The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'trip-hop'
2008/2/6
A survey of music sales from HMV outlets has revealed variations in mainstream musical tastes across the UK.
According to this survey, music tempo increases the further north one gets, with the west country (birthplace of trip-hop) still chilling to downbeat ambience, while Scotland gets down to 190bpm happy hardcore, which The Times reports as "a musical experience more akin to being trapped inside a tumble-dryer with a power drill". Meanwhile, Northern Ireland is big on country music, Birmingham has kept its historical associations with heavy metal, the mainstream in London and the south-east is R&B (I wonder whether this includes grime and dubstep), Manchester is a stronghold of "indie" (by which presumably means of the NME/Carling/Xfm variety, given that this is a HMV sales survey), in Yorkshire they're into "goth", and in Leeds they don't like trendy NME bands.
2003/3/23
This just in: Robert "3D" Del Naja is not a paedophile. (Though the timing of the charges he was cleared of is suspicious; I wonder whether it was in fact all planned to put the frighteners on celebrity anti-war campaigners.)
2003/2/28
Massive Attack frontman Robert "3D" Del Naja arrested for child pornography, as part of the same sting which netted Pete Townshend. Del Naja denied having downloaded child pornography; interestingly enough, the Graun article pointed out his involvement with the antiwar movement, as if to suggest that the arrest may be politically motivated.
2003/2/7
A somewhat iffy review of the new Massive Attack album in the Graun. To be honest, I'd agree with much of it; a lot of the songs go on for too long and yet somehow seem somewhat flat, at least compared to Mezzanine. Though it's not all that bad an effort.
Indeed, on the only occasion when 100th Window props itself up and makes a point, you wish it had stayed supine. A Prayer for England concerns child abduction and murder - an issue virtually ignored by the media in recent years and thus in desperate need of the boost in profile that only a protest song on a chill-out album can deliver. It's certainly difficult to argue with the thesis - infanticide is a bad thing - but a point this facile hardly warrants O'Connor's finger-wagging fire-and-brimstone routine. By the second verse, she is addressing God as "Jah", an affectation that recalls a wackily hatted student reaching for his bong. At this point, one's thoughts do turn to murder, but not quite in the way the song intends.
(Is 100th Window the 18 to Mezzanine's Play? Discuss.)