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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An
edited version of this article (by Alistair Fitchett) appeared in Issue 6 of
PLAN B MAGAZINE
(June/July 2005):
English As TuppenceListen With Sarah Rob was telling me the other day how he was
making a mix tape based around that poem about being in England in the summertime.
I’m not good on poetry but didn’t the Art of Noise use a line or two from it
on their ‘Close (To The Edit)’? Now I don’t want to go all High Fidelity on
you, but the art of the mix-tape is indeed a fascinating subject, not least
because no matter what idea you dream up as a cord to tie your tracks
together, you can rest assured that someone has done it before. And will do
it again. And again. So the premise of this particular mix was to
use songs that were uniquely English. It was a premise that had me
immediately wondering how you might define that quality in the 21st
Century, never mind go about choosing tracks, but that’s a discussion for
another time and place. My immediate thoughts then were for the usual
suspects: Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Julie Driscoll and then for the
perhaps less obvious: Robert Wyatt, Twinkle, XTC, Vic Godard, Andrea Parker,
July Skies. And Listen With Sarah. When I say that Sarah Nelson and her computer
are uniquely English, I mean it in the nicest possible way. Because the
sounds of Listen With Sarah seem to me remarkably redolent of the sweetest
and most peculiar Englishness; the Englishness of eccentricity and natural
strangeness; the atmosphere of a Shena Mackay novel made into sound. And
let’s be honest here: you cannot give praise higher than that. Thankfully Sarah agrees: “I’m quite
happy to be considered 'uniquely English' in that way (my computer says 'beep
hum'), and glad to be creating eccentric and naturally strange sounds.” As for
the mix tape, she would add “the Bonzo Dog Band and Roy Harper. And Viv
Stanshall's fine phrase "English as Tuppence" (from Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End)” Then there’s the drum’n’bass, this of course
being the last truly new music form and also being, at its finest, peculiarly
English; full of the awkward angles and frenetic fractured ferment of urban
(and also, crucially, suburban) alienation. Sarah however isn’t making d’n’b
records in the way that Photek or Optical made them, but rather she uses the
fabric of d’n’b (and glitch) as a natural backdrop. “Perhaps my d'n'b is a kind of 'rural'
or 'pastoral' d'n'b” she suggests. “But whatever, I feel that d’n’b has a
great potential for blending with other sounds, genres, anything.” Which means that in Sarah’s hands it takes on the texture of
little fluffy clouds and warm beer, and that’s no mean feat. Listen With Sarah is firmly in the tradition
of English bedroom music, from Orbital through Thomas Leer to Joe Meek and
beyond. It’s also folk music in the truest tradition, in that it’s music made
to tell tales of its times, to weave myths and legends. It just so happens
that those myths and legends are populated by mediated memories of
television, radio and the sounds of computers breathing. Which, living in the
times we do, it obviously ought to. Sarah herself takes it back to
Stravinsky: “I was very
inspired by a quote of his I read a while back, where he talked about the
importance of cultural references and the appropriate use of them in art...
that art should somehow express the times in which the artist lives and that
we should inform ourselves about new art forms... In that light I
certainly think of electronic music, and particularly that of the
DIY/bedroom kind as the folk music of today.” Oh, to be in England in the summertime with
Sarah and her computer… Our mix tapes really won’t be complete without her.
English as Tuppence, indeed. 2005 Alistair Fitchett Plan B Magazine (Issue 6) - www.planbmag.com |