Dark Was The Night

"Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground"...words that are fairly apt for the way things seem to be going in my small-town/suburbia. I'd like to take the credit for them, but unfortunately, Blind Wille Johnson, the blues great, got there before me. They're words with an incredible amount of pathos instilled in them, words which etch a scene of desolation, hardship and longing. Words that share a sense of the darkness, the despair of someone suffering from the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS. Fitting then, that "Dark Was The Night" is the title of a two cd, 2009 compilation album from the Red Hot Organization, an international charity dedicated to raising money for HIV/AIDS treatment. The album's made up of a pretty extraordinary cast of American musicans, most of them critical darlings in the vein of Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Feist etc. If those kind of names get you excited, then this album is an injection of pure bliss, a glorious roll-call of the kind of bands and artists that dominate the fantastic NPR "All Songs Considered" playlists.

There's a little bit of a danger that this album could be regarded as a fanboy collection, a series of artists with pretty rabid, avid fanbases who just rolled out a couple of tunes, knowing that no matter what the quality, a certain level of sales (for charity, remember) would be guaranteed. But there is something lurking in the depths of Disc 1 that changes the whole game, that turns this from a worthy exercise in fundraising into a glittering, glowing, mesmerising foray into what electronica can achieve.

Remember Sufjan Stevens? Stevens came galloping into our consciousness with Illinoise and Michigan, a veritable icon of the arrogance of youth, proudly espousing his plans to make an album for every American state...claims that he has since admitted were cheques his mouth was writing, but his mind will never be able to cash. Illinoise was one of the greatest albums of the last ten years, and Sufjan appeared to be one of the most exciting prospects for the next generation of music...and then he disappeared. Following up on Illinoise with Christmas albums, an Oddities and Rarities album, and finally his operatic opus "The Brooklyn Queens Expressway", Stevens has managed to disappoint many, including myself.

But then there comes "You are the Blood".




The video above is the original version of "You Are The Blood", by Castanets, which is the the moniker that Raymond Raposa of "freak-folk" fame plays under. Not too impressed? Mind not blown? Me either.



When I first heard "Someone Great", the LCD Soundsystem track, hidden in the post-disco mix that James Murphy made for Nike, "45:33", it was one of those moments when a beat, a melody, a thick bassline made a mark on me that I'll never be able to erase. The first time I heard Steven's "You Are The Blood", it made that same indelible impression on my mind. The Youtube version doesn't even quite do it justice...this is one of those rare (ever rarer in these days of mp3 and Youtube) tracks that doesn't just need a quality sound system...it demands one. To listen to this on a pair of computer speakers or a pair of cheap headphones is like looking at a blood-red sunset over the Grand Canyon through a pair of glasses smeared with vaseline. The sharpness of the glitches, the thick, fuzzy bass, the sweetness of the vocals...this is a precise piece of noise, and to cheapen the experience and blur the edges of its perfection with poor quality sound would be a crime.

So if you have the time, the ability and the inclination...please...close the door, ramp the level up, download the official version (it's for charity!), close your eyes and let a mark be made upon your mind.

Delorean : Progress Report -

In the course of recording a report for ARENA about this new exhibition in Dublin's Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, I spoke to the artist, Sean Lynch, about his work, a gorgeous series of photographs that trace the history of the Delorean car-making enterprise after the famous arrest and bankruptcy of Northern Ireland's greatest sports car entrepreneur, John Delorean.

What made this an interesting work was the clear undercurrent of the idea of cultural preservation. Lynch followed the machinery and basic components of the Delorean DMC-12 on their journey from manufactoring cultural value (the Delorean itself has massive power as a pop culture icon, from its famous image as the time machine in Back To The Future to its basis as the subject of albums from Neon Neon and the reverently titled Delorean, a band from Barcelona) to abandonment and reappropriation. Lynch is interested in documenting the recent past, in the same way that an archeologist is interested in documenting the slightly less recent past. Photographs provide the evidence of the story, the links in the chain that tell us what happened next to the DMC-12, photographs that stretch from the desolate back lot of the original Delorean factory to the current resting place for some of the machinery vital for the cars' production, the bottom of Galway Bay (above). But they are not enough for Lynch.

In the centre of the white space that is the Kevin Kavanagh gallery, lies a wooden box with metal propped against it, metal that is bent and hammered into the instantly-recognisable shape of a Delorean gullwing door. This is where the crux of the exhibition lies. Lynch has spent considerable time and money arranging for these handmade parts of the DMC-12 to be made, for the first time since since the Belfast factory closed in 1982. And it was these panels that let me into the heart of the exhibition.



This is an exhibition about failure, the documentation and representation of a great failed enterprise, a dalliance with hubris and arrogance that left nothing behind itself, but an underwater home for some Galway Bay lobsters. Although Deloreans are amazingly collectable, and still recognised by a huge amount of people (myself included) who weren't even born when the factory closed down, the bones of the enterprise lie at the bottom of the blue-black sea. The cultural myth may live on, in Back To The Future DVDs and collector clubs, but Delorean's reality is buried treaure, fossilized remains laying on the oceanbed, as dead as dust.

Lynch, of course, totally disagrees. You can find out his opinions for yourself on Saturday 23rd Jan, when he speaks to the writer Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith in a public lecture which will be held in the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery at 12pm.