Daily MPfree: White Heat Preview: Gold Panda, Max Tundra, Dam Mantle

We’ve three electronic wizards for you today. Sleek electronica from Gold Panda, brain-melting futurepop from Max Tundra (pictured) and some sleepy squiggling from Dam Mantle.

The three play together at a must-see White Heat show (erroneously listed as happening 31st July in the current issue, sorry folks) on August 17th at Madame JoJos.

Gold Panda – Back Home by snipelondon

Max Tundra – Which Song by snipelondon

Dam Mantle – Broken Slumber by snipelondon

Daily MPfree: Tennis

Husband-wife duo Tennis make dreamy-sounding lost rock ‘n’ roll classics that are actually brand new. PSYCHE.

Tennis – Marathon by snipelondon

SLEEP∞OVER

Y’know in Eternal Sunshine when the old house on the beach at Montauk buckles beneath the reverse suck of destroyed memories? sleep∞over are the aftermath of that; their cooing lost beneath thick layers of dust-laden, trembling synths and a gloaming choir of howling fantods. Some might call it “witch house” or “haunted house” – the inference to Beach House is certainly warranted – but sleep∞over are just “interested in creating a thick sound,” according to Stefanie, Christa and Sarah. From the dark dreaminess arises the odd unexpected clanks or howls, which Stefanie puts down to home recording accidents.

“We did most of it live and ended up with only one room mic working. We’re slightly technophobe. Modern studio recording can sound soulless. Something feels comfortable and personal about a home recording—and we started because we’re friends, and everyone should play music with their friends.” This ethos has served the fledgling band well, releasing their first single, ‘Outer Limits’ on Gorilla vs Bear’s Forest Family label. “They were nice, so we did it,” says Stefanie as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

And what about the infinity sign in the middle of your name?
“That’s how long we want to be your friend.”

Meursault

With his band tagged as downbeat and introspective, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Meursault main man Neil Pennycook might be something of a sourpuss. Not so, it seems. “I’m quite chipper actually,” he says merrily down a crackly line from Glasgow, where he’s recording with a pal. “People assume because of my voice and the way I sing that I’m somehow in pain or tortured, but if you listen to the lyrics, they’re not always that dark.” Not always, but often. Debut LP Pissing On Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues is a brilliantly brooding and cheerless ride of gloomy rumination that earned comparisons with Arcade Fire and introduced the world beyond their Edinburgh garden to an epic landscape of folky multi-instrumentation and precise and measured bleeps and bangs.
Recently released follow-up All Creatures Will Make Merry sticks to the script, cranking up the ambition and the joy (“There’s even a love song on it!”) while remaining faithful to their lo-fi upbringing in a swathe of beats, noodles, strums and howls. As with their previous effort, the latest long-player comes courtesy of Scottish indie Song, By Toad. “It’s the perfect place for us to be right now,” reckons Pennycook. “They’ve used the template of labels like Fence and Chemikal Underground, and everything works. There’s no reason for us to want to be anywhere else.” And the dark tag? “Drowned in Sound called us “a troubled mind or six”. I’m not sure I want my mum to read that! I don’t want her asking me if I’m disturbed.”

Camden Fringe Festival - A metric arseload of previews

The Camden Fringe Festival takes place from the 2nd to the 29th of August. Illustration by Alan Hindle

Don’t forget to check out their apps for iPhone and Android.

Several million years ago some lucky monkey managed to get its grasping, recently be-thumbed hands on a dead stegosaurus. It doesn’t matter if the beast was killed by a doughty warrior with a pointy stick, or was found at the bottom of a steep cliff, when it was finally dragged it back to the tribe the ape began telling everybody embellished tales of catching dinner. As the stegosaurus turned slowly on a very large spit (the wheel not yet being invented, but every cave already having a rotisserie barbecue in the garden) theatre was invented. Before music, painting, literature, and psychiatry there was theatre, the first art form. And the grilling of fine meats.

Fringe Theatre Festivals are, I think, a modern approximation to that first exhilarating experience of telling and hearing a story. The idea is freshly caught, prepared in short order and presented still fairly raw- some parts possibly undercooked, some burned, but much is perfect- sizzling and spitting mouthwatering juices.

Too Big to Fail? Johnson needs to defend London from his own party

It is always far easier to be in opposition than to govern. In the run up to his election Boris promised lower fares, more police and cleaner politics in City Hall. In every borough there was to be cakes and ale for all, with barely a pet project, protest group or cunning scheme not indulged by the Conservative candidate.

Yet cakes and ale have been in short supply since Boris opened shop, with police numbers falling, fares rising and accusations of cronyism spoiling his cheer. And with the new government now threatening to choke off his supplies, the business of Boris is facing seriously hard times.

The solution is to pose as an independent Mayor fighting the governments “savage” and “crazy” cuts. As a model for his plan, Boris is using his predecessor Ken Livingstone, who long staked out a reputation as an independent critic of his party.
Like Ken, Boris knows that his party need him to succeed in City Hall. A loss for Boris in 2012 would be a huge blow for the Conservatives and Boris’s cakes and ale business is simply too big to fail.

Yet Cameron cannot be seen to give a Tory Mayor too big a favour and his coalition partners are already getting restless.

Last week Liberal Democrat Transport minister Norman Baker warned that “there is a feeling, justified or otherwise, that London gets a very good deal. If we are all going to have to take difficult decisions they have to be fair and not be seen to advantage one part of the country over another.”

Baker’s comments will have rung true with those parts of the country who already receive far less in transport subsidies and consequently pay far more to get around.
Yet as mayor Boris must defend London against this charge, not just because of the damage that it would do to his election chances, but because of the far bigger damage that it would do to the UK economy.

Every pound invested in London gets a far bigger return than elsewhere. And without the promised tube investment, the city will gradually grind to a halt, with TfL estimating that a third of tube stations will regularly have to close just to safely deal with the crowds.

At the current rate of population growth by 2020 ticket gates at some stations would need to be closed every six minutes with delays and temperatures reaching critical point.

And with conditions unbearable underground, more and more Londoners would be forced into their cars with all the added congestion, pollution and misery that would produce.

So whilst cutting off investment in London’s transport system might seem like the most palatable option now, the reality is that big cuts would derail the very motor of the economy that is driving Britain forwards.

Boris can see the danger of this and is trying his hardest to pose as the man who will fight off disaster. Yet for all the headlines it still isn’t clear what the Mayor is actually doing to prevent it.

After a series of stories about the Mayor being “ready to explode”, the Financial Times approached the Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to see what was actually happening.

The paper was told that there had been “no conversation about funding between Pickles and Johnson” and that there was “no meeting in the diary” either.
Pickles’ team claimed that “the whole exercise seems to have been artificially created to bolster Boris’s credentials.”

Times are hard in government right now. But for a Mayor struggling to be both in government and in opposition, the times must be even harder still.

twitter.com/ adambienkov

Cross Kings shut, Stag’s Head is next

Britain’s pub companies aren’t the most popular firms in the land. With their love of crap beer, high prices and bland boozers, drinkers aren’t in the habit of toasting their names with nut-brown ale.

But North London has just lost one music venue and looks set to lose another thanks to disputes with a company whose way of doing business has been branded “a disaster for British pubs”.

The Cross Kings was once a haven of good taste in the rapidly-gentrifying back streets behind King’s Cross station.

Once a bar for leering backpackers out to get smashed and get laid, it had been transformed into a much-loved spot for new bands and up-and-coming comedians to ply their trade, while by day its clientele ranged from self-conscious hipsters to older drinkers in their Sunday best.

Adored by performers and regulars, the Cross Kings should have had a rosy future, particularly with Central Saint Martins art college due to move into a new campus across York Way next year.

But it’s now boarded up after a dispute with Enterprise Inns, the Cross Kings’ management complaining about being “bled dry” by the firm on its Facebook page.
Despite the Cross Kings’ busy diary of events, they say they were given just a week’s notice before the bailiffs’ arrival on 9 July. It is not known what Enterprise’s plans for the building are.

A couple of miles further down the Regent’s Canal, the waters are no less choppy for the Stag’s Head—still in business at the time of writing, but only just.

Tucked away down a Hoxton backstreet, this unassuming local has also become a favourite on London’s live circuit. But its management is handing the keys back to Enterprise on 8 August, complaining of an “unrealistic rent increase and high beer prices”.

Its Facebook page complains: “When you’re tied to a brewery that refuses to support you and shows this by increasing rent… there is little way out.”

The loss of the Stag’s Head will be keenly felt locally, just weeks after nearby Barden’s Boudoir closed its doors.

So what is going on when successful venues such as these are having to close?

Last year, a committee of MPs said the UK’s big pub companies —such as Enterprise—should face a competition inquiry over the way they treat their pubs, adding that many cases amounted to “downright bullying”.

In particular, they criticised the so-called “beer tie”, where pubs are forced to buy beer from their owners, often at inflated prices. The Campaign For Real Ale says this can add 50p to the price of a pint.

Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland—the chair of parliament’s all-party Save The Pub Group—said: “I’m afraid the way the model has been operated by Enterprise and others has been a disaster for British pubs.

“Frankly, the sooner it changes… the better.”

There could be change on the way. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating the pub market, while the government wants pub companies to announce reforms by next summer.

Any changes will be too late for the Cross Kings and the Stag’s Head..

853blog.wordpress.com

Retro Chick: the phenomenon of the 50s Housewife

Reading the Daily Mail is a roller coaster ride: I know it’s going to make me queasy but the adrenaline kick is strangely addictive. Especially when it is dishing up atavistic propaganda like ‘The new feminist housewives: How the latest generation of graduates are choosing full time motherhood over high-flying careers’. Any DM use of the f-word—‘feminist’—is guaranteed to be richly entertaining and this article, penned by the bucolically-monikered Diane Appleyard (DM, 14 July 2010) is no exception.

As evidence that a “generation” of women is fleeing paid employment for the subtle joys of floral housedresses and cooing at toddlers, the Mail offers a handful of middle-class humanities graduates who collectively enjoy a very casual relationship with reality. “I could be earning a fortune” chirps stay-at-home mum Kate Wheatcroft—brave words for a history graduate in the current economic climate.

The article is, of course, really about economics. This seems to have escaped the attention of its pinny-wearing protagonists, whose fiscal analysis is limited to bragging about their wifely frugality.

“We have very little money,” says mum Ellen Fletcher. “We live on my husband’s salary… and there is nothing left over for any extras.”

What Ellen and the rest of them fail to see, is that living on their husband’s salary is a profoundly political act. Not in a ‘the personal is political’ sense, either. This is basic credit crunch economics and, frankly, the sort of thing a history graduate should pick up on.

Alas, Kate has been too busy procreating to take a hard look at why, in this particular place and moment in time, society is urgently dusting off anachronistic ideals of feminine behaviour and treating them to the tabloid hard sell. They are oblivious to the fact the Daily Mail feature is an explicit attempt to normalise female economic dependence and to reinforce to women that their primary social duty is to be good consumers.

The first hint is the use of the “latest generation” in the title, which deliberately evokes the Second World War-referencing “the greatest generation” appellation.

There is also direct reference made to being a “Fifties housewife”. Remember what happened in the aftermath of the Second World War? Soldiers came home to find women working happily and productively outside the home. This was a social nightmare. Work gave women autonomy and meant they were competing with men for scarce jobs, two heavy blows to fragile male egos. Something had to be done, and quick, so the media, government and corporations ganged up to invent the feminine mystique and sell women on dependence fantasies where they stayed at home doing the hoovering in high heels, and making cookies for little Jimmy and Suzie, while their men went out to bring home the bacon. The cult of maternal devotion was a tough sell though. Women who enjoyed jobs and freedom were mostly forced out of the workplace with the aid of overt employment discrimination.

Sixty years on and the economy is in crisis. Women are once again a significant threat to male social and economic hegemony. The difference is that it is now marginally more difficult to dismiss a female employee just for being a woman. So the media, led by the dutifully small-c conservative likes of the Daily Mail, has to work twice as hard to convince women that it’s in their best interest to be financially dependent, to stay at home and to function as consumers rather than producers. Appleyard makes this quite clear with the comment that Ellen, Kate, et al are living the “Cath Kidston dream”—that is to say, they are buying into a pre-packaged fantasy based on consumption and rearing more little consumers to feed the machine. Never has the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” been more apropos.

cilwarncke.wordpress.com

Jellied Eels: The News in review

Team Expenses Scandal continued to collect star recruits with Tory MP Zac Goldsmith under investigation and Lord Taylor of Warwick being prosecuted over his records. The Independent states that the prominent Tory peer is ‘alleged to have claimed over £11,000 in expenses by pretending that his home was outside London’, although this was his actual residence.

A housing battle of another kind came to a legal close, with the Appeal Court ruling that peace protestors in Parliament Square must leave the site. The Democracy Village, awkward to attack with its anti-war foundations, has been instructed to dismantle after Boris Johnson played the World Heritage Site card. According to the Daily Mail, the group was initially formed to oppose the Afghan war but ‘had become little more than an al fresco dormitory for drug takers, drunks and the homeless’.

The Evening Standard reports on City Hall’s own contentious inhabitants, with Boris spending nine times more than predecessor Ken Livingstone on headhunters. The £450,000 expenditure in two years follows Johnson’s campaign criticism of Ken Livingstone for spending an ‘“excessive” £17.4million on consultants in the previous eight years’.
This hasn’t quashed Boris’ value on the nose. With Labour candidacy not announced until September, Betting Agency Paddypower has already marked the incumbent as favourite to win the 2012 Mayoral Election. Ken Livingstone has a probability of 11/8 to Oona King’s 5/1.

Tory MP Philip Hollobone’s attempt to maneuver his Private Member’s Bill banning certain face coverings, read Burqa and Hijab,* through Commons has not been met with grassroots support. Speaking to the Telegraph, Hollobone said he will refuse to meet with women wearing full Islamic dress at his office unless they lift their veil. The Kettering MP then challenged other European nations to ‘sit up and take notice’. However* Immigration Minister Damian Green* said that there is no possibility of a Coalition proposal emulating the recent French Bill.

Random Interview: Alan: Retired surgeon and volunteer at the Royal College of Surgeons’ Hunterian Museum

The Hunterian museum is not for those with a squeamish nature. Inside the packed cabinets are jars full of preserved specimens, including an in-depth study of a human foot, complete with a corn, the skeleton of an “Irish giant”, diseased body parts as well as a range of animals with skin folded back to reveal their delicate insides. The exhibition is a time freeze of John Hunter’s quest to understand the reality of life and how it works. Entering, I was stopped in my tracks by a display of fetuses, preserved over 200 years ago. I felt overwhelmed by the competing sensations of sadness and curiosity but realised there was something undeniably fascinating about them. A few weeks later I spoke with retired surgeon Alan about his experiences as a surgeon and why he thinks the Hunterian museum is so important.

SNIPE: What sort of a surgeon are you and why did you decide to become one?

ALAN: I’m a urologist, that’s water works. ‘Piddlers’, as we used to be called. I’m a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and I retired in 2005. Basically people and medicine fascinate me.

S: But there is a difference between being a people person and wanting to look at people’s insides..

A: Basically if you want to do it you want to do it. I found it fascinating the process of the diagnosis and treatment and satisfaction and joy comes from the patient being better than when they come in.

S: As a surgeon how do you manage your composure and nerves during the most intense operations?

A: You train so that you become used to handling tissue and redesigning parts. People ask me “what was the first incision like”? You never forget that there is a patient there and you do the best for the patient. In emergency situations nothing in the textbook can really prepare you. Yes you can set bones, operate on a kidney, but it’s all about working from basic principles. You decide to take it out, save part of it. You take a deep breath and think back to basics. None of us can say that we have never sweated a bit and thought – this isn’t going right, but you take a grip of yourself, stay calm and don’t panic. Sadly, patients do die on the operating table and that is the worst thing, but it’s part of the experience.

S: Does being a surgeon make you think more about your own body and the fragility of life?

A: No, basically. I am a bit scared of having an operation. I know too much. Although I have had a few myself.

S: What drew you to decide to volunteer at the Hunterian Museum?

A: As a surgeon I am used to talking to people and explaining to patients so they are aware of details. It’s a very useful perspective to be able to now talk to people and help them make sense of the exhibits.

S: The museum is interesting but also a very strange and curious place. Thinking of the fetuses, how do you think this is relevant to people? Why do you think there is a value in the public seeing these exhibits?

A: It’s very powerful to see these images in 3 dimension, much more powerful than pictures. Going back to your example, people ask all kinds of questions, have the babies been killed are they plastic? You can stop them and show people this is how we developed, this is how you became who you are. In the rest of the museum there are displays of diseases we no longer see anymore. People can see how surgery has developed. As horrific as it is, you can see how war has helped improve medical advances in plastic surgery, blood transfusion and fractures. Even in my lifetime there have been tremendous developments. I like saying to the young surgeons, “I know I sound like a boring old man, but in my day we didn’t have keyhole surgery” and they look at me with mouths aghast. I’ve also seen the development of antibiotics, anesthesia techniques, ultra scan, etc.

S: John Hunter seemed to be quite obsessed with looking at the insides of all kinds of animals as well as human parts, do you think he was an eccentric to some degree?

A: No, I think he was a very interesting chap, he was not only a surgeon but was also interested in how things work. There are various animals displayed so you can see how they work as he was interested in all living things, making comparisons. He had a brilliant brain. Things were more deficient then; we have so much more technology and this is how people learnt. Also the embalming techniques are quite advanced for the time.

S: Some may say there is an element of beauty in the exhibition, Do you think there is a blurry line between science and art?

A: Absolutely, Some artists come into the museum to sketch the exhibits. I quite like to watch, not being any sort of an artist myself. As a surgeon though, you can’t leave anything to chance. You can’t think, that’s sewn together reasonably well, I’ll just leave that there, because it will come apart. It is an exact science when you take things out. Some surgeons sketch their operations. Some of the original surgeons were tremendous artists.

S: If I’m honest, when I was walking around the museum I started to feel a little bit sick by the time I got to a video of a heart operation. Do you think there are two types of people, those who can handle it and those who can’t?

A: Well there are but we all have our own particular areas. I used to work with someone who was a brain surgeon. I can’t stand it. It looks horrible. The thought of all the brain and the mind and the soul. You don’t know what you are going to produce at the end with the brain. When you are in the brain it just looks the same.

I decided to keep out of there and avoid that. When you are operating on a kidney you know exactly how to achieve the outcome.

S: But I suppose if you were at a dinner party it would be quite impressive to say “actually I am a brain surgeon.”

A: No not really. Very few of us accept we are surgeons. At cocktail parties you end up getting cornered by people asking about their aches and pains.

For more information about how to visit the Hunterian Museum go to www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums