Author: BEB

News

Can the world be as sad as it seems?

Shocked and gutted to hear that Mark Fisher, aka k-punk, has died. I was privileged enough to work with Mark on a few brief occasions, and some of you may recall he supplied the sleevenotes for our Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980 soundtrack release (reproduced below in tribute). His ideas and insights, communicated with style, zeal and a courageous honesty across books, journalism and of course blogging, were a constant source of inspiration. It’s impossible to overstate his influence on us or the surrounding culture. Rest in peace, Mark.

LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF DAVID PEACE

Appropriately, Channel 4’s production of David Peace’s Red Riding novels felt like something out of time – a throwback to the early days of the broadcaster’s history.

Red Riding was an anomaly amongst the new Channel 4’s property shows, cheap controversy-mongering and reality TV. Since there were only enough funds available to adapt three of the four novels – 1977 was the one which didn’t make it onto the screen – 1980 became the centrepiece of a trilogy. Here we had a vision of what British television could (still) be like. Director James Marsh and screenwriter Tony Grisoni constructed a film that was expressionistic, fractured, mythic. Marsh drew the best of an excellent cast, led by Paddy Considine, perhaps the most gifted British actor of his generation. Somehow, Marsh and Grisoni broke free, not only from the conventions of current British television, but also from the mediocrity that reigns in recent British cinema (a mediocrity which, sadly, was demonstrated all too acutely in Tom Hooper and Peter Morgan’s dreadful adaptation of Peace’s The Damned Utd).

Four years on from the Red Riding adaptations, and Peace’s work has come to seem even more prophetic than it did even in 2009. How is it that writing about the past could tell us something about the future? And yet, how many times, in the last few years, have we found ourselves saying it’s like something out of David Peace? In England, in the second decade of the 21st century, it’s as if some kind of spell is wearing off. The conjuring, the concealment, could only work for so long, and there is a growing feeling that the past is coming back, that what had been buried will no longer remain underground. All the occult deals, the secret meetings, all the silencing and the disappearances, all of them gradually coming to light. Everything that was necessary to build the reality system we have lived in for the last thirty years is now being exposed. The same unholy triangle – police, politicians, journalists – keeps returning, scandal after scandal: Hillsborough, hackgate, Savile. Dark networks of complicity, everyone compromised (and therefore compliant). It all connects…Pull on one thread and it all starts to unravel…

It’s like Peace woke up before the rest of us, laying out, in the novels he wrote between 1999-2002 a vision of British society that would be vindicated by the revelations of the last few years. The central character in the Red Riding novels has also had a returning role in some of this decade’s scandals: Yorkshire, which in Peace’s hands becomes the dark secret heart of England, a rival source of power to London, a cursed territory. The tendrils that connected Hillsborough to Savile pass through (or under) Yorkshire. Flash to a now notorious photograph of Jimmy Saville with Peter Sutcliffe and Frank Bruno…A light entertainer, a serial killer, a boxer…Like something out of David Peace…Then there’s the revelation that police investigating the Yorkshire Ripper murders considered Savile a suspect for a while…and one of the Ripper’s victims was found only yards from Savile’s flat…

By 1980, Peace’s fictional(ised) world was increasingly incorporating actual events, as the Red Riding story arc started to centre on to the bungled police investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper. With 1977, Peace had begun to move out of James Ellroy’s shadow. 1974 felt like a fairly simple translation exercise, in which Ellroy’s infernal vision of LA corruption was transposed to Yorkshire. Already, though, it was clear that the two writers had a very different orientation to what they were depicting. Ellroy is a pugnacious pessimist, rubbing our noses in the excrement of the world and calling us sentimentalists for expecting any more. There is no such acceptance of corruption in Peace’s work, which howls with an unexpiated sense of outrage at injustice and corruption. Peace’s is a Gnostic vision: even if the material world is dark and heavy with a corruption that is constitutive and indelible, even if there is no possibility of escape or redemption, on no account should we accept it.

Some of the moments in the Red Riding novels that most felt like melodramatic excesses – children kept prisoner in bizarre underground lairs, for instance – turned out to also to be prophetic. It seems that melodramatic ‘excess’ is built into the Real. Realism screens out this excess by reflecting the world according to common sense, and in this way abets power (this can’t be happening). Actual conspiracies are easily waved away by being dismissed as conspiracy theories. Yet, after hackgate, after Hillsborough, after Savile, it’s clear that conspiracy theories have a much better grasp on how things operate than level-headed Anglo-Saxon common sense.

Drawn into the murk of institutional cover-up, Peter Hunter in 1980 has no hope of exposing the conspiracy. (The conspiracy can only be revealed many years later, when the key players are retired or dead.) Hunter is led down blind alleys; he faces lack of co-operation, outright obstruction and deadly betrayal. Most ominously, he sees, necessarily too late, the way in which corrupt power responds when it is threatened. Cops, hacks and politicians all have the goods on each other. Ruling class consciousness: it is either watch each other’s back or be stabbed in the back. There’s no need to fear do-gooders like Peter Hunter. No one is pure; there is always something – a photograph, an indiscretion, a remark – that you would rather keep under wraps. They have something on everyone, and, when the time is right, they will let you see what they’ve got on you.

– Mark Fisher, July 2013

Things

Things and things

Happy new year.

What follows is a round-up of recent news from Blackest Ever Black’s leaky floating headquarters. Apologies for the erratic updates in the last few months: the second half of 2016 was a chaotic one for us due to various personal goings-on and our move from Berlin back to the UK. As our mailorder customers may have noticed, our stock is still stuck in Berlin, and so orders will continue to ship from there until January 31st. From February onwards, all orders ship from the UK, with postage costs updated accordingly (sorry).

Before we get onto 2017’s releases, allow us to draw your attention to People Skills‘ Gunshots At Crestridge, which, by virtue of being released in mid-December, may have escaped it up till now. In the new video for ‘Mint Julep’, Jesse Dewlow’s cracked, highly personal music becomes something like an exasperated state-of-the-nation (what a state, eh) address. This album is available in an LP edition of 500 copies, and digitally, and it comes with our highest possible recommendation.

Stupid as a painter thick as sculptor: Blackest Ever Black “Singles” 2016 is a cassette+digital compilation bringing together key tracks from Tomorrow The Rain Will Fall Upwards, Carla dal Forno, Secret Boyfriend, Ashtray Navigations, People Skills, Dalhous, Raime and Pessimist, and with an exclusive newie from Tarquin Manek & Ying-Li Hooi. Strictly limited edition of 100, with £1 from every purchase donated to the homeless and housing charity Shelter. At the time of writing there are 14 copies left in stock.

This year you can look forward to 2×12″s or LPs from, among others, Pessimist, F ingers, Jabu, Silvia Kastel, Tarquin Manek, Dalhous, Amateur Childbirth and тпсб. New singles/EPs from Raime, Regis, Carla dal Forno, Black Rain, Berrocal/Fenech/Epplay. Much else in the oven besides, including two long-gestating archival projects.

Before any of that, Themes, a 12″ mini-LP from Naaahhh (cover art pictured above). “Five tracks of darkside slither from somewhere under London. Sidereal downers for all hardcore ravers. The dread energy of grime and bleep techno distilled into pungent electro-acoustic ooze. Paranoid street music meets the cosmic disturbances of musique concrète, the MDMA spine-freeze of isolationism and England’s hidden reverse. Staccato string stabs, murmured voices, black holes of reverb and pulverising, body-numbing bass. Drums optional. Unwanted side-effects include nosebleeds, earaches, stomach cramps, and nausea. Just say naaahhh.”

BEB, Raime, Tropic of Cancer and Carla dal Forno radio shows

You can hear music from many of the above in Blackest Ever Black’s first NTS radio show of 2017, available to stream/DL here.

Speaking of radio, Raime guested on Radar last week. All the way back in November – but in case you missed it – Camella Lobo of Tropic of Cancer presented the first episode of her Cry Later request show for NTS, with tunes from, among others, Lifetones, Keith Hudson, Joe Crow and The Four Tops. Carla dal Forno‘s monthly show for Berlin Community Radio is also something you should keep tabs on.

Blackest Ever Black meets The Death Of Rave

Our first gig of the year is a joint label showcase with The Death of Rave, taking place at The White Hotel, Manchester, on Saturday 4th February. Serious all-nighter with live sets from Raime (full band show), Ashtray Navigations, Sam Kidel (who has appeared on BEB as part of Killing Sound, and released the celebrated Disruptive Muzak on TDOR last year – he’ll be installing and performing the latter work for this event) and, making his debut, Croww; DJ sets come from Pessimist, TDOR boss Conor Thomas, and yours truly b2b Jon K. Tickets here.

Tropic of Cancer on tour

Tropic of Cancer have announced some live dates for Europe: Rennes (La Route du Rock Festival, 22/2), Barcelona (Delicalisten, 24/2), Antwerp (Het Boss, 26/2), Edinburgh (Summerhall, 1/3), Graz (Elevate Festival, 3/3), Copenhagen (Frost Festival, 23/2), Hamburg (Kampnagel, 25/2), London (St John at Bethnal Green, 28/2), Berlin (Berghain, 2/3) and Frankfurt (4/3). Visit TOC’s Facebook page for more information and ticket links.

Carla dal Forno on tour

Carla dal Forno too is playing a handful of European dates and then touring the UK throughout February, before returning for the Safe As Milk festival. Current list of shows is as follows, with more to be added:

Jan 13th – Cologne, Gewölbe
Jan 25th – Rome, Blackmarket Monti
Jan 26th – Milan, Standards
Jan 27th – Udine, Visionario
Jan 28th – Bologna, Covo Club
Feb 2nd – Brighton, Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
Feb 3rd – Bristol, TBA
Feb 4th – London, The Islington
Feb 5th – Nottingham, The Chameleon Arts Cafe
Feb 6th – Manchester, TBA
Feb 7th – Glasgow, The Hug and Pint
Feb 8th – Edinburgh, Paradise Palms
Feb 10th – Newcastle, TBA
Feb 12th – Sheffield, The Audacious Art Experiment
April 21st – Safe As Milk, Wales, Pontins Prestatyn Sands Holiday Park

To coincide with the tour, we’re releasing a cassette edition of You Know What It’s Like. This will primarily be available from CDF on her upcoming live dates; but we’ve allocated a handful of copies for online, available to pre-order now for February dispatch.

Raime live dates

In addition to their appearance at the BEB + The Death of Rave event at Manchester’s White Hotel on February 4, Raime currently have live shows scheduled for Barcelona (Caixa Forum, January 27th) and London (Convergence Festival at Village Underground, March 24th, with Actress, Randomer and more TBC).

OK that’s it, apart from everything we’ve forgotten. Will update you again soon.

Discographies

Polar exposure- Five or Six

Next year The Quietus is putting on a series of events celebrating the work and legacy of COUM Transmissions, as part of Hull City Of Culture 2017. The events – including “new works…using sound, imagery and the human voice” from Gen and Cosey – coincide with the first retrospective of COUM, on show at the new Humber Street Gallery from February 3rd to March 22nd.

“Closing proceedings at The Polar Bear on Spring Bank on Sunday 19 March will be a free showcase of Hull-inspired sets from some of the city’s underground exports; cultural innovators who grew up in the area and can just about still recall a youth spent loitering on Queen’s Gardens and mainlining toxic green Spiders cocktails.

“Heading up the bill will be Kiran Sande of Blackest Ever Black, an underground record label that has been bringing sonically dark mischief to our ears since 2010, and whose mix CD-Rs Id Mud and Dream Theory In Haltemprice have touched upon Hull in more than name alone. Also appearing will be Alex Wilson, who co-runs Public Information, a label that has released a fascinating survey of electronics from the last seven decades, and who will also be presenting a paper entitled: Thee Fabulous Mutations: Film and Video in Yorkshire after COUM in Hull as part of a separate Hull 2017 event. They’ll be joined by the Quietus’ Sophie Coletta, who, after spending many teenage years staring longingly down the mouth of the Humber, fled and returned to Hull’s clutches multiple times in the 2000s.”

Of all the places I thought I might find myself DJing next year, The Polar Bear was not one of them. My parents go to their weekly bridge class next door.

Events

Caroline K: Now Wait For Last Year

 

The last thing the world needs is another reissue of ’80s industrial/post-punk/minimal synth, eh? But those of you who are in any way familiar with Caroline K’s Now Wait For Last Year will understand why, when given permission to release a new vinyl edition of this outstanding 1985 album, we really couldn’t help ourselves. The work of the late Caroline Kaye Walters, co-founder of Nocturnal Emissions, it’s truly one of the most adventurous, emotive and accomplished full-lengths to come out of the UK underground in that period, and, thanks to Klanggalerie’s 2010 CD edition and no small amount of online file-sharing, it is firmly established as such (‘Animal Lattice’, you may recall, featured prominently on the inaugural Blackest mixtape, The Scold’s Bridle).

Nonetheless, Now Wait For Last Year has been unavailable on vinyl since its original ’85 pressing on Earthly Delights, which though not impossible to come by, is certainly rare, and certainly expensive. Given the explosion of interest in this sort of music over the past few years, and the sheer number of reissues flooding the market, we assumed it was only a matter of time before Now Wait For Last Year got the wax treatment…but five years passed, and nothing happened, so we decided to do something about it.

Now, in collaboration with Klanggalerie and with the blessing of Walters’ husband, Danny Ayers, we’re extremely pleased to announce a 2016 pressing of Now Wait For Last Year (BLACKEST050 / gg127-3), due out on April 29 and available to pre-order now.