From The Archive - The new lo-fi Benny Anderson?

There was a fantastic quote about us in a review of "Heads smashed in" from Holland the other day; "For certain Betika new indie-lo-fi Abba" (translation via some website). Funnily enough, the band does at the moment consist of a blonde girl (Claire), a dark girl (Caz), a beardie bloke and a clean-shaven bloke (Steve and I are interchangeable in these roles, depending on how hairy we are, but it's most common that I am Benny and he is Bjorn). It's always hard to establish the tone of reviews from overseas, when so much of the nuance of the language gets lost in the coarse machine translation, so I can't really tell if the writer's implication is that we write timeless, classic pop songs that will still be danced to in indie-lo-fi discos by our huge and loyal gay-indie-lo-fi following in thirty years time, or if he believes us to be purveyors of vacuous cheese. I guess it all depends on where you stand on Abba. I have to confess to being unsure myself.
In bits at the moment are;
(1) a Columbus EB-3 bass copy that Mike from My Hi-fi Sister (and ex-Miss Black America) gave me. This is nearly finished, I've had to make a new nut, bridge, and almost all the plastic parts (all in a functional if not particularly attractive way) and it's playable again, but it's as ugly as sin where Mike started stripping off the finish with a power sander but gave up half way (I had a similar experience with some window frames once) and think it's probably going to stay that way as I can't be arsed either. Before Mike gave it to me it was living in his shed, along with the remains of several other guitars that had been sacrificed to the gods of rock and roll by various members of Miss Black America. I've always had a bit of a problem with people breaking guitars, which dates back to when I was about thirteen, when I was saving up all the money from my paper-round to buy my first electric guitar, and I saw that famous bit of film of Hendrix smashing his strat at Monterrey. I don't think I've ever coveted an object so much, or waited so long to eventually get my hands on something, and here on the screen in front of me was this guy wantonly destroying it. Torching and then smashing into pieces my heart's desire. It seemed completely decadent, the most obscenely wasteful thing I had ever witnessed. If he didn't want the guitar, why couldn't he give it to someone who did? I was upset about that for a long time afterwards. It was worse than watching the KLF burn a million quid. Nowadays I've become a pragmatist and a scavenger, resigned to the fact that guitar trashing is a rock-pantomime set piece crowd-pleaser (just like throwing shapes, guitar solos and the earnestly gurning singer who really, really means it, face distorted into gargollic rictus by faux-emotional affectation…..), but if I ever witness it or it's victims first-hand I descend vulture-like on the carcass and try to make off with as many reuseable bits as possible. One day, I'll have enough to make a whole guitar, which I'm going to build onstage at the end of a Betika gig, amid an orgy of construction. And, getting off my high-horse;
(2) a number of Zenit SLR cameras. I've had one or more Zenits for years, my dad gave me one when I was a kid, thinking I'd progress onto something better once I'd got the hang of taking pictures with it, but as I got older I just bought more of them. I used to take lots of pictures at gigs, and as it's possible to pick these cameras up in charity shops for the price you pay for a disposable camera in the high street I don't really have to worry about them getting lost, stolen or broken- but at the same time they're still capable of taking fantastic pictures. I've broken two lately through experimenting with using them in ways which nature never intended, one I managed to fix but the other's a goner.
I've been listening to, amongst others; Steve Malkmus, Beulah, a CD of music from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, a compilation of 'outsider' music called "Songs in the key of Z" (and reading the book of the same title) and some Shostakovich piano music. I'm simultaneously reading "Porno" by Irvine Welsh and "And the ass saw the angel" by Nick Cave, both of which are written in hard-to-fathom vernacular by drug-twits

From The Archive - Chris' postcard from Oz

I think you asked me to do a diary entry for the betika site - is this ok?
The ends of my fingers have started to go hard again now. I've had a good 5 months of not having a guitar to play on and I got pretty rubbish. But now I've got one and things have started to look up a bit. I'm hoping to get some students soon which will be much better than a proper job. I can't tell you too much about betika as I've been in the wrong hemisphere for a while now. It seems like HSIBTBGT is getting re-issued with a couple of new tracks. Dave regularly forwards me the nice things that the press have had to say about it, and I would hope that some of the reviews would find their way onto this site before too long. I received a package from Mr Purse recently - he was kindly sending me copies of Belle & Sebastian/Max Tundra cd’s that cost a fortune in Australia. He also included a cd with some of his new demos that I found a little worrying, sometimes scary, but generally very promising as always. Also in the package was the new press release for “Heads Smashed in…” which alludes to Dave’s state of mind and the circumstances surrounding the recording. I never really thought about how fucked up that little bubble of time was, until now it just seemed normal – at least it proves that dysfunctional people make good music. That press release should be up here, or should go out with the cd or something – people deserve to know the truth! (see the archive!)
I’ve been reading lots of really bad books lately (see “The Death Dealers” by Mickey Spillane), but have also found some great ones like “Life of Pi” by Yann Martell and “The Art of Travel” by Alain de Botton. My favourite records of late have been Manitoba’s “Start Breaking my Heart” and Dntel’s “Life is Full of Possibilities”. I’ve been listening to a great radio station called Triple J that plays Cat Power all the time. New South Wales has a pretty active live music scene and so far I’ve seen - You Am I, Gelbison and Gersey amongst others. For proof of good music coming out of Australia check out Machine Translations, The Sleepy Jackson and Gerling (Who’s ya daddy?) See you soon Chris xx

From The Archive - Playing fast and loose in other bands

We never did find anyone (or anything) to replace Chris, so Betika as a live band is on official hiatus until he comes back. That's assuming of course that he does come back- hopefully the Australian authorities are keeping tabs on him and he'll be summarily ejected when his visa runs out…..In the meanwhile I've been keeping myself busy doing all sorts- I've been finding a sort of despondency creeping in whenever I give myself time to stop and ponder the state of the world recently, like those dark, fuzzy edges that sleep-deprivation gives your peripheral vision, so keeping occupied has been paramount. I seconded myself to the mighty Seemonster for a spell, masquerading as their drummer (previous occupants of this coveted role have included Matt "Tex la homa" Shaw and Pete from The Clams). We recorded half-a-dozen or so songs for their next release, giving me ample opportunity to vent any frustrations that may have beset me, and when these recordings are issued I'm sure I'll go back for another bash when they promote them. I've had my composer / arranger hat on over the past couple of weeks. The True Swamp Neglect boys have asked Carolyn, an as-yet-unmet French Horn player called Chris and myself to contribute some brass sounds to what will probably be their forthcoming single "Slow Fighting". I've been playing the cornet for some twenty years now, on and off (mostly off, it must be said), and have achieved the "clueless, but loud and fast" standard, as anyone who has heard my work on the Sancho Panza 7" can attest, but as it was on the basis of this recording that the Swamp asked me to play on theirs I'm hoping that they won't be too disappointed with something similar. I've also written a few short instrumental pieces for Steve's new wRong record "Children's TV themes from a parallel dimension", and even found the time to knock out ten or so new Betika songs to add to our now quite considerable back(cata)log. Steve shot some video of us rehearsing the new songs, which I might post on the site if it's any good. That's what I imagine bands like Blur and Radiohead do in an attempt to keep the wolf of between-the-albums-listener-apathy from the door. Or I could just attempt a brief description and spare us both the up-and-downloading, couldn't I? Okay; largely slow songs, arranged for classical guitar, church-hall harmonium, flute and voice, a more up-tempo song that currently needs work to make it sound less like we're ripping off Love but is a sure-fire international smash nonetheless, and a sort of hasidic/country song. Some with religio-political overtones, others just the same old boy/girl nonsense. You know the score. I've also been indulging in some electronic whimsy that may or may not ever see the light of day, and Chris, Steve and Carolyn all claim to have new tunes also. Carolyn's been doing happy hardcore for money, but I haven't heard it yet.

From The Archive - Japan / What next?

It's been interesting lately. Obviously, Chris' going away has been a big disruption to the grand Betika plan (one of which there isn't), and I'm giving a lot of thought to what, if anything, should take his place. The 7-piece Greater Betika was just about at gigging standard the last time we rehearsed, and it would be fantastic to get out in public with that band, but doing so would mean having to find another guitarist as good as Chris prepared to slum it musically with the likes of me, if only on a temporary basis, and that could take months, if not forever. So we've been considering various alternatives, from laptops to orchestras and most things in between. Whatever happens, I'd really like to have something ready to go by the new year, I've got new songs that are just gathering dust at the moment, and a renewed interest in the cello, John Fahey and Davy Graham.

In other developments, my own wanderlust got the better of me and I went to Japan for 10 days at the start of the month. The whole trip was something of a life's ambition for me, and I wasn't disappointed. I got to experience some incredible stuff; I travelled on a Tokyo commuter train packed with an impossible number of people (apparently approximately 3 million go through Shinjuku station every single day!), a 12-hour Karaoke marathon, all kinds of food and drink, anime, manga, J-Pop. I sang a Smokey Robinson song with a barman who couldn't speak any english in one place, and I sang something else by the Backstreet Boys with a computer engineer in the smallest bar I have ever been in. Where beers were £12.50. I bought loads of CD's, largely on the strength of the artwork, or the band's name, and I had more fun than I've had on any other holiday ever. If you ever get the opportunity to go, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Cultural artefacts I've absorbed include "McCarthy's Bar" by Pete McCarthy, which was duller than I'd been led to believe, "Great Apes" by Will Self, which I've been meaning to read for years and finally had twelve hours on an aeroplane free from distractions to do it in. I'm currently halfway through Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", which bears uncanny similarities to "Great Apes", especially in the way that both use the greek alphabet and feature sexual promiscuity as a cure for social ills. Things I've heard included "The begining stages of The Polyphonic Spree", John Adams' "Nixon in China" (Adams, Philip Glass and Steve Reich all seem to be very popular in Japan), Al Stewart, Numbergirl, Acidman, Beat Crusaders, "The Steve Christy e.p." by Olo, and a CD single I bought because I liked the cover, the title of which is "� 9", but, like the name of the band I have no idea how to translate it. It's on Tinstar records, Tokyo, if that helps. I also got a sneak preview of the True Swamp Neglect LP that they've been making with Hubcap. I think it's called "Sleep Function Lost", and sounds fantastic, especially "Year of the Chimp" and "Heavy Music". The only films I've seen are "Laundry" on the plane, in Japanese with French subtitles, and "Battle Royale". Both good.

From The Archive - In Bits at the moment

In bits at the moment are; a Korg Poly61 synth from 1982 that cost me £25, and for a very good reason, and; an upright piano, which I was given. A few weeks ago I had to totally dismantle it in order to remove it from the house it occupied. It had been moved in before considerable building work had taken place, and just wouldn't fit through the gap at the bottom of the stairs, so I had to strip out the keyboard, mechanism and facia until I was left with a frame, a soundboard and some strings, all on four small castors. It's taken me a little while to get it all back into working condition, but I think I'm just about there now. I've fixed the broken hammers and return springs, trimmed the dampers that were fouling each other and getting jammed, and last weekend I tuned it using a guitar tuner, a drum key and a dirty great spanner. This is probably setting a new record for dullness of diary entries, but I'm not sorry. It's a bloke-tool-gadget- thing, all part of the making, doing and fixing urge I get that makes me restless and want to write songs, and build websites. It may be that that last statement is a bit sexist, because girls might get these urges too. I don't know, I've never been a girl and I've never really understood how their minds work. That probably sounds even more sexist, verging on the MCP, but it's not meant to be.
It's raining, and I'm going to get wet cycling home.
I saw and enjoyed the bands Vext of Wareham and Lamb Quartet of Exeter recently, and I've been listening "Mastered by Guy at the exchange" by Max Tundra and other items from his back catalogue. I've read "Mortal Engines" by Philip Reeve, and "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. Chris is disappointed he didn't get to see Dogbonfire again.

From The Archive - The smell of fear

Did you know that your sense of smell is your fastest sense? It's because it works by having tendrils of your brain which are exposed to the air in the roof of your nasal cavity. All the other senses use optic or aural or whatever nerves to send their messages to the brain, which takes a little bit longer. I think that's why smells are so evocative of not only places and people but feelings too.
The air this morning carried with it the smell of fear; of the fresh intake of students into secondary schools, far enough now into the term to have identified the bullies to whom they may fall victim, and for the bullies to have identified them. It smelt of seemingly endless lunch-hours trying to be invisible, of trying to beat out the sparks of confrontation in the powder-keg of the playground, of adrenaline pumped by a racing heart, fists clenched and lip bitten in the face of insults and abuse designed to provoke a violent response; of scuffles and scraps and beatings and blood and tears and rage and shame and humiliation. It smelt of pretending to be ill, and bunking off. And it smelt of finding refuge in books and in libraries and in music-rooms.

From The Archive - A Machine Translates

Got this in my email a while back- I think it's the work of Babelfish!

This ep, ' Heads smashed in by the boy/girl thing ', takes again some of these songs re-recorded with a lighter production, more acoustic, even if guitars, glockenspiel, oboe or melodica do good housework. One cannot really speak about revelation but the songs present here are really fascinating and pleasant.
' I' ve been in year accident' is a small happiness out of time, pretty top of the ep for which Betika even turned a clip. Pretty gracious melody with the mixture of male-intonated voice and female, generous melancholy and opulante, green lawns mouthfuls of dew in morning, crossing of districts in the bicycle under a hesitant sun. Sure, one was many times much more close to the loss of balance, but to roll here one however fills the lungs with a fresh air which does not know pollution.
' the bierdigan' is splendid as much, as to go quickly on a fine and slightly elevated edge. Something of slightly childish with the real benevolence, as escaped from another time. Betika it is as suddenly a small path which takes shape between two bushes of hedge and involves us in a richly and précautionneusement arranged garden, with the pretty solid masses in flowers whose perfumes transpierce us their emanations.
' release' is somewhat percussion, finally not so far that that from the beginnings of The Beautiful South (??). I thus remain here somewhat being wary. Left pretty solid mass of pink pinks almost nauseating.
On ' one day my house will Be flooded ', Betika is found stripped to the maximum, almost a guitar and two songs then a xylophone, which intersection, a striptease which lets however see a body with the still soft and quite generous forms.
In the same way, ' dance and scream' seems out of time, an American journalist spoke about them the madrigaux one and, here, it is true that one is not far from the whole so much poetry dense and is coloured of it. And the ep to finish with the good named 'summers of solemnity' which summarizes well the pop step of Betika, estival and solemn.
Good ep, beautiful writing and charm some.
Didier

This week I have been listening to 'They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top' by Liars, which is the best thing I've heard in ages, and reading the 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy by Philip Pullman, which is a heretical epic for "young adults". Quite a thought-provoking read, if you're into homespun theology, and let's face it - who isn't?

From the Archive - Simon le Bon's dog

I used to know this girl who had this odd thing about Simon le Bon. Like an irrational hatred. I don't know exactly what caused it- the most I got out of her was once when we were really drunk, she said something about Simon le Bon's dog having shat on her mum on a beach in Cornwall when she was little.

I'm listening to "Dub come save me", the Roots Manuva remix album, and "Vunerabilia" by My Computer, which is a bizarre mix of chill-out electronica, techno, and Jeff Buckley / Freddy Mercury vocal histrionics. I've been reading proof copies of children's books, and reminiscing about when I didn't have a radio in the house so I'd go and listen to the Evening Session in my car which was propped up on two piles of bricks in the garden. Happy times

From The Archive - A Bloke and his Bird waltz sinister.

Last week I wrote and recorded a song with my girlfriend Lexi. It's the first time I've made music with someone I've been going out with, despite having had a few musically inclined girlfriends in the past. I hope our collaboration tends more to the Her Space Holiday / White Stripes end of things rather than the Wings / Fleetwood Mac. I suppose it's not without precedent- Carolyn's boyfriend was in Betika briefly, and co-wrote "Thunderstorm", and we've roped in some of Steve's lady-friends at various times. Lexi played the Casiotone that is the main Betika keyboard, and I played stand-up drums a la Bobby Gillespie, and overdubbed some autoharp. The results sound minimalist, sinister and clockwork.

Thursday

Woke up this morning with that lovely feeling you only ever get when you're safe and secure in the knowledge that it's Sunday. A big group of Superglider-affiliated personnel went en masse to see Miss Black America last night. The few times I've seen them I've always come away with my heart a little bit warmer- there's something about their energy and enthusiasm that's really infectious and a thing of beauty to witness. Stirs the spirit. Last night was no exception. I suppose in some ways you could think of them as the English Rage Against the Machine, not that they sound anything like them, but in terms of their uncompromising, highly politicised stance and their boundless raw energy. And both bands had / have a refreshingly innovative guitarist. I came home hyperactive, singing and wanting to be Seymour when I grow up (he's three years younger than me.). I'm starting to get quite excited about the prospect of taking Betika up to London, but at the same time not a little bit nervous. Not only will it be the first time we'll have played this year, it'll be the first time we'll play with our new line-up (with a human drummer to compliment the beatboxes), and the first time we'll have performed some of the songs. Still, there's nothing like fear to give the buzz of playing a real edge...

From The Archive - Carolyn's first Diary entry

My recent thoughts have been filled with visions of people drinking things that are wrong. These terrible visions started a couple of weeks ago when a work colleague seemed unnaturally down when he was forcibly told that he wasn't very good. These black moods continued, causing concern for myself and others, culminating in an offer to go out and get mashed on the Friday night, to get rid of his black thoughts, you see. This didn't happen and it didn't happen the next week either. He trudged home and the sight of his hanging head must have weighed heavy on my mind as that night I dreamed he drank down a botle of hydrochloric acid. 5M, the strong stuff you know. That very same day, I had to laugh out loud when one of my young friends Dom put his hand and announced "I drank bleach" in a proud voice. My initial reaction was to piss myself laughing, and when it occurred to me that maybe he had drank bleach as he has no lenses in his eyes and therefore didn't know what it was, perhaps mistaking it for lemonade, I just laughed harder. When I realised he shares his name with a popular brand of the very same cleaning product he drank, it all made sense so I just smiled and said "good lad" with a benevolent smile. That last bit is a lie, but the rest is true.

From The Archive - The one with the link to the hidden song

I was working on a sort of 'Making the video' type write-up for the Superglider site to accompany the "I've been in an accident" vid the other day, and rambling away tangentially as I do my train of thought took me back to the first band I was ever in. (How I got there is too convoluted and obscure to bother with here). I was 10, and my friend Kamran Javid and I -inspired by a couple of girls in our class who could play "Heart and Soul" (the duet kids everywhere can play)- started writing tunes on the school Casio keyboard. We almost exclusively used the black notes, and we only had three tunes. The first, "Organ Time" I have a recording of that we made in the school hall. It has the sound of kids playing outside in the background and faint birdsong at the start. Our second tune didn't have a title, but I submitted it five years later as a composition for my music GCSE. I got a B. Go figure. The third song we did likewise had no title that I can remember, and never got recorded. It stuck in my head, though, and being reminded of it again the other day I thought that maybe I should record it. So I did. I kept the tune exactly as we wrote it, but I tried to produce it in the way it would have been had record company execs decided that 10-year-old electropop duos were going to be the big thing in '87. Now I can't stop listening to it, though I think it's more through nostalgia than the tune being any good. It's quite sad to hear it now -around the time we wrote it Kamran and I were both pretty melancholy over a girl we both liked who was systematically flirting with every boy in the class. We'd been early targets in her campaign and she'd moved on. I remember waking up one day around this time to "Nothing's gonna stop us now" by Starship on the radio, and being struck from nowhere by this horrible empty feeling and the realisation that after we left for our different secondary schools I'd never see her again. In hindsight our tune is based on the same chord progression. Plagiarism is obviously in my genes. Chris and Carolyn both got the internet this week. Hopefully the next diary will not be mine!

From the Archive - A question of motivation

We performed in public last week for the first time since January. To the casual observer we must appear to be incredibly lazy, but the infrequency of our live appearances is down to a desire to keep them special, for the audience and for ourselves. After a while, even the most heartfelt songs get reduced to a collection of vocal noises and finger movements strung together in the correct sequence if you play them too often and know them too well. The intention is that if you come to see us play, my whole weight is behind the words I'm singing. I won't be going through the motions. How this philiosophy is going to bear up when we have a record out to promote remains to be seen! I'm not sure where this puritanical outlook came from- I can't even remember what my motivation was for starting to play music in the first place. I was too young for it to be a way of getting laid, and the idea that I could get rich from it has never been a realistic one. And yet I still find myself driven to do it. And I love doing it. It just worries me sometimes though that I'm vain enough to think that the world needs to hear my three friends and I setting the minutae of our largely unremarkable lives to music. Answers on the Superglider message board....