Kele Okereke: A State of Flux

What has happened to London's most beloved, platinum-selling purveyors of sentimental, dancefloor indie? Well, according to Bloc Party, the band is on hiatus, providing perfect opportunity for its members to stretch their legs (and maybe even spread their wings) for a little bit. This rest seems well-deserved - years of relentless touring and meticulous studio production appeared to have taken their toll when, last October, the group cancelled the gig at Newport Centre I had planned to attend, following the release of the generally underwhelming third album "Intimacy". By the time I saw them, that summer, headlining Friday night's Glastonbury Other Stage, they were full as ever of adrenaline, charismatic frontman Kele Okereke was talkative, mischievous and ballsy - it was a performance to savour, as the band drowned a legion of adolescent and young-at-heart followers in a sound which banished headliner Neil Young's over-the-hill pretentions from the mind. But there was something that irritated, that sense that Bloc Party's identity was slipping away from them; there were very few fans that night who were pleased to see the appearance of "Intimacy" tracks "Signs" and "Zephyrus" ahead of seminal classics such as"Like Eating Glass"; Kele, for all his humorous confidence, had lost that adorable stutter which so brilliantly polarised his image from his music; yet we were bored of "Helicopter", north to south, our hearts were empty. Bloc Party had exhausted itself, as became even more evident at the conclusion of the "Bloctober" they appeared to have to drag themselves through, tutting and moaning, squealing and squelching. So we now look in other directions for our tense, danceable indie rock kicks.
                            So what of said "charismatic frontman" then? Well, while Bloc Party might as well be dead for the time being (and it appears as if it would take feats of necromantic proportions to arise them from their slumber, at present), there is a new Kele Okereke alive and fighting - or punching, should I say, given the title of his debut solo album "The Boxer". Due for release in July, the album promises to live up to its name, packing the dancefloor body blows in plentitude, but any expecting a recycled Bloc Party re-hash would be falling for a sucker punch. Produced by Spankrock's XXXchange in his Brooklyn, NY bedroom, over the course of four months around Christmas, "The Boxer" offers an edition in the key of "Flux" or "Mercury" but even more dead-set in clubdance cement. Prior to Bloc Party's exhaustion, there had been signs that Kele was eager to produce an all-out dance record - after all, one of the early Bloc Party's most appealing traits was its capacity to reduce snotty schoolboy hipsters to hand-waving, foot-stamping lunacy - and here it is. Promotional single "Tenderoni" is a hard track for those, like me, yearning for Telecaster Kele, to get into, but there is merit in its sad madness - in fact, it seems certain to dominate London dancefloors at least for a while.

                       It would be brutal to denounce this a fall from grace for Okereke; his talents have simply proven to be more diverse, his indulgences more varied, than weeping Blocheads would like. With the release of "The Boxer", Kele will have become a more complete artist than he was before, and it is impossible for those who worshipped him so unreservedly for the half the decade to put him down for his reinvention. The 2000's having ended, things have to change; Bloc Party had been stuck in the stomach of an industry monster that was slowly bleeding to death, but now their shining beacon of godlike, African-British genius and light has been mercifully regurgitated - so let's not treat him like vomit.

2012 better not be the end of the world!

Today comes the news that Batman 3 is to be released on the 20th July 2012. Therefore God please do not end the world anytime before that day! Mayan myths and egyptian scriptures all point towards our demise, but the Christopher Nolan threequel is way more important than the end of the universe.

Details for the film are sparse but it will be written by the same team (Nolan and David Goyer) and produced by similar squires (Warners and Syncopy). Bale will return and all evidence points to the Riddler being involved somewhat (who will hopefully be David Tennant). Forget the Olympics, this is what counts.

All that is left to say is that 2012 is lining up to be a wonder year (The Hobbit, Star Trek 2, Spiderman Reboot and The Avengers as well as Batman 3) and God you are busy forgiving the acting sins of Danny Dyer and Vinnie Jones, so there no need to end the Earth just yet!

So you think new music is dead, huh?

Then you obviously haven't heard Foals before. Oxford's favourite purveyors of house party-friendly, indie dance fun have been as big a hit with the critics as they have with the kids, many of whom will have witnessed their 2007 appearance on E4's Skins, their organic fusion of pulsing, finger-tapping guitars and intricately-concocted polyrhythms separating them from the swarm of floppy-fringed indie hipsters that has swept, mercilessly, over the UK in recent years. Not since the emergence of Bloc Party has a band so excited the industry, and the no.3 UK Album Chart placing of 2008's Dave Sitek-produced debut, Antidotes, proved that their was commercial gold to be mined in originality as well as cult obsession; the future of music is in as fine a fettle as it has been thus far in the 21st-Century.
                              Foals, signed to Transgressive Records in the UK with Sub Pop supplying to demand stateside, are commended for keeping it real up to this point; trademark house party gigs carried on from their formative days right up to the release of Antidotes - but if they are really to be the pioneering force they have the creative and productive capacity to be, they will need to emulate the efforts of their Oxford-spawned predecessors, Radiohead, and take their tunes to the masses. This would be the thought behind forthcoming sophomore record, Total Life Forever, which promises a more mature Foals than witnessed on the raw and naively-constructed Antidotes. Foals were criticised for underestimating the effect of their sheer, energetic and intimate live shows on their sharp ascent to popularity, leading to an underwhelming first studio album. While Antidotes was most probably the album of the year in 2008, bar perhaps the efforts of MGMT, it in no way lived up to the frenetic hype which preceded its release. Following a two year touring spree, Foals return with slightly less weight on their shoulders - the result thus far having been two incredibly different and individually standout singles, both of which might be said to represent Foals on a gentle, weed trip as opposed to the breakneck speed rush of their previous full-length.
                            Similarly to the previous torch-bearers of good music in the indie-rock bracket, Bloc Party, Foals have settled down for their second album; the nervous, pressurised tensions which fuelled their jumpy, ultra-danceable first record have slackened and the foot has been taken off the accelerator pedal, but where Bloc Party delivered what was essentially a subdued, more adult version of Silent Alarm with successive album A Weekend In The City, Foals appear to have managed to branch even further out into the infinite sonic spectrum with Total Life Forever (or so early signs suggest); their appetite for experimentation and their drive for perfection has only escalated with the success of their initial full-length, whereas Bloc Party's legs were so tired after Silent Alarm and its buildup that they decided to record A Weekend In The City whilst sat in armchairs instead. Criticism of one of Britain's few quality bands of the current era may seem unfounded and brutal, but it is equally useful in emphasising the unattainable promise of Foals. What the current state of the music industry seems to lose in originality and eccentricity through the bizarrely perverted disneyfication of pre-pubescent "talent" - think Justin Bieber, Hannah Montana, etc. - it is beginning to gain again and more through an ever-expansive generation of youth willing to dig hard and deep to scratch the surface. And I'm not talking about myspace here, this is about the surge in gig tickets sold for 14+ concerts, the correlating mini-revival of the physical release and the slow-but-steady descent of illegal downloading, not to mention the artists themselves beginning to step up to the plate and act creatively and inventively to proliferate their music to the masses. If the musically bored kid was Andy Dufresne, the yardage of shit they would have to crawl through right now to come out on the other side might be twice as long as it has ever been - but, for any kid willing to crawl through the shit, the prize too is sweeter than ever. The independent music revolution is on its way at last, and bands with the intellectual invention and humble, personal capacities that match those of Foals will be the ones to lead it. All eyes now rest on May 12th, when it's fair to say the biggest, most important and most influential record in the last five years will be released in the UK - as it goes in the already-iconic lead single, "Spanish Sahara", "It's future rust, it's future dust".

Jacob Mier//

Is it Time to Shelve the Studios?

With the Awards season finally passing and a new summer of blockbusters looming, the question now has to be asked, with the likes of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland storming the box office, are the current crop of studios good for the industry? This last awards season may have been the big bucks against the pennies, in the Avatar vs. Hurt Locker battle, but is it right for the film companies to survive on one or two cash cows such as Avatar and Transformers? Is it just that companies such as Paramount and Fox should make vast sums of money from the money spinners and then waste it on dire romantic comedies and action films.

Paramount have made over a billion dollars from the two Transformers films alone, but yet have made heavy losses due to making endless rubbish, such as Eddie Murphy comedies that have more laughs once the credits have rolled. The system is just not working. Again, MGM are making vast sums of money from the James Bond franchise, but they still do not have enough money to put The Hobbit films into full scale production, as debts built up from losses on rubbish films have caught up with them. The studios are taking the public for fools and there needs to be more projects, that are willing to resist the fat debt-ridden cheques of the studios and fund creativity and ideas, not the accountants.

There have been examples of going outside the main studio system before. Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was funded by a consortium of producers and banks: it may have become a cult classic, but it unfortunately never became the juggernaut at the box-office it needed, to revolutionize the current order. The new movie Kick-Ass, which hits screens this April, was rejected by all the studios, because it was not "mainstream". In response to this, the producers decided to finance the film themselves and when director Matthew Vaughn, presented a 20 minute clip to the Studios two years later, they were all begging to be apart of the film's distribution.

With Kick-Ass as a key £30 million example, is it possible to sweep the current crop of financiers aside and still create the key money makers, that keep the film industry going? I think so but not just yet. There are no signs of a Che Guevara of Studios coming to replace quantity with quality, but Kick-Ass and Oscar winners such as Slumdog Millionaire, show that films can be produced independently and still appeal to the mainstream. We cannot abolish the studios because the industry needs the blockbusters to survive, but the green shoots are starting to appear that could, just could, revolutionize the industry.

Rhys Hancock,
Editor

Goldfrapp - Head First (Mute)

The eccentricities and atmospheres which substantiate the viral pop of Alison Goldfrapp have never appeared the same on two albums. 2001's debut Felt Mountain won hearts with its darker take on the dance-pop template, but those who subsequently wrote Goldfrapp off as a dodgy trip-hop, torch singing act were confounded by the LPs Black Cherry and Supernature, both of which vaguely resembled a more exotic, burlesque Kylie Minogue, and thus she has forged a path for herself as a glittery, post-disco princess of dark glam-pop. Following the reservedly recieved psyhe-folk detour, 2008's Seventh Tree, Goldfrapp returns to euphoric synth-pop with Head First - or, at least, that's what she'd like to believe.

The reality is, in fact, that Head First is all air and no force. Lead single and opening track "Rocket" is wearing the "Train", "Ooh La La" gloves but packing none of the darkly sexual punch. The track is lazily structured, gaining no style whatsoever for the frankly primitive cheese-synth and electrosonic interference which drives the chorus; "Oh-oh-oh, I've got a rocket, Oh-oh-oh, you're going on it". It wouldn't sound out of place on a Pro Evolution Soccer soundtrack circa five or six years ago. Much of the rest of the album is similarly blown up and synthetic, which, historically, has been a winning formula for Goldfrapp, but tracks such as "Shiny and Warm" and "Dreaming" lack, in any shape or form, the dark and dirty essence which gave power to the Goldfrapp songs of old - in fact, they contrast it to polar extent. The songwriting appears distinctly lacklustre, and while Alison has never really invested time in conveying deep, raw affairs of the heart in her work there is little by means of heartfelt creative presence throughout. "I Wanna Life" sounds too much like ABBA to be real for an artist who used to represent futurism within pop; retro is something done very well by numerous artists, but, on the evidence of Head First, Goldfrapp appears not to be one of them.