Sleaford Mods

isurrender claims to sublimity

the surrender of the claims to sublimity is part of the point/appeal tho, no? it's the 'prophetic' part of NV's earlier formula - the surly peasant, automatically suspicious of money, authority and those who like to be sold things, unseduceable must exclude art and the sublime as part of that suspicion, they do not view the pastoral, they are *in* it. that is also the problem, as you say: as a vision it becomes tiring long-term, reductive and exclusive of change - the no nonsense insolence becomes authoritarian conservatism as it gets old.

MES as a person can exemplify this, and i find the latter-day cultism surrounding him a bit nauseating. he's saved personally by his absolute devotion to art, and in The Fall the essential counterbalance to the surly indifference to pleasure ('to please is the curse, and worse') is Art, Mysticism and the sublime, to which they are open. In this respect they represent a form of satire - gnostically excoriating and revelling in the material world to reveal the spiritual sublime. (The spiritual counterweight to the surly peasant's suspicion is a credulity towards heretical gnosticism and non-conformism). Half Man Half Biscuit manage it with genuine pastoral longing and a genius for the cultural impedimenta beyond and below outside irritation at the supermarket.

But basically I'm a sucker for English nobheadism and enjoy it more or less automatically (crap dance is a golden place for this) - the addition of dirty bass and drums, and mocking guitar, just helps.

^^ there's a point, at the height/depth of the Anabaptist's delirious approach to the deity, that the thought kicks in that the whole religious edifice is just an excuse to escape work and drink for oblivion and rut like a beast

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n601/gamalielratsey/2014-03-07074141_zpsf8942e08.jpg

and of courfe the reverfe holdf true

yep, the oppofite applief - the morning light.

more Sleaford Modland

http://www.ranterulze.net/images/drunkards.png

SM do feel a bit antiquated tho - not that I mind particularly. the JCCisms, the grubby post punk musical lumbering belie the 'mod'. after reading that excellent Ian Penman LRB article on mod, was wondering what foreign elements wd constitute contemporary mod - what would be the foreign element, fashion lodestones, the cultural frontiers. ended making up something out of a ragbag of african dance like the Lapaz Toyota video, soviet satellite states (your sevastopol comment, nakh), the angular faces and baroque lines of a wyndham lewis portrait. it wouldn't look much like Sleaford Mods other than its oppositional razor to the throat of hipster fogeyism and the frigid abnegation of scandi-porn.

nakh's point about suspension of disbelief is v. on point tho - to contemplate the authenticity of the presentation is to pop the bubble immediately - hence my original caveat about "until we fall out" - but charlatanism is an acceptable angle of the English scene too as long as you keep your art project roots hid - incidentally, Earl Brutus seem to never manage this to me, they are a much archer proposition than Sleaford

even Chris Donald nods

yeah i think if you showed me the entire musical history – all failed bands etc – of these 2, or re-presented it as a spoken word project of sorts then I would be way more iffy, but for now i'm pretty infatuated.

would like to read a long history of the English 'No. Fuck off' tradition.

Andrew Fearn (the button-pusher/head-nodder/beer-chugger/e-cig-vaper) also puts out solo stuff as extnddntwrk - this is his most recent release - http://extnddntwrk.bandcamp.com/album/hybrids

Fearny is a good bloke, was (is?) a friend of my brother. I'm not sure what sort of 'pretence' you guys think he's up to, but... I guess you want to see them as archetypes not humans? But then surely the project is to force their humanity into yr face? We are all humans, fucked up and crawling and puking, and implicated in the shit to a vast extent.

I think it's one of the things I like about them - they are my people, but they're not. This is my town, but it's not. The people they point the finger at, often, are people like me, but it's a mutual implication, simultaneously drawn and repelled by to for the whole thing, the fucking Goose on the Square, Yates' Wine Lodge, Old Meadows, New Meadows, The Lamp, Peggers is closing down, it's always been closing down, Selectadisc is long gone (what the fuck is Selectadisc?), Sneinton, Lenton, Spice Spice Arena, the fucking repulsive 'Arts Quarter' concept, St. Ann's, the xylophone man (it was a metallophone actually), the spot by my friends' house where that boy was shot...

Sorry, where was I?

these guys are pretty fun!
i like english ppl shouting at me, always have

haha UMS otm

i like emily's post. art project or not, they kind of reframe northern working class rock in a way they makes the likes of oasis look the height of pretension, and not by dumbing down either, but the sense they give you of being knee-deep in all the shit of their native culture, suckered onto the local substrate like limpets stuck to the bottom of a dirty pub ashtray. they have this great tension too between being fucked-up yet still vital, deeply bored but still awake and alert. not that any of this is exclusive to them mind you.

feel like the ilx response to them is prob complicated because they answer a bit too perfectly to the Real England thing (which thread is always itself a bit complicated)

was thinking of posting them to that thread for the longest time but bottled it

xpost I commissioned the Guardian article. And, yes, it was a way to shoehorn a load of bands I was interested in into one piece that would get way more play and attention than single pieces about any of them would. In fact, not sure I could have got single pieces about any of them into the paper.

But it was a direct reaction to the fact that for two or three years I'd barely heard a new "rock" band who didn't sound like gimley eyed careerists, and suddenly there seemed to be a rush of new bands who didn't sound like 6 Music airplay was the key thing on their mind. I know such bands have always been around, but for the first time in ages people outside the underground seem to be talking about them …

who are these overground tastemakers yr using as a hype barometer?

this thread is great, particularly good to be reacquainted with one day i went to lidl, also agree entirely w/ this bit of fizzles' -

the surrender of the claims to sublimity is part of the point/appeal tho, no? it's the 'prophetic' part of NV's earlier formula - the surly peasant, automatically suspicious of money, authority and those who like to be sold things, unseduceable must exclude art and the sublime as part of that suspicion, they do not view the pastoral, they are *in* it. that is also the problem, as you say: as a vision it becomes tiring long-term, reductive and exclusive of change - the no nonsense insolence becomes authoritarian conservatism as it gets old.

It seems like SM's are pretty Deep Nottingham as emil.y's post attests, but on that archetypal level they feel v familiar. mb I wish they felt less familiar. "suspension of disbelief" is kind of curious in this context (identification). the problem isn't that the common ground invoked is imaginary, it's Real, observational, and necessarily specific. it's just that the Realness of the surly-peasant-totems - JSA, the A15, shoplifting in lidl, whatever - feels like a kind of empty materialism. it's not reflexive. it's a collection of v recognisable quotidian pains and symbols the same as a michael mcintyre routine. mb not fair to include the afrikan boy track, that's a one off. not familiar enough w/ the fall to confidently agree w/ fizzles that they bring a spiritual/sublime counterbalance to this but it sounds plausible.

the surrender of the claims to sublimity is part of the point/appeal tho, no?....

But basically I'm a sucker for English nobheadism and enjoy it more or less automatically (crap dance is a golden place for this) - the addition of dirty bass and drums, and mocking guitar, just helps.

― Fizzles, Friday, 7 March 2014 07:23 (Yesterday)

that was saying that in lieu of any identification with them then it doesn't work on any sort of transfigured way, like the squalour early suicide does

disbelief doesn't suggest they are falsifying their world but that identifying with it rests on investing in some of the same claims to what you call 'surly peasant' wisdom if that acerbic wisdom mostly seems trite, self-defeating lumpen rage without any sort of assimiliative or political intelligence beyond enumerating the indignities of their cell around them

their posture in the live videos has a sort of territorial, leering, malevolent quality that seems simulated and feeble, like many english pretenders they lack confidence, they don't realize that the people who created the world around them are cruder and more caustic than themselves

selfish cunt >>>>>>> sleaford mods

have p much no idea what he's on about but I am enjoying this music a lot

little known fact that these guys were part of the Kersal Massive back in the day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uja3W-ibifc

Lol k punk writes about these in the latest wire

Haha .. The Kersal Massive was the first thing I thought about when I saw that new Sleaford Mods video

The final rant about Levenshulme and then the closing 'Peace!' kills me every time ...

Kersal isn't even near Levenshulme ffs. Wind yer necks in, lads.

levenshulme's rep transcends its borough

and it's not that far in an 05 V6 Cleo Twin Turbo

Unfortunately the Levenshulme battle rap scene has been replaced by an M19 ukulele group.

I could not make out whether he was from Salford or Manchester <-- can't remember what Fall song that is but it ties this together nicely.

93 & 192, makes sense to get a daysaver

found myself asking for a daysaver the other day & was much derided by my gf

cheetham hill, oppet.

investing in some of the same claims to what you call 'surly peasant' wisdom if that acerbic wisdom mostly seems trite, self-defeating lumpen rage without any sort of assimiliative or political intelligence beyond enumerating the indignities of their cell around them

don't want to belabour this, but i don't think 'surly peasant wisdom' is a thing at all (certainly not something to be praised. It has no wisdom in it, it is just impervious and naturally antagonistic to certain types of folly (or mystically believed to be) - the empty grotesque (rabelais's parable of jest-gnostic insolubilia at the beginning of the first book of G&P always feels like it's about this. Fuck, I don't care if it's the SM thread, it's Saturday morning, no one's around - quoting Urquhart's translation (JCC of its day chiz chiz):

Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's, which is entitled The Banquet, whilst he was setting forth the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that purpose, said that he resembled the Silenes. Silenes of old were little boxes, like those we now may see in the shops of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, saddled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such-like counterfeited pictures at discretion, to excite people unto laughter, as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bacchus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets were carefully preserved and kept many rich jewels and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergris, amomon, musk, civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates. For to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exterior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous in his gesture. He had a sharp pointed nose, with the look of a bull, and countenance of a fool: he was in his carriage simple, boorish in his apparel, in fortune poor, unhappy in his wives, unfit for all offices in the commonwealth, always laughing, tippling, and merrily carousing to everyone, with continual gibes and jeers, the better by those means to conceal his divine knowledge. Now, opening this box you would have found within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than human understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, invincible courage, unimitable sobriety, certain contentment of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible misregard of all that for which men commonly do so much watch, run, sail, fight, travel, toil and turmoil themselves.

Whereunto (in your opinion) doth this little flourish of a preamble tend? For so much as you, my good disciples, and some other jolly fools of ease and leisure, reading the pleasant titles of some books of our invention, as Gargantua, Pantagruel, Whippot (Fessepinte.), the Dignity of Codpieces, of Pease and Bacon with a Commentary, &c., are too ready to judge that there is nothing in them but jests, mockeries, lascivious discourse, and recreative lies; because the outside (which is the title) is usually, without any farther inquiry, entertained with scoffing and derision. But truly it is very unbeseeming to make so slight account of the works of men, seeing yourselves avouch that it is not the habit makes the monk, many being monasterially accoutred, who inwardly are nothing less than monachal, and that there are of those that wear Spanish capes, who have but little of the valour of Spaniards in them. Therefore is it, that you must open the book, and seriously consider of the matter treated in it. Then shall you find that it containeth things of far higher value than the box did promise; that is to say, that the subject thereof is not so foolish as by the title at the first sight it would appear to be.

And put the case, that in the literal sense you meet with purposes merry and solacious enough, and consequently very correspondent to their inscriptions, yet must not you stop there as at the melody of the charming syrens, but endeavour to interpret that in a sublimer sense which possibly you intended to have spoken in the jollity of your heart. Did you ever pick the lock of a cupboard to steal a bottle of wine out of it? Tell me truly, and, if you did, call to mind the countenance which then you had. Or, did you ever see a dog with a marrowbone in his mouth,—the beast of all other, says Plato, lib. 2, de Republica, the most philosophical? If you have seen him, you might have remarked with what devotion and circumspectness he wards and watcheth it: with what care he keeps it: how fervently he holds it: how prudently he gobbets it: with what affection he breaks it: and with what diligence he sucks it. To what end all this? What moveth him to take all these pains? What are the hopes of his labour? What doth he expect to reap thereby? Nothing but a little marrow. True it is, that this little is more savoury and delicious than the great quantities of other sorts of meat, because the marrow (as Galen testifieth, 5. facult. nat. & 11. de usu partium) is a nourishment most perfectly elaboured by nature.

In imitation of this dog, it becomes you to be wise, to smell, feel and have in estimation these fair goodly books, stuffed with high conceptions, which, though seemingly easy in the pursuit, are in the cope and encounter somewhat difficult. And then, like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture, and frequent meditation, break the bone, and suck out the marrow,—that is, my allegorical sense, or the things I to myself propose to be signified by these Pythagorical symbols, with assured hope, that in so doing you will at last attain to be both well-advised and valiant by the reading of them: for in the perusal of this treatise you shall find another kind of taste, and a doctrine of a more profound and abstruse consideration, which will disclose unto you the most glorious sacraments and dreadful mysteries, as well in what concerneth your religion, as matters of the public state, and life economical.

Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, whilst he was a-couching his Iliads and Odysses, had any thought upon those allegories, which Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Cornutus squeezed out of him, and which Politian filched again from them? If you trust it, with neither hand nor foot do you come near to my opinion, which judgeth them to have been as little dreamed of by Homer, as the Gospel sacraments were by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, though a certain gulligut friar (Frere Lubin croquelardon.) and true bacon-picker would have undertaken to prove it, if perhaps he had met with as very fools as himself, (and as the proverb says) a lid worthy of such a kettle.

If you give no credit thereto, why do not you the same in these jovial new chronicles of mine? Albeit when I did dictate them, I thought upon no more than you, who possibly were drinking the whilst as I was. For in the composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed any more, nor any other time than what was appointed to serve me for taking of my bodily refection, that is, whilst I was eating and drinking. And indeed that is the fittest and most proper hour wherein to write these high matters and deep sciences: as Homer knew very well, the paragon of all philologues, and Ennius, the father of the Latin poets, as Horace calls him, although a certain sneaking jobernol alleged that his verses smelled more of the wine than oil.

So saith a turlupin or a new start-up grub of my books, but a turd for him. The fragrant odour of the wine, O how much more dainty, pleasant, laughing (Riant, priant, friant.), celestial and delicious it is, than that smell of oil! And I will glory as much when it is said of me, that I have spent more on wine than oil, as did Demosthenes, when it was told him, that his expense on oil was greater than on wine. I truly hold it for an honour and praise to be called and reputed a Frolic Gualter and a Robin Goodfellow; for under this name am I welcome in all choice companies of Pantagruelists. It was upbraided to Demosthenes by an envious surly knave, that his Orations did smell like the sarpler or wrapper of a foul and filthy oil-vessel. For this cause interpret you all my deeds and sayings in the perfectest sense; reverence the cheese-like brain that feeds you with these fair billevezees and trifling jollities, and do what lies in you to keep me always merry. Be frolic now, my lads, cheer up your hearts, and joyfully read the rest, with all the ease of your body and profit of your reins. But hearken, joltheads, you viedazes, or dickens take ye, remember to drink a health to me for the like favour again, and I will pledge you instantly, Tout ares-metys.

Rabelais to the Reader:

Good friends, my Readers, who peruse this Book, Be not offended, whilst on it you look: Denude yourselves of all depraved affection, For it contains no badness, nor infection: 'Tis true that it brings forth to you no birth Of any value, but in point of mirth; Thinking therefore how sorrow might your mind Consume, I could no apter subject find; One inch of joy surmounts of grief a span; Because to laugh is proper to the man.

Also I've been v much enjoying Pubic Hair Ltd.

Why you fucking hiding
Behind a stupid car?
Doing 30 in a 40,
Playing solo Johnny Marr?

Who gives a fuck about yesterday's heroes,
Who seem to think they are still today's heroes?
It's not a pyramid, you're not a fucking pharoah.

I keep finding it amusing. Both the initial image and the playground second bit.

you're not a fucking pharoah

too perfect

Be a lot more interesting if dude ws

This shit is great.

At Rough Trade for Record Store Day. Opening scenes are... unexpected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Njw0gYyVFQ

Ha these dudes are too perfect

It's like Begby from Trainspotting: the band

that guy is the nose scratchingist emcee i have ever seen......

that woman at the front in the final few frames with the five year old child is going to have some explaining to do when her kid goes back to nursery this week

on their FB page today:

"Ello. I would like to apologise to those that came to see us in Brighton last night. It's been really busy this past few months and old demons got the better of me. It's no excuse and it's not on. Really sorry. Jason"

Does anyone know what happened?

went AWOL drinking in London I think.

not really sure what happened. just before they were due to go on the promoter or road manager or someone climbed up on stage and announced that they wouldn't be playing cos "one of them had gone MIA in south london" but he refused to expand on that. i did see the guy who isn't jason outside the pub earlier on, and a tweet from a local listings magazine claimed they were both there but couldn't be arsed, but i don't know how true that was. most of the speculation i've seen is that jason was too hungover/drunk to make it. anyhow, local punk poet atilla the stockbroker seized the opportunity to take the stage so i made a swift exit to go and see some other gig instead. saw another tweet later that the other sleaford mod did go on and play some music but again, dunno if that's true or not...

anyhow nevermind, rescheduled for october apparently, so he can have a bit of a lie down til then

Yes, it seems that Andrew Fearne went on alone - http://youtu.be/dKv4K8dYMMA - and handed out free CDs as compensation.

ha good bloke, wish i'd stayed now

that gig surely at the vanguard in the long-running trend towards gigs becoming more purely like rooms of people listening to the same thing

I take it the album will be straight into the top ten, if not number one, and the papers will be all "Where did that come from?" business.

top lead review in the new mojo.

http://thetalkhouse.com/talks/luke-haines-the-auteurs-black-box-recorder-talks-sleaford-mods-divide-and-exit/

he is such a shit writer

Luke Haines is an avant garde singer-songwriter.

Luke Haines is always having a laugh

luke haines is one of those rare and wonderful englishmen
luke haines is a fly in the ointment of mainstream music
luke haines is not quite the archetypal angry young man
luke haines is one of the best songwriters in the world today
luke haines is the leader of the autuers
luke haines is at the
luke haines is allegedly the grumpy
luke haines is
luke haines is a british genius
luke haines is fully aware of the fact that the seventies weren't all about bellbottoms
luke haines is back with absinthe
luke haines is an evil pop genius
luke haines is the most underrated talent in pop music today
luke haines is utter genius
luke haines is one of those shape
luke haines is the most underestimated songwriter of our time
luke haines is the auteur behind this particular group's brand of artrock
luke haines is a cynical bastard and one helluva songwriter
luke haines is a genius
luke haines is better known for his "other" band
luke haines is the main man in the splendidly creative auteurs
luke haines is camping in a different pasture altogether
luke haines is a very observant
luke haines is the loner kid in the big classroom of rock stars
luke haines is correct
luke haines is a fantastic example of what
luke haines is what can be seen as a typical british artist as i donґt think you will find music that is more british than his as there is the typical sarcasm
luke haines is strange and i know that martin rossiter hates him
luke haines is terug