Indietronic outfit Blackhackr agreed to an interview. Of sorts. Here it is. All out of sorts.
1. What is Blackhackr?
Like most modern music, Blackhackr is best described in terms of a recipe.
Take three to four living humans. It’s important they start off alive for this recipe. Discard any deceased humans you may have picked up inadvertently when foraging. Dead humans are no good. They taste bitter and will spoil the whole dish.
Simmer the humans with the rhythm mechanics of world music and the darkest honesty of blues and folk until intensely grainy. When ready, they should resemble an Oxo cube made of charred flesh and granite.
It is essential at this point to offset the acridity of Blackhackr with a powerfully gentle aromatic herb. Grate the seeds of the Mescal Bean Tree into the mix at this point.
Crumble the residual grimey mixture into the reanimated, ever-living corpse of rock ‘n’ roll. Watch the corpse’s eyes. The corpse will understand. But! Don’t make eye contact!
Find a number of power sockets for the humans, which are hopefully still living, despite their traumatic ordeal. Note that Blackhackr usually need about 7 power sockets to make all the equipment work.
Stand back. Stand well back.
Listen. With ears.
2. Why is there a Blackhackr? What makes Blackhackr essential?
Moving away from the recipe metaphor, Blackhackr make music that is an unholy juxtaposition of electronic sounds.
Blachcrackr range all the way from decades-old uncleared samples, massive ‘90s electro-synth, surf rock guitar whilst somehow squeezing in something resembling a new wave rhythm section.
In laymen’s terms, Blackhackr are an expansive-sounding electro-rock (indietronic) band.
Simpler still, one could compare Blackhackr to various bands from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, even the noughties. Blackhackr definines the ‘10s:
Post-rock histrionic guitar work? Yeah!
Zooming, booming post-punk distorted bass melodies? You bet!
Brave-but-beautiful world music drum loops, deep boom kicks and live percussion? Come on!
Edgily pop friendly yet somewhat progressive. Rather considered. They like to read. Blackhackr feel like they know what they’re doing. Of course, in the music business, knowing what you’re doing is technically impossible so none of us believe blackhackr.
3. Why do I keep seeing the word Blackhackr? Is it a typo? Did they drop the ‘e’ on purpose?
Sometimes dropping an ‘e’ is essential to appreciate the wider picture of reality. Or obscure it.
4. Are Blackhackr going to be huge?
What, like fill stadiums?
The Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury?
It’s already written in the stars.
5. What else are Blackhackr working on?
Fortunately, due to their independence and the trust placed in them by Futureproof Records, they have a few other projects in the offing:
The ohcheers.com blog is soon to enter its 158th year of operation. It has not done too badly, but we want more. Our page views continue to grow. 5000 at last count. Pity the pigeons.
It’s not been entirely clear, however, what ohcheers.com is about, what its writers are trying to say (or what they want), and what it all means, other than espousing and emphasising the meaninglessness of it all. Such is the wilful impact of telling you what not to think, or to paraphrase Orwell: you need to use doublethink to understand doublethink.
Here, therefore, are 5 THINGS which the Main Protagonist seeks to achieve throughout 2013. He lists sub-THINGS hereunder. This is Cosmic Ordering, so the Cosmos had better provide, or else the Cosmos gets it*.
1. Writing
(i) pretentious and self-conscious poetical lyrics (haikus have been popular – I’m available for $$$)
(ii) development of PR and journalistic technique (I’m available for $$$ or else persuade me to contribute charitably)
(iii) inane whimsy on ohcheers.com, which serves as our media outlet for our profound ideas, such as:
interviewing interesting people, like what we did what with Lizzie Roper, the face of Aunt Bessie Roast Potatoes. Jim Campbell never got back to us on whether he’d like an interview. We’re not pushy, so won’t ask again, but he’s free to get in touch when he’s ready for the exposure.
radical image juxtapositions and ‘free art’
stuff published in Viz for $$$
stuff published in Viz
stuff published
2. Sonic Astronic / Blackhacker
(i) EP & album – hopefully released and distributed by a certain proposed agency
(ii) gigs & interviews to support released material, build the Blackhacker brand and make a name for ourselves as a band
(iii) some really cool live sessions, like BBC 6 Music, and certain suggested cunningly cultural venues [cannot disclose at time of writing]
3. Bass Guitar
(i) daily practice: at least 30 minutes, aiming for 2 hours
(ii) weekly recording session: use a day a week to record improvisation from a practice session
(iii) gigs & interviews to build name as bassist, in accordance with point #2 above
4. Audio Software
(i) develop the hundreds of Apple Logic projects started which are incomplete
(ii) apply vocal lines to the projects, in accordance with point #1 above
(iii) apply bass lines to the projects, in accordance with point #3 above
(iv) complete the better tracks and release them somewhere, e.g. Soundcloud for starters, but ideally with the help of a third party music business participant
5. Stands Ups
(i) noting that a couple of experimental efforts have occurred…
(ii) dinner parties are the best source of material
(iii) have more dinner parties
(iv) use dinner parties to source material
(v) use material at open mic nights to test out material and get experience
(vi) have DNA sample taken against will, subsequent to arrest by police for pushing act too far
(vii) struggle to remain friends with dinner party guests
VI. Income
(i) [NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT APPLIES]
(ii) DJ on BBC 6 Music
(iii) write for $$$
Good luck to ohcheers.com and its participants in 2013!
*serious point: what happens if you put it to the Cosmos that you want the Cosmos to go away? If consciousness is required to facilitate wave function collapse and thus enact the construction of reality, then all we need to do is to block off the senses of all conscious creatures to annihilate the universe.
20 long, bitter years Edna has waited to be able to see a magic eye picture mystically swirl into a 3D extravagance.
I recall being a young child and being taunted by my father on a family holiday in Devon.
“Can’t you see the Romulans? It’s amazing! What wrong with you freak? You’re no child of mine.”
Many years passed. Edna grew up… The bitter memories passed and jumbled with other bitterness.
Child
Enda now has a child of her own.
Edna had forgotten the trauma, until this weekend arrived, when the same god forsaken Star Trek magic eye picture was presented.
Seconds
Incredibly, within seconds the purple blogs did NOT swirl into anything special.
But Edna DID see the magic eye Romulans (20 years wait over)!
And what a sodding let down, why did Edna bother? What was Enda bitter for so long for?
Waiting
20 years of waiting, amounted to something that would probably have impressed Edna less 20 years previous. What would have been worse? Knowing how shit it was 20 years ago? Or waiting and not knowing?
Frustratingly, her own daughter had no issues seeing it immediately, she was also unimpressed.
Warping
Edna will have to find another way to warp her daughter for 20 years.
Where have the Guillemots been recently? The British avant-garde beat combo absconded from the UK scene to write and record a new album in a mere fortnight. In Norway.
Completely unannounced till just a couple of days ago, Hello Land! has been made available for instantaneous free streaming via the marvel that is Soundcloud. And here it is…
Oh, and did you know that this is planned to be the first of four LPs in 2012? They’re going to be loosely based around the seasons.
No pressure then. I mean, hey, the Beatles chucked out 2 albums a year at peak.
Away from the limiting and highly-structured commercial music industry of the big labels, it seems to me they’ve rediscovered their experimental roots. Initial impressions of Hello Land! are of a luscious but not unsophisticated lightness.
It is a departure from the hit-single focused efforts that has perhaps held Guillemots back in recent years (in this writer’s humble opinion). They’re not trying too hard to be something they’re plainly not. Not until they’re ready to take over the world.
(What a horribly cynical reason to make music. But baby needs shoes, right?)
Looking back on Guillemots’ output, following an erupting romantic rush of excitement felt within debut Through The Windowpane, its successors Red and Walk The River were somewhat staid affairs overall and never quite met up to the delirious bombast of their first release.
Fyfe Dangerfield has explained the rationale behind the departure from the traditional music biz mould as follows:
I was just a bit lost in the music industry, you can get very lost in the music business. It’s not like I hate the music industry. I think it’s just you can get very immersed in it without even realising and there are so many patterns and waves that you expect to do things. I think we were just used to playing the line without realising. The one thing we were really getting frustrated by was this album cycle.
You generally spend a few months at a time making a record and then you kind of sit on them for a time. It’s very hard to be creative, I think we started realising we don’t need to do this. We thought why not put out loads of music and do it ourselves!
You can support the band by giving them your money and buying their CD or MP3/WAV downloads by clicking this link:
What’s that you say? A fiver for a whole album? I remember when non-chart CDs were £16.99 in the Rock ‘n’ Pop section of HMV back in the mid 1990s, when I were a teenager.
Oh, just whilst I remember, Guillemots are also headlining our pals’ festival 2000 Trees this year.
I’m the kind of moaning little cunt who despises other people’s happiness. When I’m not trying to earn more money than my friends I take the high ground at every opportunity.
I consider myself and my values better than those around me. I feel guilty about the ice caps and the rainforests and the ozone.
You’ll hear me say: “I’m the way I am because I’ve never had to go to war.”
When the war that is going to end this financial mess kicks off, you’ll find me under my bed. Drunk. Shitting it.
Mystery Jets / Count & Sinden – After Dark
The reliably hyper-melodic Mystery Jets play through a set of perversely powerful euphoric hooks, whilst filtered through Count & Sinden‘s production, beats and mixing, defines the potential for what a new era of true indie disco could sound like. Utterly unparalleled right now, I want more of this material and if I don’t get it, I’ll have to make it myself. Wonderful Strictly Come Prancing dance competition video. A lot of fun.
Young Knives – The Decision
Taking matters into your own hands takes an absurd and intense turn in this track. Daft but at the same time intensely serious:
“I’m the Prince of Wales / And if all else fails / I am the Prince of Wales / That decision was mine”
…is still perhaps the best vocal hook I’ve ever heard as we hear the views of someone descending steadily into psychosis, perhaps as a result of a nervous breakdown induced by middle management in an office environment. And how on Earth would I know anything about that? Such power in the face of powerlessness. Talk about defining your own reality.
LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk Is Playing My House
An indie punk rock band playing dance music about a dance band playing at their house. Which also SOUNDS as if it’s a live band playing Daft Punk. It’s a brilliantly self-aware crossover of genres. It’s postmodern and ironic but it’s still a cracking tune irrespective of ignorant critical slurs like those. Like me. Like those. Like me. Like those.
Bombay Bicycle Club – Shuffle
As a bassist I love the understated but precise lock of the groove. It’s a demonstration of rather mature songwriting with all manner of subtleties throughout the track. And lyrically it’s a celebration of loving music. Not just listening to music passively but actively engaging within it, acknowledging the temporal limitation of a song (i.e. music captures and replicates a mood but for only as long as it plays) coupled with the very human reality of any artist’s self-doubt in the face of the drive to create and engage.
Justice Vs Simian – We Are Your Friends
This cross-pollination of Simian and Justice – respectively an established indie band and a relatively-new French dance act – propelled not only these two artists to a whole new paradigm of success, but also culminated in the evolution of Simian into Simian Mobile Disco. Everyone’s a winner, especially the listener.
Anyone who actually reads the irrelevant dross published on this website might be aware that a character who only semi-pretentiously named himself as The Main Protagonist – well, aren’t we all the main protagonist in the story of our own lives? – has a chance of being conscious of his, or, er, my love for radio, music and in particular the best radio station on the planet: BBC Radio 6 Music.
And 6 Music is ten years old. I only started listening to 6 in 2003, when my employer (coincidentally the BBC) happened to permit me to listen to it whilst working.
I had neither a DAB radio of my own, nor broadband internet. It was a different era. It was like the 1950s of the Internet compared to now. Social media hadn’t been invented. There was no Facebook or Twitter.
As a recent graduate of an arts-based degree I wasn’t hugely employable, so whilst I was working at the BBC, it was in the highly confidential and sensitive “Scanning Room”, document managing high profile employee paperwork and seeing all sorts of naughtiness.
My favourite memory perhaps being the opportunity to read about a disciplinary for one member of staff who’d been having an affair with another and doing all sorts of sneaky, saucy, kinky devilry whilst in the office/studio. Names are forgotten so the Data Protection Act is null and void in writing this. I think. I hope.
I’d always adored music and had been rather fond of radio for years. I loved John Peel’s shows. I never knew I’d get the chance to hear an entire radio station inspired by his ethos of openness, going mostly against the grain of commerciality.
Vic McGlynn‘s afternoon show was a revelation. Hearing Daft Punk Is Playing In My House for the first time was a glimpse into genius. An indie punk rock band playing dance music about a dance band playing at their house. Which also SOUNDS as if it’s a live band playing Daft Punk.
Unfortunately a lot of our time working in our jobs at the BBC was spent “on standby” as opposed to doing actual “stuff”, so we were told to listen to the radio and watch telly and generally chat to kill time. We weren’t allowed out of the Scanning Room. We were guards of the dark information, in a dark place. No windows. Literally no windows.
As for us BBC scanners – myself, Vanessa and Bonnie (later of Electricity In Our Homes infamy) – we became fast friends before the management realised how much money they could save by selling off the entire HR dept to a third party, albeit a third party which would run it really quite terribly (Capita, aka BBC HR Direct), and thus give the management lovely big bonuses to buy big houses in Holland Park and Notting Hill.
6 Music is very much a part of this writer’s present, and remains one aspect of the BBC he adores. And so he felt compelled to respond to this challenge:
As part of 6 Music’s Birthday celebrations we want to hear 6 Of The Best from you.
Just select six songs that most represent 6 Music to you by filling out the form below.
You’ll be able to hear a different listeners’ selection each week on the Liz Kershaw show on Saturdays, 13:00-16:00. We’ll also be compiling a chart of all the entries that are sent in.
I’ve replied. I bit on the bait. Here’s my first of the 6:
Guillemots – Made Up Love Song #43
The wife and I played this at our wedding for the first dance. Our Auntie Pam in a broad Manchester accent is on video yelling, “WHAT THE BLOOMIN’ HECK IS THIS?” in response to the wonky Hammond intro to which my newlywed wife and I did a close dance. We pulled some delightful dancey twirls out of the bag in the song’s climactic second part, much to the surprised cheers of onlookers who hitherto had only ever seen me raving sketchily in muddy fields.
If you’re available in London this Saturday, 28th January, 2012, the Main Protagonist has a cheeky little recommendation if you fancy a GIG:
Sonic Astronic meld electronic soundscapes and live humans.
It’s been suggested they sound like Four Tet – albeit with Mick Jagger on vocals, Hooky on bass, and with a world music percussion section.
Sonic Astronic bathe their audience in audio: shimmering guitars; delicate but intense hypnotic rhythms; a fusion of electronica, earthy beats, tremendous crescendos and tender moments.
