Alpine Punk Anyone? The Genius of Attwenger (and John Peel)

I always struggle when someone asks me what sort of music I like. The honest if facetious sounding answer is good music, of any sort. This seems to run counter to a common expectation that you should instead name a limited number of widely recognised genres, bands or singers. Musical categories are something of a necessary evil; they provide a vocabulary for trying to describe what you hear and feel but can also act more negatively in reverse by creating perceived boundaries beyond which many fear to tread. This can be reinforced by the music media which often operates in a correspondingly compartmentalised fashion, with both media and public hence having to choose which individual “compartments” they are going to engage with, the natural consequence being that all else gets excluded.

I’ve just finished reading the hefty, addictive and cumulatively impressive tome Good Night and Good Riddance by David Cavanagh which documents the late great radio DJ John Peels’ approach to, and profound influence on, new music engagement and taste in Britain. 35 years of subversive and provocative broadcasting that miraculously survived BBC conservatism allowed Peel to encourage large numbers of new unconventional musicians, and steered listeners to the vastly enriched world thus created. However, Peel broadcasts were never easy listening; they were akin to panning for gold: often deeply uncomfortable, patience testing, and with large amounts of crap to get through. Yet you still knew you were in the best possible place to encounter genuinely life-changing nuggets, and so you did – everyone who stuck with it will have their own prizes.

A key part of Peels radio approach was a kind of shock tactic; in addition to being willing to play virtually anything on his shows, however obscure, rough or provocative, and of any genre, as long as it had some sort of (often well disguised to his listeners) merit to his ears, he made a particular point of sequencing tracks in the most jarring way possible. This left the listener all over the place, constantly trying to re-adjust; it was hard work and challenging – but I soon realised that was the point, to (often brutally) challenge his audience, to see if they would “get” yet another music possibility. In so doing they had to constantly question their current preferences and boundaries – mind expanding stuff.

All of which is a rather long-winded introduction to celebrating a rare new release by one of my favourite category-busting bands of the last twenty years. A largely unrecognised duo from Austria about which Peel in typically perfunctory style simply said “I have no idea what it’s all about, but I like the general noise a great deal”.

Attwenger

Attwenger comprise Markus Binder and Hans-Peter Falkner from Linz, Austria who on their emergence in the early 1990s had a highly distinctive, rapid, in-your-face sound, which could be broadly described as manically fast drums and accordion overlaid with inscrutable Germanic lyrics, often spoken rather than sung. It was sufficiently new, raw and engaging that it provoked the (possibly tongue-in-cheek) coining of a new genre – Alpine Punk, recognising its core building blocks lay in the traditional music and instruments of their homeland. Their initial 1991 release Most captures this style best, and is still a fun listen – with even the occasional yodel creeping in. Others such as the notable Bavarian band Hundsbuam Miserablige subsequently joined in and developed the theme further (their leader inspired by an Attwenger concert), and their eponymous first album from 1996 is also well worth a spin.

Early Attwenger were highly influential in firing up a whole Alpine New Wave and enjoyed considerable acclaim, locally at least, to the extent that it all got a bit much and they ceased to exist in 1995 to get a break from it all. Two years later however, they roared back with something very different, and this ability to move on with great originality and panache has proved to be one of their key assets. The 1997 release Song left the punk moniker well behind and hinted at how their longer term evolution would progress, to something far more sophisticated and interesting. Dominated by clubby repetitive trip-hop and jungle beats, centred around the synthesizer with only light-touch folk and traditional elements, Song broke very different ground with its small number of long mesmerising tracks. Yet it in turn was something of a transitional step, marking out new territory of interest, before inventively amalgamating this with the earlier more traditionally based style to arrive at a far more creative, varied, yet balanced and satisfying sound that gelled fully for the first time in 2002 on the album Sun, which took them to a whole new level and remains a firm favourite of mine.

Attwenger largely sing/speak in an Upper Austrian dialect that is beyond even many Bavarians, let alone a wider audience; a situation the duo use to advantage by treating the vocals more as another interesting sound source than an explicit source of meaning. But with each album from Sun onwards it’s got a lot more intriguing than that; wordplay has become a key part of their art, with careful positioning and emphasis of occasional words or phrases that have alternative meanings across several languages they create fascinating ambiguities and pulses of meaning (or possible meaning anyway) that jump out at the careful listener of a particular language in time with the music. It can all get quite beguiling.

 

This complex and absorbing style has developed and matured in unhurried fashion from Sun through the subsequent albums Dog (2005) and Flux (2011), to the very pleasing latest offering a couple of months ago, Spot. The latter is an object lesson in creativity and sophistication, with 23 diverse tracks nearly all under two and half minutes, showcasing a level of entertaining and playful inventiveness that most artists would give an arm for. Seek it or its predecessors out for a rewarding new musical experience ranging from the languid to the frenetic. Oh, and play it loud for greatest appreciation, this really isn’t music for half-measures.

Getting my first Attwenger albums in pre-internet times was a rather mysterious experience; sending cheques off to the sole UK distributers, the splendidly named Klang Records at the Tolkienesque address of Midgehole Road, Hebden Bridge in the deepest darkest Pennines. I had visions of a flea-ridden establishment like something from the slightly disturbing TV black comedy series The League of Gentlemen. They now have a clunky, rarely updated website of exquisitely obscure recordings – are they really still there I sometimes wonder?

Coincidentally I only recently discovered that klang is German for sound – so actually a rather boring name. Sometimes it’s better not to know; although such changes in perception with language are pure Attwenger!

 

Despite nearly 25 years of inspired music making Attwenger are hardly known in Britain and as such they epitomise the great music that is out there in the wider musical world that many would find exciting and rewarding if only they knew about it and could hear it for themselves. John Peel was a special and relatively lonely explorer and champion of new music on the national airwaves in his time, an impressive one-stop shop for those with sufficient open-minded hunger. A few others on the radio have subsequently picked up the baton to varying degrees, and arguably across a wider front, though generally with a lot less appetite for the truly experimental and half-formed. But the key now, in this digital era, is perhaps for each of us to develop that appetite, beyond any simplistic constraints of familiar artists or genres. The internet-enabled means for new musicians to put stuff out-there and for listeners to find it, with or without the help of intermediaries, means exciting and rewarding new music is literally at our fingertips if we want it enough to go looking. Maybe we just need to first hear that one fantastic piece of music that tells us just how good it can be…



The tip of the John Peel tribute iceberg

 

In Pursuit of Poetry – A Personal Journey (as it has to be)

How many of us, I wonder, do justice to poetry? Perhaps it is the ultimate written form, striving to say so much with so few words in an ultimate distillation; invoking strange alchemies to achieve improbable and powerful evocations. However it can often be too much effort to unravel those cryptic complexities, feeling more like doing the Times crossword, and I for one have certainly struggled frequently in slowly developing a rewarding engagement with poetry.

That process seems though to have recently reached a tipping point, and I now find myself in an exciting and more comprehensive relationship with the work of a small but growing number of poets. To understand how this came about I’ve been tracing my history of engagement with the form, which you may care to compare your with own.

I have always loved the rural above the urban and, in my younger days particularly (but still somewhat), the wilder the better with hillwalking and mild mountaineering dominant interests along with the creative capture and interpretation of such places. Hence the landscape work of the late photographer Fay Godwin was an early passion, her stark monochrome images of the wilder parts of Britain making a significant impression. Collecting books of her work starting with the still magnificent 1985 volume Land, I subsequently picked up a cheap and unassuming earlier work Remains Of Elmet, only to discover I had inadvertently bought my first book of poetry. While full of Godwin’s atmospheric photographs of the harsh beautiful landscapes of the Pennines, it was also a book of strong uncompromising poems by Ted Hughes. But rather than Godwin simply producing images to accompany existing poems, this was a more intriguing joint project where Godwin first took photographs that captured the essence of the area as far as she could, and Hughes then wrote poems triggered by particular images that struck a chord with him. The synergy and impact of the joint representations and interpretations remains marvellously strong, and certainly strong enough for me on first encounter to register the power of poetry for the first time. Hughes raw, visceral lines (epitomised by titles such as You Claw The Door and The Sluttiest Sheep in England) were an invigorating slap in the face akin to being out on those moors lashed by gale driven rain.

 

In subsequent years my preoccupation was very much with exploring the Scottish mountains in all their splendour, seasons and weathers. In doing so it was impossible to avoid encountering the evocative poetry of the prolific Norman MacCaig, who provides a stirring, yet tender, thoughtful and relatively uncomplicated narrative to such hill-going activities. His work is a clear demonstration that poetry need not be cryptic or difficult, and that if it talked of the things that you were most passionate about, the motivation to engage with and savour the work regularly and fully was easily forthcoming. For the keen hillwalker there are endless gems such as Climbing Suilven and A Man in Assynt, but in truth MacCaig captures the whole of Scotland in every aspect, and much of the human condition besides, hence there are rich rewards for anyone with a love of the country or of life itself.

 

More recently I have found equal pleasure in exploring regions other than those with mountains, and an early affection in this new phase was South Devon which my better half and I visited repeatedly for a number of years. Exploring the exquisite coast, the rivers from estuary to moor, Dartmoor itself, and the bohemian atmosphere of Totnes were all special pleasures. And all of this proved to be a kind of preparation for the full appreciation of the mesmerising Dart, published in 2002 by young poet Alice Oswald. Dart is the unsentimental book-long poetic description of the River Dart, gradually moving from its source on the moor, through Totnes to the sea at Dartmouth. It reads almost like prose and makes frequent use of local characters Oswald encountered, both describing and quoting them at length to fascinating effect. Knowing and loving so many of the places described created a strong connection for me which again meant I was able, and continue, to draw much from it and revisit it often. There is even a rather fine recording available on CD of Oswald reading the entire work, which takes about an hour. Her slightly severe voice is perfect for it, and strangely and subtley reminiscent of Ted Hughes, to whom many consider Alice to be the natural successor.

 

And so, via rewarding encounters with better known poets such as John Clare and Dylan Thomas, to more recent times, and a new and unexpected connection that has taken my appreciation of, and engagement with, poetry to a new level. I know and love the countryside around Petersfield in Hampshire well, having previously lived in the town for several years, albeit without making any literary connections at the time. Last year I began revisiting the area since it is now once again within easy reach of home, and savoured the rediscovery of the beautiful varied landscape of both open downs and steep wooded hangers. A favourite walk has always been north up through Steep village to Ashford Hanger and down the far side to Hawkley, with variations extending to Selborne also. As I was enjoying this area on foot last year I dimly registered the Edward Thomas memorial stone on the slopes of the Hangers, and having done so realised that Matt Hollis’s recent prize-winning biography of Thomas, Now All Roads Lead to France, might be necessary reading. This was encouraged by the fact I had recently read Thomas’s book The South Country, a curiously poetic piece of prose of a kind I had not previously encountered, which while beautifully evocative of rural southern England and clearly written with great passion, was idiosyncratic in aspects such as the refusal to name the specific places he was writing about. Hence my initial failure to connect Thomas with the Steep area.

 

That Hollis’s work was required reading proved something of an understatement, for rarely have I devoured a book with such indecent haste. But more telling was that having realised Thomas’s greatest work was his poetry, and having picked up a volume of that work to read in parallel with the biography, I then found I consumed the poems from cover to cover in a matter of days, drawing deeply from them as I went, and which I have found hard to leave alone since. This is a new level of appreciation for me which seems to stem from knowing intimately the places he writes of, walking them via the same routes and with a similar regularity, and due to the deep insights into Thomas’s situation provided by Hollis (clearly benefitting from being a poet himself). For there is something almost mythical in the tragic story of Thomas that makes him stay with you; haunted by serious depression and financial insecurity despite being one of the most influential literary critics and prolific prose authors of his time, but only realising he could write poetry three years before he died in France at the battle of Arras on Easter Monday 1917. The outpouring in those slender years was however astonishing, and despite often being referred to as a war poet all his poetry passionately reflects the love of rural England and the folk within it that meant most to him. His work is tinged with a melancholy that adds a special power, a symptom of the overbearing war and his depressive nature perhaps, or a deeper recognition that when something is sufficiently beautiful or precious it becomes potentially heartbreaking – constantly at risk from mans stupidity or mortality.

And so, hopelessly hooked as I now am, this weekend I will again walk out to the pub with no name near Petersfield, have a pint in the Edward Thomas bar, look at the map, and decide which direction to head next. Thomas’s soulmate Robert Frost for sure, David Jones, Liz Berry perhaps? The possibilities (that work for me) are expanding…

And poetry has a wider definition after all, than its written incarnation. Is it not what we all reach for in some form, above and beyond the basic drudge of life?

Literary Walking in Hampshire - A Slippy Slidey Affair

The affection I have for my adopted home county of Hampshire has grown steadily down the years, but an unanticipated new enthusiasm has recently taken hold as I slowly register its dense connections with the English literature I’ve belatedly engaged with and am learning to love. A simple walk out of Petersfield today, through the village of Steep and up onto the Ashford Hangers, and then down towards Hawkley had us (almost literally) falling over literary associations and resonances.

It was a cool murky start as we wound our way past Bedales school towards Steep, where the war memorial revealed the first surprise. I’ve cycled past this little pillar perhaps a hundred times in my life yet never stopped to read it; today we did and registered the inclusion on the roll of honour of one Edward Thomas, poet, writer, and literary critic. The countryside and country life were Thomas’s muse and his work some of the most evocative of southern England ever produced. He settled in Steep with his family in 1906, and walked and wrote prodigiously, although he only turned to poetry from his staple prose in 1914 with the encouragement of his close friend the American poet Robert Frost. As we strolled to the northern edge of the village we passed Thomas's first home, Berryfield Cottage, where it was good to see that it still seemed to be someone’s normal home, with no blue plaque or tourist paraphernalia in immediate evidence.

 

Then it was the stiff pull up through the wooded hangers, picking our way, initially alongside a clear spring-fed chalk stream, through sticky mud on slippy chalk, gradually aware of increasing height but tantalised by the characteristic view-blocking trees. On reaching the top of Shoulder of Mutton Hill a glorious, expansive view south east should have been ours, one of the finest in southern England and referred to in several of Thomas’s poems. But the murk hid it for now, so we pressed on along the ridge.

As we were about to descend northwards towards Oakshott two deafening quad bikes roared up, spraying mud everywhere as they turned sharply down the track we were also to follow. The peace was well and truly shattered and tranquillity was hard to re-establish as we slithered down the steepening quagmire of the track, deeply gouged by 4x4s and water run-off. The going became increasing difficult and exasperating in the claustrophobic tradition of many a Hampshire sunken lane, and sufficiently vertiginous to be a little like trying to down-climb an ice-covered gully. At a final absurd precarious friction-free giant step, with no sensible way forward, we made a more emotional literary connection. Nearly 200 years ago the indefatigable William Cobbett explored this area on horseback and railed regularly and heartily in his classic Rural Rides against the perilous muddy morasses he had to negotiate down its sunken lanes. What can I say except that my better half produced a sequence of suitably impressive expletives in classic Cobbett style (she formerly of William Cobbett Middle School, Farnham) as we struggled to accept we were just going to have to turn round and climb all the way back up through the mud to the ridge.

Looking north to the distant church tower of Hawkley, from Ashford Hanger

 

This we did in suitably dark mood, having had our route to Hawkley neatly curtailed. Nonetheless we somehow remained friendly towards a group of exaggeratedly polite off-road motorcylists who descended gingerly towards us, clearly aware that public acceptance of their blatantly destructive activity was on a perpetual knife-edge.

Regaining the ridge we claimed our recompense, for the mists were clearing rapidly and the sun beginning to energise all about. To quote Cobbett as he sat on horseback near this spot in 1822:

“…out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger! And, never, in all my life, was I so surprised and so delighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land and not water.”

Looking south-east from Shoulder of Mutton Hill towards the distant South Downs

 We drank it all in as we had our lunch, equally amazed and inspired at the panorama of hills and woodland extending east and south, subtly lit, with the distant skyline of the South Downs the elegant backdrop. Far down below, directly at our feet, sat Berryfield Cottage, a sublime location – how did it take the troubled Thomas so long to turn to poetry here? (But then it was already largely there, his prose is often almost poetry, exemplified by the magnificent The South Country and In Pursuit of Spring).

 

Descending the open slope of the hill is a rare delight on the wooded Hangers, to be drawn out as much as possible, with the view initially widening as partially obscuring trees are passed, before compressing vertically as further height is lost – perhaps there is a sweet spot halfway down, not far below the Edward Thomas memorial stone. The simple octagonal plaque poignantly reminds us of Thomas’s tragic early demise aged 39, killed by the blast of a shell in the Battle of Arras, on Easter Monday 1917 only two months after arriving at the front. He refers to this hillside in a number of poems, notably in When First:

“When first I came here I had hope,
Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat
My heart at sight of the tall slope
Of grass and yews, as if my feet

Only by scaling its steps of chalk
Would see something no other hill
Ever disclosed...”

Looking down from Shoulder of Mutton Hill, Berryfield Cottage is the right hand building in the foreground

We ambled back towards Petersfield in the sunshine, stopping for contemplation in Steep churchyard, only forgoing the interior and its Edward Thomas memorial windows due to the calamitously muddy state of our boots (I hear Cobbett muttering!). A beautiful, annoying, frustrating, uplifting day with much to take away (and return to)…

Favourite Listening of 2014

OK, so here for the record are my favourite new (to me at least) albums of 2014. No agonising was involved in their selection, since by definition they had to pick themselves – standing clearly above all else I’ve heard this year. Regular readers will see few surprises as I’ve telegraphed most of these in earlier posts, though there are a few words below on the one exception, the rather marvellous Mishaped Pearls. At the risk of contradicting my recent post promoting world music I have to wryly acknowledge that this years top listening is all from Britain and Ireland; I was tempted to contrive otherwise but it would have been just that, a contrivance. The stuff coming out of these islands just now is simply too damned good; and I’m also intrigued that this set of five albums happens to form a remarkably coherent combination, beautifully reflecting the diversity of said islands. Savour…

 

Duncan Chisholm - Affric (Scotland): see 26 January post

9Bach - Tincian (Wales): see 22 May post

Fernhill - Amser (Wales): see 29 July post

Eithne Ni Uallachain - Bilingua (Ireland): see 24 December post

Mishaped Pearls - Thamesis (England):  This really shouldn’t work. German mezzo soprano Manuela Schuette meets down-to-earth musical adventurer Ged Flood and his large multi-instrumented crew to perform radically reworked English traditional songs themed directly or indirectly on the River Thames. It should be nauseating or a complete car crash, and probably both, but somehow, with the golden thread of Manuelas strong elegant voice running through the whole, and the sheer class, taste and creative energy of all concerned, it manages to be jaw-droppingly beautiful from start to finish. A classic, and also a tribute to ace musician and producer Gerry Diver (hubby of equally ace singer Lisa Knapp who figured in this post a year ago) who was brought in for the project.


See also: Favourite Listening of 2013