Wherever you go in the world you find the Metal. I've walked through Malaysian jungles and found kids living in stilt villages wearing Metallica t-shirts. A chum of mine ended up having the most frightening night of his life in a Maori Heavy Metal bar in New Zealand, and being a hairy beggar I regularly get similarly hirsute folks the planet over coming up to me, giving me a hug and shouting the bonding cry "Heavvvvvy Metaaaaaaaaaallllll!!!" at me like I'm a long lost brother.
So I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that Bahrainhas a thriving metal scene. What I wasn't expecting was how darned unique and inventive it was. I stumbled across a fantastic band called THEE PROjECT during one of those massive MySpace click through sessions you do (well, I do), and I was immediately hooked. Not the formula widdly guitar solo hair-shaking pose for these boys. Neither the wedge-haired and angular-elbowed screemo that seems to be digesting the planet. No, these boys were thoughtful, original and quite entertainingly dark.
Swathed in woolly black balaclavas (which must be an effort enough in such a desert setting) and pounding out a fractured mix up of the stop-starty metal chunk favoured by Dillinger Escape Plan and their chums, with a dark punky alt edge, and occasional forays into reggae, folk and local folk musics, they claim, rather pleasingly, that they follow a three-point formula in their musical creation process...
"1. Make each song a different style than the previous.
2. Try to cover different genres of music.
3. Boost it up by making it head-banging friendly."
And they certainly succeed in their refreshing musical plan. Each song has a complete and distinct universe of its own, while still retaining an over-arching feel to the music that suggests it could only come from a single source. They've just released a blisteringly good new album called Thee Art of Mehyawa, that's packed with ace noise and a dark and wry sense of humour. I heartily suggest that you track it down like a dog and get it while you can.
While Bahrain is one of the more liberal of the Gulf states, it can still be classed as a conservative state by our fancy dan European standards. A loose mob of Metal fans calling themselves Bahraini Rockers have been trying to put on gigs, but their shows are frequently cancelled by the authorities, with stories of kids being turned away from the shows by security for wearing too much make up and what they call 'satanic t-shirts'. So it's a wonder that any kind of scene has managed to survive - let alone thrive in such an interesting and exciting way.
And THEE PROjECT are just the tip of the iceberg. More traditionally loud and doomy acts like The Mushroom Massacre, Motör Militia, Smouldering In Forgotten and the amazingly brutal Arabic-language Death metal mob Narjahanam are cropping up all over the island - and every one of them begs a listen. And when you find them, keep clicking through on their friends lists and see what other wonders you can uncover!
Now there are many, who when the subject of Eurovision is raised, dismiss it with a cursory "Of course it's all political." What they are touting is usually the misguided and paranoid idea that nobody votes for the UK because everyone hates us, and there's some manner of fit up among all the other countries against us. Of course, they are wrong. The only reason nobody votes for us any more is because we send lazy-assed songs firmly rooted in the Eurovision of the past. However, in some instances Eurovision can claim to be a highly politicised beast - none the least out in the Caucasus.
Case in point is this year's Armenian entry, Apricot Stone by Eva Rivas. On the outset it sounds like nothing more sinister than a nostalgic ditty about the old days, the pretagonist's mother telling her how good life would be once she'd grown up - kind of like Ke Sera Sera with a skipbeat. But a little bit of delving will uncover all manner of mischief making.
For a start, take a look at that Armenian flag up in the top right corner. See the orange band at the bottom? That's not orange, that's apricot. The colour on the flag relates to the fruit considered to be the symbol of Armenian nationality. This thing goes back centuries, with Armenian generals going into war carrying banners and effigies made in the colour of the fruit, and the country's favourite folk instrument, the duduk (the very instrument that Eva's song begins with) is made from the wood of the tree. So perhaps the song is a call out to the diaspora of up to six million Armenians scattered around the globe in order to garner a few teary-eyed votes?
Maybe so, but some commentators are claiming yet more symbolism within the song's lyric. Some say that the mention of the fruit's stone refers to the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave within the borders of Azerbaijan. These two very different nations have been niggling about this neighbourhood ever since the Russians poked their noses 90 odd years back - but would they extend their beef to something as seemingly innocent as Eurovision? You better believe it, because these two have form.
Last year the Armenians had their singer from the previous year, Shirusho, read out their scores. But look carefully and you'll notice that both on the backdrop and on the back of the very clipboard that she kept cheekily flashing at the camera was a picture of the Tatik yev Papikmomument in Nagorno-Karabakh - a symbol of Armenian nationality in that area.
Following that, it was reported that 43 Azeri residents were questioned by their Ministry of Security after it was found that they had made the very unpatriotic move of voting for Armenia in the 2009 competition in Moscow.
Obviously feelings are still running very strong between the two countries, and they're playing their local politics out in the living rooms of a hundred million viewers across the continent. And with Azerbaijan yet to choose their song in this year's contest, we suspect this one could run and run. Keep them peeled, 'cos that Saturday night at the end of May could prove to hold more political intrigue than the casual viewer could ever imagine!
Around the turn of the century I was editing an entertainment and lifestyle website for the student market. Most days I'd have a barrage of record company PRs calling me up and trying to sell me their latest big thing - which for the most part only proved to disappoint. But one midweek afternoon when one the few that I trusted to tell me if anything was any good or not - you know, really good - rang me to enthusuastically expouse the joys of one of his new charges, I thought it was time to pack up all this lark and get into plumbing.
"I got this act called Petit Vodo - you're going to love him!" Tell me more, I instructed. "Well, he's a French one-man band... but he's a lot better than I can make that sound. I'll send you a copy of the album." He wasn't wrong. Despite a description that held less promise than an old pair of damp socks, that album, Monom, rocked like a bastard.
Imagine the refuelled delta blues of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, without any of the ego or knowing irony, and steep it with an innocent gallic charm, some dynamite slide guitar and all kinds of bonkers-in-the-nut samples and you're part way there. "He's playing down Dingwalls with Gallon Drunk in a couple of weeks," explained my Vodo go between, "do you want to see him?" Heck yeah, I replied - if only to see if he could actually play any of this stuff live. Surely he had a band, or merely relied on overdubs and recording trickery on the album.
It would seem that he didn't.
Up in Camden, right by the canal, a tiny, unassuming man in spectacles and a flying helmet toddled speculatively onto the stage. With a massive guitar over his shoulder and a harmonica perched around his neck, he settled in behind the drumkit and started to play - everything. Strumming the open chords with his right hand and hammering the snare with his left, while hooting out all kinds of strangled vocalisms through his harmonica - and at the same time triggering scatter-shot sampled with his elbows. Once in a while he'd even take the stick and slide it up the fret like a bottleneck, while he still pounded out a beefy rhythm on the drums with his feet. The sounds he was making were glorious, unique and quite quite beautiful.
The partisan Gallon Drunk didn't seem too fussed by such a wonderful sideshow, serious souls that they were. But every now and again someone would walk into the room, stare hard at what was going on before them, and give that confused look that said "How the heck is HE making all THAT noise? On his own!!!"
The next album I got my hands on, Sixty-Nine Stereovox, held more of the same delights, and rarely left my stereo for a number years. Then for a while I kind of lost track of his exploits, until a recent websearch told me that he was still thriving, and still making his delectable swampy racket. Lately he's been accompanied by the glamorous Miss Caroline on drums, but it doesn't appear to have made him any less interesting or unhinged.
And you'll be pleased to hear that the good fellow is playing a few dates in the UK in March. So hunt him down like a dog and bathe in his magnificent otherness. You'll be pleased you did.
One of the first things that you notice when travelling around India, apart from the oppressive humidity and the persistant smell of plasticine, is the music. Pumping out of practically every building and vehicle, the familiar playbackstyle wafts along alleys and highways like a fragrant wind. Those slightly distorted and overdriven vocals so familiar from Bollywood movies soon become engrained in your consciousness, and inside days you'll find the pace of your walk has changed to match the skip of the music's beat.
It's pretty much the same wherever you go, but venture North and the musical landscape begins to make a few subtle changes. Travel up the country to Kashmir and more Arabic influences begin to appear. But once you pick your way through the mountain passes and enter the Himalayan region of Ladakh, you'll notice a sudden marked change. Gone are the pulsating skittish off beats of the dholaks and maddales. Instead a more organic, insistant skip of a rhythm takes over. Sing the phrase 'tummba-tiddily tummba-tiddily' to yourself gently under your breath and you'll get an idea of how it sounds.
And it's so happy too. Ladakh offers a stunning but bleak terrain, and many parts are completely cut off from the rest of the world in the long winter months. Rainfall is minimal, and as such the crops are spartan. And yet its people, predomenantly Buddist, and more akin to Tibetans than they are to any Indian nation, are some of the most cheerful I've ever met. So it's no surprise that their pop music is among the most whimsical and optimistic on the planet.
From what I could gather there are three main themes to the Ladakhi pop song: either a young soldier boy is stationed in the mountains and thinking of his girl back home in the village; a young girl walking around her village, seeing things that remind her of her soldier boy up in the mountains; or lastly the boy and the girl are together and thinking of their future and the landscape that they live in. And that's it. Every song sounds much the same as the last, and they all appear to be recorded not only in the same studio, but by the same plinky plonky keyboard, probably esconced in some chap's ad hoc studio in the capital Leh. But the music is so infectiously sweet that you'll find yourself longing to hear it for years after you visit the area.
The videos, too, are impossibly cute. Always filmed outside, and taking in the glorious scenery and unearthly light, the sweet-faced singers are always gently revelling in their surroundings, and dreaming of their loved ones as they're about their daily business. And you see them everywhere. Compilation discs of the lastest faves are played on tiny boxy screens in restaurants, bars, tourist offices and trinket shops. Ladaki pop is the heartbeat of the region, and the moment you begin to head South again, and the music pumping out of the massive, but always slightly damaged speakers on the buses shifts to more traditional Indan pop sounds, you feel like you're leaving behind an old friend.
There isn't a single Ladakhi pop act that I could recommend, they're all so reassuringly similar. Just listen to and watch some of the videos throughout this post, as they'll give you a flavour of the glorious sounds and images of a remarkable part of the world.
As a country that suffered the ravages of dictatorship for so long, it's nice to see the Spanish take to democracy so heartily - and nowhere is it more evident than their Eurovision selection process.
Three years ago, fed up with a string of poor to middling results, some genius at RTVE had the brainwave of opening their pre-selection contest up to the masses and not only allowing anyone to enter, but giving the whole world the opportunity to vote on them. No filtering or fine tuning - anyone could enter, from the most professional record-company endorsed act to the most lowly bedroom artist. Now that's the kind of democracy I like!
So they put out a call for songers across the land to display their wares on MySpace, not realising the mild controversy that would ensue. The plan was that punters would vote for their faves, and the top few would battle it out in a televised final. All very good, but it didn't take into account that fabulous human instinct for making things cheekily difficult. Inside days an unlikely contender raced to the top of the vote table. Antonio 'El Gato' González was an elderly man who had his croaky homespun warblings set to a bizarre mininal techno backing track for the song La Bicicletera. It was racing away into a huge lead when someone at the Spanish TV station noticed that a bulk its votes all came from the same few IP addresses. It subesquently had around 100,000 votes taken away from it, but still finished respectably well up the table.
This may have been good news for those hoping for a more traditional song, but their previous fears were soon doubled by one Rodolfo Chikilicuatre with his faux reggaeton stomper Baila el Chiki-Chiki. Chikilicuatre (local slang for good for nothing), was the comic creation of comedian David Fernández, a regular cast member on rival TV station LaSexta's late night show Buenafuente. With plenty of free publicity, and a groundswell of populist funtime opinion behind it, the song walked the final, and finished in 16th in Belgrade - still one of Spain's best results in some years.
The following year RTVE tried it all again, only this time in a much more complicated way. Once again, songs were submitted via MySpace. Of the 978 entries, only 455 were considered to be within the rule. These songs were then divided into genres. The top 5 songs in each of the ten categories then qualified for a protracted series of auditions and ever decreasing heats. Runaway leaders throughout the contest were a flamenco dance act called Melody y Los Vivancos with their difficult but exciting song Amante de la Luna. But despite tieing for the lead in the final with the severe-haired songstress Soraya and her more traditionally-Eurovision flavoured dance piece La Noche es Para Mí, they missed out on a trip to Moscow on a countback technicality.
Soraya eventually came 23rd out of 25th in the final.
So bless RTVE for their persistence - they're trying the whole thing again this year. Thankfully though the process is much simpler. This time, 480 songs were submitted, of which 319 were banged up onto the TV channel's website for a straight open vote - the top ten going on to fight out a gala final. But there was immediate controversy. Each viewer to the site could vote up to five times a day from the same email address. This led to accusations that those artists signed to big labels would benefit from dedicated PR departments flooding the table with votes sent from a string of specially created email addresses. But despite this, a surprise candidate flew to the top of the leaderboard inside 24 hours.
The song Soy Un Tsunami by a botox-powered old gal calling herself Pop Star Queen stormed to the head of the field. It was soon discovered though that the performer was in fact one Karmele Marchante, a presenter from another minority channel - this time TeleCinco - who wanted to pull a similar stunt to old Chiki Chiki two years before. Close checks were then made on the content of all the submitted songs, which saw Pop Star Queen disqualified, along with a few other popular tunes (sadly also including the rather ace La Fiesta del Fuego by old-skool Valencian rave head Chimo Bayo). This meant that the table was now topped by Coral Segovia and her formula Disney-esque ballad En una Vida - particularly ironic as it was Coral who was beaten into second place by Rodolfo Chikilicuatre two years since.
But that isn't the end of it. It would seem that the curious forces behind Pop Star Queen are attempting to rocket another hapless hopeful to unexpected stardom. This has seen the unlikely rise to glory of a surly looking body-builder called John Cobra, with his raspy piece of bedroom business Carol. Leaping from near the bottom of the table to a solid third place in a few short days, RTVE are bound to cobble up some reason to disqualify it, but I for one hopes he makes it - if only to see how the poor soul is going to perform it live on a big stage in front of a whole bunch of people.
But it's the lower reaches of the voting table that holds the most joy. Mainly populated by transvestites and old men hammering away on guitars, there are many splendours to behold, and I highly recommend a quick visit to the official site to sample some of them yourself. If for nothing else than to sample the glorious marvel that is SuperEddy...
With a week of voting still to go, almost anything could happen. Coral Segovia will probably win it, as there's a general feeling among Eurovision fandom that it's her turn. But I suspect that there'll still be some thrills and spills along the way - particularly as our old mate El Gato has suddenly started creeping up the charts again!
When I first noticed that Europe's coolest first lady, Carla Bruni, was doing a stint on Jools Holland a few months back to promote her new album, I immediately assumed, as many of us must have, that it was some mere vanity project, existing only to boost the ego of a woman with impossible opportunity at her fingertips.
I didn't watch the show that night, but when, a couple of weeks back, I saw a massive pile of her album on sale for 99p by the checkout of my local hyper-discount record store, I reckoned it would be worth less than a quid of my money to see what horrors were inprinted on this shiny round disc. I rushed home, chucked it onto my stereo and prepared to giggle.
What I wasn't expecting was for it to be not only listenable, but a cracking little album. Bruni's breathy, minimalist style brings to mind the kind of husky teen ingenue that old rogues like Serge Gainsbourg used to get the best out of back in the day. Indeed, Bruni's backstoryprobably hindered sales of Comme Si de Rien n'Etait (translated as a somewhat knowing As If Nothing Happened) rather than encouraged them. But don't let her status as Sarkozy's missus, and her track record as an indulged heiress and lover of the powerful put you off, because it's a lovely album.
A little digging in the crates led me to discover that this is in fact her third album, her debut Quelqu'un M'a Dit being released some five years before she met the guvnor of France. This album is every bit as good as her more recent effort, Bruni's butterfly thin voice fluttering across gossamer thin melodies and brittle song structures. I was expecting something of far more bombast and bluster, but instead enjoy the floaty light brightness of her body of music work.
Her middle album, No Promises, was a little more poncey, putting to music the words of WB Yeats, Emily Dickinson, WH Auden and many more dusty old poets, and is currently trying to fit work on her fourth disc, including a collaboration with that old musical hack Lenny Kravitz, in between her civic duties and philanthropic doings. But as much as you try you can't knock her two albums of French language original songs. Seriously, if you see them going cheap somewhere give them a pop, as you may be pleasantly surprised.
And whatever you think of the woman personally, could you imagine what kind of album the other spouses of the leaders of the world would put out? Sarah Brown, get the singing lessons in - you've got three months to get the album out and help save your old man his job!
There's something about living on an island that turns its inhabitants a little batchy. Perhaps it's the isolation, perhaps it being cooped in with the same familiar faces day after day, or maybe it's just the sea air. But when that island is perched off the steamy coast of Western Sahara, has the world's third biggest volcano looming preganantly over it, and suffers the greasy footsteps of over five million tourists a year pacing (and puking on) it's pavements things are bound to be a little more unhinged than the workaday insanity of say an Anglesey or an Orkney.
So it came as no surprise to discover that the holiday isle of Tenerife is home to some of the most blisteringly unique rock and roll music on the globe.
I discovered it all quite by accident. I was having a peek around the fabulous Last FM website before a recent trip to Madrid to see if there were any gigs of note in town when we were there, when an entry for a band called Brutalizzed Kids caught my eye. Their gig was a week after our visit, but there was something about their album cover that lured me to find out a little more. A middle-aged gent, stripped to the waist with a wispy tache and dreadlocks piled up on his head and a world weary look on his face peered disapprovingly out of the screen. Whether he was a band member or just some bloke off the street I didn't know, but I rushed stright to their MySpace and was instantly struck by their fabulous shouty racket.
Their bombast is familiar, but still difficult to explain. Imagine the insistant industrial techno of Ministry or The Revolting Cocks fused with the sleazy Scandi rock and roll of Turbonegro or The Backyard Babies, sprinkled with the high tech energy of Pendulum and the filthy dirty basslines of someone like World Domination Enterprises from days gone by. And heavens I was hooked. The album Soy Muñeco has scarcely left my ears ever since - hit the link and buy the beggar, I implore you!
But then curiousity led me to wonder if they were an isolate incident, or if there was any similar noise on the island. Happily a quick MySpace trawl led me to loads more good stuff. Becerro are similarly noisy bunch, with a slightly more technofied edge, Ataud Vacante are old school punk with a sleazy edge,while 13 Motos are just a good old fashioned, nads out punk'n'roll act of the finest kind. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's plenty more - go search them out yourselves.
Every band is distinct, but all seem to share at least two members with the next. They say island life can be incestuous, but for me, this kind of cross-fertilization has led to some teriffically unique and brutal sounds. So next time your other half insists of dragging you to this holiday isle, ignore all the usual Brits-On-The-Piss sick in a basket bars and get yourself to the steamy clubs of Santa Cruz. Glorious treats await!
As I travel around our funny old globe I'm constantly discovering all sorts of amazing music - fabulous regional rebendings of punk rock, hip hop, bonkers techno pop, hectic folk, doomy metal and all sorts of other amazing local business that we back home can scarcely imagine.
So how come the music that gets sold to us under the banner of World always ends up being either some drearily worthy yoghurt weaving Sting-alike, or every country's version of Peter Gabriel and not all the good stuff? You know, the music people actually enjoy.
In my own tiny little way I want to help introduce you to some of that good stuff. If you're up for it...
