The Null Device

Christian Saville interview

An interesting interview with Christian Saville, former guitarist from Slowdive (and, mercifully, not involved in any sort of alt-country/early-70s-AM-radio-easy-listening act), talking about the rise and fall of Slowdive, the crap state of popular music today, those unreleased Slowdive demos floating around, and his new band, Monster Movie (which is probably more interesting than Mojave 3 anyway). (via the Avalyn list)

The funniest thing I saw recently was on Travis' website, the very first screen you see has photos of their Brit Awards on. That sums the "big" UK bands up. It is revolting. The music is way down the list of priorities for these guys. I don't have a problem with bands getting famous, but some of the bands from Britain right now seem content to be as ordinary, unadventurous, and inoffensive as possible. As for the mercury prize, I don't understand it - it seems like its only function is for Record Company execs to try to seem like they are trendy and for irratating bands to mouth off about how innovative they are for bothering to do an album once every 2 or 3 years. Any award that can list previous winners as M People is totally worthless. I don't want to sound like a moaning bastard, there is plenty going on that I really like. The internet is great for hearing bands. I guess the thing is you have to look a little harder for the interesting things than you did perhaps 10 years ago. I really love 'Yo La Tengo', and 'Stereolab' and they are still around.

Yes. Too bad those RIAA fuckers have been determinedly shutting down all possible sources of interesting music on the Internet (from AudioGalaxy to web radio), one by one.

And here is the Twee Kitten blurb on the Monster Movie EP, and one of their album. I can see it in my next order from some independent disc emporium or other.

There are 4 comments on "Christian Saville interview":

Posted by: cos http://polydistortion.net/monkey/ Tue Jun 25 23:13:52 2002

re: Mojave 3

"you'll understand when you're older, dear."

at least, I hope so. Maybe one of these days I'll sit you down and make you listen to _Wichita Lineman_ (not necessarily the Glen Campbell version, though) until you like it ;)

Posted by: Jimbob http://the-fix.org Wed Jun 26 01:26:05 2002

Anything's gotta be better than William Reid's (Jesus and Mary Chain) post- offering, "LazyCame". Never have I paid so much for a UK import to listen to it once then hide it at the back of my CD collection forever.

Posted by: MJ http:// Wed Jun 26 15:21:21 2002

Well, Mojave 3 didn't (doesn't) quite do it for me either, but Neil Halstead's new(ish) solo album is my favorite of the year.

(Disclaimer: I grew up listening to bluegrass, classic country and 70's AM radio - Shoegazers didn't show up until much later)

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Wed Jun 26 15:44:23 2002

I picked it up as well. It's a bit bland. The thing that grabbed me about Slowdive was the lushness and intricacy; something that has been entirely lacking from their post-Slowdive output.

Though in a recent interview, Rachel said that had Creation not dumped them, the first M3 album would have been the fourth Slowdive album (at the time of Pygmalion, Slowdive was basically a duo with the others doing session work). I may have to check it out in that case.