Chill out music is kind of like the prawn cocktail of the music world; having once been extremely popular at dinner parties, back in the early 90s it was considered sophisticated and on trend, yet is now more often thought of as being dated, tacky and all in all a bit sad. I am not a fan of prawn cocktail. I am, however, a fan of ambient house or chill out as it is more widely known.

This fact was brought home to me last week at around 3am in the Body and Soul area at Electric Picnic. Standing beneath a tree in the pouring rain, I was entranced by the Orb’s closing performance at the festival. Playing a mix of Dub and Deep House with a live MC the boys’ performance was without contest the highlight of my weekend. Hell, I even went out this week and purchased not one but two of their albums. In CD form! *GASP*

For me their music is not generic nor boring but rather makes a welcome change from the samey Baltimore drum loops and screechy electro synths that seem to appear on every second dance release these days. For those of you who are yet unacquainted, I’d highly recommend checking them out. For starters, here’s a snippet of one of their live performances…

Ireland’s other new national music magazine has announced it is to take a months break from active production, relaunching as a freesheet. Before I get to an analysis of the change, I’d like to point out a little something from States’s press release (reprinted in full below), which sticks in my craw.

The phrase is “It is set to become the first Quality National Music Monthly available completely free of charge!”. Lets parse that shall we, ‘first’ means original or only, ‘quality’ as in indicative of worth or high value, ‘national’ as in nationwide, ‘music’ as in covering or concerned with music and ‘monthly’, as in printed on a monthly basis. Four out of these five words combine into a factual claim, easily falsifiable. The fifth, the adjective ‘quality’ changes the meaning of the sentence from a statement of fact to one of opinion. Clearly State is not the ‘first national music monthly available completely free of charge’ (however dubiously you choose to capitalise it), that’s an empirically verifiable fact. Connected was (to the best of our knowledge) the first free magazine, focused on music, available throughout the Republic of Ireland. Analogue’s recent relaunch as a nationwide magazine makes it the second. The addition of the term ‘quality’ has a clear implication, and that is that neither Analogue nor Connected are quality pieces of work. The comment area below this article would be the ideal venue for an apology.

On to State’s future as a new national music freesheet. This isn’t as much of a change to the Irish market as it at first appears. The country plays host to a wide variety of regional and national advertising supported publications, many of which include music coverage. Whether magazine readership is a zero sum game, or whether by contrast the Irish audience has room to grow, is a question open to debate. The fact is that State, which already included advertising, is merely entering more fully into an increasingly competitive market for advertising supported music and culture publications - titles including ‘GCN’, ‘AU’, and ‘Totally Dublin’; rather than representing a novel direct threat to Analogue, Connected - or any other magazine.

Personally I hope State succeeds, both in finding an audience for it’s new format, and in continuing to pay its writers. As a paying market for writing about music it provides both an avenue for the development of new journalistic careers, and for readers an alternative to other music publications on the market, from ‘Hotpress‘ to ‘The Ticket‘. As a website, playing host to some of the most interesting music writers in the country (and now, likely, as Analogue has always done, reproducing for free the content of it’s printed cousin) State.ie provides another essential destination for Irish music fans; and enhanced community features can only add to that. The magazine is not to my personal taste, but that’s what great about magazines - no matter what your preference there’s likely one to suit, whether it be in the form of a printed publication, a web based outfit, or a PDF mag. As a comment on the state (no pun intended) of the for pay magazine, the change is telling. Combined with the closure of left wing political outlet ‘The Village’ (a move some of that magazine’s writers found out about only through a report in the Irish times), State’s going free questions the viability of paid niche magazines in the contemporary Irish market place. It’s one gradual step in a wider cultural change - people are less willing than ever to pay for things they can get (legally or otherwise) for free.

PRESS RELEASE

State Magazine
Ireland’s Quality National Monthly Is Free!

After a month of rumours and speculation State Magazine is ready to announce its plans for the future. It is set to become the first Quality National Music Monthly available completely free of charge!

After only 6 issues the monthly magazine has already established its credentials as a vibrant and incisive publication with attention to detail, a design that is second to none and impeccable production values. In addition its sister website (www.state.ie) has proved itself constantly on top of its game with breaking news, interviews and reviews that keep it bang up to the moment and ahead of the pack.

With their publication now a recognised brand the minds behind State Magazine are determined to move things forwards, onwards and upwards.

Their first step will be the launch of a newly strengthened and emboldened website hosted at their usual address.

Meanwhile the published magazine will take a one-month break to restructure its production and distribution returning with a November issue at the beginning of October which will be distributed nationally and available free of charge!

“We have produced 6 issues the old fashioned way,” explains publisher Roger Woolman, “and we feel it’s time to make a change and communicate more directly with our current readers as well as making our journalism and photography available to an even wider audience.

“We will still be producing a magazine of the highest quality filled with impeccable journalism, exclusive photography and top-end design but we don’t want to restrict ourselves and our readers by relying on traditional methods of distribution and sales, so we’re going to try something new: a top quality music magazine for free!”

The magazine will initially be instantly available in Ireland’s main towns and cities but will also be available by post for no more than the real price of postage and packing to anyone who subscribes. And in an unprecedented move this subscription service will be available right around the world!

“The fact that our magazine is Irish doesn’t mean that only people living in Ireland want to read it,” Woolman commented. “Our readership will be as big and broad as we allow it to be and we want it to be worldwide!”

Note: This article (like all Analogue articles) represents only the opinions of its writer.

In his Official Blog, Patrick Wolf writes (albeit not very coherently) about his fourth-coming album:

i have to tell you, i have two albums coming out soon…. think, smashing pumpkins, kate bush, im going double, double, trouble, thats why im taking so long, one disk is heartbroken and in deep dispair, one is in deep dark joy dedicated to my new love, my old and forever love, william the conqueror, ok….. i better leave, my irish cousins are begging for a go on the intranet…. i just realised its been an age and a half since i communicated, the album has been in my blood for a year and much more…. the label think it will be a disaster, im sure, as it comes more from the bottom of my heart than even lycanthropy, about my fathers cancer, my solitude, my true love, my irish roots, everything that has touched me to the core in the last year…. ok, im rambling i must go…. i hAVE been told by my relative that i must go…………… oh shut me the fuck up……….

A double disc record, by the looks of it- one happy, one sad? Smashing Pumpkins and Kate Bush? This sounds a lot more like his earlier stuff than the more recent pop-tastic coloured-ribbon fest that was The Magic Position. Only time will tell, I suppose, but if there’s even one track on the new album that’s half as wonderful as this one, I’ll be a happy hack.

I spent the weekend on a boat in the countryside, listening to snippets of 2fm’s Electric Picnic coverage on a radio. From what I could gather, it sounded great. Very loud though. No word has filtered back through to Analogue Towers, but plenty of discussion is going on over here. Everyone seems to be saying the same thing:

1. Grace Jones was amazing.
2. Candi Staton was equally amazing.
3. The Sex Pistols should quit (or should have quit) while they were ahead.
4. Festival Toilets….

I can’t really throw any light on this, but I’m sure you lovely people can. Go on, how was your Picnic?

No Electric Picnic for me, so I’m planning on trolling updating the Anablog for the next few days, while the rest of the “team” queue for the toilets and drink overpriced beer at the event itself. Festivals are overrated anyway aren’t they.

If you’ve been living in a ditch, or are a “proper music” bore and believe that pop music is beneath you, then it may have escaped your attention that Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” has thus far spent three weeks at number one in the UK. I quite like the single I must say, but not everyone will agree. In recent weeks the song has been played constantly on daytime radio, on MTV Hits and The Box, in supermarkets, in clothes shops, in cars and bars - and nobody likes an overexposed pop song. What’s more, “I Kissed A Girl” has prompted accusations of homophobia. The song may be irritating, the video may play up to every Zoo magazine lesbo-fantasy in the book, but is it really homophobic? I think this is pushing things a bit.

The phrase “lipstick lesbianism” has become quite the popular alliterative put-down of choice over the past decade or so. I dislike the phrase, because of its snotty undertones, but I’m talking about girls who are to all outward appearances “straight” (as if outward appearances count for anything in the world of sexuality), publicly snogging other girls for whatever reason - expressed or otherwise. Perhaps it is fair to attack public girly snogs, if such displays merely exist for the voyeuristic pleasure of blokes. That’s already to make a bit of an assumption, I’d say. Maybe it is just attention-seeking, but is it homophobic? What is the point of protest? It does all seem to spin on the idea that there is such a thing as a “proper lesbian”. This single isn’t pushing the sort of ideas Luce Irigaray espouses, I’ll grant you. The singer of “I Kissed A Girl” does add “I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it”, and wakes up in bed beside the chap at the end of the video, in true secondary-school essay “It was all a dream!” style. For some people all of this will scream “I’m not gay by the way!” But I’m sure we all know plently of people who have “experimented” with members of their own gender, and who don’t feel the need to label themselves as “gay”, “straight” or “bi” or any other category. The line “it felt so wrong/ It felt so right/ Don’t mean I’m in love tonight” also seems harmless enough to me. It’s flighty and cheeky, kissing as harmless fun. That’s all the “lipstick lesbian” phenomenon is. I don’t believe it makes life more difficult for LGTB people. I think the real bone of contention is that some straight men are turned on by lesbian fantasies (always involving very feminine looking lesbians natch). So it involves the sexual objectification of women - is it misogynistic? Just about any hetero-male fantasy is going to be misogynistic by that account - unless you get your kicks out of thinking about the sufragette movement or by reading “The Female Eunuch”. Isn’t the area of sexual drives, fetishism and fantasy always going to be dark and unsettling to some degree? Or am I just a perv?

The accusations of homophobia against “I Kissed A Girl” smack of a new puritanism to me. Perry’s previous single was of course a thing called “Ur So Gay” (”gay” having become a synonym for “lame” or “naff”). You could chart the etymology of the word like you can a single climbing or sliding down the pop charts. The “Brights” movement, a bunch of people who champion what they call reason over what they call superstition (and for these people this includes religion), and involving Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett among others, has sought to claim the word “bright” in much the same way that homosexuals adopted the word “gay” in the last century. Again, I am not conviced that even “Ur So Gay” is really homophobic. The argument is an interesting one and I’m open to it, but if you want to convince me that the use of such phrases is homophobic, then we’ll have to get into the intentionality behind it. I suspect that Katy Perry’s religious (Christian) upbringing has a lot to do with how people hear her recent singles. But I think a point is being missed. “Lipstick lesbianism” is a cultural phenomenon. There is a song about it. It doesn’t go any deeper than that.

Mind you, if her next single is a collaboration with Beenie Man, it might be time to worry. (But stranger things have happened - according to Planet Sound Roots Manuva and James Blunt are about to record together. This is great news, if only because it’ll force the “James Blunt, anyone?” brigade to think for a change.)

Illustration: Aaron Taylor

At this exact moment Madonna is about to wow fans in Berlin with her Sticky and Sweet tour, a tour that will no doubt make a shed load of money and make her new partners Live Nation very happy if not relieved. Madonna herself will have every reason to be smug sitting on a new record deal from the very generous pockets of Live Nation, the events company based in California. At a reported $120 million it is a vast sum to pay to someone in an industry shaken to the core by illegal downloading and where artists like Prince give away albums in daily papers. However to call it a record deal would sell the term short for this is no normal four album advance contract. Commonly known as a ‘360 Degree Contract’ in the music industry, Live Nation gets a percentage of all the other ancillary revenue by the artist from t-shirt sales to Tour revenue. The deal also locks the artists involved to Live Nation’s ticketing service, which in the future will probably be the only place one can buy a ticket to their future tours.

Live Nation haven’t been coy about their unorthodox approach, one which has yet to be financially proven. Like a Russian oligarch at an art auction they have waved virtual blank cheques at some of the largest artists in music today with almost adventitious haste. Jay Z signed on the dotted line a deal worth $150 million, Shakira and Nickelback for around half that, while our very own U2 signed a few months back on an undisclosed deal reputedly worth more than $300 million over 12 years. Such vast sums thrown at already insanely wealthy established artists has made many sit up and openly question the financial viability of it all. If in the last financial year Live Nation lost close to $12 million dollars,how can it justify such sums? The music industry is a frustratingly low margin business. However Live Nation sees a future quite different to today. To concentrate on one aspect of the industry they feel is dangerous and in the digital age may lead to financial ruin. Where bands have become adept at using the internet and social networking, learning the ropes on their own on how to promote themselves the days of EMI and Warner as we see them today could be over very soon.

Live Nation anticipates synergies in combining the revenues of merchandising, music publishing and sponsorship. Linking them all into its already established ticketing business these Young Turks plan to transform the music business. They also firmly believe that by signing up the largest artists in the world today now in such deals before anyone else they will reap the profits from the whirlwind of change they themselves have created. While many in the music business stare in bemusement or grumble that it will all fail, many artists are very happy with their new deals. Is this a result of these artists simply inebriated by all this new money? Have they been foolishly swayed by the smell of crisp dollar notes without thinking? Probably not for many of them are experienced, proven and successful businessmen and women in their own right. Jay Z has businesses ranging from his own record label to clothing worth hundreds of millions of dollars while U2 have been savvy (or greedy depending on your own personal opinion) enough to move their holding company to the Netherlands to avail of lower taxes. U2 on the signing of their deal with Live Nation released a statement saying “The opportunity to integrate U2 and Live Nation’s vision of the future is a great extension to our established business”.

Established is an apt term for these Live Nation deals. The company have stuck to well established artists, who have proven adept at making money through touring and merchandising and not just record sales. Live Nation will not get involved in the business of finding new artists - which at times can be painful and loss making. With the live music industry booming (Shakira’s “Oral Fixation” tour alone made over $100 million) and sponsorship a well known means of pocketing a lot of money, garnering a sizeable percentage of this cash in the future will hopefully in the eyes of Live Nation make their mouth wateringly big deals make a hefty return. Newer artists may feel a bit left out by the new 360 Degree contracts; with their own record companies being sapped of their cash cows their position could look a little more worrisome. With Live Nation unwilling to invest in new and emerging artists and their own record companies seeing their revenues reduced investment may dry up. This is an unfortunate situation for the music industry overall but one which through technology many bands are adapting to through use of communication technologies.

While Live Nation has to be commended by taking a bold step, diving into the fires of the musical revolution and stealing the family jewels it will have to wait a long time for their deals to bear fruit. There is also the fear that the live music industry will implode and become just a victim of fashion. Ticket sales, already insanely high could become too much for a world already tightening the belts and bracing for recession. Merchandising and sponsorship could easily go the same way too. In the end Live Nation could be left with the old publishing revenue that todays record companies rely heavily on and debts to rival Third World Nations. Will Bono help them then? Lets see in 10 years time….

Electric Picnic 07 - photo by Eoin O’Braoin

Not sure if this is the official Electric Picnic timetable or not but it looks fairly right to me. Download it from here.

The argument about the delay of the official timetable is still going on over at Jim’s blog.

The Ben Folds/Regina Spektor collaboration has been out and on the internets for a while, but I finally heard the non-leaked version the other-day. I’m a little disappointed. What I thought would sound like this, actually sounds a little more like this:

That’s not to say the track is heinous. It’s quite lovely. Thing is, it’s just neither as pop-orientated or as quirky as I’d've hoped for from Ben ‘n’ Reg. Thank goodness then, for the youth of today. When all else fails, a bassoon, keytar and djembe trio can always liven up the proceedings.

I can’t decide whether my favourite member is the bassoonist dressed as Pauly Bleeker, or the be-hooded Regina-stand-in djembe-ist, clutching a lyrics sheet in his hand, before throwing it away to rock out. Also, they have the best end to a video, ever:

‘Not bad’
‘Not bad at-fucking-all’

Proof, if anything, that music lessons WILL pay-off. No matter how bizzarre the instrument.

Open publication

I finally got around to cropping the first issue of Analogue and uploading it to Issuu.com. This site is great, it allows you to flick through a virtual magazine online. Through Issuu Analogue has reached over 30,000 new readers worldwide.

Check out our other issues on Issuu!

I’m on a charity buzz this week. There’s much to buzz about, I suppose. I went jumble sailing yesterday, round George Street and up to Capel Street. Then I spotted this lot in my favourite rag. Whilst I’m sure there’s only a relatively limited audience for Adriano’s pants, but they’re bound to be rabid. Bids at the charity auction are currently at 10 pounds sterling. Other highlights are Sir Ian McKellen’s fabulous shoes and a signed script from the Office.

But for music fans there’s only one item (obviously Pete Waterman’s crap donation of a crap cd aside). Go on, reach deep for CSS’s pants.

ps, please note that these are not actually pants, but are in fact vintage fila shorts, signed by the band. But they did belong to Adriano.