Some Different Music

We celebrated St Catherine's Day last week by heading out to see The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing at the Star in Guildford. Having both seen them before some years ago we knew what we were getting and wondered why they were straying to Guildford to play in the back room of a pub (there couldn't have been more than 60 people there - was it really worth everyone's while?). Still, it had to be done. The said back room, helpfully called 'The Back', is a long, narrow and awkward space for a band, accessed by negotiating the staircases and mezzanines of the Star's appealingly maze-like interior, but it meant we could loiter at the back and still see something. I don't much enjoy stand-up comedy, so I found Andrew O'Neill's warm-up routine only intermittently effective, and neither of us was ever going to respond to all the silly encouragement to the audience to bounce around the limited space, but the set was fun. The Men's lead singer and saw-player Andy Heintz had a tussle with cancer last year and is only just recovered, and has swapped his pith helmet and red military jacket for a bowler and tattered Dickensian urchin coat with a touch of makeup that makes him look rather like the Tiger Lillies' Martyn Jacques after a very late night. The new album, Not Your Typical Victorians, has a more political edge than their previous stuff as well as being more musically interesting, and I rather liked pieces such as 'This House is not Haunted' and 'Third Class Coffin'. I felt like taking Mr O'Neill to task on his lyric insisting 'Jesus was a Cockney (even though he didn't exist)', but I'm glad someone is doing this kind of thing.

PS: I forgot to mention that the audience included remarkably few visibly identifiable Steampunks. 'I thought all that business of sticking goggles on a cheap fancy-dress top hat had finished', opined Ms Formerly Aldgate.  Truth be told, the few folk dressed up looked more like Morris dancers than Steampunks, but it can be a fine line, I suppose.

Gothic Evolution

One of the things that fascinates me is how, why and to what extent people change the style they may have adopted for themselves. Of course some Goths, once they have become such, stay exactly the same as they were at 18. Others move away from the subcultural world completely, once it’s fulfilled whatever need it was that drove them there in the first place. Those who stay, but change, I find most interesting.

Now, many, many years ago I used to contribute to the Goth magazine Meltdown with the odd article or review. The editor had set it up to make her fortune, or at least her reputation, although I don’t think it really managed either in the few years it was going. Meltdown had an in-house illustrator called Dr A who would come up with cartoons to accompany articles for which no sufficiently appealing photograph could be found. Here’s the one he did for my article on Gothic academic studies.

Dr A wasn’t just an illustrator. He also played synths with a band who started out calling themselves Sneaky Bat Machine and then in the very early 2000s morphed into Goteki. Goteki, or Sneaky Bat Machine, were broadly speaking a Cybergoth band. I’m pretty sure I’ve never listened to any of their output, but feel fairly confident that it would have been the kind of thing that makes more traditional Goths quiver with rage. ‘Sounds like an ‘80s computer game soundtrack’, commented IF magazine of their album, apparently. You don’t see many Cybergoths these days – you don’t see many Goths at all, of course, but Cybers are a near-invisible minority even within the subculture now, though once upon a time, in the late 90s and early 2000s, there were loads of them. Cybergoths mingled regulation black with fluorescent tubing hair extensions, enormous furry boots, and, ubiquitously, little black goggles perched high on the arrangement of multicoloured dreadlocks and plastic that served them for a hairstyle. So Dr A was one of these fellows. Here’s a picture of the band from their Goteki phase, from their one-time record label Wasp Factory: he’s the one on the left.

I had not spared any of this a thought for years. Then not long ago while looking for something else entirely I stumbled across an artist and sculptor/toymaker calling himself Doktor A. This Doctor constructs little Steampunkish characters from a strange fantasy world called Mechtorians, all of which have their own identities, histories, and, quite often, riveted brass moustaches. He exhibits them all over the place and sometimes people buy them. It was while looking at some of his drawings that I noticed affinities, little features, that reminded me of the cartoons of the other Dr A all those years ago. There were spirals – and you might say with some justice that attenuated spiral motifs pop up in all sorts of Gothic artistic places thanks to Tim Burton and The Nightmare Before Christmas – but they still leapt to my attention. And, buried away in the depths of Doktor A’s website there are little resin caricatures of the members of Sneaky Bat Machine, which can be yours for a mere £150. The Doctor and the Doktor are one and the same, even if the resemblance may be hard to glimpse in photographs.

But Dr A has eschewed his fluorescent tubes and gigantic boots in favour of a granddad shirt and a waistcoat. This is what he looks like nowadays, as depicted by circusposterus.com. His ‘artist’s biography’ somewhat unhelpfully informs the online enquirer that ‘raised by the military and monitored by men in white coats until he was 16, Doktor A has always scribbled monsters’, giving no clue as to the nature and causes of the artist’s shift over the last dozen years from Cybergoth to Steampunk. It’s a move from a style based on a fantasised vision of the future to one organised around a fantastic vision of the past – in which the only continuity is provided by goggles, except that now they’re brass and leather whereas once they were plastic. But they’re both outsider style, linked by a dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of the present and a determination to dress up. That’s the connection, I suppose.

Mind you, the question arises – now that Steampunk’s dead, where do we go from here?

Christmas Jollity

... or something like that. Our friend DiamanteQueen, who assembles amazing Gothic adornments for the person or the home, recently came up with a range of Christmas wreaths and I decided to buy what she described as the 'Steampunk' wreath. There isn't really that much Steampunk about it apart from a cog or two; but then nor is there a great deal specifically Christmassy apart from the tinsel and a bauble. Rather it has an Autumnal feel with the purple and brown leaves, and I was delighted with it. My friend Ms Formerly Aldgate, spotting the tiny wooden teacup, summarised the theme as 'Time passes, people die, and everything stops for tea'.

Electro Swung

A few friends of mine from the Goth world attended White Mischief a couple of nights before Halloween. White Mischief has been a predominately Steampunk event since 2008 but the last outing had (so I'm led to understand) a considerable dollop of music that has come to be called Electro-Swing, some of which, some of which I stress, I find myself quite fond of as well.

How people come across new genres and styles is always interesting. In my case I was sojourning with my parents over Christmas in 2008 and caught the festive edition of Jonathan Creek which featured in a garden party scene a trio of close-harmony singing ladies in vintage hairstyles. These were the Puppini Sisters whose Myspace profile I swiftly looked up. The song they were singing was 'Spooky', and they also did (and do) both covers of modern pop and classic songs from the swing and big-band era in a fairly staightforward style - though their version of 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B' is so fast, a full minute quicker than the Andrews Sisters', that some vintage fans can't take it. Some of their stuff, however, came under the category they themselves, lacking any other label at the time, referred to as 'swingpunk': music that took a swing-era idiom and updated it with modern rhythm and production. 'Crazy in Love', with its initial sample of 'Puttin' on the Ritz', was a prime example. Eventually I got around to buying a couple of their albums on Amazon, which, in its helpful way, suggested I have a look at White Mink/Black Cotton as well.
Obviously what caught my eye was the reference to the iconic ER Richée photograph of Louise Brooks, 'Kansas Cleopatra'. What caught my ear when I actually listened to it, however, was a number of pieces that, like 'Crazy in Love', melded vintage music samples (and sometimes more sophisticatedly musical motifs played in a vintage style) with contemporary instrumentation. In particular I found myself rather adoring Gry and FM Einheit's 'Princess Crocodile' and 'Jolie Coquine' by Caravan Palace. I now know that White Mink/Black Cotton was crucial in consolidating and spreading the whole idea of Electro-Swing beyond a few experimental tracks and turning it into a genre.

Of course it's begun taking off hugely and feeds into the burgeoning vintage scene as well. A lot of electro-swing is heavy and strongly rhythmic, and can be seen as a close relative of house or hiphop, but Caravan Palace and other bands do play real instruments. I've just come across Michael Biboulakis and Nina Zeitlin's 'Is That Too Much To Ask' which, as well as the heavy beat, features a clarinet, bass and trumpet/. The closer an interest you take in the music of the past, of course, the bigger the temptation is to adopt other aspects of the past's styles too, especially when there are pre-existing organs such as The Chap encouraging you to do so. Have a look at Caravan Palace's video for their second single, 'Suzy', to see how they succumbed. It's rather gorgeous.

'After an evening of Steampunk and Electro-Swing it's good to get back to Goth basics', commented a friend on Facebook after coming home from White Mischief, linking one feels with some relief to an online deathrock radio station. Other Goths can't get enough of the stuff; another friend talks of 'rescuing electro-swing from the house crowd'. I suspect it's the genre's tongue-in-cheek quality which appeals so strongly to the mischievous side of Goth as well as its creativity and references to the past, and elides very smoothly into other varieties of dark-tinged music such as Sepiachord and Dark Cabaret: compare both the sound and look of The Scarring Party performing 'No More Room' and the Diablo Swing Orchestra, for instance.

On its edges Electro-Swing goes very poppy, and shades into some of Caro Emerald's brilliant output, most notably 'That Man' which I've even heard being played on Radio Co-Op in the local Swanvale Halt branch; or The Correspondents who, I'm afraid, are slightly too soft for my tastes. This is bound to make Goth fondness for it a controversial matter in the scene. But we've been there before, and will be again.

Blameworthy

Back in January I saw, among other artistes, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing performing at the Cross Kings, as was. Yesterday I went to hear them again, this time at The Gaff up Holloway Road. A rather crazy thing to do on a Sunday evening, but sometimes craziness must be embraced. I missed Lady Carol and her ukelele, but did catch some of delightfully-named compere Ophelia Bitz. The Men themselves once again offered good if very loud fun (not that these things are always contradictory) and I considered it a success if I could get the general gist of what was going on. Sometimes we had an introduction to the songs, which was helpful on occasion ('this one's about the Empire'; 'this song's about a works outing to Margate ruined when a Cthulhu octopus god crawls out of the water'). Mostly the topics were offbeat and humorous with episodic lapses into the more serious - the one about the Tommy who turns his bayonet on his sergeant having decided 'my real enemy's the bastards in authority' was admitted to be 'nice and cheerful for a Sunday'.

My Friend Went to Whitby and all I Got ...

I went to the UK's Goth capital at the very time when it was packed to frothing with Goth retailers and all I managed to buy was a Steampunk cross made from cogs bought off a foppish young man who looked suspiciously like a poet, and an old chloroform bottle purchased from a fiddle-tormenting antiques dealer who warned me not to take up the instrument 'because there are too many violin players'.

A Day In Oxford

In fact it turned out to be rather less than a day, as my car conked out on the way to the fair city and I had to be got going again by the good offices of the AA. Anyway, I did all the things I'd planned to do with Dr Bones only not in quite the order we'd planned.
After lunch we went to the Steampunk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science. Dr Bones has already visited this as have a party of devoted lunatics from the London Goth Meetup. I thought it was highly amusing and I especially liked the Tank Cathedral model which gives a new meaning to the phrase 'Church Militant'.
I even bought a fob astrolabe which will make an appearance sometime - the closest thing I'm ever likely to achieve to the fob orrery I once offered to commission from a friend, a commission he couldn't fulfill having failed to work out how to convert the gears from something twelve feet across to a version small enough to fit in a waistcoat pocket. Shame.
From there we sampled the new Ashmolean Museum. Of course the Ashmole isn't new at all, it's been there since the 1700s, but it was massively reconstructed last year. For two terms or so while I was an undergraduate the Ashmole's sculpture gallery became very familiar to me as I was passing through it, and past the Alfred Jewel, most days on my way to the Classics Library. The Library moved out to the new Sackler Building a few years ago, allowing the rebuilding of the rather dowdy old Ashmole.
And what a rebuilding. I think this is now the most stunning museum space I've ever seen. Some of the displays aren't finished - we kept coming across objects with no labels or labels with no numbers next to the objects to tell you what they referred to - but the sheer aesthetic is wonderful, with a breathtaking, and massive, central stairwell full of light opening into the darker, intriguing gallery spaces off the staircase. The statue hall off the central well has busts and statues arranged in a delightful irregular sequence that encourages you simply to stand in one place and admire the angles and juxtapositions. And we were very taken with this exploded Grecian redware pot which reminded us of the 'dinner service' art installation at Waddesdon Manor.

Calling this 'The New Ashmolean' is no exaggeration: the place really has been utterly transformed. In fact, the great sculpture gallery is the only part that remains unaltered.
Oxford looks beautiful beneath blue skies and flooded by chilly sunlight (less so at other times). I even warm to the architecture much more than I once did. I'm planning my walk for the London Goths on Gothic Revival buildings, and now whenever I see a pointed arch my heart does a little jump of delight.

Steam and Noise

I'm a Steampunk sceptic, I admit. My attire has become gradually more Victorian over the last ten years, and I never encountered the S-word until about 18 months ago. I have been known to voice a certain degree of irritation with the cartoonish antics of Steampunk devotees (all those goggles and fake fobs), when we all know that Goths are supremely sensible.

Nevertheless I was persuaded to set out for King's Cross on Saturday last to what was described as a Steampunk Spectacular, emboldened in the knowledge that at least a couple of chums from the London Goth Meetup would also be there to leaven the brown-clad loaf. I discovered myself, willy-nilly, to be rather charmed.

Firstly there was the music. I warmed to Saville Row, performing what was described as a reunion concert after a gap of ten years; by my calculation that meant they hadn't been playing together since the sixth form at the latest. Then came the lovely Rachel Hayward, Rachel Raygun as she calls herself, married (apparently happily, I'm afraid) to Steampunk fantasy author Robert Rankin: at this point I want you to picture a Goth girl in a latex tutu and little neoVictorian hat playing 'California Dreaming' on steel-pan drum. Having some trouble? No, it wasn't a concept that came naturally to me, either. She was followed by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, 'putting', as they say, 'the punk back into Steampunk', and fronted by a large red-whiskered man in a pith helmet singing songs about Charles Darwin (rather shamelessly lifted from the old Jacobite favourite 'Charlie is ma' Darlin'', I think), drainage, and Victorian engineers. Headliners Ghostfire came across as quite pedestrian noise-merchants compared to all that, so I didn't feel guilty leaving two songs into their set.

Then the outfits. A while ago I went to a London Vampire Meetup Group outing and found it all a bit samey: all the girls in Victorian garb, all the chaps in leather trousers and pirate shirts. The Goths, I smugly concluded, are more varied. Well, variety was hardly the word on Saturday. There were remarkably few goggles; what there was was a very entertaining eclecticism and creativity, treating the whole of the past as a colossal dressing-up box.

All in all, it was worryingly fun. It was almost as though somebody had been going through the darkest recesses of my head late at night. I'd sometimes mused that were I ever called on to play a set of music at a LGMG event it would include 'Doomsday' from the soundtrack of Dr Who; and what was almost last on the jukebox before I left the pub on Saturday? 'Rose Tyler, I ...'

What I like about Steampunk is precisely this creativity and breadth of range - although Goth at its best goes even further, as I've seen in some places, and Steampunk can't coherently stretch back any further than George Stephenson's top hat - its sense of history, and humour. All that is colossally appealing, and I can see easily why more mature Goths who want a bit of a laugh find themselves drawn Steamwards. But, but, but ... Something in me yearns for a bit more than humour too. I want something deep and dark to resonate with, the aesthetic of ruin and romanticism. And only Gothic has that.

In the end, as the last strains of the final dance die down and the destitute gamblers unpeel sadly from the table, I am on the side of the flying buttresses and weeping angels rather than the cogs and goggles. I find myself Black, not Brown, though I tip my hat to the boys and girls with the mechanical rayguns.

The hat was a Homburg, since you ask.