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imomus
1/The Dewey Decimal System is a system for classifying books. 2/Today, however, I would like to classify the English singer Simon Bookish, who has a new album out next week, his third, "Everything/Everything" (Tomlab), "a big band song cycle about science and information".
3/The Devo-ish sleeve (which is very good) is by Anthony Stephinson.
4/Before Bookish released Everything/Everything he released Unfair/Funfair (2006) and Trainwreck/Raincheck (2007). Generic titles containing consistently quirky punctuation are good.
5/Simon Bookish is the stage name of Leo Chadburn. Leo/Simon (as I expect he would enjoy being called) is very tall and always looks more interesting than anyone else in the room.
6/Pitchfork called him "the long-lost son of Jarvis Cocker".
7/Other people (I still love you, powpowpow!) have said "he thinks he's Momus" and "but Simon Bookish is quite a bit better than anything he's done in years". Grrr!
8/Tracks on the Simon Bookish Myspace page make it seem as if this new album -- played by a fifteen piece band rather than Bookish's usual digital synths -- is a great leap forward, a coming-of-age.
9/It is therefore time to say some things about Simon Bookish.
10/But first, let's watch him performing a song called Interview, from his previous album.
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11/ I like the way the backing track is almost Brian Eno's Golden Hours, which is probably my favourite Brian Eno song ever.
12/ The repeated refrain "Queen Victoria", and Bookish's outlandish garb, make me think of him as a futuristic "New Victorian Dandy" type.
13/A typical Bookish lyric: "the royal meteorologist's expression is pained". This is refreshing as a break from "let's hump and grind one more time", but not refreshing if you set your watch by Divine Comedy lyrics.
14/Reviewing Ocky Milk, Simon Bookish SLASH Leo Chadburn kindly called me "one of the most ingenious, pranksterishly self-aware musicians around". He criticized my Jamaican accent (correctly), though, and thought some of my friendly songs were mawkish.
15/If I might be allowed to criticize back, I would say that I find something emotionally attenuated (not mawkish enough) in Simon Bookish songs. Where, gentlemen, is the soul?
16/If Interview has the sound of Golden Hours, it certainly doesn't have the soulfulness of the Eno song.
17/People Simon Bookish has been compared to in reviews: Pulp, The Divine Comedy, Momus, Steve Reich, Marc Almond, David Bowie, Laurie Anderson.
18/People I would compare him to: David Cunningham, Wire, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, The Books, Dickon Edwards, Idle Tigers.
19/Artists I would not compare him to, but might compare to each other (because they're all out of control, dark, subconscious, soulful and fascinating to me): PiL, Tricky, No Bra.20/No Bra's Susanne Oberbeck might be the only person in the room more extraordinary-looking than Simon Bookish, if a room were to exist where they both were.
21/I don't know why, but No Bra songs like She Was A Butcher and Doherfuckher touch me in a way Simon Bookish songs don't. Perhaps because, as Susanne says, "for me music is about relating emotion". There's something vulnerable and dangerous there. No Bra songs are "bad", but in a good way.
22/Boomkat classifies the new Simon Bookish album as "laptop folk / americana", which is completely weird, especially since the American empire has this week officially fallen. Laptop folk / Americana is the category my Folktronic belongs in, but not his Everything/Everything.
23/Simon Bookish asked John Talaga -- Fashion Flesh -- to do a remix for him for a single called Leo Being Simon Bookish.
24/Simon attended the Guildhall School of Drama and Music in the Barbican.
25/In 2004 Simon presented Fear of Music, a deconstruction of the work of Talking Heads at Limehouse Town Hall.
26/David Byrne played a track from Everything/Everything on his podcast recently.
27/Not Wanting To Say Anything About John Cage is an art piece Simon Bookish has presented.
28/He has also made a new score for Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk CIrcle at the National Theatre, and appeared in the production as The Singer.
29/I would like to inform you that I approve of Simon Bookish's new Tomlab release wholemindedly.
30/But perhaps not, alas, wholeheartedly.
Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 01:49 pm (UTC)Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 02:04 pm (UTC)Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 02:55 pm (UTC)At one point you used to bang on about how there is no space outside society, it's an illusion. Well, I think something similar applies to genre. There's no real space outside genre, or convention, because it is the conventions that create the meaning. Playing off or against a convention is just playing the same game, albeit negatively.
Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 03:13 pm (UTC)By the way, who are you? You have a somewhat professorial tone! (I'm impressed by the correctness of the french accents!)
Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 03:38 pm (UTC)The messing around with the genre is just part of the dialectic that makes up the ur-genre, though. The other part of the dialectic is the "getting back to the essence of the genre" - the two need each other to exist.
Re: ha!
Date: 2008-10-02 04:22 pm (UTC)Ooh you big liar!
Have we met in real life?