“Carol” is alone, but why? The world around her is full of life and people who care about her, yet she is alone and isolated from the rest of the world, and it seems to be by choice. She literally lives in the shadows; Polanski uses a lot of shadowy imagery that reflects on the idea of living in the shadows and helps create that isolated feeling.

Throughout the whole of the film you will be asking questions; Why? Who? What? When?, this is because “Carol” is silent and ambiguous; she never lets anybody know what’s wrong with her and you can get frustrated with her character at times because of this. It is an extremely clever idea though by Polanski as it forces you to keep watching for the answers to the questions that you ask throughout.

As the film goes on it gets more and more surreal and dream-like; “Carol” creates an idea that all of the events are just dreams, she seems so distant from reality. For example, she is raped by a man who suddenly appears in the house, yet, she does not seem to care the next day, and it causes the audience to wonder whether it was just a dream. You never quite know when you’re being shown reality in the film because strange imagery, as is the case in once scene, of walls cracking suddenly and arms appearing through them, force you to think that other parts of the film are just dreams and hallucinations.

Polanski has created a highly ambiguous film where not a lot of your questions are answered. This can be a little frustrating as you feel a tad cheated, however, the last shot of the film answers one main question about why “Carol” is in this isolated dream world and why she has killed people.

“Carol” murders her landlord and would-be lover; however, you may believe these parts to be out-of reality-dreams because of all the other events that happen to her as she locks herself away in her sisters’ house while her sister and her lover are on holiday. But why does she kill these men? This will all be revealed by a simple shot with no dialogue and no human emotion, just simple suggestion through this solitary shot.

That is the amazing thing; Polanski can reveal the main answer in the film simply through this final shot of “Carol” as a little girl in a family photograph. The sheer idea of using a shot of a photo to reveal the ideology behind the film seems insane, but it works flawlessly. The entire film provokes questions right up until the very last shot; nothing is ever revealed, not even really hinted at. Polanski could have revealed answers slowly throughout the film, yet he held on for that simple last shot so that the audience were asking and waiting for an answer the whole of the film, therefore forcing them to stay and watch until the end. All I can say is - that is great directing.

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I think he’s probably in for a bit of a shock when he has his first meeting with them. There have been numerous attempts to legitimise and monetise P2P file-sharing, but the record companies remain unconvinced. Even if they were willing, the royalties they’d demand are likely to be much more than TPB’s new owners would be planning to pay. And that’s assuming the record companies would be willing to do business at all with their least favourite online enterprise, even if it’s under new ownership.

Hans Pandeya, the boss of TPB buyers Global Gaming Factory, has told Business Week that his grand plan for The Pirate Bay is to build a massive worldwide P2P distribution network that could be used by companies looking to get content out to a mass audience but concerned about the bandwidth costs of serving content directly to every single user. Such a network would also be of interest, he reckons, to internet service providers, who are concerned that the increased use of multi-media services by consumers is draining bandwidth, pushing up their operating costs and hitting their profit margins.

A number of video-based content services have previously dabbled with the idea of utilising P2P technologies to ease the bandwidth use and therefore cost of delivering such content - each P2P user becomes a substation in a massive distribution network, so that people downloading content need only connect to a near-by user on the P2P network, and not all the way back to content source. If that makes sense. It sort of works, providing none of the substation owners is on a limited bandwidth internet package, in which case they might find other people use up their monthly allowance.

Anyway, it’s that kind of super-distribution network that Pandeya reckons is a viable business, and he hopes to use The Pirate Bay community to build it. In fact he reckons he can make enough money from the service to not only pay content owners, but also the community members who provide a substation.

Pandeya: “The technology will use the community of file-sharers to cut costs of data traffic for ISPs by more than a half. Users will earn money by joining, which can be spent on Pirate Bay’s other services [such as music] or transferred to their bank accounts”. The other services would also carry advertising, which Pandeya hopes would also help fund the operation.

It’s an interesting idea that’s for certain. And ambitious. Whether it will work is another matter entirely. Many commentators aren’t convinced. Net firms already exchange bandwidth and might not want to involve a third party (and they would, essentially, be buying back their own bandwidth), content owners might not want to work with a company with such a big piracy history (licensing content or using their distribution services) and other ad-funded content platforms are admitting it is taking longer than anticipated to grow ad revenues. Speaking to Business Week, Forrester Research’s Mark Mulligan said simply: “This doesn’t appear financially viable”.

UnLimited /CMU / www.cmumusicnetwork.co.uk

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Here’s what she told Maxim: “Warhol said art should be meaningful in the most shallow way. He was able to make commercial art that was taken seriously as fine art … [and] that’s what I’m doing too. When you listen to a song like ‘LoveGame’, is it communicating my soul to you? No… I make soulless electronic pop. But when you’re on ecstasy in a nightclub grinding up against someone and my music comes on, you’ll feel soul”.

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Tour dates:

18 Aug: London, Koko (Sold Out)
22 Aug: Green Man festival
31 Oct: London, Barbican Centre (with the LSO)
2 Nov: Glasgow, ABC
4 Nov: Manchester, Cathedral
6 Nov: Bristol, Anson Rooms

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He added that he expects the new LP to be ready next year.

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It rained continually for three months from the turn of 1992: a misty, spectral rain that looked passable until you stepped outside. Then it drenched you to the bone. On those dark mornings, I’d kick the Suzuki 100 until it snarled its ten years back at me, get out into the road and cling on fifteen piggy-back miles over the dark, wind-battered tops to the next town and the factory, always a bit late.

What time do you call this?

It was Alan, the works manager.

Get downstairs and start filling those bloody moulds - we’ve got orders to get out. It’s the last time I’m telling you. Next time you’re getting a warning!

It’s only ten minutes, Alan.

He gave me that cold, withering look managers do best and went downstairs to the factory floor. I clocked on, hung the jacket up on one of the kilns so it’d dry enough to absorb another six gallons of Atlantic mist on the way home, in the dark, sometimes with all the lights out except for one indicator flashing, polite motorists hooting.

I got to my bench. Everyone gave a jeer as I came in. I shared the basement room with Bob and his three packers, another caster called Ron and a bunch of miserable strip-lights. I smiled and went over to the radio to tune it into something other than Radio 2 for a change.

Don’t touch that fuckin’ dial, Jack! shouted Bob from behind a stack of cardboard boxes.

I slouched back over to my bench and noticing the moulds hadn’t dried properly overnight, borrowed Ron’s truck with a nod, loaded up and headed down for the basement for a dry set. A ‘best of’ Scott Walker and The Walker Brothers had just been released and Stewpot and gang had been playing the hits to death for the past few weeks;

The sun ain’t gonna shine anymore…
the sun ain’t gonna shine any more…

and looking out through those dimmed-out basement windows it sometimes seemed like it never would. What a bloody place to spend any portion of your early twenties.

Just as I got to the doorway, If You Go Away came on the little radio in the middle of the room, caked in sweat and clay dust; one of Jaques Brel’s songs translated into English by Rod McKuen who Bukowski once named as the three worst poets in America, but then I’m a sentimental old bollocks at times too…especially when I’m fresh back on the shelf again, as I was:

If you go away on this summer’s day - well
You might as well take the sun away…

That bloody sun. Jesus. I picked up an armful of piggy bank moulds and headed down to the cellar, followed by the sound of the machinery clanking, distant shouts, buzzing sounds, the pipes hissing, motors whirring and somewhere in there, that song, threaded in like a gold stitch - shit, I’d never heard music in that way before. And as I got into the cellar it grew ever more dim and distorted; paper thin and flaking, fragmented; these little shards of sounds coming through a door that hadn’t been unlocked in years. I stopped, put the moulds down and listened to the magic.

There’s something haunting about a melody heard far away; down staircases, cascading off cold stone and round blind corners that lend it a longing quality. It aches and clings. It was too much. I tried to shrug it off and got on with the moulds, not thinking too much about that girl, but it kept coming.

When I got back upstairs Scott had finished. Thank God. Then it was an endless procession of oldies - Frank Sinatra, Sam Cooke, Ella Fitzgerald; Ken Bruce taking the rise out of Jimmy Young; Johnny Kidd, Johnny Cash, Gary Puckett, Nancy Whiskey - all the way through to…lunch-time = a half hour strangled to death, hurrying to cram your soggy sandwiches down with a bag of Walkers for texture, so you’d have time to get a damp smoke in before the hooter went again and you were back to it, but I couldn’t get that song out of my head - or the way I’d heard it…as if from a music box on the dark, empty stage of a derelict Victorian music hall.

That weekend I went over to Torre Records and got a copy of Scott 3. The first song I played was If You Go Away…but it didn’t sound quite the same in my tiny room. I put the needle back to the beginning of side one, left the door ajar and went over the landing to the bathroom and sat on the jakes…it crackled a bit, as the family I was lodging with argued downstairs, and then filigreed through and out into Copenhagen:

I’ve been around too long, listening to the old landlady’s - hard-luck stories

I had to smirk -

Children aren’t afraid to laugh, when life amuses them

Jack! You’ve got a letter down here!

OK! I shouted back, the dog barking down in the kitchen as a pan lid hit the floor.

Eventually Big Louise blew in, sounding like some vista from Lawrence of Arabia, halting by a closed, paint-peeling door at the top of a flight of tenement stairs:

Didn’t time sound sweet yesterday:
In a world filled with friends,
You lose your way…

You done in there, Jack?

It was the landlord. He always took a box of matches with him into the john. His name was John. I went back in my room and shut the door…heard Thirty Century Man for the first time with its lullaby ending; Two Ragged Soldiers; We Came Through reminding me of a D.H. Lawrence book of a similar name…on another wet, lonely Torquay United 0, Doncaster Rovers 1, closed-down chip shop Saturday afternoon in Devonshire, England. It felt great. I lay there on my damp bed and allowed myself to feel all right for a while as the dog got kicked out into the rain and the landlady swore the dinner into the trash.

Not long after that the bike conked out for good so I started hitch-hiking to work and back; on one occasion being totally ignored by Keith Floyd and his buxom young thing at the wheel of his Jaguar Thingy, but somehow I never got that second warning…thanks to a young couple who gave me a regular ride in…not until one day the following winter when the piggy banks and spoon-rests and flower vases weren’t selling anymore and they all came in at once. They laid me off together with all the others who were last in, but I wasn’t bothered. I got another job, in another pottery and carried on…ingesting those first Scott Walker solo albums in the evenings…but it’s Scott 3 that remains the favourite; the difficult one S.W. himself described as sounding careless…oh, well.

The last three songs on 3, Scott leans on Brel again, ending with If You Go Away, but it’s never sounded quite like it did that first time, going down those bare bulb factory steps to the cellar. Some people say it depends on your speakers. Others say it’s the amp. I say it’s that secret you swore when you were seven years old; that merry-go-round nightmare you awoke from alone and sweating and what your Auntie Jean told you never to do again that clammy summer afternoon in 1981 or you’d go blind.

Nowadays the old factory’s been converted into luxury flats; all Coldplay and Simon Cowell, I imagine. Something is always lost. But I can still hear Scott Walker in the pipes and through that locked cob-web door. That, nothing changes. And, pretty soon after getting laid off, I stopped using my Walkman…and probably never will get an MP3 player. As I said, I’m sentimental. You can’t buy music… or download it.

Scott Walker / Scott 3

Philips (UK), Smash (US)

1969

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Venue: The Brudenell Social Club

Location: Queens Road, LS6

Event Date: Friday 10th July

Price: £5 OTD

Other Info: Dolby Anol (Tigerbass and Back Yard Recordings)

Label mates with Gossip, Chromeo, KID606 and Eats Tapes, DOLBY ANOL are big Leeds favourite faces! They play all over the place from NYC to Moscow to Glasto back to their Glasgow home. The duo make mucky electro wonkytronics with their lapdogs, no quitting until you are dancing and this, sir/madam, is going to be a late one.

Zun Zun Egui (Blank Tapes Records)
This is Kush’s new band, ex-Designer Babies front man. Designer Babies are an all kicking and screaming legend of a band from Nottingham. ZUN ZUN EGUI have already played with David Byrne in the Royal Festival Hall, London and this is their first Leeds gig and not to be missed!

“They make a hypnotic blare-out sound that is making a joyful noise. Very on the corner, off it’s head and a blast. This is “tropicalism” but with a influence of subterranean shaped rock edges and quick edits, Japanese progressive epicness and a heavy dose of Fela Kuti inspired eternal groove. East African guitar practise hotwired to Zappa like subversions and underpinned by a thumping rhythm section sounds hot. This is where the wild music lives on. Political, inspirational and dance.” - Incubate ezine (http://incubate.org/2009/)

The only thing I could think of to add to that is that it reminds me of the pleasant feeling of listening to Captain Beefheart&The Magic Band’s loveable nonesense and wailings.

CHOPS! (Upset! The Rhythm & Chinchillatone)

This is what Upset! The Rhythm say…
“CHOPS are a wild, damaged-dance band, who leapt from the cauldron of Leeds’ ever-evolving DIY musical stew and hit the ground running in 2007, hellbent on perfecting their spontaneous combustion of jazzoid excess and lock-popping party bombs.

The trio married up their love of fidgety drum patterns, effect-drenched saxophone and synthesizer showdowns in such a way that every broken sound that swelled forth was caked in euphoria and creeped-out gravity.”

Cowtown (On the Bone & Chinchillatone)
‘Space rocket devo socks with tints of cow wow’ - The Observer

Fizzy, electric, skewed tunage with a Deerhoof/Devo pile-up and bright primary colours.

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It would be fair to say that this Canadian five-piece is ‘too punk’, and indeed their self-titled debut was dangerously rough and disjointed. However, they developed with Watch Out in 2004, and 2006’s Crisis was a coming-of-age album now set on a well-deserved pedestal. They play no-nonsense, aggressive-melodic punk, which despite being emotive could never be tarred with the Emo brush. They’re still loud and fast, but now they have grown up a bit, their sound is suddenly accessible. The album features eleven decent rock songs, immaculately produced and a far cry from their ‘Pulmonary Archery’ days. Opening track ‘Old Crows’ reinforces this view: the lyrics “We are not the kids we used to be” immediately suggests a ‘mature’ album. The video for leading single ‘Young Cardinals’ also makes a point of fan loyalty: an audience continuing to mosh even as the boat carrying them and the band enters the spray of Niagara Falls.

The reason for this dedication may be justified, as their sound is rather good. They combine beefy chord riffs, solid bass, and that classic non-stop one- or two-note droning that occasionally sounds like an air-raid siren or a fly in the room, putting the listener slightly on edge. Alexisonfire are also still making use of their almost-unique advantage of three singers: the rock of Wade MacNeil’s old-school gruff melody, covered by the clean smooth paper of Dallas Green, in turn sliced by the scissors of George Pettit’s sharp screams, which apparently have blunted slightly since Crisis.

There is exemplary punk drumming from Jordan ‘Ratbeard’ Hastings, all driving rumble and crashes and roll-fills, which creates real dynamism, as does the lack of indulgent introductions or instrumental tracks: they just jump straight in and don’t stop until the last track, the tortuously slow and poignant ‘Burial’. Green’s melodies remain a highlight: ethereally pure, soulful, and infallibly emotive in content and tone, giving him every chorus and generally more prevalence than in previous albums is a smart move. Standout track ‘The Northern’ may be a ballad but it’s not in the least calming or passive: the yearning gospel-like chorus, Green’s eerie refrains of “Hallelujah”, and walls of organ chords, make this a desperately sad and haunting interlude. However, the real gem (excuse the pun) has got to be ‘Emerald Street’: starting with pummelling drums, introducing one of the most crushing riffs they’ve written, leading to a killer chorus; this is bound to be a highlight of their Reading/Leeds appearances and their October tour.

So, a great album… but not phenomenal. Nobody can begrudge maturation, and lamenting the lost ‘heaviness’ of a band is just sad; but this new accessibility is tainted with repetitive, sing-along choruses, and of course, anyone shouting “One, two, three, four!” before a chorus deserves a slap. The album’s journey is disrupted slightly by ‘Accept Crime’ and ‘Midnight Regulations’, which just feel like mediocre filler, making this album a definite step down from Crisis. Green’s breathtaking solo project City and Colour, along with other members’ various side-projects, have kept fans going in the intermittent three years. Whether or not it was worth the wait is open to debate, but Alexisonfire will no doubt retain their popularity, because of their ability to inspire emotion and diehard dedication whatever they do.

www.theonlybandever.com

Record Label: Dine Alone
Release Date: 23.06.09

Old Crows/Young Cardinals: 7/10

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Professor Green hasn’t exactly caught alight; once signed to Mike Skinner’s label The Beats, the London based MC has struggled to breakthrough (I’m not sure we can count that appearence on the remix of that Twang song ‘Either Way’). Though talk of attaining commercial success seems rather trivial considering Green got stabbed a couple of months ago. You wouldn’t call this a comeback, but ‘Hard Night Out’ is a purposeful return.

Green has the pedigree, he’s a veteran of high profile rap battles; therefore he possesses the all important factor of credibility. The problem Green has found is that there is a glass ceiling in white rap, his former label boss (who I wouldn’t personally call a rapper) Mike Skinner is the face of the UK, Eminem is the Godfather who runs the world. So really Green has to take it from a different angle, he needs to put his music across in a way that differentiates himself from Skinner and Eminem. He does so by incorporating a little rock into the mix.

Strangely this makes Green sound like a more coherent Jamie T. Propelling ‘Hard Night Out’ is a dirty bass line; the track rocks out without removing the stabilizers. Green’s fiery delivery quickly retells his story of an eventful evening that descended into trouble. I suppose ‘Hard Night Out’ is a close cousin to Lethal Bizzle’s crossover release ‘Police on My Back’ in style, though in delivery it reminds me a lot of Plan B (whatever happened to that guy?), only backed by a full band.

You may have heard B-side ‘Upper Clapton Dance’ before as it featured on Green’s 2006 release Lecture #1. Over a Classical music sample Green raps about the hell of Hackney, painting a grim picture of crime and violence. His delivery is biting, but because I’ve heard this track already I’m wondering whether Green is still sat at the crossroads, unsure whether to keep it traditional or attempt to crossover. Where’s the new material?

‘Hard Night Out’ is a frustrating single; it would be churlish to suggest Green lacks skills. He’s not Asher Roth, but there is nothing on this single to suggest that 2009 will be Green’s breakthrough moment. He’s caught between following what’s hot and trying to put together that elusive hit.

Release Date: 9th July

http://twitter.com/professorgreen
http://www.myspace.com/professorgreen

Hard Night Out: 6/10

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Upon their arrival on the Dublin scene in 2007, these four youngsters from Terenure were hailed by the Irish media as a cross between Jeff Buckley and The Libertines, with perhaps a touch of Phil Lynott’s second coming.

Fronted by Danny O’Reilly (son of Mary Black), and nominated for three Meteor Awards in total, they managed to have their first single “San Diego Song” spend twenty-four long weeks in the Irish singles chart. So excited were we to finally have a credible indie act on the island, in fact, that we may have over-reached ourselves. Turns out this debut - Heroes or Ghosts - isn’t much to get excited about after all.

The opener (and single), “Grace Don’t Wait,” seems oddly under-produced given all the hype; still, there’s much to be said for low-fi Irish indie-rock (I mean, probably?) and to be totally fair, it is a strong track. Still, the catchy sing-along chorus is more Kooks than Libertines, and indeed the band’s homage to Luke Pritchard’s gang continues more or less throughout the album with likeable but hardly stellar offerings such as “Make a Change” and “I Choose Love”.

“San Diego Song” - a kind of calculated attempt at sounding like a college student - probably boasts the most impressive vocal of the album, as well as the now-legendary chorus line: “We sleep all day and we drink all night/We are not wasting our time”. While it goes down well at the bands’ many (many many) concerts, it comes off a little less impressive on record, as do many of the songs. “Heroes or Ghosts,” another single, fares somewhat better in this regard, being the acoustic ballady thing that it is. Here again, O’Reilly proves himself an able vocalist and really, for a lightweight indie pop act, the lyrics are only mildly terrible.

Sadly, the metaphorical B-Side of the album is far more disappointing. A few bright moments - “Filtho” in particular - fail to light up a wasteland of under-written songs bulked up with noisy guitar and long pauses between words. The Kooks are swapped for a wan impression of Snow Patrol on “Decision Time,” while “The Real World,” features a flailing attempt at grunge, but none of it feels particularly impassioned - or bears the slightest resemblance to poor old Jeff Buckley, while we’re at it.

By all accounts a bunch of very lovely young men, The Coronas have here produced nothing more than a sturdy little pop album boasting a few singles and quite a lot of filler. Better luck next time, lads. We’ll keep an eye.

Heroes Or Ghosts: 6/10

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Bassist Charlie Cave told Absolute Radio: “All the things we’ve achieved we can instantly relate X number of hours of immensely hard work to. Whether it be touring, which means the ridiculous logistics of planes to and from places and 16-hour overnight drives. Whatever it is, I certainly honestly don’t feel as though any of the success we’ve had over the last year has not been deserved in comparison to the work we’ve done… we’ve worked really, really hard.”

I feel duty bound to say, at this point, that plenty of bands, and indeed, non-bands, work that hard, are talented and clever, and never, ever achieve that level of success.

Of the the band’s upcoming shows supporting Coldplay singer Harry McVeigh added: “The Coldplay dates are going to be super exciting for two reasons. One, because we’re obviously supporting one of the biggest bands in the world. But also, the other support is Girls Aloud and Jay-Z, which is going to be amazing”.

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As previously reported, after the three founders and main funder of the rogue BitTorrent tracker were found guilty of all kinds of copyright infringement and sentenced to a year in the slammer, some alleged that the judge who heard the case, Tomas Norstrom, was biased because he was a member of two intellectual property organisations. His membership of those groups, the Pirate Bay Four’s legal reps argued, made him biased towards the copyright owners who were suing them.

Earlier this month the District Court in which Norstrom sits said it didn’t believe their man was biased, adding that he had only joined the two IP bodies so that he was better informed on the copyright issues being assessed in the Pirate Bay trial. And now the Swedish Court Of Appeal, who are considering the bias issue as part of the Pirate Bay Four’s full appeal, have said they don’t believe Norstrom was biased either, though they did say he should have made all parties aware of his membership of the IP groups before the trial began.

That ruling means the Four’s claims for a complete retrial have now been fully turned down - though their application for an appeal hearing is still being considered by the appellate court.

Needless to say the appeal court’s ruling wasn’t welcomed by supporters of the Bay, who say that judges in the Appeal Court were also biased. Meanwhile, the Bay’s Head Of Comedy Peter Sunde, a defendant himself of course, announced via Twitter he is considering taking the matter to the European Court Of Human Rights. He tweeted: “The Pirate Bay will now file charges against Sweden for violation for Human Rights - more info later - (the bias-judge is himself biased…)”.

Meanwhile Christian Engstrom of the Bay supporting Swedish Pirate Party, which, of course, recently won seats in the European Parliament, told a Swedish radio station: “This is part of a pattern. It shows that the Swedish legal system is no longer to be trusted when it comes to copyright cases. It’s a travesty of justice quite simply. I’ve been a lay judge for seven years and I’ve never seen an indictment as bad as the Pirate Bay verdict. But that didn’t stop the court from setting ridiculous sentences”.

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