HEAVY DISCIPLINE

'The Future of Rock and Roll' (or 'New Band Demos')

August 2005
 

Corporation:Blend - 'For All My Sins / Blew It' (Superior Quality Recordings)
from... London 
www.corporationblend.com
 
Part of the exalted New Cross 'anti-scene', C:B promise enough to warrant scepticism among those free from the Londoncentric arts scene.  Like every other band with a fashionable postcode and sharp haircuts, it's hard to tell whether the emphasis is on the sharpness of their guitar riffs or their cheekbones.  But, with a burning copy of NME in our hands, we must hack our way through the hype and judge them solely on their music and their moment.  'For All My Sins' is, simply, beautiful.  It rises wide-eyed and conscious from our shards of greed, apathy and intolerance, spreading hope as others spread hate.  The bass is so earth-shakingly dubby it reaches 3.7 on the Richter Scale.  Bodies do not so much dance as vibrate under it's sheer low end boom.  Ragged Dylanish organ synths sweep over each chord like the tide over a desperately slow moving child.  Drums seem to punch you directly in the face.  'Blew It' is cut from a more standard punk template, but pulled off with enough bluster and energy that it could only live now, in this moment.  All this means that, although they may sound enough like Muse for me to wonder when the piano solo's coming, there's enough of a pop melody and enough taught power to suggest Corporation:Blend are poised to live up to their considerable hype, and become flag bearers for post millennial punk.  Stadium rock never sounded so good on CD?

Ten Foot Nun - 'A Ten Foot Nun Sampler'
from... Croydon
www.nuntoof.net
E-CONTENT!
 
Their singer can't really sing but, kids, that's the least important thing in rock and roll. This is gonzo rock, the kind that threatening to play allows you to scare your neighbours into letting you use their flat as a crackhouse, and then giving you the moral high ground to complain when they don't get the right beers in.  Instead of honing a typical 'tight' sound, each instrument is so accidentally independent from each other they decide to fuck the notion of diplomacy and go off and form military dictatorships, where they do what the fuck they want.  Luckily, they seem to reunite over their musical foreign policies.  It seems to fall together, with some of the most messily obtuse guitar anti-sounds I've heard since I dropped my guitar down a flight of stairs appearing on 'Last Night I Saw Your Band' and 'Limbo/Collapso'.  Also seems to remind me of the only song a friend could play on the piano, a Beethovenian operatic masterpiece called 'Random Notes' , which is an impressive feat.  If you were to overdub the episode of the Young Ones where Rik and Vivian dance to Motorhead in their lounge with a stoned Sid Vicious soloing on a broken guitar, it may sound something like this.  To be honest, I cannot think of a bigger compliment.

Rek - 'Demo'
from... London  

Sometimes, the whole notion of reviewing demos seems flawed.  For the continual production of bands in an 'underground scene' (I use this term lightly, as mostly they only exist in the hope that someday the NME will take an interest in them) is reliant on encouragingly tolerant pacifying demo reviews for (mostly) speechlessly average bands that they hope will one day reach stardom, and therefore propel the rest of their 'scene' with them, feeding off their success like pensioners feeding the ducks, taking a few bites of the bread for themselves...
So.  I tread this path carefully, avoiding, on one side, the chasm of major label dream destroying vitriolic reviews, which would, if the band was a gang of bored-angry glamorous teenage intellectuals from Shitsville Uk, force me in to early journalistic retirement, whilst steering clear of the slippery slope of promoting bands you've yet to see live, and could easily turn out to be the next Stones / Pistols / Suede, but are more likely to be JUST ANOTHER BAND (the worse thing possible, infinitely worse than just plain old 'shit').  
So Rek, take these turds of wisdom away from an blissfully egocentric reviewer: however much I'm sure you will amount to nothing more than a tunefully inoffensive demo with all the la's in the right places, I will say you are the future saviours of rock and roll.

Divina Icon - Little Devils
from... London
www.divinaicon.co.uk

Despite being as androgynous as Ram C Nesbitt in a pink tutu isn't (but nowhere near as memorable), Divina Icon somehow manage to tick the rock and roll boxes marked 'make-up?', 'fake orgasmic vocals?' and 'porno pouts?', but choose to wilfully neglect the 'how to write a good pop song' sections.  Pointless melody can only get you so far.  Without any musical or lyrical direction save mindless hedonism (scoring with chicks, dicks and drugs), and with influences ranging from Placebo to King Adora, Divina Icon are your typical glam rock caricatures, more cock than rock, more spunk than punk.  Take the time to struggle through their numerous unforgivable excesses, which number sluggish 5 minute songs, permanent depression, and hairspray, but exclude such apparently peripheral pursuits as tunes, meaning, energy and FUN, you perhaps could see some grim optimism.  I'm sure it's to their credit that they're ploughing their own musical furrows (probably with a giant horse drawn flying V) and of course this makes them far more punk rock than any number of teenage Pistol rip offs or even, gasp, Pete Doherty, but my 'Cheekbone Theory'™ (cheekbone size dictates band success) suggests they'll end up being dragged out of their dark bedrooms by EMI (probably forcing them to become addicted to prozac), marketed to gloomy adolescents and given the chance to scare little kids on CD:UK.  I'm sure they'll prove me wrong though.
 
Another thought...  In striving to portray themselves in some kind of revolutionary glamour futurists, they're merely fulfilling the very same cliché they strive to avoid.  Don't get me wrong, lipstick and eye-shadow on attractive young men is great, but when the band motto could well be "I pout therefore I am" you begin to wonder whether they're the 'proper' rock stars they think they have to be.  Of course, they're sure they are.  Otherwise they would realise that their 'alternative' stance is as derivative and inevitable as rebel teenagers in the latest skateboarding chic, or alpha-male 12 year olds in gold chains, NYC baseball caps and estuary dialects.  Nothing's original, boys.  But some are more original than others.

Big Joan - 'Insects And Engines' (Blood Red Sounds)
from... Bristol
www.bigjoan.com
 
Big Joan seem to inhabit a place between rock and roll and drum and bass and it's scary.  Opener 'waiting for nine' seems to be an anti-corporate rant, but I can't really work it out between that itchy trebly bass sound braindead indie kids think sounds cool, and drumming that vishnu himself would struggle to play, even with all those arms.  I'm not sure whether this could be a huge step forward for rock and roll or a blast back to more primal times, but compared with everything else offered in 2005, it's a welcome change.
 

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