utterances/quick news update;

Saturday 8 March 2008

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There is a proper blog entry to come soon, with news of upcoming Kara Sea projects, and I've also been challenged to write about my 10 favourite New Order songs, which is a Herculean-enough task to merit taking some time over and doing it properly. I'm currently ensconsed in my home studio writing and recording a freshly-baked batch of new songs, which are due to see the light soon, with a little help from my old friends at new Manchester netlabel/collective Rebellious Jukebox. The Jukebox is run by some of the people with whom I used to run Manchester cottage label Valentine Records back in the day, so I'm looking forward to collaborating with some old faces again. My track Oh, If Only recently appeared on their introductory sampler album, which was given out for free to attendees at the Rebellious Jukebox launch party a couple of weeks ago, but if you weren't able to go to that, don't fear because it can now be downloaded from their website (also free of charge). The website, still embryonic, is going to take the form of an inclusive community of artists working with the project, so add it to your favourites or feed reader and keep an eye out for some contributions from me.

I've also started using Utterz, a rather nifty new site which allows you to blog via text, audio, photo and video, or any combination of those. I'm still poking around to see what the site can do, but I've already recorded a little introduction to The Kara Sea and an update on my activities -- with a bit of luck it should appear in a widget below.



Finally today, the obscenely-talented French photographer and filmmaker Emilie, whose videos for my songs you may already have seen, has made a lovely little tribute to my song The City Is A Sorceress, which you can see on her Flickr photostream now.

Emilie shoots mainly on Polaroid film, and the results are beguiling, instantly nostalgic and precious. Sadly, as you may already know, Polaroid are planning to discontinue manufacturing the surviving instant films later this year. If you appreciate the spontaneity of photography as an artform, and certainly if you look through Emilie's creations, you'll know that this will be a tragic loss. So, if you like her work (and my music, much of which takes its cue from visual inspiration including Polaroid photography), do us a favour and sign this petition to save it.

I'll be back soon with further updates and those 10 New Order songs I'm sure you're all waiting with baited breath to hear about(!); but keep an eye on my Utterz page, which is likely to be updated sooner!

Much love

Sarah. x.

technology and me;

Saturday 2 February 2008

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I'm a musician. This is something of which I often have to forcefully remind myself. It's something I actually, very often, forget. For instance, tonight.

I started writing and recording the songs that became Kara Sea songs in around 2004 or 2005, after not having written any music for years. My teenage self favoured the guitar as the instrument with which to write - and as such (bearing in mind I'm really not a very good guitarist at all), those early bedroom compositions were dreadfully formulaic. Mostly in A minor, for that was the easiest and best-sounding chord to play, they all followed largely the same chord progression, the same time signature, the same tempo and the same overall structure. I still have the chords and lyrics to those songs in my possession, and leafed through them recently hoping to find some inspiration or a lost gem; well, all I can say is, don't expect them to see the light of day. Ever.

Fast forward several years, and I'm discovering what Fruityloops is and what it can do. I still vividly remember my first encounter with this software, initally developed for dance music producers to assemble "loops" from libraries of internal and external sounds; legendary (in the literal sense of the word) Valentine Records act The Hi-Fi Renaissance, an open-ended "band" with any number of pipe dreams on the go at one time, used it to write a song called "Mousemat" on a PC in a bedroom in Swinton, and oh my, it was brilliant. A tuneless concoction of deliberately randomised bleeps that, by hook or by fluke, came out sounding like a track you wouldn't be ashamed to throw shapes to if it was to come on in a club. The rest of the "band" hated it. But I loved it. And what I loved more, was the fact that it had come not from an unwieldy and expensive studio visit, but from a casual half-hour during an evening round at John's watching films, using hardware any Joe Bloggs probably had kicking around his house. This was the new DIY.

Fruityloops (or FL Studio 354645, or whatever version we're up to now) has come on in leaps and bounds since then, but it's still very much at the lower end of what home computers can do when it comes to producing music. Nevertheless, it was the tool I started out with, and it's the tool I mainly continue to use. If you've listened to any of the songs on the Kara Sea website - they all started out in FL. Some of them don't sound like it, but I can never help but worry that they do. You see, just like my ill-advised adolescent guitar noodling, to my ear they sound formulaic, tell-tale. I worry that I'll be "found out". I've known people to be unbelievably creative within the constraints of such amateuristic software (if you want to hear the very best of what people do with FL, go and listen to Shirokuma), but I'm not particularly techy, nor do I relish the thought of actually reading manuals, so I potter around with the more basic features. It can actually be very restrictive. In my imagination are stunningly beautiful crystal synths; on my screen is a Juno 106 emulator that won't play ball. In my head is a laid-back, crackly drumloop; on my screen is a selection of tinny percussion sounds that no amount of processing can salvage.

I'm not geeky enough to learn, or intuitive enough to fumble around, the more specialised aspects of Fruityloops or any other music-producing software. And then it hits me that, really, programs such as these really are designed for people who know their way around a Control Panel better than they know their way around a guitar. I am, for better or for worse, a musician, and maybe I should stick to writing songs in the good old-fashioned way. Now, if only someone would book me some good old-fashioned studio time, I'd be sorted.

--

Other news: I'm finally getting round to going to the Hacienda exhibition at Urbis in Manchester next week. I shall report back with my findings.

blinking into the light

Tuesday 22 January 2008

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I keep promising to write in here more often, and then breaking said promise, don't I? Even now, more than a fortnight into 2008, I can't claim that it was going to be a new year's resolution. The fact is, it's been all quiet on the Kara Sea front lately - and I could try and find unrelated things to waffle on about, but trust me, you really wouldn't want that. The rest of the internet has to put up with enough of me.

2008 is, in theory, going to be a much more productive year for this project than 2007. Already I've got some interesting-looking projects lining up, some of which might take me off the local indie circuit for a change, and into more leftfield, more playful areas. I'm also masterminding an evil plan which might end up making you fall out with your computer and running off to start a new life with your dusty old bits of analogue kit. It just might. The annoying thing about these plans and projects being in the early stages is that I can't really write about them here, therefore I have to scrub them off my mental list of potential blog entries, and am left with even less to work with.

I'm slowly beginning to get to grips with How To Do Music v2.0, as opposed to How To Do Music In A Half-Arsed Way v1.5, which is what I used to work with. I only slipped under the radar for a couple of years, but even in that time, methods of making and distributing music have changed radically. I used to work for record labels; record labels don't seem to have much of a place now as they're so easy to bypass, at this level anyway. Everything I learned there has to be scrubbed, and I've started again with a blank canvas. I used to be a web designer, but the skills that were once in high demand are things that any 14-year-old can do in their sleep, and now everything's all Web 2.0 and suddenly my knowledge of HTML and CSS means absolutely nothing. Again, I find myself starting from scratch. This very website is likely to undergo some major changes soon, purely because it has to, in order to keep up with what you, the people reading this, want - nay, demand. And rightly so.

Andrew Dubber's New Music Strategies blog is a must-read, if you're in a similar boat. The thing about music and the internet these days is that there are so many baskets, and you really need to have eggs in all of them, or as many as possible. Spread the net wide and keep spreading it. It's no longer even enough to have a presence on Myspace; and anyway, there are scores of better sites than Myspace for discovering new music, if that's what you want to do. ReverbNation springs to mind; an intuitively-designed, easily-navigated site that is crammed full of benefits to both musicians and listeners. Last.fm has gone from strength to strength over the last few years, and now provides its users with radio stations very cleverly tailored to their own tastes, as well as the opportunity to write about the music that appeals to them and to connect with others who share their tastes. And today, I discovered a relatively new and very intriguing site - thesixtyone.com - which actually takes the form of a sort of game, whereby users collect points for listening to tracks, and use said points to "bump" the music they like. I still haven't figured out exactly how this works, but I've already spent a sizeable chunk of this afternoon poking around the site, and will no doubt continue to do so; and that, after all, is the mark of a good website, isn't it?

Talking of last.fm, there's a meme thing that has been floating around for the last couple of days, and I gleefully filled it out last night, happy of the opportunity to wax lyrical about some of my favourite music. You can read it here.

milenasong; the aftermath...

Sunday 25 November 2007

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Last weekend's gig with Milenasong was something it felt special to be a part of. I'd never before had the opportunity to support an act I counted as an "influence" rather than a "contemporary"; much less to play in such a setting at a gig being organised by one of my closest friends. Kate, Glasgow's newest promoter-extraordinaire, commented afterwards that she'd felt like she was wrapped in a cocoon made of friends all evening; and those are always the best nights, especially when you're surrounded largely by strangers. It was that sort of an event. The intimate confines of the 13th Note, the venue I've played more often than any other since I started this project (and there's more than one reason for that) were perfect for the occasion. The stage was decked out in fairy lights, the house lights were low, the drink and conversation flowed, and the audience assembled cross-legged on the floor - the best surroundings in which to play.

Of course, it was all too predictable that my guitar would have proven to come off the worse from its encounter with my kitten, Amy, a few weeks ago. She knocked it over and I thought nothing of it at the time, but it turns out some wiring had probably come loose, and in typical Kara Sea fashion, I didn't bother to find this out until I'd turned up for soundcheck. I have soundman Paul to thank for peeling me off the roof, and Older And Far Away to thank for moving mountains to get me a replacement guitar in time for doors opening. Thanks, guys.

Older And Far Away were, incidentally, very very good. I'd never seen them play before and was instantly captivated by their ramshackle yet elegant cello-meets-guitar-fuzz noise. It was as pretty as it was anarchic, and their set closer, an exhilarative cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog", brought a grin to the corners of my face and ensured some feet were raised from the floor. Definitely a band to check out if you find yourself on the Glasgow circuit any time soon.

I was on second and only had time for a quick line-check with my new guitar before taking to the stage a little flustered. It had been a long time since I'd gigged, which I kept muttering in between songs in the hope that my audience would forgive me my roughness, but it's no excuse really. Mostly it went well - the omnichord behaved himself, which he very often doesn't do in humid temperatures, I had the chance to showcase a new song, and played both tracks from the recent split single which were well-received. Then, the inevitable happened - I attempted a stripped-down acoustic track, only to find that the replacement guitar had also given up the ghost. It took two takes, but I got there in the end. I did have to cut the other acoustic song, a Field Mice cover that was sounding pretty good in rehearsals, out of the set, but hey - we were running late anyway.

All in all, it felt great to be up on stage again, and a receptive audience made me feel welcome and warm. My stage outfit - a hastily-thought-out homage to Elvis's 1968 comeback special get-up - was probably ill-advised in retrospect, but Lisa-Marie's comment that I looked like I should be in (X Factor girl band and tonight's surprise non-evictees) Hope cheered me up rather a lot. I always knew there was a latent popgirl inside me somewhere.

I looked forward to Milenasong's set with the kind of anticipation normally reserved for children at Christmas. Milena and her band were utterly lovely people, which of course helps, but in the end the music, as it does on record, spoke for itself. Live it's more intense; Milena's vocals soar as her arms flail in time with the ethereal noise emanating from the amps, and you can't help but be drawn in to the bewitching world the three of them create in such a small space. It's beautiful in its far-fetched-ness, the red rose lights tied around the microphone stand seeming to lead to a garden of forbidden fruit and sounds you feel priveleged to hear. Later this week, Milena and drummer Mark flew to Sydney with a few suitcases of belongings, to start over. The fact that they played in front of us only a few days before, made it seem all the more transient and special.

Afterwards Kate held a sort of afterparty at her flat; the most amusing taxi driver in all of Glasgow drove us there while regaling us with anecdotes of near-death experiences in corn fields while driving his cab. Milena read us poetry and we listened to Boards of Canada while drinking tea; it felt like the most perfect setting in which to end such a night.

Lisa-Marie, dear friend and Guardian-endorsed blogger, wrote more eloquently about the performances than I could have managed, as well as taking some photographs of the bands. (I would have uploaded some too, but unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me.) You should really subscribe to her blog anyway, as she's always a good read even when she's not writing about yours truly...

The Kara Sea's set list (which was pinched after I came off stage - a career first!) was as follows:

1. (I Was) Hardwired To Love You
2. Oh, If Only
3. We Need All The Help We Can Get
4. Goodnight, My Love, Wherever You Are
5. Friendly Milk
6. The City Is A Sorceress

Keep your eyes firmly fixed to these pages for suitable plugging of Kate's future endeavours in the world of gig-promoting, as she is beavering away as we speak (probably not literally as we speak, it's 3.45am and the girl needs her sleep) putting together all manner of exciting line-ups that she'll be bringing to you in 2008. Don't say you weren't warned.

--

And no sooner is one gig put to bed, than I am back to the grindstone preparing for another. Drive Carefully are ensconsed back in their regular third-Saturday-of-the-month slot at the Note, and next month, of course, marks their Christmas special. I get to share the stage with another of my favourite bands of the moment, Creeping Bent's beautifully eccentric and eclectic Say (formerly known as Say Jansfield). Their paths and my own have crossed a few times over the years, but I've never been able to share a bill with them until now, so I'm looking forward to it greatly. There's another band yet to be confirmed as well. The gigs page on the main website, as ever, will give you all the details, but it's on Saturday 15th December at the usual time in the usual place for the usual cost, and I hope to see you there.

It's gigs ahoy at the moment. On Tuesday night I'm going to see Electrelane, in the unfortunate setting of their farewell tour. I was gutted to hear that they were going on the dreaded "indefinite hiatus", largely because I only saw them live for the first time earlier this year, and I hadn't realised what I'd been missing. They played two sets at the Triptych festival and not only blew all the other bands off stage, but blew me and the rest of the audience away with their sheer loudness and intensity. It's not often you get a band of Electrelane's calibre, and they'll be a sad loss - it's sad, as well, that I should feel the need to point out that we need more all-female bands breaking through into traditionally male-dominated genres such as indie music. One of the things I always loved about Electrelane was their refusal to trade on the "girl band" tag, and let their talent and ambition push them through without indulging the media in gimmickry. I applaud them, I am inspired by them and I hope for more bands of their ilk.

Unless you've been under a large rock for the last fortnight, you can't also fail to have noticed that My Bloody Valentine have announced a reunion tour for next summer, with the promise of that legendary unfinished album seeing the light of day before the end of this year. I saw the Pixies at Manchester's Move festival in 2004, and was rooted to the spot for much of the gig, pretty much unable to digest the fact that a band I thought I'd "missed" due to the unfortunate incident of having been born too late, were standing a matter of metres in front of me playing the songs I'd daydreamed about having heard them play the first time around. If anything, MBV meant even more to me in my formative years than the Pixies did, hence last Thursday I was up with the lark, desperately refreshing Seetickets because not going just was Not An Option. I managed to get tickets for the gigs in London, Glasgow and Manchester, and although my bank account isn't thanking me for it, my 17-year-old self definitely is. They'd better play Soon.

In slightly more poppy gig news (although some might argue, not that much more), Girls Aloud have also announced an arena tour for 2008, and amidst nasty rumours that it may be their last (Cheryl's getting broody, apparently, and doesn't want to Have Both), I should really get my act together to see them live as well, before it's too late. I don't particularly relish the idea of seeing them on their 2017 comeback tour, promoting an insipid charity single ballad in-between juggling their reality TV careers... or am I thinking of someone else here? Hmm.

slight return and some nostalgia;

Thursday 8 November 2007

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If you've clicked your way here at all over the last six months, you'll probably have noticed tumbleweed flickering across your monitor, as The Kara Sea was left lingering in limbo while I took a few months off to sort out my health, move house and generally regroup. That done, the sabbatical is almost over and I'm dusting off my instruments in preparation for two exciting comeback gigs. The first of these is less than a fortnight away (gosh!) and marks the promotion debut of my friend Kate, who has put together a line-up which I am proud to be part of.

It was Kate who first introduced me to the joys of Milenasong, an act based formerly in Berlin and now in Brighton, featuring the enchanting lo-fi anti-folk of musician, gravelly chanteuse and tape fiend Milena Hunstad. Her album, Seven Sisters, came out on Monika Enterprise earlier this year, and reeled me in immediately with its otherworldy found-sounds and unlikely singalong songs. There's a certain atmosphere about the record that I love; recorded on tape and evoking late, nicotine-stained nights watching over darkened cities from uncomfortable distances. It's extremely exciting that Milena is coming here to play her first-ever Scottish date (and, most likely, her last, as she's relocating again at the beginning of 2008, this time to the other side of the world) and even more exciting for me that I get to support. I hope you can come along.

I've been busily patching my set together, as well as sprucing up the website (opening the curtains, letting some air in); it's an improvement, I think. There are MP3s to download from the site now, and more, newer stuff to come once I'm slightly better organised - I've recently moved house and am still floundering under boxes and boxes and boxes, scrambling around for leads and adaptors and batteries and everything else that I've lost. The Kara Sea home studio is "under construction", or will be after I've found the time to make a dash to Ikea. I have a feeling my set on the 18th might be a bit shambolic, given all this upheaval. I don't know what the musical line-up will be yet, but it will almost certainly be on the low-key side. Rehearsals continue apace. Expect new songs, old songs, and possibly a cover.

--

Since I've been off the radar, the biggest thing to happen on my musical landscape was the death of my childhood hero Tony Wilson in the summer. I felt at the time, and still do now, that it wouldn't be right for me to play another note in public without writing a few words in way of a tribute to him, and the influence he had on my life in music (because everyone else did at the time, and I didn't). So here they are.

If you think back to early childhood and try to pick out one song that opened your eyes and ears to music and kicked it out of background noise into something important - well, sometimes people's answers are things they'd rather not admit, sometimes it's something your parents listened to, sometimes it's the first record you bought, the first thing you danced to at the school disco. For me, True Faith was none of those things, but it was the cause of a massive epiphany all the same. The first time I heard it, it towered immediately head and shoulders above the tinny Eurodance that was fashionable back then in the early 90s, and that I had been listening to quite contently. All of a sudden things changed, and music became of prime importance rather than a playground distraction. The 2 Unlimited tapes went into the back of the drawer and New Order's back catalogue beckoned to me like a shiny, glittery thing to a magpie.

Throughout my teens I dabbled in various different musics; Britpop, shoegaze, contemporary house, tweepop; but New Order were my staple favourite band, and through them I became aware of, and eventually fell head over heels in love with, their label Factory Records. It hadn't occurred to me previously that a record label could be something that concerned itself with art. As far as I had known, the label was the business side of things and was there to make the dreams into cold hard realities and to turn a profit. So in my impressionable, overimaginative mind, it was unbelievably liberating to find a label that concentrated on aesthetics and romantic masterplans, just like the best bands did. In fact, the label was a work of art in itself. The contradictions bedazzled me; a label whose nightclub was at the forefront of the acid house revolution, and yet was run by a teatime newsreader. The biggest-selling 12" single of all time, losing money on every copy it sold because of the intricacies of its sleeve. And yes, the sleeves, and the artworks - the first Durutti Column album encased in sandpaper, Ben Kelly's "industrial fantasy" design for the Hacienda, the Situationist-inspired logos and manifestos, the obsessive catalogue numbering. None of it could have happened in any other space and time; nothing like that will ever happen again. Factory was a thing bigger than the sum of its parts, and it inspired me to guzzle up all of its releases like sweets (many of them incredible, others shockingly bad, but cushioned by the cachet of having a Fac number) in second-hand record shops up and down the land.

Of course, I was too young to be there at the time. By the time I had started memorising lists of the label's back catalogue (yes, I'm afraid I really did do this), it was 1998 and the zeitgeist had moved on. I got more satisfaction and more spurring-on from collecting Factory stuff than I did from listening to new music, which at the time was suffering from a nasty Britpop hangover. The ill-fated spin-off label Factory Too was releasing albums by Hopper (which, incidentally, I listened to the other night - dear me), the Space Monkeys and, interestingly, Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields fame - but it wasn't the same. Of course it wasn't; it couldn't be. From 1992 right up until a couple of years ago, Wilson launched version after version of his label hoping to kick-start the dream again. It never happened, because during the 90s, and especially since the turn of the century, the music industry changed, things gravitated away from Manchester (Nirvana were possibly one of the worst things to happen to Factory) and the musical climate grew more and more fickle, and less and less likely to accommodate an anti-capitalist indie label with a stubborn ego and a bewildering eccentricity. The original Factory sits encapsulated in its own little bubble of history, that it created and destroyed. The music of Joy Division and New Order has remained enduring; the label's more hidden gems, such as the Durutti Column's Sketch For Summer or The Wake's Here Comes Everybody, lie in wait to be cherry-picked by future generations. It's sad that we can't find space in the world for something like Factory anymore, and that if we do, it must be neatly packaged and crammed into neat two-hour feature films, bookended by intros and outros to perpetuate the myth.

Talking of films - around the time 24 Hour Party People was being made (and I was being knocked back for a part in the film despite making it to the last round of auditions), I was hitting an age where I could get into nightclubs, hang out with bands and make friends older than myself who listened to, and got passionate about, the same music as I did. My friend Gareth was my Factory soulmate and we formed a band with the sole intention of signing to Factory Too - needless to say, despite bombarding the label with demos and phonecalls and even staking out the office one day, we never achieved that particular dream. But it was precisely Factory's anarchy that inspired me to drop everything, walk out of school, and move 250 miles away to start a record label - and that dream did, in a sense, come true.

Valentine Records would not have existed had it not been for Factory. It's as simple as that, really. We weren't blind copyists - Creation, 4AD, Rough Trade all inspired us in one way or another, and Twisted Nerve provided us with much-needed moral support and helped us take our baby steps - but I don't think any of us would have had the inclination to run a label if we hadn't all had separate obsessions with what came out of Palatine Road and Charles Street in the 80s. It wouldn't have seemed like an appealing prospect - a bit like having a burning desire to start an accountancy firm. But we knew different.

During the four years I was involved with Valentine, I'd like to think we achieved some things I'm proud of. Tony Wilson had our first sampler album on his iPod, for a start. I was lucky enough, both through running the label and my stint playing keyboards in the band Megarider (who had their own, albeit vague Factory connection) to meet and work with people I found inspiring, and we travelled up and down the country having various and suitably bizarre adventures. We never made a day job out of it, and we never sold many records, but then that was never the point. We did party a lot, get involved with music we were passionate about, and paraded ourselves in the local and national press looking like twits. In other words, we were young and impressionable and having a vast amount of fun.

Looking back, I can trace all of my achievements in music back to New Order and to Factory, and therefore I suppose I have Wilson to thank for all of it, in a weird way. When John Peel died I was very upset, and mourned for the loss of his championing that was so important to everyone in an indie band, but I never really idolised Peel in the same way I idolised Anthony Wilson. He'd pop up on late-night cultural programmes and spout excited rhetoric about a new film or record, and I would go out the very next day and buy it or watch it, because I trusted his quality control (sometimes a misplaced trust, I grant you, but you could never fail to be inspired by his boundless, childlike enthusiasm). In my daydreams he was the only person who I ever envisaged managing my band or putting my records out, because he was one of the few people in the music industry I felt I could trust, or take at face value. And no, I didn't always agree with him, but I never lost my respect for him.

I will miss his eagerness, tenacity, tall tales and far-fetched masterplans. I'll miss spotting him walking his little dog and looking dishevelled around Manchester, like a part of the furniture. I'll miss shouting at the TV when he pops up on Question Time or suchlike, being obnoxious. In short, I will miss him. Goodnight, and god bless.

--

recommended further reading;

Mick Middles: From Joy Division To New Order: The Factory Story
Tony Wilson: 24 Hour Party People: What The Sleeve Notes Never Tell You
Matthew Robertson: Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album

and ten Factory songs you ought to revisit;

Joy Division - Disorder
The Wake - Pale Spectre
Tunnelvision - Watching The Hydroplanes
Marcel King - Reach For Love
A Certain Ratio - Shack Up
Section 25 - Looking From A Hilltop
The Wendys - Pulling My Fingers Off
Happy Mondays - Wrote For Luck (Vince Clarke mix)
The Space Monkeys - Sugar Cane
Electronic - Getting Away With It