Roni Size / Reprazent - New Forms (1997)

Whilst I'm always happy to hear new music, I generally find that new music makes its way to me so it's just a case of keeping my ears open. I don't actively seek out new music for the sake of it, and I tend to regard those who do as trying too hard - for example, a certain facebook twat who recently opined:

I'm fifty-one. My favorite bands right now are Otherkin, Bad Sounds, Spring King, Sundara Karma, Inheaven, Kagoule, Vant, and Moaning. I can't see myself ever not listening to new music.

This came in response to some clickbait about a teenager observing that she had heard of the Pixies because her grandparents listened to them. Following Mike's the aforementioned facebook twat's recommendation, I sought out Moaning - which really is the name of a band - but they sound like the fucking Mission; and Otherkin sound like the Strokes or the Fratellis - both of whom were shit first time round - and doubtless have a bright future composing theme songs for edgy Channel 4 comedies about teenagers having abortions.

New Forms won the Mercury Music Prize back in 1997, most likely thanks to some tiresomely self-conscious upper management twat who, much like Mike the aforementioned facebook twat, prefers his music to be new new new. The Mercury Music Prize has also been won by Primal Scream and something called Gomez so probably doesn't count for much in the great scheme of things. Anyway, possibly as a result of winning the Mercury Music Prize, Roni Size was on the telly singing a couple of his songs. They sounded decent so I made purchase of the album, but the thing jumped all over the fucking shop. It could have been big fat bass frequencies making for poor groove integrity, or it could have been a dud pressing on vinyl recycled from truck tires and the plastic bits of vehicular dashboards, what with it being the last days of the original wave of vinyl. I played it maybe twice, so it never had a chance to sink in, and I never got over my vague feeling of disappointment.

The thing is that I'd heard about drum and bass, and most of it didn't actually sound quite like I hoped it would - nosebleed breakbeat falling somewhere between Peshay's Piano Tune and I, Me, Mine by Godflesh, which probably doesn't even count. Drum and bass compilations seemed to feature a suspiciously heavy emphasis on all that deep forest shit, and some of it even sounded like - ugh - jazz. Then I discovered Panacea, so that was one itch well and truly scratched; and yet somehow I still picked this up on CD on the grounds that there wasn't much point trying to play the vinyl edition; and now, two decades later, I've finally managed to listen to it all the way though more than twice in the same year - because it's one fuck of a long album - building up to three or four times just this week, and finally I have an opinion.

I'm still not sure why New Forms won the Mercury Music Prize other than new new new and you probably won't have heard of it, but we have, and I'm not convinced of it being a landmark album; but it has impressive peaks, and nothing which truly sucks or outstays a welcome. I think the thing which confused me relates, more than anything, to my own expectations and related quest for a truly brutal drum and bass record which kicks your head in like no other. New Forms is really just a bunch of people pissing about in a studio, trying things out, some of which just happens to involve accelerated breakbeats. It's as much soul, dub, rap, ambient, techno, and even jazz - but in a good way, I guess - as anything. It's an album which never should have been square-pegged into a round hole by industry wankers with some giant medal burning a hole in their collective pocket, although to be fair I probably shouldn't have been so stupid as to grant such categorisation any sort of credence.

New Forms takes a while to sink in, but somehow does so as a coherent, mildly hypnotic whole - all thirty fucking hours of it. Brown Paper Bag still sounds insane after all this time; Watching Windows is gorgeous; and Hot Stuff - which I'd somehow never even noticed before - is one of those rare pieces of music which seems to be the same size as the sky. So I'm finally glad I bothered, not least because I might never have come to such an appreciation were I engaged in an endless, ostentatious quest for new new new.

Lady Gaga - Artpop (2013)

So far as I've been concerned up until very recently, Lady Gaga was just wossername who brought us Poker Face, a song comprised entirely of choruses which sounded like it had been recorded on an expensive phone. It came on the radio at work to bring pleasure only in the knowledge that we at least weren't tuned to the station which played Chelsea Dagger by the fucking Fratellis every seven bleeding minutes. More recently I joined one of those facebook groups you hear about, specifically one in which members post a piccy of the cover of whatever they're listening to at the time, then we all say how we like it too, or we think it's shite, or how our next door neighbour once bummed the drummer or whatever. It's fun, but not without its annoyances, one of which is provided by the doubtless absolutely lovely and well intentioned guy who posts a picture of whatever he's listening to embellished with photocopied paper dollies of famous pop stars stood around the record cover along with a tattyfilarious script of their conversation.

ELVIS PRESLEY: Hey guys, I see Dave's checking out the first Doobie Brothers album.
BARBARA STREISAND: That's a pretty ropey looking copy.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Yeah, I hope he didn't pay too much for it.
ELVIS PRESLEY: Well, the Clash told me it was something he found in his dad's loft, so I guess he didn't pay anything.
BRITNEY SPEARS: Is that right?
THE CLASH: Don't ask us. We were still in the pub.
JOHNNY CASH: I think you mean me. People are always getting us confused.
BARBARA STREISAND: Ha ha!

No. I don't know why either, but to get to the point, our man recently posted a photograph of this Lady Gaga album as subject of imaginary debate amongst cut-out pictures of top poppers. Fuck's sake, I muttered darkly to myself, even more disgusted than usual; and then went off for a listen to some of the album on YouTube just to confirm that it was as shit as I thought it would be. Somehow it wasn't, at least it didn't sound that way on that particular morning, and so I wondered if I perhaps had Lady Gaga all wrong. After all, of the musical artists I rate most highly, my initial impression of almost every last one has usually been what the fuck is this shit?

Weirdly, whatever that not actually terrible track may have been, it sounds completely different on the actual disc, and completely different to the point that I'm not even sure which one it was. More annoyingly, Artpop is Madonna for people who post videos of themselves talking about their top five favourite Manga characters on YouTube and is about as good as I had a feeling it would be, at least in so much as it probably sounds amazing if you're under thirty and fucking stupid...

Nope. Not apologising for that one, and I don't care if I've just turned into my dad frowning at the Sex Pistols - young people are shit. Theoretically they can't all be shit, but I don't seem to have encountered too many exceptions to the rule: useless fuckers forever fiddling with their phones and texting about how all music is pointless now, not like the good old classic rock days of Oasis and Muse, or Andrew Lloyd Webber and Elton John, and old people are always going on about books but you can't learn nuffink from books because that ain't life and there's nuffink wrong with games because some of them have got really good stories now blah blah fucking blah - fuck you, kids. All of you. Develop some fucking discretion.

Sadly, Artpop is post-music, just the sonic extension of a larger, more substantial memeplex incorporating visuals, ringtones, sneakers, YouTube, and marketing strategy. It means well and it tries hard to deliver an authentic experience, but even with the best intention, it remains a McDonald's Fruit Bag™ at heart. I'm trying to pinpoint just what it is that fails to work, that lets the side down, but there's so much going on, and so much which sounds like it should work without actually succeeding that it's hard to identify any one specific turd in the musical swimming pool. Of course, being post-music, it all sounds like it was recorded on a phone, full of flourishes which never could have arisen prior to our developing the ability to move waveforms around on a screen. I'm a huge fan of weirdy electronic techno, and yet what happens here all feels too smooth and easily achieved, and it might almost resemble the Severed Heads -  ordinarily a recommendation - but for the problem that musically it only really does one thing, and it does it over and over. Everything sounds like a crescendo, like a musical analogy of the worst of modern cinema - the tender interlude from The Fast and the Furious again and again and again, all soft focus and a single tear forming in the corner of an unnaturally enlarged cinematic eye whilst five orchestras shit themselves in unison just in case that blind guy living on Pluto missed the point of it being an emotional moment.

I could live with this if Artpop had some dimension other than the celebration of its own artificiality, its own failure to resemble anything occurring in nature, but the rest of the sentence, had I bothered to spell it out, probably depends on how much you care about Andy Warhol, which personally I never did. The sexuality is up front and lurid, better done than the perpetually gurning Miley Cyrus forever holding her flaps apart and inviting you to take a lick, but still ultimately as clinical and calculating as any vagina airbrushed and clean shaven in the name of selling beer, guns, or cigarettes. I quite like sexy music, but properly sexy music rarely spells it out, and Gaga doesn't have the voice to pull it off, in either sense of the expression. She's decent, but then doubtless so are many other X-Factor contestants, and she only seems to do two things, either gushing operatically over musical crescendos or that wearyingly stern now I'm going to shove this up your arse, you naughty boy voice; excepting some bluesy effort towards the end of the disc to which she just isn't well suited. For fuck's sake woman, put some clothes on. We've seen enough.

Artpop is an advert for car insurance, a soundtrack for people who think that the fashion industry is important, techno which misses the great innovation of techno having been its rejection of personality. Artpop probably isn't quite so terrible as I've made it sound, but for something which tries so hard, it's surprising how little it really does.