Whether we actually achieve those goals or not is of course, not ours to say; that we aspire to create something as great as human art can possibly be is what is paramount. We are not pompous enough to claim genius, but we are wilful enough to aspire to it.
In a lifetime as short as the ones we lead, and with the greatest of culture of thousands of years behind us, we believe that the time and attention of every individual is a perennially precious thing. So precious in fact, that to waste it listening, reading or watching anything that is not the very best of the best of the best, which is mere entertainment, which doesn�t mean anything personally significant to its subject but is merely a pleasing distraction, is an atrocious waste of time.
What is the point of The Datsuns when The Stooges exist? What is the function of The Hives where we have The Icarus Line? How relevant are The Vines compared to Nirvana? And why would anyone sane listen to Korn when they could hear Joy Division?
We believe it is more pretentious for a braindead dolt like Noel Gallagher to scribble some nonsense nursery rhymes down on the back of a beer mat and get his idiot brother to intone them in a deadpan stadium-rock tearjerk-style over a shameless Beatles cover in a laughable attempt at straight-faced profundity, than it is to write songs about subjects that are culturally relevant.
We believe that adult human beings deserve to be challenged, that it is the ultimate patronisation to spoon-fed a man via accessibility and commercialism. It is commonplace for musicians to refer to themselves as artists, but what is an artist that has nothing to say?
We believe that rock and roll music is synonymous with extremity, and that the middle of the road, the easy route is the antithesis of it. It is more commercial for a band to make the same album again and again, no matter how loud that album is, than it is to evolve, even if that evolution actually happens to incur greater commercial success.
The fact is that the function of genuine art is one and the same as the function of all great science and the function of true religion. That is, to further human development.
All supposed art that is not progressive will be brushed into the dustbins of history like the useless trash it is, without apologies for taking seriously what is vital.
