where you wanna go with the men from uncool

To see unfamiliar emotional reality behind the facade of familiar material appearances. To somehow counter the nightmare of the pervasive material appearance. Obviously, the word spirituality has some some sappy cliched references and its meaning has not the same relational baggage that it strapped onto a hundred years ago which means an ironical, ambiguous compliment today; but it’s also a reference to what can be described as soulful, profound, reflective and serious. To get under the generic poses and gestures that serve as a flimsy foundation for identity and hinder the search for more complex varieties of the genuine and authentic. Paul Hamilton of the Bisonics in conversation with John Hind:

There seems to be little wit – lyrically or musically – in rock music generally. Why do you think that is?

Well, The Who, for ten years, always had room for a lighthearted, funny song. Even Kraftwerk were funny in their way. But it is all terribly sincere now. I thought The Mighty Boosh were going to usher in a new age of Silly Rock. I hope it happens but it probably won’t, because groups and singers don’t want to be thought ‘uncool’ – whereas Bisonics are The Men From Uncool. Most bands feel that droning navel-gazingly on about the woes of the world and their broken fucking hearts indicates their artistry, maaaaaaan, and dignity. Maybe they don’t see comedians as cool and sexy. But I do. Peter Cook, Noel Fielding, Fred Emney… And the coolest of all, John Cooper Clarke, bestriding the worlds of stand-up, poetry and rock’n'roll -

Read More:http://www.smokingantrecords.com/

That’s three-ish legs.

That third one isn’t a leg. But it’s bizarre, this hankering for ‘roots’ and ‘authenticity’.


Does Bob Dylan really think he’s a cowboy?

And Van Morrison – The Belfast Cowboy? When did you last see a herd of cattle in Belfast? Or Van on a palomino? You can see him, instead, in Holland Park, walking his dozen Pomeranians and poodles, with his pointy shoes with the big shiny buckles. People will accuse Joe Strummer of being a hypocrite, because his father worked for the Diplomatic Corp or whatever it was… but I suppose it’s not down to Where You Come From but Where You Want To Go….

---Read More:Doug Murphy - guitars, bass, keyboards, vocals Si Beex - sax, keyboards, production, vocals Paul Hamilton - drums, vocals

A spirit knowing itself and coming and becoming itself, then flipping back into a sense experience. A spirit knowing itself principally through sense experience. Its not all about formal innovation, impulse and spontaneity and other perverted notions of individualism within the cult of celebrity and personality. Far more complicated than that. Representing, re-presenting a spiritual, gutty impulse in all its raw and fresh glimpse of first light without the baggage of traditional iconography, what Kandinsky termed, ” the all important spark of inner life… of inner-necessity.”

Paul Hamilton: …To keep myself interested, entertained, I play around with words, turn things upside down, pretend I’m a character – because that gives the freedom to address the usual subjects from different angles. It’s like if Mick Jagger went onstage and said, “Call me old-fashioned but I believe that b


women are put on this planet to dance on my tongue”, there would be disturbances in the streets, people would drop toffee wrappers in the sink. However, by putting such sentiments in the mouth of a scarred old slave-ship captain and then turning that into ‘Brown Sugar’ he can celebrate trez kinkoid behaviour in a most delightful way….

There’s a strange middle-eight section which Big Dougie recites. It’s strange because it seems to be making a philosophical point but stops just short of revealing itself….

---I think art is becoming very ideological, and it's less interested in mediating this special experience called the "aesthetic," which you can get outside of art but which is intensified and more concentrated within the, so to say, closed circle of discourse which is art. ---Kuspit . Image:http://www.smokingantrecords.com/bisonics/see.php

…That whole ‘Above the rooftops of London’ section was in fact from a chorus to a lyric about my Nan and Grandad. That song, ‘Mary And Jack’, wasn’t very good, except for the chorus, so we simply took that and slotted it in. It doesn’t pay to be precious about things. What we make are improvised collages in sound, really. There have been moments when we’ve had to discard quite nice fragments….

---Read More: http://www.smokingantrecords.com/shop/

…Sorry about that. Is the following true – ‘The chunky Rothko leg-warmers knitted by your mum/The pale blue cardigan that still smells of cum’?

Yes… ‘There’s always something there to remind me’.

‘Salmon Pink Raincoat’ is sexually graphic. ‘Re: Union’ has you trying to get off with someone you used to worship at school. ‘The Block’ incorporates your demands for whores to come in and soothe you. ‘Keeping Mum’ has a verse where she’s masturbating to the sound of the neighbours copulating. ‘A Karaoke Version Of Myself’ is set in a topless bar. ‘Invitation To A Beheading’ mentions the Gay Gestapo and has a segment depicting gang rape….

…I didn’t notice that sex was such a prevalent subject. Does this paint me as some hairy-palmed pervo? Well, this is what comes from writing straight off the bat, and not censoring oneself….

…But you’d like a major record company backing you?

I’d love our records to be widely available. I’d love not to be scuffling along, looking for a pot to piss in. I’d love an end to this age apartheid in pop music, this utter fanny that says that only 20-somethings have something to say. They’ve got nothing to say except the same old shit in new toilets.

You’ve got something new to say? …

Its the idea of spiritualized sensing within the context that Kandinsky was searching for, far from the cookie-cutter off the shelf inventory of fixes that is our predominant mode. But its an impulse that is difficult to maintain, to sustain; the perfect example is Jackson Pollock. The dichotomy is the spiritually absent AWOL , cynical artist devoid of integrity versus the explorer of the sublime. The decision, as imperfect, flawed often fatally, to bring together the spiritual side with an aesthetic idea. To unite the impulse into one.

PH: …Bisonics have something different to say. It’s not enough to say ‘Life sucks’ or to paint yourself as the betrayed party, the victim, in a love gone wrong scenario. We actually see, with the benefit of hindsight…

…We can take the blame for certain situations. We sing about our imperfections – such as ‘A Karaoke Version Of Myself’, where what’s being addressed is male pride, ego taking a fall, admitting to one’s faults: ‘There are visions of beauty that can make a heart melt/Mine will neither thaw or bend/I take drugs to remember to drink to forget/Situations I can’t wreck or mend/I sidestep sorrow, misery misses by miles/I’m out to lunch should you call for help/These tears are pure crocodile/I use coat-hangers to smile/I’m a karaoke version of myself’. …

…I didn’t notice that sex was such a prevalent subject. Does this paint me as some hairy-palmed pervo? Well, this is what comes from writing straight off the bat, and not censoring oneself….

…But you’d like a major record company backing you?

I’d love our records to be widely available. I’d love not to be scuffling along, looking for a pot to piss in. I’d love an end to this age apartheid in pop music, this utter fanny that says that only 20-somethings have something to say. They’ve got nothing to say except the same old shit in new toilets.

You’ve got something new to say?

Bisonics have something different to say. It’s not enough to say ‘Life sucks’ or to paint yourself as the betrayed party, the victim, in a love gone wrong scenario. We actually see, with the benefit of hindsight…

I have a chill in my bladder; carry on while I have another tiddle.

We can take the blame for certain situations. We sing about our imperfections – such as ‘A Karaoke Version Of Myself’, where what’s being addressed is male pride, ego taking a fall, admitting to one’s faults: ‘There are visions of beauty that can make a heart melt/Mine will neither thaw or bend/I take drugs to remember to drink to forget/Situations I can’t wreck or mend/I sidestep sorrow, misery misses by miles/I’m out to lunch should you call for help/These tears are pure crocodile/I use coat-hangers to smile/I’m a karaoke version of myself’.

(Distant:) I can’t hear you! But carry on!

There aren’t many songs like that. It’s rare in Song to admit to being a shit. There’s not many songs about marriage break-ups like ‘The Sore Thumb Parade’ where on one level it’s a silly list of clothes but on a deeper level it’s about how all that heartbreak and hurt, the emotional cost, comes down to a couple of boxes of ephemeric possessions.

It could be so easy to write to a formula and then to play predictably and have a run-of-the-mill production – which nowadays means engaging in The Loudness War, where music is actually sacrificed on the altar of noise, digital squee – and housed in a CD decorated by moody band pix, gazing at the horizon. But we don’t. We like to go a bit deeper.

Sex again?

But you know what I mean, don’t you? Where’s the joy in doing what everyone else is doing, or repeating what you’ve done before? It sounds solipsistic and egocentric but if I can’t bear these songs, why should anyone else? I wouldn’t have spent all my money on something I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in. And I know music-making is self-indulgent to a vast degree but I believe that someone else out there might get a buzz from it as well. We were never contracted to make this album. No-one forced us to do it. This isn’t some obligation that we had to fulfill. We made it – and this sounds so Romantic and ludicrous – because we had to….

…How did you arrive at your running odour?

There is an art to getting songs sitting pretty, so that each one is illuminated and enhanced by the others rubbing their shoulders. Two slow ones together can really bring the album to a grinding halt. In the end what we did was plot a path from darkness to light. The opening song is nihilistic, jaded, beyond despair – attending a beheading for entertainment. From there we travel through the poisoned worlds of hate, self-destruction through booze and drugs, porn addiction… but slowly we get through that and begin to connect with the world and other people, to care, to give. ‘Broken Pencil’ is saying, in its way, that – despite all the hurt – life is worth living, and ‘Seconds Out’, which had the working title of ‘Living Is Giving, Denying Is Dying’, is a shedding of all the bilious baggage one is burdened with… Read More:http://www.smokingantrecords.com/bisonics/seconds/ph_jh_interview.php
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PH:Usually, if you mention ‘improvised music’, people will run a mile, thinking it’s just going to be discordant scrapings and bangings. It’s a minor miracle that we actually made songs out of unprepared, non-discussed jamming (a word with unfortunate connotations).
But the album title is apt. We were purely playing in the moment. The link has the full-length songs, not just snippets. And – on the smokingantrecords webiste’s Bisonics page – there are essays by the three of us on how it came about.

…In the time it takes Liam Gallagher to decide which shoes to wear to the studio, Bisonics have written and recorded a 19-song album from scratch. Simon Beacon, Douglas Murphy and Paul Hamilton were friends in Basingstoke in the early 1980s. They grew up and apart – Paul to London, Simon to Australia, Doug to Norway – but the opportunity arose in July 2009 where they could all meet up for one afternoon in Kent. So they decided to mark this event – the first time they’d been in a room together since the summer of 1983. So they booked a recording studio. And they wrote some lyrics. But there was no time to rehearse. There was no time to discuss the possibility of rehearsing. Simon stood at a microphone with sheets of lyrics in his hand. Doug plugged a bass into an amp. Paul sat at a drum kit. They looked at each other. Paul counted, “One-two-three-four.” They played. The spontaneous improvisations of Bisonics – an hour of immediate compositions – will be issued as a CD (called ‘Play For Today’) in late April 2010. Because Murphy, Hamilton & Beacon gave themselves no time to prepare anything other than some lyrics, the Bisonics’ music carries all their most innate influences – you can hear the jukeboxes of their minds in the way the bass guitar is caressed or possessed, how a word is savoured or spat, how a cymbal is tickled or trashed. Mixing the in-the-moment elements of Jazz with the D.I.Y. manifesto of Punk, Bisonics may have invented a new musical hybrid, ‘Junk’. Whether Bisonics have found anything of cultural ‘worth’ or significance amongst their outpouring of Junk is for others to discuss elsewhere….

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