Bob & Roberta Smith Stick It To The Man

Bob & Roberta Smith (Patrick Brill) Speaks Out...

In a recent post I alluded to it being part of an Artists’ role to bear witness and respond creatively to events without necessarily hoping to change them.  In that case I was discussing the weather, in which context it’s probably only realistic to admit to a degree of helpless fatalism, (although it might be an idea to stop fuelling the fire, at least).  Sometimes, however, in the field of human affairs, it becomes insufficient to merely observe and record.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Make Art Not War', Commercial Paint On Plywood,  1997 

For many years, I consciously tried to avoid engaging with politics.  My general position would have included the notion that “REALITY’ is so much bigger and more engaging than the self-serving, factional disputes of various narrow interest groups.  Perhaps the cappuccino fuelled vacuity of Blairite Britain afforded the anaesthetic luxury of such detachment but it’s a position that is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.  The recent palaver over Madam Thatcher and her funeral reminded me of how revved up I used to get about the stunts she and her gang pulled in the 80s and early 90s.  I guess it’s no coincidence that many of the same feelings have returned.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Join The Art Party', Commercial Paint On Panel, 2012

Everyone must find their own breaking point and degree of engagement but it seems too lame for the injustices and moral/cultural bankruptcy being inflicted on us under the cover of the current crisis in Capitalism, to go overlooked or unprotested.  Thus, I find myself drawn again to the work of Bob & Roberta Smith, (actually the British artist Patrick Brill).  It is, I think, one example of how to accept the task of social engagement with humour and goodwill but retain artistic integrity.

Mark Tichner, 'We Want Responsibility To Be Shared By All',
Ink Jet Print On Aluminium, 2004

I first noticed Smith & Smiths’ work, (I’ll maintain the fiction for the purposes of this post), a few years ago when I started to research various artists who had used text and typography within visual art.  Like the work of his contemporary, Mark Tichner, it draws upon identifiable popular stylistic tropes in pursuit of a conceptual, philosophical or political project.  Like many figures from the turn of the century YBA moment in British art, he achieves this in a more visually entertaining, less theoretical way than much of the ‘hard’, Conceptualism of the 60s and 70s.  Indeed, this may actually be the most useful legacy of ‘BritArt’ in general.  At the remove of a few years it feels easier to assess much of the work produced during that period and to separate the more interesting or insightful examples from the mere shock tactics and savvy marketing usually associated with it.  As ever, it’s more revealing to view an artist’s output over the long haul than merely in terms of any introductory splash they might make.

Just Going To Need To Watch The Spelling Though B & R

In Smith & Smith’s case, the appropriation of a slightly wonky, naïve folk style, somewhere between traditional signwriting and the homemade political placard now seems less ironically Post Modern and more directly appropriate to the times we find ourselves in.  Since he first emerged we’ve witnessed global economic meltdown, a vocal Anti-Capitalist movement, the rise of blind religious hatreds and plenty of geopolitical upheaval.  Here, the biggest issues revolve around the pernicious attempts by our current government to dismantle much of what makes Britain tolerable, nominally to repay the massive public/private debts of a mismanaged economy, but also to maintain the fiction that only a privatised marketplace can provide a sustainable, fulfilling future for everyone.  Protest placards, street-level ‘situations’ and underground or community action once more feel like the currency of our times rather than mere cultural references.

Bob & Roberta Smith, Public Art Event, Details Unknown 

There have always been plenty of High Art in-jokes in Smith/Smith’s work and a certain element of philosophical content behind the humourous facade.  If this marks him out as a poseur or left wing Art Luvvie to some, it is to ignore that, for many practitioners, the very act of producing art is an intrinsically political and/or philosophical pursuit.  Smith & Smith simply puts those elements at the front end of his art.  He has also demonstrated a willingness to bring his practice to ‘the street’ via numerous public art events and campaigns of an essentially democratic, inclusive nature.  Perhaps it is his refusal to leave specialist knowledge and an engagement with ideas marginalized within galleries for the delectation of an elite that actually annoys some.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Letter To Michael Gove', Commercial Paint On Board, 2012

This willingness to allow the worlds of ‘serious’ Art, philosophy and street politics to run into each other seems particularly vital if the Government-promoted philistinisation of Britain and attempted down-grading of creativity and critical thinking within education is to be resisted.  As many people have already twigged, this looks like an attempt to reshape the intellectual landscape and hijack the future for ideological ends, (having already claimed the past and wrecked the present).  Education Secretary, Michael Gove’s appalling vision of the future appears to be one in which, having been denied a financial stake in society, large sectors of the population are also to be denied the chance to even imagine an alternative to bleak utilitarianism or find artistic expression within themselves.  I also note, with a shrug, Culture Secretary Maria Miller’s recent assertion that the only Art activities worth funding are those of direct benefit to the floundering economy.  Most of us involved with this stuff know it’s actually a bit more important than that, regardless of whether you do or don't make a living from it.

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Art Party Messages', Commercial Paint On Plywood, 2012

R&B Smith’s open letter to Gove of 2011 has been rendered technically obsolete in its specifics by the abandonment of the proposed EBacc qualification. However it is absolutely on the money in general terms, still very relevant, and funny into the bargain.  I’d urge you to read it in full.  I also note the central role played by the artist in promoting The Art Party, a lobby group that appears to be both philosophical and artistic as well as politically campaigning in nature.  It’s membership criteria require simply that one be a creative individual on some level, highlighting an intent that is communal and far wider than the merely factional.  It also reflects the status of arts as a fundamental strand of human experience, rather than an irrelevant, minority specialisation as Gove and his ilk appear to claim, (and I’m ready to lose it big style with anyone using the word ‘Hobby’)

Bob & Roberta Smith, 'Art Party Conference Poster', 2013

It’s all too easy to become despondent about the state of things and so, encouraging having artists like Bob & Roberta Smith around just now.  The charming seaside jollity of his poster for the upcoming Art Party conference in November proves it’s possible to become actively engaged, produce valid art in opposition and remain cheerfully positive in the process.

...To Maintain High Visibility For The Arts

R.I.P. Storm Thorgerson

Storm Thorgerson In Recent Years

I was saddened to hear of the demise of designer and photographer, Storm Thorgerson, as the result of cancer, yesterday.  Thorgerson, aged 69, was a mainstay of the noted graphic design house, Hipgnosis, and thus, became responsible for some of the most memorable record sleeve designs of the late 60s and 70s.

'Elegy', By The Nice, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis, 1971

It feels like another part of my early years has slipped away. In the pre-Punk era when I first began taking notice of and acquiring music, the 12-inch vinyl album, preferably in a luxurious gatefold sleeve, was the default format for the Prog. connoisseur, and was often carried under the arm as a badge of hipness and tribal allegiance.  Hipgnosis’ designs were amongst the most intriguingly arty, with their blend of twisted Romanticism, inventive Surrealism and elegant production values.  It’s still impressive to see the degrees of manipulation they were able to bring to analogue photography in the days long before Photoshop and digital imaging.  The attention to detail was always high and images were often combined with stylish, one-off typographic design or, most daringly, no type on the outer sleeve whatsoever.

'Animals', By Pink Floyd, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis, 1977

Thorgerson was part of what David Gilmore once labeled ‘The Cambridge Mafia’, - that inner circle of dissenting, middle class kids from which Pink Floyd drew its core members.  It’s with their records that he’s most closely associated.  My own personal favourite is the front cover of ‘Atom Heart Mother’ and I’ve often puzzled over how a simple image of a Friesian cow in a bland landscape could have such resonance.  It’s the perfect cow somehow, and the photograph has been subjected to just the right degree of subtle manipulation.  The whole thing just reeks of that strangely English, pastoral trippiness with which the band is best associated.

'Atom Heart Mother' By Pink Floyd, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis, 1970

  

The slick Hipgnosis style, along with much of the music it augmented, was swept away by the whirlwind of Punk fashion in the late 70s, although Thorgerson must have earned a good living from the endless repackaging of luxury Floyd products alone in subsequent years.  Nonetheless, his imagery made a big impression on me at a formative age, in an era when ‘quality’ seemed important and music came in total packages.

'Phenomenon' By UFO, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis, 1974

'Uno', By Uno, Storm Thorgerson/Hipgnosis, Date Unknown

I note with interest the current, new found retro-fetishism of vinyl as a format of choice amongst a new generation of affluent connoisseurs.  In the age of the digital download and shared file, it’s ironic to think that, via the classic reissue, Thorgerson’s imagery may once again decorate someone’s stylish pad in all its 12-inch glory. 

'Exai': Autechre

Some Context:

Autechre is the Rochdale-based duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth who, for an astonishing 26 years now, have gained a highly respected name as purveyors of uncompromising, left-field electronica.  Their extensive back-catalogue comprises ten previous albums and numerous E.P.s.  This eleventh album, 'Exai', is a double package, clocking in around the two-hour mark.  It suggests they don't plan to stem that prolific tide just yet.

Autechre.  Rob Brown (L.), Sean Booth (R.).

The Ae sound is famously obscure, complex and, at it's furthest edges, highly challenging.  As far as it can be divined, their M.O. leans heavily on current software but may also involve the sabotaging of both digital and analogue synthesizers, and the application of homegrown digital algorithms to pervert generated sounds into baffling mis-shapes.  There have been occasional geeky rumours of military hardware.  By the time of 2001's 'Confield', or 'Draft 7.30' in 2003, their music had become so abstruse that it seemed to mostly represent the effects of complex programming on beat patterns.  It's possible to imagine that some of this stuff was devised by writing code to specifically modify each bar or individual beat in a different way.  'Unquantized' doesn't get close; rhythms appeared programmed to metastize uncontrollably and progressively randomise themselves.  The music wasn't so much produced as subjected to invasive experimental procedures under lab conditions.

Despite all their difficult number crunching, Autechre themselves have always claimed to be old-school Hip-Hop and Electro enthusiasts at heart.  There has often been a sense that their pieces derive from a recognisable rhythm or even a tune, even if only Brown & Booth actually know where they buried it.  More recent recordings have seen a slight rounding out of their sound once more, with 2008's 'Quaristice' and 2010's 'Oversteps' leaning towards the atmospherics of their earliest work and the length 'Move of Ten', E.P. also from 2010, featuring beats you might actually dance to, (you still wouldn't pull, mind).  So where does that leave 'Exai', with its punning title, customarily opaque track labels and intimidating scale?  More to the point, do Autechre actually make me feel anything or did all those ones and zeros die in vain?

Rigourously Formal; Very Focussed; Tonally Varied; With Pure Sound
 At The Very Centre.  Says It All Really

Response:

Autechre hardly create 'Soul' music but I do find immense sensory stimulation within their work and it's from this that vivid imaginative connections and yes, - emotional responses, gradually emerge over repeated listens.  Here, instead of trying to encompass 'Exai' in its entirety, I'll respond to four specific tracks that have made a particular impression on me.

'Irlite’ (Get 0)' (1/2):  The album's second track is one of it's longest, at a smidge over ten minutes, and one that breaks in half around a distinct central lacuna.  After an opening moment of apparent chaos, the first passage establishes a bouncy forward momentum and a dialogue between an insistent, ticking rhythm and an ominous, rubbery sub-bass.  Throughout this opening movement the top end prevails.  The beats clack on through numerous patches of interference, becoming heavily embroidered by distorted Electro flourishes but retaining their regular metric identity.  I'm reminded of urban transit carriages traversing the dense, complex environment of a modern metropolis on clearly delineated tracks.  The music speaks of an earlier moment of optimistic techno-futurism, albeit one becoming somewhat confused by multiple distractions.  The metronomic rhythm counts time reassuringly and there's even a slight hint of Jazz-Funk about the shards of synthetic melody.

After pausing with a deep ambient sigh, the track proceeds, apparently in similar fashion, but a more forbidding mood emerges now.  The big, grumbling Dubstep bottom grows progressively dominant and washes of miasmic ambience create an increasing air of suspense.  Although the bright synths briefly coalesce into something almost resembling a tune, the beats degenerate into irregularity, fading from rhythmic foundation to mere embellishment.  I'm left reflecting on the relationship between the well-regulated machine ethic of older electronica and more organic dread-laden forms of recent years.  It parallels the ways that uncertainty and potential threat so often haunt the shadows of what remains of the Modernist 'future' and how reality and entropy must abrade any Utopia.

Ae Demonstrate Their Understanding Of The Importance of Beautifully
Packaged Artefacts...

  

'Bladelores' (1/9):  'Bladelores' is an even longer piece that gives the lie to the idea that Autechre only deal in cold, grey, hard-edged sounds.  It features laid-back Hip-hop style beats and a singularly squelchy bass line but the track's most notable characteristic is its vapourousness.  It's announced from the off by the clouds of fuzzy reverb applied to the percussion and prevails via washes of synthesizer and processed organ sound that evoke an ethereality far greater than Ae connoisseurs might normally expect.  The track's extended coda is just a gorgeous sheet of very subtly textured ambiance.

Mentally, I see a city skyline, - its architectural forms softened through a filter of dawn mist or polluted heat haze.  It gives me the feeling of delicious detachment one might get on observing the scene from a high vantage point and also the sense of immense possibilities experienced on a mid-summer morning with no duties to perform.

...And Of Standing Around In Bleak Industrial Locations

  

'Nodezsh' (2/2):  This track is a great combination of Autechre's typically frigid atmospherics and a rhythm pattern that threatens random breakdown but proves, perversely, to be more regular than expected.  It opens with stark synth stabs before settling into a stumbling pattern of punchy rhythms built from sputtering snares and dull metallic beats.  Threaded through this rickety structure are broad washes of echoing tone and repetitious, incomplete phrases of a higher, static-fuzzed timbre.  Many of the album's tracks have perfunctory, or even arbitrary endings but 'Nodezsh' dies away rather thoughtfully, receding into the distance under thickening blankets of reverb and muffled distortion.

This track first captured my imagination during a hurried drive through swirling snow between Leicester and Nottingham, establishing the sense-memory I now associate with it.  Peering through an increasingly dense interference pattern of wind-churned particles, my perceptions of both driving and music synchronized into an overall sensation of vulnerability and frustrated purpose in an entropic environment.  The unbalanced yet propulsive percussion clearly echoed the irregular buffeting being dealt my car but also suggested the mis-firing of failing machinery as Britain's infrastructure began to buckle and its landscapes became clogged by drifts of late-season snow.

‘Yjy Ux’ (2/8):  ‘Yjy Ux’ concludes the album and is another atmospheric mood piece.  Its general esthetic is pleasingly sparse and distinctly liquid as it proceeds with stately melancholy over a slow, irregular beat.  It seems to tap into Ae’s origins in a rain-soaked Lancastrian landscape of industrial architecture decaying into grimy dereliction.  The most dynamic elements are the percussive splashes that pepper the track like heavy water droplets shed from rusted girders into murky puddles.  In the sparsest passages, certain note clusters resemble the rattle of corrugated sheeting stirring in the wind.

The track’s position on the album can be no accident.  Throughout it’s duration it threatens to run out of momentum and its whole function seems to be to mark the passing of activity.  Eventually, it sputters to rest as if the incessant rain has penetrated the last circuit, shorting everything out once and for all.

Certain reviewers have pigeonholed ‘Exai’ as an over-long grab bag of random sound files lacking any unifying theme or overall identity.  Others claim that it plays to Ae’s comfortable strengths without breaking any new ground.  Perhaps it’s just a function of my middle-aged attention span and comfort with the album format generally, but I have happily listened to the whole thing right through on numerous occasions now, and find these criticisms to be rather short sighted.

In doing so I’ve detected various recurring motifs, most noticeably the playing-out of struggles between conflicting elements within individual tracks, and the sense of structures progressively succumbing to the forces of entropy and decay.  As already mentioned, many pieces here also create a palpable sense of atmosphere and environment.  It would also be wrong to ignore how adeptly Brown & Booth incorporate newer sonic elements, such as wobbly sub-bass), into their existing toolbox.  Even if ‘Exai’ is primarily a monument to their established strengths, it’s still a fascinating edifice to wander around inside.

Further Listening:

‘Oversteps’, Autechre

‘Noisette’, Soft Machine

‘Amazing Grace’, Spiritualized

‘Technicolour’, Disco Inferno

‘Ufabulum’, Squarepusher

‘Somer’, Deepchord

‘Stand Down Margaret’, The Beat

‘St. Dominic’s Preview’, Van Morrison

‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!’, Godspeed You! Black Emperor

‘All This Useless Beauty’, Elvis Costello & The Attractions