Earlier in the month I compiled a playlist for the car that was unashamedly 1970s. It was full of stuff I could turn up loud and sing out of tune to with no fear of reprisals. I can’t tell you how good that drum section and Herbie Flowers’ bass sounds on Nilsson’s Jump into the Fire on Nilsson Scmilsson sounds flying down the motorway. Or Led Zeppelin’s Rain Song or anything by Bad Company or Free. Old hippies never die I suppose, they just get nostalgic from time to time.

But just to prove I don’t live in a time warp, this month’s playlist of music I work with is rather electronic. And thanks to Stuart Maconie and those great people at emusic, the month has been at bit expensive as well.

Darshan Ambient - The Zen Master’s Diary: very close to ambient. One reviewer on emusic says, “This is how I start Sunday morning, along with coffee and the paper. Masterful and mellow”. There you go.

I Monster - Art of Chill EP: part of the 2-disk Art of Chill Volume 6 put together by I Monster. We’ll have to forgive them a dubious version of a dubious song, Tina Turner’s The Best, the rest is a gem. Part Air, part psychedelia, three short(ish) tracks. Just fresh.

The Lickets - Journey in Caldecott: An apparently elusive duo. Hypnotic, melodic and and somehow elevating.

Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons: Not at all ambient, call it chill, down-tempo or whatever you want. Unchallenging, pass the day away with it.

Rhys Chatham – A Crimson Grail (for 400 electric guitars): 400 electric guitars and the Sacré Coeur cathedral in Paris. Epic, mad and it works.

The Advisory Circle - Other Channels: Retro-synths and public information films. What’s not to like? Like the rest of Ghost Box‘s output.

Sylvain Chaveau – The Black Book of Capitalism: This is an elusive record, a mix of electronic and acoustic. It paints scenes, creates atmospheres.

The Jellyheads – Filthy Mechanoid: Downbeat/down tempo (what the hell is the difference?). Basic guitar, bass and drum supplemented with all kinds synths, software and kitchen utensils (apparently). A glorious smorgasbord.

Inch Time – As the Moon Draws Water: I’ve seen this described as “slow dance music for melancholic robots”. I’ll leave the dancing to others, another electro-acoustic affair with a whole variety of influences, jazz, world and techno.

Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express: OK, this is retro-electronica, but I came to Kraftwerk very, very late. I’d liked an extract from their second album that appeared on the Vertigo sampler Suck it and See, but not all the 80s stuff that I found too mechanical. Take them out of that horrible decade and they sound they sound revolutionary. Mea Culpa, I’m catching up as I write.

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Kaya Project - Elixir
North African tinged electronica. One of the few things that will get me dancing in the street. OK, it was midnight and the street was deserted.
Steely Dan – Aja
Although it’s a 70s album, it sounds 80s. Not a great time in human history and fashion, this stands out like a beacon. Sassy and slick.
Pink Floyd - Relics
This is a funny album. Not a greatest hits but it has nothing new on it. My iPod played me Richard Wright’s Paintbox.
Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality
I first heard Children of the Grave on the sampler that launched the Roger Dean-designed Vertigo label, Suck It And See. Driving, thunderous, fresh even now.
Imagined Village – Empire and Love
Folk reinvented and refurbished. Worth it just for Martin Carthy’s rendition of Cum On Feel The Noize, but there’s much more.
Peter Gabriel – Scratch My Back: Special Edition
His first album in seven years. A set of covers recorded with no band, just an orchestra. It gets better every time I hear it.
Joanna Newsom – Have One on Me
A triple album, which is ambitious enough, of songs of between 5 and 11 minutes long, which may seem crazy. The whole thing hangs together wonderfully.
Bruno Sanfilippo & Mathias Grassow - Ambessessence Piano & Drones
Drifting ambient, treated piano. Great for late night walking when the weather’s cold.
Wire – 154: Remastered
A great classic from my student days. Wonderfully bleak.
Burial – Burial
Very fashionable. But for once, worth it’s reputation.
Air – Pocket Symphony
Consistant quality over a number of albums. Does lounge electronica exist?
George Benson – Give Me the Night
Oh those disco days!

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Stuart Maconie described the Advisory Circle on 6music’s Freak Zone as “quite scary”. You can see his point as well. The music recreates the atmosphere of half-remembered public information films and weird and wacky children’s television programmes that the current crop of TV executives would run a mile from. For those too young to remember, public information films were screened on the television in the 1960s and 1970s to “inform” people of a variety of dangers ranging from running for a bus to the aftermath of an atom bomb falling on the country

“The Advisory Circle….helping you make the right decisions”, proclaims the first track, Logo, on the the recently re-released and augmented Mind How You Go. It paints a picture with other titles like Mind How You Go and Nuclear Substation or Civil Defence Makes Common Sense on Other Channels of a world where nostalgia and futurism rub shoulders in an uneasy alliance. Get in the Swim takes its cue from a 1973s film called Lonely Water that warns against the dangers of playing too close to water and is narrated by the Grim Reaper. The kids voices in the background seemaugment the sense of impending tragedy. You couldn’t imagine it today, it would be dismissed as nanny-statism of the worst kind by the right-wing press at least. But as kids in the late 60s and early 70s, we took them seriously.

The “group” is in fact one man, Jon Brooks (also King of Woolworths and Georges Vert). He has no plans to play live and is one of many that describes his studio as an instrument. His father was a jazz session player and he started playing instruments at a young age. He’s built up a large collection of 1970s Moog synthesisers over the years and combines their analogue quality with modern digital technology to produce music that has what he describes as a “Everything’s fine, but there is something not quite right about it” atmosphere.

For this fiftysomething writer, the music is reassuringly familiar. All those memories colour the way I listen to records and create a lush atmosphere that resembles a texture-like quality that many records aspire to but never actually achieve.

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There’s been much wringing of hands about the BBC recently. Under pressure from the media, the Opposition and particularly the Murdoch empire, it has felt compelled to publicly wield the axe on some sacrificial lambs, easy targets like the web site, 6music and the Asian Network.

For those that don’t know or live on the other side of the world, 6Music is a music station that supports new music, it doesn’t play the usual pap you here on normal commercial radio and it has no ads so it can afford to be daring.

The state of music radio

There’s nothing new about playlists, they’ve been around since at least before I started listening to “youth” radio in the 1970s. We’ve always had smug DJs and formulaic business models that served the major record companies far more than the audience.

Even before the advent of commercial FM radio stations in the UK in the 1970s, BBC radio stations (Radios 1 AND 2) had a list of recently released songs that were played once a day for a given period.

When the commercial stations appeared (one per city at the time), the pressure became greater because advertisers wanted listeners and listeners were quite happy to listen to the same things over and over again.

We’ve now reached a point when things are getting ridiculous, songs are being played 2, 3 or 4 times a day. Yes, we’ve got it, we heard your song. In fact we’ve heard it so many times that we’re sick of it and don’t want to go out and buy it, it’s too much: overkill.

Why should 6music be saved

That old fashioned thing called public service broadcasting. It fills a gap for all of us that grew up with that vast majority of music that isn’t in the mainstream, the stuff that isn’t heard elsewhere and that doesn’t treat its listeners like an ATM.

According to the British Phonographic Industry, 6music has a “unique role in supporting new artists” playing four or five times as much new music as other stations. Translate that as it is fulfilling the BBC’s role “to inform, to entertain and to educate”.

It plays a variety of music that no other public or commercial radio station plays.

It’s not afraid that people won’t like what it plays. I remember Stuart Maconie playing an orchestral version of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. That’s not the most accessible piece of music at the best of times, but it put it out there as a challenge to its audience.

It will challenge it’s audience. It has intelligent, articulate DJs who are passionate and knowledgeable about what they play in the same way as John Peel, Bob Harris and Annie Nightingale were in the 1970s

Commercial radio stations (and to a large extent the other two BBC “pop” stations), play safe music that is likely to attract audiences and advertisers. 6music doesn’t have that type of constraint.

What should you do?

Sign up to the Facebook page set up by Rage Against The Machine Christmas number one campaigner Jon Morter. It includes the names of all the members of the BBC Trust that will be reviewing the decision and asking your opinion in the next few months

Write to your MP and all the candidates. Remember, this decision was probably made in the light of the coming election. Let the incumbent and the pretenders know what you think. Ironically it may be a great PR exercise for the radio station because if not many people knew they were out there before, they do now. You never know, they might have an epiphany like shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey who changed his mind last weekend calling 6music “brilliant” after previously towing the party line supporting the cuts. Opportunism? You decide.

Listen to 6music!

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I put my iTunes on random this afternoon as I work on something that is neither interesting or relevant. It played a track from Now We Are Ten, an album celebrating the tenth anniversary of Trunk Records.

Trunk Records

Trunk Records is a one-mand band (excuse the pun) run by Jonny Truck. He rediscovers cult material mainly from the 70s such as the soundtracks to films like Kes, Deep Throat and the Wicker Man. He’s unearthed music from UK television series such as The Tomorrow People, UFO and Vernon Elliot’s wonderful scores to The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and the creepy Pogle’s Wood. He’s also eeked out a nice little sideline in records associated with 60s and 70s pornography such as Deep Throat and Mary Mary Millington Talks Dirty.

Recommendations

I suppose I’m of the age to get nostalgic about Jonny Trunk’s stuff. I’ve discovered wonderful little snippets of incidental and library music, particularly on Now We Are Ten. If you’d have told me when I was 16 that in a future life I’d be listening to the Mike Sammes Singers I might have topped myself there and then, but now they have a kitsch charm about them.

Apart from the Vernon Elliot records, Trunk Records also recently unearthed Edward Williams’ music to David Attenborough’s Life on Earth. The original record was produced as only 100 vinyl copies for the members of the orchestra played on it. The music is very much of its time, eerie, stark and very atmospheric. This is how the re-release came about. It’s a story of a collector’s zeal and determination, as he says “(so) we can all enjoy some of the most beautiful music made for some of the greatest TV ever produced”.

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Whatever you do, wherever you work, sometimes you just need some space to concentrate. It’s not always easy to create that space, mood or whatever you want to call it. This is what I do:

Ignore the door and take the phone off the hook

I know, phones don’t have hooks anymore, you get my meaning, put them on silent or whatever you do.

If you really can’t do without the phone

Your friends can wait a bit, then take all the others according to priority. Answer anyone offering you a big job straight away, the taxman’s place in the queue is way behind your friends.

Make the coffee before you start

Or if you’re a caffeine junkie, keep the coffee maker (and the biscuits) close by.

Make sure things are hunky dory with your family or those people you live with

There’s nothing worse for concentration than a row.

Work in a tidy space

Preferably where there’s room to swing a cat. It’s always nice to be able to spread out.

Wash

That might sound silly but as a freelancer I get the opportunity to work dressed how I like. I always work better however when I’ve had a shower, a shave and I’m dressed in something comfortable.

Make sure your airflow is sufficient

This doesn’t mean checking for carbon monoxide poisoning – even though that would be a good idea from time to time – it means that ideally you’d work in a light and well-aired space. Especially in the spring and summer.

What about the music?

I’m going to be non-commital about this because it’s very personal. When I really want to concentrate, I shut the door, fire up my iTunes playlist with this on it and I’m away.

Sometimes I put one of those “nature sounds” records on that you find in Garden Centres. The sea works great, especially when the sun’s out, but tropical rain forests don’t go down so well. I’ve also got a thunderstorm one, but I use that one mainly just to scare the dog.

Generally, put the stuff on that gets you going, fires you up, puts you in the right place. If Metallica’s your bag, go for it (although most people will prefer something a little calmer).

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This is a completely subjective list. It features albums that, with one exception, were all made between the mid-seventies and mid-eighties. I’ve been listening to them for years and when I really need to concentrate, I shut the door and put this playlist on. I make no excuse for the fact that it’s exclusively Eno (et frère) and Budd, the two have shaped relax music single-handed in recent years. Most discerning people will already have them or at least know about them. If you don’t, enjoy.

Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno:

Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks The so-called (although not by himself), inventor of ambient music. This album was part of the soundtrack to For All Mankind, a film that documented the Apollo space mission to the moon. The film itself wasn’t released until many years after the album, by which time it had taken on a life of its own. A mixture of styles from the broody, atmospheric beginning to the country-tinged steel guitar of the later tracks, this was the first real ambient album I listened to. Like On Land, it evokes landscapes that are bleak and grey, not just lunar. As good a starting point to ambient music as you’ll get. Especially if you want to clear your head for any reason.

Harold Budd/Brian Eno:

Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirrors. The first of Brian Eno’s two collaborations with Harold Budd. It features Budd playing sparse, rambling piano with Eno’s “treatments” and sythesisers interjecting and underpinning at the same time.
The Pearl: RemasteredOn Land: Ambient 4/RemasteredMusic For FilmsNeroliThursday Afternoon: RemasteredVoices

Harold Budd:

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I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about Richard Branson who’d been reading his autobiography Losing My Virginity. We were talking about Branson and the debt he owes to Mike Oldfield. For those that don’t know or weren’t around in 1973, Tubular Bells is a two-part piece (made so by the LP, two-sided format) that takes its queue from a minimalist, repetitive style. Its inspiration however comes from the overlaying of a variety of weird and wonderful instruments from “two slightly, distorted guitars”, “mandolin!”, “Spanish guitar and introducing acoustic guitar” to the eponymous tubular bells all introduced with grandiloquence by the great Viv Stanshall.

Even at the time, it was a pretty strange record to sell 16 million copies. It was also the making of Branson, the record that put the newly formed Virgin Records on the map. It’s been remade four times, from the orchestral version in 1975 to three newly made versions by Oldfield in the ensuing 30-odd years, never with the same effect, in fact most of the reworkings have been complete tosh.

So what can we make of this record 35 years on? Well, the first side was always better than the second. These days, I like to see the debt owed to Philip Glass, Steve Reich and other 1960s minimalists. At the time, it was a revolutionary record for the mainstream audience it reached. People that were listening to the David Cassidy, The Carpenters and The Bay City Rollers in 1973 also had this record in their collection (some may still do). I listen to it now as a great minimalist record, there are times when it rolls along like a steam train, it’s great for working with. And of course it had one of the greatest ever footnotes on it, “This stereo record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment please hand it into the nearest police station”

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If Erik Satie had been able to use synthesisers, you can’t help thinking he’d have moved to California and been called Harold Budd.

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Warning: this post contains comments of a personal nature. They are my opinions and describe my life experience. If you are family, perhaps you should read them in order to understand me a bit more. If you are not my family, well, have a read anyway.

I speak as a bilingual adult. I learned French as a teenager and into my twenties. I wasn’t born in France, my parents aren’t French, I didn’t go to school in France (although I did go to University in France later). I learnt my second language the hard way. So was it worth it?

Slipping from one to another

I think what I love is the ability to jump seamlessly from one language and culture to another. This is always easier in the kind of bilingual work environment in which I found myself in the 1980s, but now my desk, computer(s) and my bookshelves are full of documents, audio and video in English and in French. All the clichés a true, it is a window on another world and a different way of seeing the environment in which we live. This may be pretentious but speaking another language teaches you humility and tolerance.

Career opportunity?

Not sure about that one. I spent 20 years living in France. For a long time, I thought that speaking two languages was an end in itself. Here’s a bit of careers advice, it’s not. Professional French (or any other language for that matter) speaker is not a job. For most of the first part of my time there, I was a travel agent in Paris where having English as a second language was a distinct advantage. When I got to Rennes it wasn’t. Lesson number one, in a working environment in France, English is a second language. You do actually need another skill in order to make it.

And what about your mother tongue?

Because of all my efforts to assimilate, I got to speak very good French. So good that people thought I was French. Well done me. That made me acutely aware of the language I was born with. This was probably the reason why I first became a translator (apart from being hungry) and then started writing. That was the other skill I needed.

It’s all about the culture

This is a vast area that can’t be covered in a few hundred-word blog post. My life would be poorer without my ability to understand Jacques Brel in the original. Ne Me Quitte Pas is simply the best love song ever written. The beauty of Le Plat Pays, Vezoule and Amsterdam describe places better than any travel book ever could. Brel has been badly served by his translators. Amsterdam and Next (Au Suivant) are exceptions, but If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas) simply doesn’t the desperation of the original and the mawkish Seasons in the Sun (Le Moribond) is just atrocious. Brel conveys pathos like no other. He’s happy and sad at the same time. He talks and sings about real things, real emotions and real-life situations. He’s as close as songwriting gets to poetry.

So what’s the conclusion?

Of course it was worth it. The thirteen-year old me who decided he wanted to speak fluent French would have been happy with the outcome. When I was in my 20s I wasn’t entirely sure where I belonged, I’d often say I had one foot either side of the English Channel. Even now, I’d like to be able to spend more time in France than I do. But I’ve got the identity thing sorted. I’m a European first and foremost. As Eddie Izzard says on his Twitter profile, a British European.

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