051: We Live In The Shadow Of A Book Avalanche
Hullo.
I am confined to this chair due to hurting my back. I can only provide words. Here they are. Here are the words, which I am, and nothing else. Hmm. Doing my Tracks of the Year while not being able to chair dance is unusual, but I like unusual. Hello, newcomers. I hope you like unusual, and/or brain downloads about pop music. If not, I have pictures from Jamie. Scroll to see Jamie's pictures. They are pretty, as is Jamie.
Contents!
Imperial Minted
The Tacks of the Year 2017
1923
We Live In The Shadow Of A Book Avalanche
Byeeeeeeeeeee!
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The sixth trade is out this week. The sixth. I can't quite get over that. That's twice as long as Phonogram. I see the spines behind me, and it looks like a body of work. If it was a block of wood, you couldn't punch through it, even if you were Ryu, or one of the more interesting Street Fighter characters.
(Yes, you can take me out of the professional irritant videogame critic biz, but you can't take the professional irritant videogame critic biz out of the me. And god knows, people have tried.)
This is... probably the most dramatic trade? It's been one we've worked towards for a long time. As in, since issue 1. If you haven't had anything spoiled by your single issue reading friends, give them a firm, grateful handshake. I'm been aware that we're at a point where our initial trade orders are about equivalent to the total number of people reading in single issue (both digital and non-digital). It's two serial models running simultaneously, and I'm trying to serve both.
Out yesterday in comic shops. Abstractly out next week in comic shops – at least Amazon thinks it should be – but shops tend to do things in their own way.
Okay – you buying the trade? You may be aware of the WicDiv playlist, which is over 400 songs I use as a personal soundtrack to writing this fucker. I made a supplementary playlist for year four, and have kept it private. Why? Because some of the songs seemed to be spoilerific. I'll be moving them onto the playlist after a month or two of this trade being out, but feel free to listen now, as long as you've read the trade. Seriously, don't spoil yourself via pop music.
Talking about spoiling you with pop music...
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Since the early 00s I've been doing a Top 40 Tracks of the Year list. I originally started it as I wanted to give a large piece of writing for the regular blog readers as a Thank You, but it warped into its own tradition, with its own bits of ritualism to it. I am the writer of Phonogram. This shouldn't be a surprise.
Eventually, the ritualism got a bit too much, and last year I went a different way. I retired a bunch of incense, candles and human sacrifice, and removed the necessary State Of The Nation address to it. I made simple, harsh rules. I would take the playlist, arrange very roughly and then set an hour or so to write up some bits and pieces. Then, even if I hadn't written it all properly, I'll just lob it online. Reduce the scale of the exercise, so it doesn't lead to the track listing dropping towards the end of the year.
This suits it anyway. I'm a more casual music fan now than when I started the list, and even then I was at the end of my Living-Phonogram period. Yes, I was losing my edge before they released Losing My Edge.
The rules: One track per artist. If an artist is in multiple bands, they can appear in multiple spots. If an artist has done an album I love, I normally push the single entry a little higher. Normally stuff just released in 2017, though I'll usually find an excuse to write about anything I want to. Stuff that was released in 2016, but was only on an album in 2017, for example. Or maybe re-released. It's not as if you're going to fact check this.
Normally I try to keep a working playlist as I go through the year, and then do some research at the end of the year of shit I've missed. This year, that wasn't necessary, as Spotify have finally given me what I've clearly wanted forever. My standard ramble is how much I hate the Discover playlist, as it's got entirely the wrong name, and the algorithm is not working in any way I'd like. I don't need to “Discover” Pulp's Common People, let alone fucking Kula Shaker. Equally, no matter how much trashy pop I listen to, it never recommends any. I suspect it solely looks at demographic information from facebook and goes from that. I actually follow some of my younger and/or not male friends' Discover to actually get some genuine recommendations of stuff I don't already know.
However, while I'd love a Discover that works, what I'm most pleased with the release radar. As in, a playlist of stuff that's been recently put out by artists – any artists – you've ever listened to. I don't read the music press. I just need the reminder that – say – Bjork has a new record out. I see stuff, I add it to my own playlist, and come back to it when I have more time.
My scratch listening playlist this year was fairly hefty, which I used to cut down to the list that following. The whole thing has a lot of fun stuff, much of which I had given more time to. Go listen to that, if you wanna.
Or just leap into my Top 40 one here. The full list, plus notes, follow.
(Heh. This is the one which I've actually got problem editing to 40, which is a good problem to have. I've ended up editing up some stuff I love but I just haven't had a chance to listen to as much as I wanted – Bjork, Lamar, Downtown Boys (Whose cover of Dancing in the Dark was one of my 100% Top 5 tracks of the year, but not released this year) and so on. I just deleted two without even looking too hard. If my brain didn't scream “NO!” I needed to trim 'em. And Alvvays are ejected, and I'm done.)
These have all given me a bunch of joy in a bleak year. Or, often, given the bleakness a shimmer which made it almost bearable.
I love them, but not enough to proofread what I've just written about them. That would be silly.
40) Heavenward - Wolf Alice
Hey, Warren. I put this at the start of the list as it's the one I think you'll like. Get Your Cathedrals Of Sound Here.
39) Reincarnation - Susanne Sundfør
I didn't go as deeply into the album as I wanted to, and I believe I put Kamikaze in a similar place the year I discovered her, before proceeding to obsess over her Ten Love Songs for the following twelve months. Which is probably an omen.
38) Wot U Gonna Do? - Dizzee Rascal
I think I'm the only person who's been listening to Dizzee having a little post-Imperial Phase neurotic rant the mirror. I love note-to-self pop, which normally is about building yourself up. This really isn't. This rants, builds the problems up and finds no good answer, and little good anything. Key moment: the strings like a Hitchcockian blade in a shower at 1:30.
37) The T - (feat. Adore Delano) Alaska Thunderfuck
Yeah, I watched a lot of Drag Race this year.
36) Boyfriend (Repeat) - Confidence Man
As far as talked relationship songs go, less a kissing with confidence, more like a dismissing with confidence. I HATE BACON AND EGGS is an excellent lyric.
35) Doomsayer - Seeming
Bedroom Scott Walker symphony automythological pop.
34) Buried Guns - Out Lines
Basically, if you're Scottish and sound really fucking depressed and your mates are playing what sounds like a requiem for an early 80s Glaswegian record label, I'm there.
33) tonite - LCD Soundsystem
“I never realised these artists thought so much about dying.” I have a comic to sell you, Mr Murphy.
32) Dramamine - Jeff Rosenstock
Marc Ellerby's favourite artist of the year, and it is the epitome of Marc Ellerby music. Two minutes long, with an albums' worth of rock ideas in it. Starting with a simple garage rock, and it expands to the point where the Flaming Lips space orchestra descending from the ceiling is not only a delight, but entirely natural.
31) Swish Swish - Katy Perry/Nicki Minaj
Weirdly long intro into an awesome one minute Nicki Minaj single, but I'll take it.
(I spent some time this year trying to work out if there was a way to just mix her bit in Monster into her bit in this. I did not succeed.)
30) 5 Flucloxacillin - Los Campesinos!
I used to write fanzines, right? Still someone I'd have on my lapel. The bit which catches me is the chorus' lyrics which read about a glorious baiting sneer of “They said if they had got the victory/They'd act with so much more humility... WELL I GUESS WE'LL NEVER KNOW” is sang like it's the worst thing in the world.
29) Resolution - Desperate Journalist
I love this, and the stadium-rock-in-miniature of it, its drama, its urgency.
28) Slip Away - Perfume Genius
I didn't go as deep into Perfume Genius as everyone else, which strikes me as odd. It's very much my thing. The Associates hanging around in a backroom of a bar and then, fifty seconds in a gathering of Nordic Trolls arrive carrying all the drums in the nine worlds and start banging them, but the Associates aren't going to let a little thing like the loudest percussion in existence distract them from their elegance.
27) Apocalypse - Cigarettes After Sex
I wasn't sure I would include this, but it came on shuffle last night when walking through the streets of London, and it turned the skyline into cinematography and I got my reflected indie movie feelings, and inevitably wanted cigarettes, sex and the end of the world.
26) Pa’lante - Hurray For The Riff Raff
This is astounding. Guaranteed shivers by the end of the record, honest.
25) Not About - You Haiku Hands
Yes, Katie, I have listened to it.
24) Your Wife - Self Esteem
Not what I'd have expected next from Rebecca Slow Club, but as I hadn't listened to Slow Club since the first couple of records, my expectations are desperately out of date. Maybe Rebecca was all about smart, slinky poise before now? I'm sorry, Rebecca. I've been working like crazy.
23) Love - Lana Del Rey
When watching the new Twin Peaks, I just kept on thinking “Man, it must sting for Del Rey to not have played out an episode.”
22) The Underside of Power - Algiers
I got mildly obsessed with the optimistic political pop music of the 80s. Aztec Camera doing Good Morning Britain. Basically half the stuff by the Style Council. How inspiring it was, and how jealous I was of the level of naivete, in the belief we were capable of being better rather than collapsing. This scratches a similar musical itch, but has the lack of delusions that being alive in 2017 gives you.
21) Ice Cream and Sunscreen - Martha
GentlestrumgentlestrumwinsomeandfeyandTHENTHEYLOCATETHEFUZZPEDALANDTHEDRUMS!!!!! So zine-kid pop it makes me want me to put a pair of staples in my stomach, fold myself double, cover myself in glitter and write in nonsensical metaphors that swap enthusiasm for making any fucking sense.
20) Long Live the Chief - Jidenna
Glorious brags over a Slinky coiling its way down the steps, as recorded by a 16-bit sampler and played through a stadium stack. Wonderful.
19) Andrew Eldritch Is Moving Back to Leeds - The Mountain Goats
Inevitable inclusion, inevitably a delight.
18) You Want Love - The Afghan Whigs
Until starting to pull together this list, I didn't know this was a cover, and I didn't know the Whigs' Dave Rosser had passed, and this recorded in his honour. I didn't know. Yet simultaneously, I somehow did.
17) Big For Your Boots - Stormzy
All confidence, power and grace, completely convincing to me. The sort of song that makes me wish I had a car, so I could drive and listen to it.
16) Look at Your Hands - Tune-Yards
Tune-Yards records feel like some manner of aural videogame, like something that Jeff Minter would cook up, based around rewarding your attention to detail and your interest in immersing in the context of flow.
15) It's Okay To Cry - SOPHIE
Everyone needs a friend like SOPHIE is here. Thanks to anyone who's been a SOPHIE, and SOPHIE reminding me to be a SOPHIE more often.
14) Exhumed - Zola Jesus
End of the World pop.
13) Real Death - Mount Eerie
End of the world.
12) Venus Fly - Grimes/Janelle Monae
Obviously last year, but was released with a single this year. And a video. A berserk video! In my head, if Minerva and Persephone ever have a fight, it'd look like this. I played it when I was DJing, and it worked exactly as well as I'd hope.
11) Straight Boy - Shamir
Not just 180 degrees from (the immortal) On The Regular. Like, 11800 from On The Regular, rotating sufficiently quickly to mine into a different dimension where Shamir has things to talk about, and a weary sense that the words won't make any difference.
10) Boys - Charli XCX
My aim this year is to try the Charli excuse when failing to hand in a script. “Kieron – we're waiting on Space Fight 65. WTF IS GOING ON?” “Sorry. I haven't done it.” “Why?!!?!” “I wish I had a good excuse, like my dog ate it, or I was smashing up a hotel room, but I was thinking about boys.” “Boy?” “Boys.” Boys!?” “Boys.” “Oh. Kieron, you and your boy thinking. Now, get it in for Monday, and we'll let it go, this once.”
9) Everything English Is the Enemy - The Indelicates
Suffice to say, the Indelicates aren't taking Brexit well.
8) Masseduction - St. Vincent
We're well into the Whole Album Is Great area now. St Vincent in the Talking Heads art pop mode, and the horror in her high croons that haunted Cruel turned to something a lot more defiant.
7) Homemade Dynamite - Lorde
Tricky to pick a track from this one. Lorde had her bangers, but the album is interested in much darker terrain. Writer In The Dark walks a line between starkness and melodrama with an admirable verve. Let's go with this though, an inadvisable hymn to making your own explosives.
6) On Hold - The xx
In short: The xx are bored of moping in their bedrooms. They're off to the dancefloor to have a good hard mope and fail to navigate a not-relationship successful. The swell from 30 seconds to a minute is the real butterfly wing moment.
5) Well Done - IDLES
2016, but the album was 2017. Ludocrat Comrade Rossignol noted Mother had the immortal lyric of “The best way to scare a Ttory is to read and get rich,” but I love the Brutalism of this. Sometimes the only reasonable reaction to the world is sarcasm so acute it scours cities of human life leaving only the buildings. A mid-point between McLusky and Gallows, I was entirely surprised they were a Bristol band – and the politics, the angles, the rage, the humour all made me miss that city more than I have for a decade.
By this point, basically you're in “Any of these could be number one territory” by the way.
4) Love You So Bad - Ezra Furman
I only got into Ezra Furman this year, and desperately wanted to include something. But there were new records! Then this drops in November, and we're saved. Basically, Hefner Does Springsteen, with a zinekids sense of wit and a novelist's precision. This makes me to go and take a college class, just so I can have a folder, and spend lectures scrawling choice lyrics from this in the back in black biro.
3) Cut To The Feeling - Carly Rae Jepsen
There's an odd curse we have when DJing. Obviously Call Me Maybe is always enormous, but any time anyone else has played anything by Carly the floor has been flat at best. This broke that curse, and was fucking huge. This gives me emotions too big for a human body, like a cosmic entity has possessed me, some avatar of pop come to Earth in its belief it can improve us all, leaves me Dionysus hearted, makes me cut to the feeling, makes me amazed we get to be alive, we get to have this.
2) Space Carnival - The Comet Is Coming
2016, I believe, but there was a special edition of the album in 2017, probably, I haven't checked. This is... well, my Doctor Aphra soundtrack. If there was a TV show, the credits, the sophisticated, the playfulness and - as you hit that two minute mark – the utter frenzy. I've never played it when I've DJed, as I'm a little twitchy over over it just being too obscure, but I'm going to put it here, you're all going to get into it, and then we're going to have the best Bacchanalian throw-down in the whole galaxy.
1) To the Moon and Back - Fever Ray
The first Fever Ray album was my Hel album. It wasn't end of the world music. It was post-apocalyptic music. It was post life music. It was all endless fogbanks and figures, half shadow, making their way through it. Bleak is too small. So...
“Hey! Remember me,” says Karin, “I've been busy working like crazy...”
This is not that Fever Ray. This is closer to the Knife musically, but without the cold distance and horror which made Silent Shout into a classic. This responds to the sheer impossible hell that is 2017 with utter defiance, a joy in the face of Armageddon. We have seconds left? Let's make them the best seconds we can. Nothing sounds as delighted, as life-affirming, even innocent this year as her “I want to run my fingers up your pussy.”
No fucks to give. But fucks, to give, to share.
We're in this together and all we have is each other is both a curse and a blessing. It's been easy to remember the first half of that. This reminds me of the second, and as such is absolutely necessary.
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Apart from the new trade, it's been a biggish WicDiv week. The Wicked + the Divine 1923 special is off to image. It goes to print a week tomorrow, so we'll be doing some tweaks on it. It's been a considerable amount of effort, I suspect even more than issue 23. It's 56 pages long. It features Jamie designing a whole cast of 1920s gods. Aud Koch is on art, and does magnificent period stuff. I wrote a novelette of prose for it – basically 12,000 words. Designer Sergio managed to pull it together. Chrissy somehow managed to get it together, despite me cutting it worryingly fine with the prose. There was even a little WicDivian magic, in that when we pulled everything together and added the icon page, it added up to 56 pages precisely. As in, what we solicited. We were aware that it would have to be as long as it had to be, no matter what it cost us. But it just fitted. Perfect.
Anyway, here's one of Jamie's designs of the gods. Meet the 1923 Norns.
They are a fun time. It'll be with you on February 7th
In other WicDiv news, Jamie teased a cover...
The full thing is even better, and will be with you soon.
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I instagramed this photo...
… to show what the current work situation is like. It's basically stuff I wanted for reference for 1923 and Spangly New Thing. I was asked a useful question on tumblr...
Q: How do you use fiction as reference material? Obviously different methods for different people but you often hear writers warning everyone off of reading fiction that's in the wheelhouse of their current project, so when you read something like Tolkien for Spangly New Thing or look at Queen and Country for your Bond one-shot, what's the fiction doing and what are you looking to get from it?
A: I would generally agree with the advice - in fact, I tend to think fiction generally is risky, especially when you’re working in prose. I’m aware when reading a good writer I’m trying to think in their voice for a good few minutes after I put down the book.
There’s three main areas where it isn’t true.
1) When you’re writing something which includes element of homage or parody. You are expressly trying to do something which feels, in parts, like something else. In Alan Moore terms, perhaps things like the stories at the back of the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, but there’s a lot of homage with Moore when he wants to.
2) When you’re writing something which includes elements of metacritique or metafiction. If the story is, in part, about another fictional text you want to be able easily access the texts to check facts. This is essentially using fiction as non-fiction. In Alan Moore terms, this is Providences’ primary mode, but there’s obviously a lot of it in The League too.
3) When you’re including simple quotation of other texts. In Alan Moore terms, the quotes that end Watchmen chapters.
Fiction in the pile would include all three of the above, for both Spangly New Thing and WicDiv 1923.
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Work update: I'm working on Spangly New Thing this week, as evidenced by the pile by the book. Worth noting that this is the Tolkien issue, and (er) not what you're thinking. I have been sniffling a bunch when writing it, so hopefully it'll go down well. I also give Spangly New Thing's artist something I promised to include in the story on pages two and three. I am a delight to work with, honest.
Pages are also arriving for Ludocrats from David. I'll try and show a panel or two next time.
Byyyyeeeeeeee!
Kieron Gillen
London
11.1.2018