Blank Editions-a labour of love.

Image by Ross Adams.

The 2012 film 'Good Vibrations' is set in the late 1970s/early 80s and follows the life of one Terri Hooley, a Belfast record shop owner who suddenly becomes aware of the new vibrant punk scene in Ireland. Having had his eyes opened to the raw talent and excitement of an underground music scene going on all around him the entrepreneurial Terri records and releases singles by various bands from the area, the most famous being 'Teenage Kicks' by The Undertones. At the core of the film is a 'regional' record label facilitating a new surge of creativity. Fast forward 35 years and two of the most exciting bands I've seen recently, Tomaga and Housewives, have had recent releases on Hackney record label Blank Editions, the brain child of David Blanco and Will Shutes. After a recent gig at The Shacklewell Arms David kindly agreed to an interview.

Q: David, you are both busy people! Will co-wrote a book on Syd Barrett and is now running a publishing house, Test Centre, with a partner and I think you run a design house, originalblanco, could you say a bit about that- the sort of stuff you do?

A: Yes, I do design most days, I run dsblanco.com which is essentially my freelance practice. I work with quite a broad range of people from small start ups, record labels, publishers and do day to day design at Blank Editions.

Q: How did you and Will get together and what made you decide to set up Blank Editions?

A: We met through mutual friends who played in a band we were both really into called Electricity In Our Homes at a Sticks show in Hackney around October 2011.

We are both record collectors and enthused over local bands like EIOH, Hatcham Social, Factory Floor, S.C.U.M, The Horrors, Neils Children, Flats, Disconcerts, bands that were all connected through friendships and had created a community by playing in each other's bands and producing each other. Most of them resided in pretty much the same neighbourhood…we thought this needed to be documented in a beautiful tactile way.

As we began discussing the label and its potential output we found ourselves constantly referencing the very first Electricity In Our Homes E.P that Brandon Jacobs from Neils Children put out on his Modern Pop label in 2008, 'The Shareholders Meeting' E.P. That one record started it all off really, it was incredibly inspirational to us. People were asked to pay in advance for a share of the record, thus becoming a shareholder. You paid £5.00 upfront and you received 0.5% of the 200 records pressed…which equated to 1 record.

We used that one record as a focus for the kind of music we were interested in at the time and the way the actual record was promoted and released as a blueprint for the label.

Right from the start we were both initially interested in documenting off shoot projects from the members of local bands who we really liked. This led into doing the solo record we did with Charles Boyer from EIOH and initiating The Solo Series.

Q: What would Blank Editions mission statement read like?! What role would you hope it will fulfil?

A: To simply document a local and thriving undercurrent, to help illustrate that there is a great community of artists and musicians local to us who are creating really special things and to produce beautiful editions that document these recordings.

Q: The two bands I've seen that have releases on Blank Editions-Tomaga and Housewives-are quite different but both have a dynamic experimentalism and a desire to play with musical form. Is that what attracted you to them? What aspects are you looking for in a band to issue something by them?

A: We were introduced to Tomaga by our good friend Tim Garratt ( Moon Zero) who has produced, recorded and played on several Blank Editions releases ( COP, Niqab, Joseph Coward, Ted Milton, Housewives ) through his recording studio The Moriaki Skyway. Tim was kind enough to recommend Tomaga to us, we fell in love with their debut LP 'Futura Grotesk' straight away and thought they would fit perfectly  into what we were doing with the label. Tomaga’s approach to “ambient” music is unique and so brilliantly realised, their live act is just as engaging as listening to them at home and it wasn’t long before we were writing them to offer a recording. Tom and Valentina are two of the nicest people we have had the pleasure of collaborating with too, which is always pleasant.

We were already really into Housewives, we had bought the tape that Faux Discx had put out in 2013 and it was hands down one of the best things we had heard in a long time. When Tim Garratt wrote to us introducing Tomaga he also told us he had recently recorded two tracks with Housewives, once we heard them we wrote to the band and offered them a 7” straight away of the back of these two songs and without seeing them live. Tim had worked with them so the connection was there and fortunately they turned out to be really nice people too. Tomaga and Housewives in our opinion are two of the best bands playing ambient, industrial, post-punk, experimental music right now, the recent Housewives 7” launch show with Moon Zero and Mphahlele was truly great.

A connection to an existing recording we have released is always something we look for when releasing something new, most things are introduced to us by people we have already released so we fortunately find ourselves often surrounded by things we want to approach as opposed to the other way around, although we do welcome demos and of course are interested in hearing things that are not just from London.

Q:  Blank Editions includes both 'The Solo Series' and 'The Blank Tapes' Do they have different functions?

A: The Solo Series is purely to facilitate solo recordings from people in bands we really like, It’s not really surprising that these days most bands have members recording vast amount of material on their own at home or in studio set ups, this was of great interest to us as one sometimes find this kind of unreleased material to be the most fruitful and beautiful with its own personality that isn’t necessarily tied to a release or any sort of formula. The Solo Series packages these recordings into a 2 song limited edition one time pressing 7” in a handmade sleeve, as of mid 2015 we have released 6 singles in this series with more being discussed

The Blank Tapes services both bands and solo artists experimental work, development work, demos and small run E.Ps, the nature of this series is quite lo fi and fairly spontaneous in its approach, the recordings are normally sessioned in one or two days and as cassettes are made in very small runs, they are pretty low risk plus quick to turn around, it works as a perfect format for these kind of recordings to be released in. The newest sub catalogue, The Blank Community will be completely open-ended and simply be a platform to document material from bands and artists we both love, we hope to edition publications, super small run recordings, albums and other items not completely related to “music” through this platform too. We have just recently released the debut 7” from Housewives under this umbrella.

Q: What made you decide to go for cassette and vinyl as mediums?

A:  I guess they are just formats we find beautiful and collect ourselves we simply wanted to release items that we would want to own.

Q: I was surprised to see you have a couple of releases by ex-Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore! How did that come about!

A: Thurston moved into our neighbourhood in 2012 or so and we kept seeing him around. One day we invited him to the launch we were hosting for the Douglas Hart's solo 7” which fortunately he was going to anyway, we asked him at the launch whether he would be interested in contributing to The Solo Series which he was. He then approached us to release the 'Sun Gift Earth' tape later that year which was Inspired by the comet-chaser Rosetta.

We hope to release more material from both Thurston and Douglas sometime soon.

Q: You and Will have been running Blank Editions since 2011-are you happy with how it has gone so far? What are your plans for the rest of the year?

A: Very much so, we run the label daily in some sort of capacity, but its very far from being a full time job. We have some really great things lined up, we have a new cassette coming out in July by Charcoal Owls and a few other things that haven’t been solidified yet. Hoping to do more stuff with Housewives and Tomaga and also a duo called Mphahlele, Tim Garratt has a few things he is working on too which we are excited to hear. We are busy with lining new things up, its a really good time for this sort of thing. It has been really good fun so far and has solidified many a new friendship which is always nice. We simply want to keep documenting things as and when they happen and make records and tapes you would want to give to your grandkids.

 

Thanks to David and Will-for more info on Blank Editions visit blankeditions.com.

 

 

Cultural Resources and Neoliberalism.

Image by Yvonne Forster

So despite only about 25% of the electorate voting for them the Tories got the single biggest percentage of the vote (37%) and we have 5 more years of Tory Government, they hope to bring us more cuts to social provision leading to more poverty, more disempowering of Unions, a vague Anti-Extremist Bill, less taxation for the well off and possibly a new British Bill of Rights written by the Tories instead of those tricky internationally recognised Human Rights much loved by foreigners...  

Since the late 1970s Neoliberal capitalism/politics has reconfigured institutions (governments, schools etc), individuals and society into its own image. Capitalism’s most brazen trick is to try and pass itself off as natural, or ‘god ordained’ in a bygone era, attempting to convince us that this is how it is meant to be, that no other world is possible. The Situationists wrote about this in 1950s/60s referring to it as ‘the spectacle’ (1) — how advanced industrial societies are represented to themselves by the elite, so effectively that the oppressed internalise those values, those views. Society and culture dominated by a seamless representation of a capitalist version of the world via the media, state and corporations (1), where any dissent is marginalised or co-opted. Gramsci referred to something similar as 'cultural hegemony' (2). The hallmarks of neoliberalism are individualisation, an ideology of free markets, small state provision (for the workers, though not for corporations), privatisation (the transforming of public goods into private property) and a continual dismantling of workers rights and protections-in short authoritarian capitalism. Coupled with this is the phenomena known as 'post modernity' which includes the 'death' of the meta-narrative and at times a retreating into ethnicity and nationalism as sources of identity in the face of capitalist globalisation (3). All this has created a constructed, mediated environment/society that is anxious, alienating, individualised, competitive, commodified-with wage labour and individualised consumption promoted as the highest goal .

An essay written last year commented that some sociologists 'believe that we construct our sense of self, of self identity from the cultural resources available to us. That is in order to construct a version of ourselves that is understandable and intelligible to ourselves and others we draw on the representations, roles and social signifiers around us, configuring and modifying them to construct a sense of who we are both for ourselves and (others). Many of these cultural resources-conventional gender roles, nationalities, etc- are top down products of a nation state capitalist system and these cultural resources will perpetuate roles, identities and social structures that serve the status quo and reactionary relationships'(4).

Many, possibly most, people in the UK imbibe a daily dose of right- wing press including the abjectification of 'othered' groups and a few hours of 'spectacle'-game shows, food contests, programmes about the well off choosing new houses, dramas, soap operas etc. Often these programmes represent the working class as poorly educated, divided, bogged down in domestic problems. When did you last see a working class character in a contemporary drama who was 'sorted', self educated and politicised? Most TV appears to be written by the privileged reflecting their view of the working class-unfortunately many have internalised these offensive, belittling representations.

If individuals do draw on cultural resources to construct themselves and the 'cultural hegemony' of neoliberalism has created a society and media where the cultural resources readily available are an expression of a neoliberal worldview-including a disempowering view of the working class- then how is it possible for the working class to wake up and break free of both being constituted by neoliberalism and helping constitute neoliberalism? They are not going to hear an alternative narrative or come into contact with a creative progressive vision from the top down, the elite like things as they are. The Labour Party is now Tory-Lite, berating itself for not coming across as more business friendly in the last election and The Green Party is too small and poorly funded to compete in a 'first past the post' system with either of the two big parties.

There would appear to be -unsurprisingly-no alternative to grass roots organisation, activism and education (to cite a Noam Chomsky 'tweet') in constructing alternative cultural resources and political narrative.

On the distance learning website Futurelearn (5) there is a course 'The Secret Power of Brands' (6) which includes the idea of a Venn diagram in which one circle contains the felt needs of your target group, the other circle your organisation's attributes-in the overlap of the two circles are the aspects of your organisation that meets those felt needs, the aspects that the organisation needs to communicate (6). Obviously this is to do with businesses but transposable to other spheres. In an online article 'The Left Can Win' Pablo Inglesias of the Spanish Podemos party-that emerged from the Indignados movement- makes the point that the Left needs to communicate in a language that people understand about things that people are bothered about, that there has to be a tie up between what we are talking about and what people are experiencing or we are irrelevant while having the correct analysis (7).We need to disrupt the top down dominant discourses that people read and hear by listening to people and talking with them about the things that matter to them in a way that alerts people to the misleading, elite-serving, disempowering narratives they have been given and instead empower people to engage and create change. The disrupting of the top down discourse by the introduction of new ideas, new perspectives into the narrative is essential for effective resistance to hegemony (8).  

Similarly a recent 'Red Pepper' article/interview with Podemos member Eduardo Maura comments that the Left needs to have a better grasp of "class compositions and identities" (9) which are far more complex and fragmented than before the neoliberal era, and to have a better understanding of people's lived experiences so that it can communicate effectively (9). Podemos seems to be a political party that is closely aligned with progressive grass roots movements, it has managed to embed itself in local communities with many local branches as well as using social media/ the internet extensively in order to enable involvement and participation in discussion and decision making for as many people as possible (9). This model of a movement with multiple access points so that people with busy fragmented lives can get involved in a way they can manage has to be taken seriously as for many people an initial involvement that includes conferences, reading lengthy books and protests may be a bit too much.

In Scotland last year the 'Yes' campaign was a diverse movement that included many on the Left (10) and while the 'Yes' campaign failed to win the vote their grass roots model of campaigning seems to have been very effective at engaging people in local, community based discussion and participation.

All of the above examples are peculiar to time and place, in circumstances different to our own but they do give us clues as to how the Left/anarchism could engage more effectively with the world around us- exploring how anarchism answers the felt needs people have, listening to people and their concerns and then trying to give them a better analysis of the causes of their problems in a language they understand, having a localised and online movement that has multiple points of access so that people can learn, understand more clearly, engage and participate in a way they can manage. It will almost certainly be a bit messy and include mistakes but the need for a clearer, more effective communication of radical Left/anarchist politics is paramount.    

  
Bibliography.

(1) Debord, G. (1968) 'The Society of the Spectacle'. Black and Red, USA.

(2) Thomas, M. (ed)(2012) ‘Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary’, Workers’  Liberty, London

(3) Bowman, M, Herbert, D. and Mumm, S. (2001) Religion Today: Religion and Society in Religion Today: Tradition, Modernity and Change. Course Introduction The Open University, Milton Keynes.

(4) 'Constructing the Self' http://musicculturevision.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/constructing-self.html

(5) www.futurelearn.com

(6) 'The Secret Power of Brands' UEA https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/the-secret-power-of-brands

(7) Inglesias, P. (2014) 'The Left Can Win' 12-9-2014 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/pablo-iglesias-podemos-left-speech/

(8) Hill. S. (2013) Digital Revolutions; Activism in the Internet Age. New Internationalist Publications Ltd. Oxford.

(9) Dolan, A. (2014) 'Si se puede' in Red Pepper, Issue 199, Dec/Jan 2015, Socialist Newspaper (Publications), London

(10) 12) Shafi, J. (2014) 'Another Scotland is-still- possible' in Red Pepper, Issue 199, Dec/Jan 2015, Socialist Newspaper (Publications), London.






   

 

Santa Semeli's Birthday Show-the nearest I'll get to the Cabaret Voltaire.

Photo by Roger Eaton.

Santa Semeli's Birthday Show at The Macbeth on 27 April was an event that managed to combine the Dadaist's love of the absurd, modern progressive Rap and a set by Santa Semeli and the Monks showcasing just how far they have come in a few months.

Maybe it was the venue, maybe my own preoccupations but watching The Euromen felt like the nearest I will ever come to realising what the atmosphere and content of the early Dadaist events at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich* must have been like! One man claiming to be Icelandic was wearing a small Viking helmet, a Nordic jumper and shorts, another older man who seemed to be Polish was wearing a t-shirt and too baggy Y-fronts. They introduced themselves as The Euromen and then proceeded to give a child like enactment of a Nordic legend about a Hero, a bridge and a Shape Shifter. This was narrated in English by the 'Icelander' and translated for any one who spoke Polish but not English by the older man-it was utterly bizarre, amusing and absurd in the best sense of the word. Later they re-emerged to give a curious interpretation of Miley Cyrus' 'Wrecking Ball' video- fortunately my view was obscured.

Next up was rapper Sean Dean. My knowledge of Rap is poor, I love 'The Message' by GrandMaster Flash and I like what I've heard of Public Enemy (are they Rap?) but to me Sean Dean sounded as good musically as the Rap I hear on daytime Radio 1 and lyrically he was interesting and intelligent. His set included songs dealing with spiritual struggle, childhood memories, addiction-I couldn't see any reason why he shouldn't do well.

"It's my party and I'll...sing if I want to" If you are in a band and you decide to have a birthday gig, it is only right that you play, and Santa Semeli and the Monks did! I saw them towards the end of last year on a weekday near Kings Cross and despite it being a quiet evening they were good, interesting, and intriguing. They have come on in leaps and bounds in a few short months! Their song writing is brave and diverse and has resulted in an exciting collection of work that, while being coherent, contains plenty of surprises as they veer between Rock and European avant garde. They chose tonight to premiere three new songs  ('Hypocrisy, FMT, I'm Your Queen) which added to the overall strength of their set. The Monks would be an excellent band whoever was singing but in Semeli Economou they have an exciting front woman with a great voice who draws on her Drama training to communicate the songs in a powerful way. Sounding like 'Cabaret' rewritten by Nick Cave and an early David Bowie (the latter due largely to Gaspar Hunt's excellent keyboard playing) they are a band who explore the human condition and are certainly worth checking out.

As Birthday parties go this will be one I remember!



For extra info on SSATM check out www.santasemeliandthemonks.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Semeli_and_the_Monks


Bibliography.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada#Zurich

Tomaga; Making the familiar unfamiliar.

Photo by Antonio Curcetti.

 

 

Tomaga is comprised of multi-instrumentalists Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen. My first experience of them was live at Corsica Studios last year, their set was a mesmerising collection of sound sculptures-cum-music, fluid, rhythmic, organic. Seeming to ignore any genre delineation their music has been described as "darkly psychedelic, elusive and deeply imbued with images – as though they have set some curiously unsettled, surreal dreams to music"(1). With a new album coming out and a tour supporting Wire coming up they were kind enough to agree to an interview. 

You are both part of The Oscillation- is that how you started playing together or had you worked together before? How did the idea for Tomaga emerge?

We have been playing together for quite a while not just as part of The Oscillation, also touring and recording with other artists. Even if we like heavy psych and stoner rock we have never felt musically complete exploring just that musical genre. Tomaga began as an experiment in which all of our thoughts and emotions about music can collide with less attention to musical boundaries. We haven’t got a clear idea of what we want this project to sound like. If we have anything we have ideas about what we don’t want it to sound like, so really it is more like a mental state, or some kind of radio station of the unconscious, in which sunny days, rainy afternoon and long, long nights translate themselves into sounds via an endlessly changing collection of instruments.
  


You both play with a range of musicians-do these different collaborations have an ongoing effect on the way you play and approach music?

We like to think about it like a big dysfunctional family. We live surrounded by musicians and artists and we wouldn’t be able to achieve anything without this constant feedback and exchange of works and ideas. We have always been big supporters of what come out from musical communities, from La Monte Young’s, to Sun Ra, to Gnod this togetherness always delivers interesting results. Moreover, it reduces the cancer of the ego of many musicians out there who spend their creative talent getting too stuck into themselves. Making music should be about the divestment of the ego and submission to expression. When this is achieved it is like therapy from modern life! 
  


The second Tomaga release 'Futura Grotesk' came out last year and you have an album coming out this April on Blank Editions. Is the latest album a continuation of the style of 'Futura Grotesk' or a new direction? How did the ideas for this album take shape? 

We have a tape release on Blank Editions out on the 15th of April. It is a collection of works recorded at the same time as 'Futura Grotesk'. We spent a few days listening back to hours of material left from these sessions and thought that there was a lot of good stuff that would have been great to put out somehow. David Blanco contacted us asking if we were interested in a collaboration so we undertook a mammoth editing session and and created “Familiar Obstacles”. We are happy that Tomaga will release on Blank Editions, alongside the likes of Thurston Moore, Ted Milton, Yuki Tsujii. The label has a great aesthetic, as does it’s sister label Test Centre. It was a natural home for Tomaga music.


How did the recording processes for the two albums evolve? Were they similar or different? Is it a balancing act between improvisation and structure?

As mentioned above the process was the same. We have regular improvising sessions, mainly in studios in east London, and from these some material is created fully formed, whilst other’s begin from a tiny element that we like, that we might change and distort and build something new on top of.  We spend most of or time building a sonic environment to improvise in, so there is a tension between improvising and the limits of the sonic world that we have put ourselves into.
  


 When you play live do you aim to replicate the studio recordings or use them as a 'launch pad' to work out from? How much of a part does the immediate environment-the audience/ building- play?

We were really surprised at first on how much we both gained from the live show! It is something that shaped up itself so naturally in a form that neither of us rationally planned or schemed. After the first few shows we became aware of the power of the project and we started to work around this new creature. It is surely bigger than its parts. It sounds different every time. We practice a lot and we bring some structures from the recordings but the audience and the place play a big part.
  


 Nic Endo has on her Twitter page that "There is purity in noise that can serve as a very direct way of communicating emotion..." (2) is Tomaga's music a transposing of emotion into sound or more conceptual? 

We agree with Nic Endo’s statement about noise, and would equally apply it to improvising on another instruments, such as drums. Tomaga is our way to transpose our various emotions, of boredom, rage, fragility, joy. It acts as a way of expressing them, non-linguistically, so it is a bit like therapy or something. Or self-defense, a way of translating the world and getting something off our chests! 

Later this month (April 12-24) you are playing The Lexington and touring with Wire-how did that come about?

We jammed a few times with Colin Newman and Matthew Simms from Wire and became friends before starting working as Tomaga. When the record came out they liked it and invited us to tour with them. We feel incredibly honoured to support such a British institution! I still remember the day I bought my copy of Pink Flag.
  


What cultural resources (writers/thinkers/musicians/etc) have you drawn on, and been influenced by, as people and musicians?

They say that creativity is copying from many different sources as opposed to plagiarism that is copying from a single one. I guess we are privileged enough to be able to spend our days immersing ourselves in readings, exhibitions, listening, hence we are constantly influenced by everything that gives us space, and so making a list is very hard, but here goes, in no particular order: Egisto Macchi, Werner Herzog, Hannah Hoch, Brutalism, The Necks, David Foster Wallace, Delia Derbyshire, Brodsky and Utkin, Brothers Quay, Terry Riley, Marlene Dumas, Palmbomen, Chris Watson, This Heat, Charles Cohen, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Aperol.

Thanks to Valentina and Tom for interview.

You can find out more about Tomaga and hear some of their extraordinary music here https://tomaga.bandcamp.com/ 
Their new album 'Familiar Obstacles' is out soon on Blank Editions http://blankeditions.bigcartel.com/product/tomaga-familiar-obstacles


Bibliography.

(1) http://julietippex.com/roster/tomaga/

(2) https://twitter.com/nic_endo 

'Punk attitude, riot grrrl aesthetic, queer feminist rage'...* Interested? Meet 'Not Right'

Photo by Liz Ewbank.

 

In October 2014 activists, academics and left wing, feminist punk band Not Right released 'Your Turn' an album dealing with political, social, cultural and gender issues. The album was described by punx.co.uk as 'uncompromising' and a 'reality check' with echoes of Crass and Action Pact (1) so I was excited when they kindly agreed to an interview. 

You are all academics -what made you decide to form a punk band?

Snowy:
Kirsty told me to. At Rock It March 2011, I bumped into Kirsty and at some point she asked ‘Do you play in a ska band?’
‘Yes’
‘So you’ve got a decent sense of rhythm?’
‘Yeah’
‘Great you can play drums in my new band’.
That’s my band genesis story. I borrowed a pair of sticks from a colleague who didn’t play anymore – booked a couple of practice sessions and tried to ignore the embarrassment of ‘Oh no everyone will hear me fuck up’. After that I was(n't) ready for our first band practice!

Kirsty:
For me the final push to form a band (after a decade of wanting to but not acting on it) actually came from my academic work. I was halfway through my research, for a PhD focused on the Dutch punk scene, and was back home for a few months. My research was the first thing that really demystified the ‘being in a band’ thing and made me feel I could maybe give it a go. Years of being into punk hadn’t really done that for me. The lack of a local scene meant that most bands I saw live were big commercial bands; those punks were no different from any other distant rock star. And I didn’t see many other women on stage, certainly not shy women like me. But I suddenly realised that it really didn’t matter that I couldn’t play and never wanted to do so on stage – I could still get in a practice room and just have fun. So I sought out two other friends who also couldn’t play their instruments so there was a level playing field and we could just work things out as we went. 

Ruth:
I've always wanted to be in a band! As I got older a lot of my friends started playing guitar and forming bands, but I felt they were all more talented than me. Instead I started to run gigs, and later started to DJ. In the end, I finally joined a band because Kirsty encouraged me to. The idea of us all basically starting from the same place and learning together was really appealing. 
We happened to all know one another as postgraduates because we'd all been students at the same university for a long time. The band has basically continued alongside our studies.  I don't see the two as in any way contradictory - after all, most musicians have day jobs.  And punk is a powerful outlet for self-expression outside of the mundane world of work. 

Your lyrics deal with a range of political and social issues from social media to male dominance of children's culture to education cuts -where would you place yourself politically?

Snowy: 
Somewhere left of centre. I think I'm to the right of the other two though. I don't really think about where I fall on a political axis too often. Maybe I should.

Kirsty:
The band’s lyrics are mostly written by Ruth but always okay’d by the rest of the band – but this doesn’t mean we all agree on everything politically, and we often end up having long rambling political debates! It’s really difficult for me to position my own personal politics in a straight-forward way. I don’t tend to label myself and I certainly don’t align myself with any of the political parties that ‘represent’ us. I tend to draw differentially on anarchist, socialist, and intersectional feminist ideas when constructing my own approach.

Ruth:
I think all three of us have somewhat different political views and approaches. The way we organise the band basically enables us to remain autonomous as individuals, but act  collectively as a band.  We're all left-of-centre and broadly believe in stuff like the public provision of services  (e.g. healthcare), individual freedom from state surveillance and interference, an intersectional approach to liberation politics (taking into account feminism, anti-racism,  class politics, LGBT rights, disabled rights and so on) - I suppose we're most likely to differ on ideas around implementation, the role of political parties and suchlike. But that's not a  particularly exciting theme for a song. Ultimately most our songs - being punk songs! - are oppositional. We oppose the things we  think are bad in the world, rather than necessarily advocating a solution (with occasional  exceptions, such as 'Intersectionality Song'). But we're all activists outside of the band too to one extent or another, so that's where you're more likely to find us fighting for something.

How have government cuts affected the areas you are involved in-education and the arts?

Kirsty:
The DIY punk scene tends to try and operate outside the realm of government supported arts, but there’s a definite issue with the loss of/lack of support for vital things like venues and practice rooms. With more of these closing/being forced to charge for the use of them, the higher the costs are for those in bands/promoters. This then prices people out at a time when not many people have cash to spare.

Snowy: 
There've been a fair number of smaller promoter hiatuses in my hometown caused by venues closing down or cutting back on live music to stave off closing down. Then a short delay before somewhere new can be found to put bands on. The larger nights tend to be run in-house by one of the larger places, who play it safer with what they put on (plenty of tribute acts!). 

Ruth:
At the same time, there has been an upsurge in DIY venues recently, which is really positive. In one (horrible) sense it's a bit like Cameron's "Big Society" in action, except these venues also act as a launchpad for performers and campaigns that pretty much oppose everything the Tories stand for. So, that's quite cool.

Kirsty:
In higher education the cuts are causing all manner of problems. Large swathes of research and teaching roles have become casualised as the universities attempt to cut costs. Those that have achieved permanent jobs find themselves in unsafe positions, forced to ‘prove their worth' constantly and with ever increasing demands on their time. Morale is low and universities have shifted from institutions for learning and blue-skies research to ‘result orientated research’. 

Ruth:
Kirsty and I have found ourselves earning less than the minimum wage whilst teaching undergraduate students who are paying £9000 a year for the privilege. This, of course, hasn't stopped the men at the top pocketing hundreds of thousands of pounds. There's a big funding problem with universities thanks to the cuts, but that hasn't stopped a small number of people making a huge amount of money from exploiting academics and students alike.

Snowy:
Studying in the sciences I may have a different perspective to the others as funding for science has been slightly more protected. There are no undergraduates in my department, so I’m not really in touch with the way government cuts have affected them. I also don’t apply for research grants myself so I don’t directly see the effects of the lower amount of funding for research proposals and the increased competition to secure them.

As a female fronted overtly feminist punk band what sort of response have you had  from audiences? The lyrics to 'Never Back Down' (2) seem to suggest that you have had to deal with some difficult situations!

Ruth:
We actually tend to have a pretty good response from audiences! I think this is partly luck,  and partly the audiences we're more likely to play to, since we get asked to perform at a lot of feminist and queer events. Regardless of whether we're playing one of these events or a more "mainstream" punk night, the people who remain in the room (we usually  manage to offend someone!) tend to be pretty engaged and interested in what we have to say. We know other bands like ours who have had a pretty bad time at some gigs though. 

Snowy:
Most of our audiences have been amazing and I think it’s easy for the effect of the negative gigs to be overstated when we write songs about them. Not that the songs shouldn’t be written. I agree with Ruth that there’s some selection bias in the responses we have had because just due to the types of people who tend to book us will be sort of predisposed to our music. Not to the point where we’ve just playing into an echo chamber though, and even the more neutral gigs we’ve played have tended to be more ‘accepting/friendly’ – places like the Adam and Eve in Birmingham. Sure, half the room might’ve left…

Ruth
That was amazing

Snowy 
But that’s fine, they just take themselves away. 

Ruth:
They weren’t being dicks about it.

Kirsty:
'Never Back Down' is specifically about a gig we played for Love Music Hate Homophobia at Coventry Students’ Union. One of the other bands felt it appropriate to made rape jokes during our set. We told them where to go – as did security. But not without also giving us a telling off for standing our ground.

Ruth:
In a sense, that wasn't so bad to deal with - we were at the front and had amplified instruments and microphones, so were in a pretty good position to shout them down. The biggest problem was probably the attitude of the venue, who cut our set short (we hear they also weren't keen on our song "Tory Scum" - what a pity) and then tried to tell us off for causing trouble. We had none of it! On another occasion we had guys heckling us, we didn't even get a chance to respond  because a woman immediately leapt onto the stage, grabbed the a microphone and had a go at them. That was pretty awesome.

Kirsty:
However, mostly we get an overwhelmingly positive response from our audiences and we’ve met so many lovely people at gigs. We’ve never been subject to the ‘Is your boyfriend in the band?’ syndrome which afflicts so many other female musicians.

If we construct ourselves from the cultural resources available to us, what resources and role models have you drawn on to resist a patriarchal, sexist society?

Snowy:
I don’t know. A lot of friends are my role models and I’m lucky enough to have that kind of circle of friends. On a facetious level – general grumpiness. If the patriarchal society does something I can generally assume that I don’t like it. Work out why not afterwards. 

Ruth:
A good way to deal with this is probably to carry on enjoying and being inspired by things,  whilst acknowledging and criticising/calling out their flaws where relevant. There's a  really good blog post about that here: http://www.socialjusticeleague.net/2011/09/how-to-be-a-fan-of-problematic-things/
With that in mind, I've found the following things/people/bands to be massively helpful in  shaping my personal politics and approach to playing in a punk band: - the riot grrrl movement - intersectional feminism - Bikini Kill - Crass - Manic Street Preachers - Karren Ablaze! (zine creator, singer and writer) - Sandy Stone (trans academic and activist) - Leslie Feinberg (RIP - revolutionary communist and trans activist) - Art Brut

You organise 'Revolt-a DIY Riot Grrrl Ruckus' in Coventry-what's that all about!

Kirsty:
This was actually another thing that has its origins in PhD research – between my research on punk, and fellow organiser Michelle’s research on feminist zines, and Ruth’s many years of putting on DIY gigs, it seemed like a good idea to try and put something on that would represent all of this. Revolt is very much about the creative community in the UK at the moment; providing a platform for amazing performers of all levels of experience, and a safe space for people to come and enjoy and contribute to the feminist DIY punk community. We’ve released a couple of compilations of bands who have performed and at the last few events we’ve even started producing the ‘Revolt zine’ – we put out pens and paper and invite attendees to contribute a drawing/piece of writing which we then put all together, photocopy and hand out at the next event. Everyone has the ability to get involved!

Ruth:
One of the main things we think about when booking performers for Revolt is offering a  platform for women, basically because women are massively underrepresented in  underground music scenes. There are small riot grrrl and queer punk scenes in places like  London, Brighton and Leeds with loads of amazing women performing all the time, but we  basically had nothing like this in our area. We spend quite a lot of time in Coventry and it's the nearest large city to the three of us who run it, so it was the obvious place to host an event. We use Revolt to offer gigs to loads of awesome out-of-town bands with a broadly similar  politics and approach to Not Right, but it goes beyond that - we've managed to build an awesome little community of people who support the event, and we aim to encourage  everyone (but particularly other women!) to go away and form their own amazing  projects.

Snowy:
It is amazing how successful it’s been right from the first one. 

In a presentation 'Trans Music Isn't: Deconstructing DIY Identity' (3) you conclude (I think)  that while there are plenty of Trans musicians there isn't a Trans music scene-is that due to positive reasons, for instance diversity of musical styles/ integration of both musicians and listeners into wider musical scenes or is it more problematic?

Ruth:
This stemmed from a small research project that myself and Kirsty did. I think there is a trans music scene, it’s just so open and diverse and inclusive that it doesn’t bother defining itself as such. I suppose this means that someone who doesn’t realise what they’re walking into might turn up to one of these events and suddenly realise that the bill is full of trans performers and the person running around organising it is trans and think “…hang on a minute”. It kind of reflects how the term “trans” is intentionally open and incorporates all kinds of different experiences of gender, whereas older labels like “transsexual” and “transvestite” were a lot more restrictive. 

You also produce a 'zine 'Not Right' -can you tell us about that, are 'zines a significant feature of the Riot Grrrl movement?

Kirsty:
Definitely! The voice of anyone who isn’t a straight white cis man is so often left out of the mainstream and zines are another medium through which more people can communicate with each other. We’re able to talk about more and different things from the topics that make it into our lyrics and our zines often feature contributions from friends. I love the immediacy and physicality that comes with zines and the amount of care that people have often put into creating them. And you don’t need anything other than a pen, paper and a library photocopier to make your own.

Snowy:
I think most of my involvement with the zine is the three of us thinking we should put out another zine. It gets to the deadline and I think ‘Oh shit I have nothing’ – I’ve done little bits here and there – a QR code, a cover page. Embarrassingly I think Bean Counters was my first inside contribution. I feel quite guilty that I don’t contribute more.  

Kirsty:
I’ve not done much either.

Ruth:
I just write lots and lots of shit and that doesn’t mean that the other two don’t do much. Kirsty has written a collection of pieces and Snowy contributed a lot to the artwork and stuff!

Snowy:
 I’ve sat down and tried to write a piece on Debate Club Wanker a few times but I can’t even write an intro that I like. It’s such a wanker of a song.

What current bands and writers interest and excite you?

Ruth: 
Against Me!, Sleater-Kinney, Cat Bear Tree, My Therapist Says Hot Damn!, Big Joanie, Bad Vibes, We Are A Communist, Deathsex Bloodbath, anarchistwood, The Ethical Debating Society, Husbands N Knives, Jesus & His Judgemental Father, Beauty Pageant, Slum of Legs, CN Lester. Loads more!
 I don’t normally follow particular writers but I suppose I really like stuff by Roz Kaveney, Julia Serano, Stephanie Phillips, Tori Truslow and Laurie Penny. 

Snowy:
I don’t think I have any punk answers! 
Musically I’m listening a hell of a lot to the Sonic Boom Six self-titled album, it’s great to listen to when you’re focusing on it rather than as background music. The People’s String Foundation also gets a lot of playtime at the moment. After the gig we played in Nottingham in August I really got into Onsind’s album Anaesthesiology. 

Ruth:
The Tuts sang Pokémon City Limits from that album at Boris Johnson recently, it was amazing. “Never trust a Tory, they’ll betray you when it matters…”

Snowy:
It’s been a while since I’ve found something that I’ve heard and thought immediately “I’ve got to listen to everything that these people have done”.


Massive thanks to Not Right for their time and thoughtfulness, you can find out more about them at notrightpunk.com or on their Facebook page.

Bibliography.

*  http://notrightpunk.com/about/

(1) http://www.punx.co.uk/not-right-your-turn

(2) http://notrightpunk.com/lyrics/never-back-down/

(3) Ruth Pearce and Kirsty Lohman- Trans Music Isn't  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdoeNNJesnY

Capitalism's Hierarchy 2015

Here is a photo montage attempt at updating the IWW 'Pyramid of Capitalist System' (1911) for the UK in 2015. (The photo is a bit askew!)

 

 

How about nowish?

After 35 years of neoliberal economics working class Britain is not doing well.  A recently published report shows that in 2011 nine out of the ten poorest regions in North West EU countries were in Britain (1). The figures for 2009-10 in the UNICEF report 'Child well-being in rich countries-a comparative overview' puts Britain fourteenth out of the twenty nine 'most advanced economies' (2). That doesn't sound too bad until you realise that is pretty much last place out of NW European countries with a similar post WWII experience. Also reported this summer was that out of the twenty eight EU countries the UK comes in twenty sixth in terms of loneliness- that is not having someone you could turn to and rely on in a crisis (3). After three decades of what Harvey termed the economics of class war (4) the British working class is atomised, alienated, lonely, precarious and increasingly skint. We live in an ill society that generates ill people. Studies show that individuals are happier within societies that are more equal — wide disparities of income and wealth create societies that are less happy and more ill at ease. The UK has high rates of inequality, one of the consequences being the prevalence of mental illness and the use of anti-depressants. In a society marked by inequality, exploitation and environmental degradation people are struggling with unease and alienation and a lack of an alternative to ‘what is’.
Since the industrial revolution of the mid 1700s capitalism has concentrated power in the hands of the owners of the means of production — factories, land, mines, distribution — and has separated the vast majority of people from those means. Power and wealth have been and are accrued by an elite while the rest of us hope to pay our bills. This plus the commodification of the necessities of life -food, shelter, heating etc — means that the working class are forced to sell their labour, whether mental or physical, in order to survive above destitution. Within capitalism the wealth of the few and the exploitation of the many is linked, the worker spends her day adding value to the assets of the company, at the end of the day that work/added value is taken by the company who then gives the worker a wage that is less than the value they have generated pocketing the difference. They pay enough to keep the workforce functional-unless they can get the government to subsidise those wages via Working Family Tax Credit etc- as they need their labour and thus each day the shareholders/boss/company gets richer while the worker struggles on, hoping they might win the lottery or looking forward to the next weekend.
Capitalism is exploitative, oppressive, alienating and instrumentalist. The worker is alienated from their work, having to carry out tasks assigned to them, the benefit of that work being largely accrued by someone else; from their colleagues who they are taught to see as competitors, as threat; from themselves as they wonder how they ended up doing this, being this. And the worker functions as an instrument, a means to someone else’s ends. In post industrial work there has been a change, industrial capitalism demanded the worker's body but was often uninterested in their mind or ‘soul’, their thoughts, relational skills, communication abilities, however post industrial work wants those aspects as well. 21^st century work often demands all of the worker leaving her with little to construct a meaningful life outside of work. In industrial work there was a chance to find meaning, community in unions, political/social clubs etc but often the modern worker is drained of all energies and goes home to watch TV and get ready for tomorrow. As this goes on the only place of meaning in her life becomes work, the very place that incapacitates her for anything else (5).
Since the 1980s neoliberal capitalism has dominated UK politics, an ideology of free markets, small state provision (for the workers, though not for corporations), individualisation, privatisation and a continual dismantling of workers rights and protections, concessions gained since the Second World War. In short class war waged by the rich to cite Atari Teenage Riot (6). Neoliberal capitalism and politics have reconfigured institutions (governments, schools etc), individuals and society into it’s own image. Brought up in a commodification environment that promotes work and individualised consumption as the highest goal people have been reduced to objects, women especially valued according to their physicality-and make of handbag. Capitalism’s most brazen trick is to try and pass itself off as natural, or ‘god ordained’ in a bygone era, attempting to convince us that this is how it is meant to be, that no other world is possible. The Situationists wrote about this in 1950s/60s referring to it as ‘the spectacle’ (7) — how advanced industrial societies are represented to themselves by the elite, so effectively that the oppressed internalise those values, those views. Society and culture dominated by a seamless representation of a capitalist version of the world via the media, state and corporations (7), where any dissent is marginalised or co-opted. Gramsci referred to something similar as 'cultural hegemony' (8).
And over this society that is a material expression of capitalist interests exists the state, hierarchical, coercive, serving the interests of the political and corporate elite. The capitalist state is a capitalist construction expressing capitalist’s interests, configuring society to the interests of capital. Between 1945 and the 70s there was a respite from the state/corporate amalgam as unions and the Labour Party gained concessions for the working class but since the 1980s the state has re-assumed its historic role of enforcing capitalist interests. Where there has been resistance, as in the Miner’s Strike of 1980s, the coercive nature of the state has come to the fore, undisguised and brutal. The state’s authority rests ultimately on the use, or threat, of force, it is normally structured and bureaucratic but if it has to be more violent to achieve it’s ends it will be. The modern capitalist state is inherently hierarchical, coercive, patriarchal and militaristic.
As individuals we are ‘socialised’ by the societies and cultures we are reared in, we imbibe their values and embody their world views. We listen to their fairy tales of royalty, hierarchy and the sinister ‘other’ both as children and adults and believe them. We take the norms of our societies and believe them to be nature, believing this is how it is meant to be rather than seeing them as top down constructs, the result of class war that has been waged particularly ruthlessly by the rich over the last 30 years.
Capitalism and the nation state system have been responsible for the misery and deaths of countless millions over the last 300 years. The state communist system proved little different to capitalism perpetuating the same old patterns of hierarchy, instrumentalism, elitism and coercion. However throughout history there has been another way of organising society, economics and politics that has been glimpsed, sometimes poorly, sometimes more fully explored; anarchism. Anarchy is a word often used by the media to describe disorder, violence and chaos and the Sex Pistols did it no favours either! Anarchism has been misrepresented by many people for various reasons. There have been violent anarchist who in the 1800s believed in ‘propaganda by deed’, the idea that the assassination of a leading industrialist or politician would stir the working class to revolution, they were wrong, and it enabled the state to represent anarchists as violent and to crack down on non existent global anarchist networks (9).
However anarchism did not go away and has hung around waiting its time-which should be about now!
Anarchism is the belief that communities of people are capable of self organisation for the common good and don’t need to be told what to do by bosses of whatever kind and that in fact being socialised to look to a parental figure to always adjudicate or direct holds people back from maturity. In an anarchist community all people are equal there is no hierarchy, no patriarchy, no racism. All people take part in making decisions about those things that affect the community, the decision being reached by discussion that concludes when every one has agreed or is at least happy not to block the consensus.
The means of production — land, machinery, natural resources, distribution — are held by the community there is no private ownership of the means of production and people organise and work in co-operatives of equals. Obviously some people have certain skills and abilities and that would not be neglected but certain roles would not bestow special status on anyone, all valid work is of equal worth. Production would be primarily on the basis of need, consumption also, the maxim ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need’ is appropriate here.
Because production would be organised on the basis of people’s needs not profit there would be more leisure time available for people to explore their creativity. An anarchist community should be a place of creativity, arts, crafts and relationships. Communities would be voluntary associations of willing participants whose concern would be for the common good knowing that their own well being and the well being of others is intricately linked.
Lots of anarchists are federalists, realising that autonomy is different from independence they favour local or regional councils made up of recallable representatives from different communities. These councils could resolve difficulties or coordinate actions to do with production etc.
Syndicalist anarchists would see anarchism as applicable to the function based, spread out world of industrial work as well as geographical communities.
Some anarchists have been preoccupied with individual freedom while others see it as the only reliable path to social justice and equality as its structures preclude anyone from accumulating wealth or power. Over time people brought up in anarchism would be socialised into a different way of being, of co-operation and collaboration and of seeing people as equals to be worked with rather than as objects to be used.
Obviously production in an anarchist economy would use less natural resources and energy due to holding many goods collectively and producing primarily on the basis of need this would stop the rapid exhaustion of the earth’s resources and with the decentralisation of energy production slow global warming
In an anarchist community where things are held collectively, everyone’s needs are met and status goods are irrelevant so crimes of appropriation would fall, however in instances of violent crime a period of supervision or even exile may be appropriate, disciplining action would have to be agreed by the community and be victim centred aimed at healing, restitution and rehabilitation.
So how do we get there from here? The classic anarchist answer is to begin ‘building the new in the shell of the old’, to disregard the structures and powers that be and to do something better instead. Capitalism according to John Holloway is a verb, it is something we do rather than it existing independent of us (10). It will end when we stop doing it! Some think there would be a period of conflict, that the powerful are not going to allow the source of their wealth and power-the working class- to turn away and reconstruct society without a struggle. However anarchists have nothing to gain by the use of violence because 1. not enough people would be prepared to get involved; 2. there is no point taking on the capitalist state at it’s point of strength; 3. your means must be consistent with your aims, if they are not you won’t hit the ends you were aiming for, ends are shaped by means; 4. if you believe it is acceptable to use violence to achieve your objective you have to cede the same right to your opponent.
The online learning site 'Futurelearn' (11) runs a course called 'The Secret Power of Brands' (12) which includes the idea of a Venn diagram in which one circle contains the felt needs of your target group, the other circle your organisation's attributes-in the overlap of the two circles are the aspects of your organisation that meets those felt needs, the aspects that the organisation needs to communicate (12). Obviously this is to do with businesses but is transposable to other spheres. In an online article 'The Left Can Win' Pablo Inglesias of the Spanish Podemos party-that emerged from the Indignados movement- makes the point that the Left needs to communicate in a language that people understand about things that people are bothered about, that there has to be a tie up between what we are talking about and what people are experiencing or we are irrelevant while having the correct analysis (13).We need to disrupt the top down dominant discourses that people read and hear by listening to people and talking with them about the things that matter to them in a way that alerts people to the misleading, elite-serving, disempowering narratives they have been given and instead empowers people to engage and create change. 

A recent 'Red Pepper' article/interview with another Podemos member Eduardo Maura comments that the Left needs to have a better grasp of "class compositions and identities" (14) which are far more complex and fragmented than before the neoliberal era, and to have a better understanding of people's lived experiences so that it can communicate effectively (14). Podemos seems to have managed to embed itself in local communities with many local branches as well as using social media/ the internet extensively in order to enable involvement and participation in discussion and decision making for as many people as possible (14). This model of a movement with multiple access points so that people with busy fragmented lives can get involved in the way they can manage has to be taken seriously as for many people an initial involvement that includes conferences, reading lengthy books and protests may be a bit too much. The above examples are peculiar to time and place, in circumstances different to our own but they do give us clues as to how anarchism could engage more effectively with the world around us- exploring how anarchism answers the felt needs people have, listening to people and their concerns and then trying to give them a better analysis of the causes of their problems in a language they understand, having a localised and online movement that has multiple points of access so that people can learn, understand more clearly, engage and participate in a way they can manage. It will almost certainly be a bit messy and include mistakes but the need for a clearer, more effective communication of anarchist politics is paramount.    

 Many people in the industrialised world are experiencing alienation, lack of community, purpose and fulfilment-they know something is wrong with their lives, with the way we are organised but they are distracted and anesthetised by TV and the tabloid press which keeps them away from alternative narratives and visions. What is needed is the propagation of an anarchist alternative and an example of what it looks like in practice so it can be seen and experienced.
The future is not necessarily anarchist, it could be even more authoritarian capitalism or environmental meltdown but if we want to avoid these two then the working class are going to have to decide to change our direction, to find ways of discussing and exploring how we can move towards a more equal, just and free tomorrow. The challenge for anarchists is how to facilitate this, a mass movement towards a just, equitable society-how to move out and engage in a project of coordinated education and activism.

.
Bibliography:

(1) Rickman, D. (2014) 'Are 9 of the poorest region in northern Europe really in the UK?  http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/are-9-of-the-poorest-regions-in-northern-europe-really-in-the-uk--eJ0axHCqmx

(2)'Child well-being in rich countries-a comparative overview'  UNICEF UK  https://www.unicef.org.uk/Images/.../Report%20card%20briefing2b.pdf

(3) Bingham, J. 'Britain the loneliness capital of Europe' . 18-6-14.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/10909524/Britain-the-loneliness-capital-of-Europe.html

(4) Harvey, D. (2005 ) ‘A Brief History of Neoliberalism’, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.

(5) Berardi, F. (2009) ‘The Soul at Work’, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles.

(6) Atari Teenage Riot, ‘Black Flag’ on ‘Is this Hyperreal?’ Digital Hardcore, 2010.

(7) Debord, G. (1968) 'The Society of the Spectacle'. Black and Red, USA.

(8) Thomas, M. (ed)(2012) ‘Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary’, Workers’  Liberty, London

(9) Butterworth, A. (2010) ‘The World that Never Was. A true story of dreamers, schemers, anarchists and dreamers’. The Bodley Head, London.

(10) Holloway J. (2010), ‘Crack Capitalism’ Pluto Press, London and New York.

(11) www.futurelearn.com

(12) 'The Secret Power of Brands' UEA https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/the-secret-power-of-brands

(13) Inglesias, P. (2014) 'The Left Can Win' 12-9-2014 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/pablo-iglesias-podemos-left-speech/

(14) Dolan, A. (2014) 'Si se puede' in Red Pepper, Issue 199, Dec/Jan 2015, Socialist Newspaper (Publications), London