermarket, shopping for space pills.

HMV was an OK job, I guess. As it recedes into the past it’s easier to love that time. But I really hated it towards the end. It was the job I did for far too long after university. Treading water whilst I tried to work where I was going and coming up with no good answers. But when Talkie Walkie was on, I was in the right place.

The last time I spoke to Jon, he was in the right place too - France.

Aerial M - Aerial M (1997)

Bought in HMV in Reading, on or soon after 16th August 2005

With some records I’ll be able to tell you exactly when and where I acquired them. Most of the time this will be because they are among the more important ones in my collection. Not with this one. It’s a good record, but it’s only in listening to it now that I realise I am more familiar with it than I thought.

The reason I’m so sure of the when and where with this record is because I bought it when I worked at HMV. It’s not the sort of thing that is readily stocked, so I ordered it in. And there in the top left corner of the case is a price sticker (normal price stickers go in the right corner, left for customer orders so they’re easily recognised as such):

CUSTOMER  £14.99

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Aerial M Aerial M

CD WIGCD037

ANTHONY (STAFF) 16/08/05

065724/01 1

Working in a record shop can spoil you. It spoiled me to a degree. This purchase is a good example of how. I bought this record seven and a half years ago, and I could barely remember it before today. When you want to buy records, and you have a generous discount, and the easy means of ordering them in free of charge, it is easy to get carried away and buy stuff just for the hell of it. The readiness to hand cheapens it, allows you to take it for granted.

I’d become aware of David Pajo (a.k.a. Pajo, a.k.a. Papa M, a.k.a. Aerial M, a.k.a. M) some years previous when I bought another of his solo works after hearing the most blissful sound on a record shop stereo. Since then I’ve picked up the odd thing here and there, sometimes solo, other times in some band or other (Slint, Tortoise). His work is not the most readily available stuff, so one idle day I must have passed some time in HMV by going through his back catalogue and ordering his debut solo album in. Pay day will have come round and I will have gone to my hidden stash of wants and bought it.

Before putting this CD on my laptop I would have guessed that I’ve not heard it since I bought it, but it comes back to me on hearing. It’s a good short record, but not a startling one. As you would want from David Pajo, it’s a pared down affair, with judicious use of minimal instruments. There’s little more than guitar, drums and the odd synthy noise similar to some of the bleeps found on Pajo’s Tortoise albums. There’s a backwards track (penultimate track ‘Compassion For M’ sounds very close to a reversal of opening track ‘Dazed And Awake’, something that reminds me of ‘Waterfall’ and ’Don’t Stop’ on the Stone Roses’ debut album), but apart from that, it’s a straight and pleasant instrumental guitar album. Perhaps it's the unassuming nature of the album that has led me to neglect it for so long. I regret that, but it will be a fun thing to put right.

Adem - Homesongs (2004) & Love And Other Planets (2006)

Bought in HMV in Reading; the first probably in 2006; the second most definitely so.

I won’t always lump together CDs by the same artist, but I will do so for Adem. This is in part because they were probably bought very close together, but mainly because my experience of one album is so intertwined with the other. His music came along at just the right time for me.

Over the past few years I’d been delving deep into electronica. The Beta Band, Warp records and Radiohead’s new direction with Kid A had led me to finally discard my adolescent prejudice that proper music was played solely on guitars, or at the very least by live musicians. But from 2003 onwards I’d started to explore old traditional British music. I wasn’t getting all purist about it (another adolescent indulgence that I’d done away with), but I think I was curious about how people entertained themselves with no access to records. Weirdly though, it was my friend David introducing me to the records of Tortoise and Fridge that led me to Adem.

Along with Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) and Sam Jeffers, Adem Ilhan plays in Fridge, a post-rock band speckled with electronica (I say ‘play’, in the present tense, but I think Fridge are sadly on a long hiatus). But on his own, Adem’s music is folky. There’s not a trace of the Tortoise influence at all. His debut, Homesongs, is a collection of pretty much that; it communicates an appropriate intimacy. Love And Other Planets is an album about space, but replaces the cliched bleepy-bloopies with pump organs, whistles, acoustic guitars and xylophones. We can lump the albums together and say that the overarching subject is the distance between people, or between ourselves and the world around us. How do we cope with that? And how do we express that? There’s a real warmth to the music; a genuine and unashamed attempt at cosiness and closeness that I really enjoy.

It is perhaps these qualities that have led me to inadvertently blabber in Adem’s face. I’ve seen Adem perform quite a few times, and after the shows I’ve often found myself face to face with him, talking nonsense. He seems such a nice man, mainly because he tends to stand there and smile, almost managing to obscure the expression of a man hoping that this little exchange is going to wrap up soon.

Since Love and Other Planets Adem has released another record with Fridge, The Sun (2007) and a solo covers album, Takes (2008). More recently he has played live with James Yorkston and collaborated with Megan Wyler. I’ve never heard of the latter, but I’m going to seek her out. It is the sort of discovery that I hope this project will throw up often.

A Big Task Ahead of Me.

Several things occurred on the evening of Monday 11th November 2013 that led to me starting this little project, but one in particular was not finding the Beta Band’s first and eponymous album where it should be on my CD shelves. It wasn’t the first time they’d come up in conversation, and it wasn’t the first time they’d come up in conversation with my housemate, and it wasn’t the first time they’d come up in conversation with my housemate on the evening of Monday 11th November 2013. But it was the first time that the visual aid of the actual physical copy of The Beta Band (1999) was desired.

But it wasn’t there. It should’ve been there, between my third (or was it fourth?) replacement copy of The Three EPs (1998) and second album proper, Hot Shots II (2001). It had been apparent to me for some time that I needed to sit down and have a good session with my CD collection. They’re in a right state.

In the main, they gather dust. Occasionally, I’ll slide an album out because it’ll be faster to check the spelling of Florian’s surname (Schneider) by glancing at the back of Kraftwerk’s Computer World (1981) than by looking it up on Wikipedia. But if I’m going to listen to music, it’ll probably be Spotify, or iTunes, or Grooveshark, or even vinyl before I even consider getting the CD out.

But I couldn’t get the CD out because it wasn’t there, so I couldn’t draw my housemate’s attention to its cover’s striking similarity to Jimmy Shand’s Step We Gaily (1960). It was then that I resolved to give my CD collection a good sort. There are records that I know I’m missing, but there are plenty more that I presume are not missing but very well might be. This cannot be tolerated.

I searched through the collection, scanning for all the dark spines because The Beta Band spine is dark. I paid a great deal of attention to the tottering tower of CDs that I hastily transferred to an iPod before a long haul flight to Peru. It must be there. Or at a friend’s house. Or someone came into my house a maliciously filed it away with the soundtracks or compilation albums.

In the end it doesn’t have a dark spine, but a light cream one. And it wasn’t in any higgledy piggledy piles, or in a totally far-flung place, or at a mate’s house (sorry for the late night text, Oggy). It was just two places out of order, in between Bjork’s Debut (1993) and Volta (2007). As I said, the collection is in a right state. Where’s Vespertine (2001), for God’s sake?

I’m going to write about my entire CD collection. Right after I’ve put them back into some kind of order.