It is nine o’clock, the guest-list is virtually spotless. Next to no names have been ticked off.

Rohan Sakhrani is not the only person to be caught off-guard tonight, the hastily-arranged surprise 18^th being held in his honour having mercilessly drawn the punters away to the opposite corner of the Tube map, leaving Gypsy Moth in a state of even greater confusion than normal. Come ten-fifteen, and their arrival onstage, will they, like the proverbial tree falling in the woods, make a sound?

The ear-piercing shrieks and shrills of the Queens girls provide the four-piece, which has had to make do without a sound-check and with only a few hours’ rehearsal time, with the perfect, tinnitus-inducing answer. The Water Rats is an intimate venue but incredibly loud at the same time. Each thud on the bass-drum hits you like a slug to the chest, every downward strum is another seam in the rich tapestry of chords that envelops the senses. The sheer scope of Gypsy Moth’s sound is such that even vocalist Sam Carr’s leonine roar occasionally loses itself in the mix, but everyone is too busy dancing to notice this rare occurrence.

Eight songs, like carriages of an express-train, tear past a gathered faithful left bewildered by the dazzling musical virtuosity on display. That is not to say there is no variation in the pace, however, as the slow grooves of Where Is My Mind, a Pixies cover, and Death of Celebrity, which closes the set, testify to. The next stop on the line to stardom is 93ft East, a club of wide renown throughout the land, where Gypsy Moth, accruing momentum with every beat, will wait for no man. Rohan will be there; will you?

Words: Charlie Chichester, Pictures: Ed

The ear has always been challenged by unfamiliar sounds. Play someone who is not well-trained in music a piece by Schoenberg, Berg or Webern, and they will probably describe it as “modern-sounding”, or something similar. Yet much of the music by these three classical composers who championed the ‘twelve-note’, ‘serialist’ or ‘atonal’ style of music was written over one hundred years ago. Although these atonal composers’ music is ripped-off in a vast number of movie soundtracks and film-scores, their music never made it into the mainstream as music in its own right, and possibly with good reason: it’s challenging to listen to because there’s no respite from the dissonance. But you can get used to it.

The other day, a boy walked on stage at a school rock concert with a bundle of wires and a guitar pieced together from the broken remains of other instruments. He sat down cross-legged in the middle of the stage; what followed was an array of noises the vast majority of the (captive) audience would never have sat through were it not for the context of an eclectic mix of bands performing one after the other, which seemed to be conducive towards an open-minded attitude from the crowd. Fuzz, distortion, static, rapid strumming on extremely dissonant chords (played on an instrument patently not even close to being ‘in tune’), and dive-bombing sounds reminiscent of the end of Jimi Hendrix’s famous Band of Gypsys recording of Machine Gun; this was something no one was expecting and which only a small collective of dedicated noise-rock fans in the audience would have ever heard before. Needless to say, there was a tumult of partially sarcastic applause after he had finished, far louder than was afforded any of the other acts that night.
Should people have to step outside their comfort zone and experience something different? In an ideal world, prejudice could be left at the door at this sort of event. Playing it safe and sticking to what you know where some things are concerned is generally considered to be acceptable, and music seems very often to be one such example. My hypothesis is this: taste in music isn’t as simple as taste in something like food where you may never learn to like something (marmite and liquorice being two obvious examples). Not only do people often say things like a song is ‘growing’ on them, suggesting people cannot really be absolutist in defining their taste by genres or even individual artists, but their tastes may change completely in the course of a few years.

‘Noise-rock’ is perhaps the best description for what that boy in the school rock concert was making, although in its absence of easily discernable harmony, melody or rhythm, it bore far less resemblance to ordinary rock music than most artists who are labelled as such. But maybe the underlying point is the same: it challenges one’s preconceptions about what is listenable, what aspects of music one enjoys, and becomes more of a sensory experience than a simple listening exercise. Being a ‘noise-rock fan’ must surely demand an ability to embrace the ugly, to leave aside musical prejudice and to reconsider your definition of music. John Cage’s credence that any sound can be music if afforded enough attention (culminating in the infamous 4’33”, which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence) has had a lasting influence, and one need not look as far as noise-rock to see it: I can think of numerous pop records where there is a soundscape of noise, produced electronically or otherwise, which, while not integral to the song, provides texture and atmosphere and must surely be considered as part of the ‘music’.

The fact that a large roomful of people were exposed to a rather extreme example of noise-rock is, for me, highly commendable. Narrow-mindedness is endemic in music to an extent unparalleled in the other arts. It may require a certain degree of understanding, technical or otherwise, of some styles of music in order to fully appreciate them, but not enough people take the first step and actually listen to something just a little different. Why not start today?

What is so brilliant about Footlight MT is that it can be used for so many different things. It can be professional, without the cliched curves of Helvetica or Arial. It can even be incredibly informal, with the cool, sophisticated flicks on the Q and Js giving the text an air of subtle dynamism. Originally designed as an italic typeface, the roman version conveys some of that edgy tilt that italics are famous for. The ‘N”s unconventional proportions say “FUCK YOU MONOSPACE,” and the smoothness of 0 means that the font is ideal for making boring maths numbers interesting.

Two of my favorite covers of two of my favourite songs by one of my favorite artists.

Chris Garneau – Between The Bars (Elliott Smith Cover)
Lex Land – Miss Misery (Elliott Smith Cover)

Being eighteen years old I consider my youth to be on the verge of extinction. Although I truly believe that balance is important in life and that a combination of discipline and self indulgence is key to contentment, it appeals to me that there is something fundamentally wrong, especially at this youthful age, that the probability of success in the course of your life is determined by the number of hours you spend sitting in front of your screen crunching numbers and analyzing graphs. Thinking back over the past few years, among the most vivid memories are of those countless long hours spent in the library filtering through textbooks. It has gradually dawned on me over time that after university it will only get progressively worse as the rat race  gradually accrues pace. Lest we do something about it, it will become the primary ingredient for the most part of our lives.

On the other hand I fully acknowledge the importance of education and work, and how it allows us homosapiens to advance into becoming moral, functioning and rational thinking persons. I also acknowledge that deep down we do have the choice to do what we want and that we are just influenced partly by external impediments into doing what society perceives to be good. It just makes me sad that once youth is spent, there are these significant external pressures constantly distracting us while life just passes us by.

Okay, so you’re Brad Pitt
That don’t impress me much
So you got the looks but have you got the touch
Don’t get me wrong, yeah I think you’re alright
But that won’t keep me warm in the middle of the night
That don’t impress me much

I asked the ICA if they would have anything to put into a publication I am working on, and they sent me all this really nice stuff, posters, newspapers etc. Now I just have to pick which one I want. (You should see the latest exhibition if you haven’t already.)

A while back, I was at home alone feeling inspired yet lacking the will and the materials to do anything truly worthwhile. I resorted to making collages on photoshop rooting from completely random ideas and I guess it worked – on the level that I wasn’t bored for the few hours that I spent making them…

Running a blog is tiresome work. In the past four days or so that this blog has been up, I have noticed that there is a constant self imposed pressure to create stimulating, original posts out of thin air, and this made me wonder whether my life involved sufficient interesting content to constitute one that is blogworthy. But everynow and then, there are subtle hints that it is…