The Sound of Tumult

Kerfuffles and malefactors.

Indiscretions and perfidies.

And of course, supercilious c-bombs.

Those are words. These are songs: on Spotify or Youtube

Fire Action! - Fiasco

Despite shoving it down the throat of most people I've ever met for the past few weeks, I somehow failed to post about this here. Fire Action! made an EP. You should totally buy it. Yes, YOU. From either iTunes or Amazon.

Fire Action! Tour - Day Three (Monday)

Bristol - 12:00

The sun is out again, although not with quite the same force as we felt it in Oxford. I'd have liked to use the next few hours to explore - I hear Isambard Brunel built an impressive suspension bridge nearby - but the cheap shoes I bought yesterday are fighting against my unusually shaped feet and, at the moment, winning, leaving the heels and tops of my feet feeling something like good carpaccio: raw and tender. So instead I'm sitting on a bench just off the High Street, outside a Methodist church that lays claim to some kind of historical significance, while some cheery whistling workmen paint the wall behind me a not completely repulsive shade of lime green.

Fire Action! Tour - Day Two (Sunday)

Oxford - 16:00

Day two of the tour and there's time to kill in Oxford before we drive to Bristol. In an attempt to blend in with the natives I've bought a pretentious Moleskine notebook and taken refuge from the day's scorching heat under a tree in Christ Church meadow. It would probably be sensible to find a more secluded spot than I have - tourists pour down the wide pebble dashed path almost constantly, eager to gawp at the university's golden monuments to intellectualism or the cows in the field ahead of me - but the poser in me quite enjoys imagining I might be a source of fascination to passersby with my furrowed brow and look of intense concentration. Besides, it's not long before the repetitive crunch of footsteps on gravel becomes faintly reassuring- like the sound of rain on a pane of glass.

Fire Action! - White Dress video

Here it is! It's turned out alright, no?


Fire Action!, White Dress from Chris Newcombe on Vimeo.

We're still left with lots and lots to organise: we're aiming for an EP launch at the start of August, to go alongside a one week INTERNATIONAL tour (which will include both England AND Wales).

Obviously, feel free to re-post like kerazy.

DON'T PANIC

I'm just getting excited about tenuous links to events in my life in the lyrics of old pop songs. It definitely doesn't mean anything.

Also: is the guitarist in this video the coolest ever? Or does he just benefit from standing next to a Paul Simon wearing a white t-shirt tucked into high-waist trousers?

Regardless, I wish I could pull off a hat like that.

"...Lit a Fire..."

1. Admire faraway paradise.
2. Start building bridge to farwaway paradise.
3. Spend ten years building bridge.
4. Forget where bridge was supposed to lead.
5. Burn bridge down.

Finally reached stage five today.

The Best Kind of Exhausting

I spent last weekend in Norfolk making a music video for the Fire Action! song "White Dress". The band - along with one phenomenally talented director/producer, one so-witty-you-could-punch-him Director of Photography, an unfailingly resourceful and creative Production Designer, and crucially a funny and beautiful selkie - spent two 20-hour-long days filming for the five-and-a-half minute long song.

I cannot begin to describe (largely because I'm still feeling the effects of the sleep deprivation) how excited I am at the prospect of seeing it all put together, so until I get back to the point where putting words in a coherent order is a little more effortless, here are a bunch of photos I took on my mobile phone (click 'em to see 'em in all their high-res glory):

Nathan Fake - You Are Here (FortDax Remix)

Generally if I'm writing I have to do it in silence. If I put some music on and it's any good then I won't be able to concentrate on what I'm saying, because my attention is all too easily stolen by a good tune. And if the music is rubbish, then, well, why would I bother listening to it in the first place?

Here though, is one of very few exceptions.



Brooker-tastic.

Fire Action! - Lucy Fang

On this I'm playing the bass AND the washing up tub.

Fire Action! - I am Boring (but you are Bad Bad Bad)

I should get out of the habit of staying up too late and making crap videos by throwing together a bunch of Google image results. It's no good for me. Or for the song they accompany.

Oh well:

Cutting Teeth

You should form a band because you want to entertain. Only the most desperate, naïve or utterly corruptible can start making music with a belief that they’ll ever make money from it. That’s not the point. The point is to play. Have fun. And then hope that your play is infectious enough that anyone listening starts having fun too.

At least, that’s where I come from whenever I play a musical instrument in front of someone else. Admittedly there will be some who approach music making from other angles, perhaps with some great political or philosophical points to make, and some even pull it off. But for the amateur pop or folk musician (and I use “pop” and “folk” in the broadest possible senses there), entertainment has to be key.

So... does it sound like we're enjoying ourselves?

Fire Action! - "Who You're Gonna Be"


Fire Action! feat. Pankita - Improvisation

Ongoing Fire Action

Or is it Fire Alert? I'm not quite sure. But the exciting band I'm in are starting to do some things that sound quite good. Perhaps. I think. It's hard to tell when you're so close to it all. But at the very least I think we're getting near something that exceeds the phenomenal debut song we "released" a few months ago. Yeah, it's all very exciting, so this is a space you should watch.

Whoever this is has bad technique

In the meantime, here's a sweet, pretty work in progress I'm being naïve enough to believe might keep someone's interest in the meantime.

The Golden Age of Video

by Ricardo Autobahn

This is what the Internet's best at: beautiful, ridiculous, novelty nonsense.

Tom Farrer & the Pharaohs @ the Half Moon

16th November 2009

Never betray your reader. That's the first rule of criticism. Don't let your friendships, fancies or politicking get in the way of truth-telling, because integrity is mighty hard to earn and all too easy to squander.

These thoughts weighed heavily on my mind as I headed to Tom Farrer & the Pharaoh's EP Launch Party last night. I'm friendly, though hardly friends, with everyone in the band, and although determined to come away able to write some sensible words about the evening, I knew my objectivity was always going to be in doubt.

So screw objectivity: it's a naïve and futile thing to aim for anyway. Those professional reviewers of “important” gigs at big venues don't begin their articles with a disclaimer that explains that they got in free, had all their drinks bought for them by a sexy girl working in PR, and that they were lucky enough to be invited back-stage to a showbiz, coke-fuelled after-party at the end of it all. Perhaps they should but they clearly don't. I guess their readers are supposed to figure these things out for themselves.

Let the record show I paid my £2.50

Art Brut - DC Comics & Chocolate Milkshakes

And to think I ever doubted they'd make a second album. Brilliant stuff.

Fire Alert debut, err, "thing"

We got the name Fire Alert from some fire evacuation instructions we stole from a bar, on the night my brother, James McInerney and I decided we should have a go playing some music together. The wise principles contained within ("DO NOT TAKE PERSONAL RISKS OR PUT LIVES IN DANGER!") formed the basis of the first song we wrote. It's not a very good name for a band, but I'd rather have a crap name with some significance to it than spend months trying to think of something that's sufficiently "cool" but which is totally meaningless.

(While we're on the subject of bands with hip names, I'm pleased to see Internet Forever getting recognition from the likes of the Observer and VICE. They deserve it, and I've been slightly obsessed with the twee but undoubtedly great 'Break Bones' for a while now.)

Anyway, we got drunk, made up songs til the small hours of the morning, and pissed off the people living in the flat below. Thanks to the wonders of the iPhone, we were able to record it, and sure enough, most of it was a mess. Yet among the fluffed notes, dodgy lyrics and hesitant improvisations, there were a few minutes that stood out as sounding surprisingly 'finished'. (Or at least, slightly more than half-finished.)

A week later we took some video, and what you see below is what happened when the two were put together. I'm playing the bass notes.

"You ain't heard it played like that before" #3

Y'see, it's not even about posting something GOOD anymore. Well, maybe Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 provide an "interesting interpretation". Maybe... maybe... maybe... a rethink is in order.



At least you can't go wrong with the original. And how about those dancing girls? Why don't people dance like that anymore?

Jukebox Collective @ Bar Rhumba

29th May 2009

Feeling utterly wrecked and with about two minutes to spare, I turned up at Bar Rhumba last Friday to see Jukebox Collective's first ever gig. In the interest of full disclosure, I should declare here and now that I used to play guitar for the lead singer's previous band, Dakar Rally. The vindictive, schadenfraude-seeking side of me wouldn't have minded seeing them bore the crowd to tears and make under-prepared fools of themselves, but thankfully they were great, and I can't recall ever seeing a band do a better first gig.

At first glance, doesn't the ammo-strap look like a guitar neck and the gun a microphone?

That's not to say I won't nitpick. While Kev's vocals were much improved from some of the more dismal and lacklustre nights when we shared a stage together, he tailed off after a strong start in a way I recognised too well. I hope and expect that he'll improve as he gets used to playing regularly again and gets more comfortable with the set.

The band? They were well-rehearsed and looked good, although Zara's ice cool "I'm going to look bored and not give a fuck" approach to the keyboards definitely beat Greg's "They love me! They really love me!" style of guitar and magic-box-sampler playing. When the image-consultants come in, they'd do well to have a word and suggest he leave it for Kev to do the hard work of looking excited.

I'm really chuffed for them though, and hope they can build up some momentum over the coming months. The tunes are beepy, slightly hypnotic and catchy little numbers, and the second half of the set hinted at more interesting and varied things to come.

Anyway, below is a little sample of their first single, which although sadly not ready for the launch night, I'm told will be available on iTunes any day now. You can have a listen to the full version over on the irrepressible Myspace.

Peter Doherty @ Proud

22nd April 2009

Penned into the stables at the Proud Gallery in Camden, boys in skinny jeans were asking girls in polka dot dresses, “why can’t we go in the main room?”

Pete Doherty was there.


For hours we waited. While making-do with Proud’s adequate but unadventurous playlist, the patience of the pretty poser girls and the anaemic indie kids was thoroughly tested. They stood about outside, restlessly chaining their umpteenth cigarette of the evening, until finally word got around: the doors had opened.

We poured through. There were some guys in skinny jeans on stage, but no-one recognised them. “Are they his backing band?” asked a too-tall man standing too-far forward.

No. They were ‘Vaults’, one of those bands who tediously refuse to put the definite article before their name even though it’s crying out for it.

Maybe ‘Vaults’ were excellent. Maybe they weren’t mediocre hitless me-too’ers. Maybe they sounded adequate and unadventurous because we hungered only for most the evocative lyrics of our generation.

Whatever. Vaults weren’t Pete Doherty.

So we trooped back outside. We smoked our umpteenth-plus-one cigarette. Some were heard cursing that they might miss their last train.

But when finally cigarettes, Vaults, and frantic phone calls to Transport For London were over, it almost took you by surprise. It began with screams, then came “PETE!” swaggering onto the stage, and before you could elbow past too-tall man standing too-far forward, a belting (but perhaps most importantly, unironic) performance of ‘What a Waster’ was over.

Doherty was on fine, crowd-pleasing form, smashing through his greatest hits while treating us to a total of six Libertines tunes. The pace was almost business-like, and he barely uttered a word between songs, save for one moment early on when he started to complain about the quality of the lighting.

“It’s so dark out there I can barely see you! Err, can anyone see a Graham Coxon in the house?”

And to the delight of all, up strolled a sheepish-looking Graham Coxon to the stage. He looked nervous, maybe from being so unusually close to the hungry mob, or maybe because of Doherty’s liberal attitude to tempo. Songs would race forward at twice their usual speed before he’d suddenly slam on the brakes and do the final chorus at a canter. Regardless, the two shared a cockle-warming chemistry, even (or especially) when things around the edges got a little rough.

Yet after a couple of songs Coxon was gone and Doherty was alone, although still amply filling the stage all by himself. And “alone” must surely be a poor word to describe a man with four hundred people screaming his songs back at him. In these intimate surroundings, with Pete at his effortlessly entertaining best, there can’t have been a soul in the room who felt alone.

That said, the soul-less were there too, watching the whole set through the viewfinder of their cheap camera-phone, fantasising no doubt about the number of hits their grainy pictures might get on Youtube. Too-tall man standing too-far forward was one of them, leaning over the row ahead of him with arms fully out-stretched, grinning smugly at the good-looking but awful-sounding footage he was recording. Where did this cult of joyless camera-phone people come from? Are they perhaps descended from the losers that read all their album sleeves nine times over in order to learn lyrics?

Was it really worth it?

Whatever. Someone please take them away and do something horrible to them.

Yet in spite of nuisance support acts, and nuisance camera phones, Doherty was great. When stripped down to just the man and his guitar, his brilliance as a song writer is indisputable. He enraptured the crowd, as they sang along loudly to the songs they knew, and listened respectfully to those they didn’t. He remains a living legend, and everyone needs to hear the web of sound he spins when he picks up a guitar.