Recently-Acquired Vinyl LP of the Day #13: Tricky 'Maxinquaye'

As something of a departure from (re-)investing in original LPs from the late Seventies – mid Eighties, that personal golden period of vinyl-buying, this purchase was made with a desire to hear what an album so familiar from CD – for the better part of 20 years now, too, blimey – would sound like on vinyl, and also to sample the artwork on a larger scale, of course.

Happy to report that no loss of quality or enjoyment has been experienced across the change in formats, & that the vinyl pressing of ‘Maxinquaye’ is even mightier than before, an album of rare, dark wonders indeed.

[untitled: Football Portrait #11]

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

(Re)presenting the most recent drawing to be processed with reference to the visual source material of photocopies of photographs of football players as reproduced in the 1970 edition of a ‘found’ soccer annual, that vintage period of the game’s history, just prior to personal experience & memory, that seems to exert the most romantic appeal.

In this particular instance, the portrait subject of the original image & the outcome of the drawing process, Alan Bermingham, wears a somewhat pained expression more common to the long-suffering supporters of his club, Wrexham (Update 07/05/2012: the current Wrexham team have added to the fans’ catalogue of ongoing agonies by managing to avoid promotion back to the Football League after failing to negotiate the play-off system for a second successive season, a dereliction on this occasion after leading their division for a substantial period of the season & amassing an impossible-not-to-get-promoted total of 98 points – it could only happen to Wrexham, beset, as almost always, by incompetence at the crucial moments. Good luck to their conquerors – again - Luton Town in the play-off Final: please, with respect, leave our league now).

Update 20/05/12: Oh, for God's sake, hapless Luton have lost the Blue Square Premier play-off final again, this year to York City (to whom congratulations & due respect upon regaining their Football League status), in the process making even bigger mugs of Wrexham, with whom they've become locked, doomed, in an embrace of failure - what a waste of time & effort.

Soundtrack:

The Caretaker 'An Empty Bliss Beyond This World'
Tricky 'Maxinquaye'
Miracle Legion 'Surprise Surprise Surprise' (vinyl LP)
Jesca Hoop 'Hunting My Dress'

The return of the 'Soundtrack' feature with a not inconsiderable bang - The Caretaker's 'An Empty Bliss...' becomes a richer experience for each listen & engagement with, whilst it was a pleasure & treat indeed to hear for the first time in a long time the Tricky, Miracle Legion & Jesca Hoop albums & the many enduring wonders they each contain.

Storytelling

Today the opposite of tomato is ‘Sideways’

Perhaps it’s because of currently reading ‘Vermeer’s Camera’, as previously mentioned, and consequently considering a number of the artist’s paintings, but the narrative appeal of this sequence of original newspaper images, illustrating a fashion feature on the new season‘s ‘statement shoes’, suggested it/they might make a suitable subject for transcription. This composite drawing - and indeed its individual parts as processed - therefore remains faithful to the sequence of images as printed in the hardcopy of the newspaper, which served as my model, and also the online version.


graphite/52x30cm
original source: 'The Daily Telegraph' 12/03/08

The accompanying feature as written-edited, however, presents the narrative of the shoes as worn, tested, in another sequence, as, indeed, does a short film of the same.


Furthermore, to add to the fluidity, the ‘shufflability’ of the narrative, & thus the story they might tell, they are sequentially arranged in my sketchbook - inadvertently skipping a page between the first & second drawings, which blank space subsequently became filled with the third - in the following order, different again, as dated: 01/04/08, 03/04/08, 02/04/08. How we read a sequence of images, especially in the print or visual broadcast media, subject to editing and presentation, is perhaps often taken for granted, even when the story they tell might not be that as it happened, in real time. What stories may be told, using the same basic raw materials: the possibilities are open to numerous interpretations, agendas, etc…

I must admit that, if the sequence of photographs was originally composed & published thus - not strictly depicting the story as written-told, but illustrating it all the same - for aesthetic reasons, then this is the only ‘truth’ in which I’m really interested & with which I’m concerned. Didn’t someone once release an album of music entitled ‘This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours’..?

Soundtrack:


Spiritualized ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space’
Tricky ‘Maxinquaye’
Charlotte Gainsbourg ‘5:55’
Belle & Sebastian ‘Push Barman to Open Old Wounds’
Lambchop ‘Aw, C’mon’ & ‘No, You C’mon’
Sigur Ros ‘Takk’
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds ‘Best of’

Been enjoying more of a musical catch-up, this time including the brooding, unsettling magnificence of Tricky’s masterpiece ‘Maxinquaye’ & the grand guinol of much of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ earlier work, the oft-murky depths of the breadth of which are a pleasure to submerge oneself in, surrender to: many an intriguing narrative too. The power of both of these albums (& some of the originals from which the Cave selection is culled) remains undiminished through or by time.


Watched ‘Sideways’ last night, for the third time, & enjoyed it more than ever: a quietly wonderful & beautiful film, with a perfectly-realised narrative, fuelled by wine & the pleasures of its drinking but encompassing much human nature within its journey. All that Californian space & sunshine appeared most attractive too…