Oh! The Fall John Peel Sessions box set! OH! you guys.

He self-banned so as to get on with some uni work, I believe.

Yeah I heard he was doing this David Blaine-ish stunt where he is like living for six months (possibly frozen in ice? possibly in a cage over the Medway? possibly just in his pants? I dunno) and during that time he's not posting to ILX. People keep baiting him by posting stuff about the Fall etc but through the power of mind alone he is managing to hold out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/entertainment_living_with_david_blaine/img/1.jpg

Hey Louis have you heard the new Cardiacs record?

Truly, lj is like a modern day Jesus, suspended in a perspex box for our prog rock related sins.

apparently, 20 mins....

FROM A FACEBOOK WALL:

The Fall - Peel Session 11 ReviewShare
Today at 11:25am

Athlete Cured - Heavy bassline, ever so slightly distorted, drum flourish. Call and response MES. Weird and wonderful, panned helicopter beats. Dark fire from guitars. This is not the poppy post-Bend Sinister burbling I expected, this is monstrous and mashsome. It sounds like some techno beast is trying to free itself from prostrate bondage as a troupe of performing witches growl in laughter. This is really quite minimal as far as song-structure goes, even by Fall standards, and of course it works beautifully. When the helicopter beat malfunctions, the effect is supreme. Multitracked vocal layers give the song a druggy sheen, as MES' unhinged necessaries are buried, put back into the soil they came from.

Australians In Europe - Holy hell, so catchy! And there's a subtle chord-change. This IS the poppy post-Bend Sinister burbling and it's AWESOME. And wow, that vocal echo thing! Playing with content AND form here. I'd not expected something quite so righteously joyful! It's still heavy; the bass and drums ensure that. But it's also a romp, a blast, perhaps the blinding chords of the Ketamine Sun shining onto our damned forms. I can't quite explain how bizarre this song's alchemy is. OH SHIT! The power-chord middle section!!! What's happened to The Fall?! This is completely insane! And then the guitar builds beneath, the bass changes, and MES comes back in...it's maybe one of my favourite 5 Fall moments so far? Hahahahaha, this band NEVER fails to amaze me. WOW. This has rapidly become one of the best pop songs I've ever had the privilege to hear. And there's still over a minute left!!! It's all going a bit Complicated Game. I ain't complaining. FUCK. I have no more rational argument about this. Why isn't it automatically mentioned every time the Peel Sessions are brought up? Beautiful solo during the fade-out too. YES

Twister - How to follow that up? With a REALLY MENACING AVANT-GARDE BASS DRONE and then some austere 4th-interval (I think) keys! Which suddenly hammer down amid building beats, manic strumming, catatonic Brix and -silence-...reset. Dual guitar this time. I don't know what the drums are doing. No longer are The Fall trying to take your head off. They're charming it from your shoulders. And as straight-up linear as Athlete Cured had been, this is ALL OVER THE FREAKING PLACE, losing nothing by comparison, clearly the work of the same band in the same place. The jarring effect of those keys+those tribal builds is phenomenal. This is pop Fall fed through Hexen vortex. Brix taunts and is taunted. Spirals into careen. Delirium. The most delirious session.

Guest Informant - Starts with muffled MES, echoed drums. Then he yelps a mantra, perhaps the clearest he's been in this session. But the keyboards soon return, and they're inspired. This chorus is great; I can really feel the songwriting in this session. I can sense it being worked out, worked towards, an instance of truth as hell marries heaven somewhere along the decline of England. No wonder the dude set Jerusalem to music around this period. He set it to The Fall. Here is another hymn to the damned nation, perhaps more straightforward than the other session tracks, but still guttural, still mysterious. The box-set blurb claimed this was one of the best sessions. I didn't believe it. Hell I do now. And look, there's a really fucked-up guitar solo, as if to confound me further. Slips s'ways out of time. Chaos. Chaos! As if that's the only way this song could have ended.

Australians in Europe might be the single greatest Peel sessions moment ...

The whole sci-fi narrative of Twister is ace.

build a tunnel, cross Britannia

IT FALLS TO ME ONCE AGAIN...

The Fall - Peel Session 12 ReviewShare
Today at 2:03pm

Deadbeat Descendant - The opening riff is disarmingly simple, and after a couple of run-throughs plunges us into a complex, urgent pattern of pop-punk, complete with moody keys/what sounds like a vibraphone. The riff then returns, but contextualised by the unerringly heavy drums it sounds nothing like itself. This is what's known as a 'low-key vamp', maybe, and it's pretty good. The alchemy from the previous session is still there.

Cab It Up - Again, the 'simple riff into confusion' trick, except this time OMD's Enola Gay has leapt into the fray in the form of a vibrakeyboard refrain. It works rather nicely. The guitar is nicely splayed, even though there's less of an instinct to really integrate the pop into what makes The Fall tick. Less exposition than rendition. Having said that, the atonal guitar-blast-during-Enola-Gay bit after two and a half minutes is sublime. I think this one will reward relistens. There's subtlety, if not mindsplitting fury in fear or in pop. It also sounds maybe a tiny bit too professional? Perhaps 'calculated' is what I'm searching for. Closing trawl is again excellent, though, so my reservations are few. MES gives a good performance.

Squid Lord - Haha, for the third time! There's definitely formula at work here. The depth of sound, the slightly blurred sophistication, is appealing, and this one's certainly a bit more arch than the first two. Grand marching keys, less guitar exploration, drama generated by the drawl of it all. Again, there's plenty of subtlety, as the high whistling keys effect mounts behind MES, and the drums briefly drop out to relaunch the unfolding reportage. This feels like a giant news story, as reported from MES' armchair.

Kurious Oranj - Slight alteration to the formula this time. Or not, if horn-driven garage reggae was what you expected. This is certainly poppy, certainly intriguing, and yes, drawling. Although the offbeat guitar-strum that develops is slyly one of the more open concessions to musical form that the Peel Sessions have thus far revealed. There's even a heroic rotary organ in there somewhere. Suddenly, the rhythm goes out of whack, wordless babbling, thenthe synthesised horns begin a kuriously strident reattempt at nailing that reggae vibe. It's very listenable, even catchy, and manages to be lucid in its unexpectedness. One can sense what is being tried here, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but at least it is not a disaster in a bad way. It's not a disaster at all. Will I count that against this song? Probably not. Closing section meanders briefly until MES remembers who his band are and throws in a final, open-ended chord-change by means of punctuation.

This is like when you found out that Blaine had taken a pee bottle with him in the box. Good job of staying off the internets LJ ;)

(Also good posts!)

It's only fair that he do this.

nb: The "best" version of Guest Informant is on the "Backdrop" bootleg--Totally storming.

Enjoying this - consider these ones v lyrically strong too:

Squid Lord - comedy Lovecraft - In the Squid Hospital, his head will be in a draught, a geriatric germ-well

KO - Stuyvesant smoking, made the Jews go to school, sent missionary girls to arab states, spat on the Belgians, built the world as you know it (all systems you traverse), made Hitler laugh in pain, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Gaelic, hey shit man you name it, they were against it.

Smith at some kind of lyrical zenith - a goddam pop song about The House of Orange forchrissakes.

Seriously, you can't quit now, man. As incentive, when you're done I'll upload the Complete Non-Peel Sessions. ;-)

That's godda be worth it!

ah GO ON THEN

yay

KO - Stuyvesant smoking, made the Jews go to school, sent missionary girls to arab states, spat on the Belgians, built the world as you know it (all systems you traverse), made Hitler laugh in pain, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Gaelic, hey shit man you name it, they were against it.

Smith at some kind of lyrical zenith - a goddam pop song about The House of Orange forchrissakes.

Have sad suspicion that KO led me to write doctorate on culture of the 1690s. & yes unbelievable lyrical brilliance.

Chicago Now - Dinky keys! Menacing bassline, jaunty but slightly wronged guitar-line. Momentary call and response. Mixture of light and dark such as this band has grown skilled at over years of rock. Faintly unreal chords in chorus - the sort of chords you'd expect from bagpipes. It's back. It's a slow kill. Scrap that, it's a tempo HIKE. As we spiralled beyond the point of no return into black ink, pop thrusts even the keel. This is deep, foul, graceful. Somehow the orchestra hits are the foulest of all - lessons have perhaps been learned from Foetus? Air on a damned string. TEMPO HIKE. Disorientation. Arch and confused all at once. Rewards close listening. Completely fucked. Superb.

Black Monk Theme - Luminous Fall! Vibrato ethereal goddamn LUMINOUS Fall! Again the chords have a sliding quality, a noble slipping. Violin madness but not like early Ultravox; this violin is subjugated. Organ is lovely. This session, so far: a lovely, imprisoned experience of triumph as seen from the POV of soon-to-be-discarded weaponry. Defeat shining through the translucent skeleton of victory. Spoken in MES' tongue and his bandmates' brawling ballerinas.

Hilary - This sounds more positive, almost like a love-song, and it has Brix's backing sighs, but there must be something awry. It's too elegant. Maybe it's exactly as elegant as it has to be. Maybe this session is about Elegance, and this third chapter is about an attempt to find pure elegance and not pervert it, for once. The songs have all had elegance, but successively with less violence. It's a musical project. Or a test. An experiment which is reaching its tipping-point as soon as this song ends.

Whizz Bang - Again, the violin, playing elegy! Piano and guitars weeping for a lost friend; THIS is even MORE elegant! Tragedy is more elegant than appraisal. The chorus is even beautiful, with no askance glance nor eyebrow cocked. Satan has gotten behind this band. The experiment is complete, and The Fall have achieved a state of unironic beauty. It's not their best song, or their crowning moment, but it does define a purge of sorts, and underlines that the act can examine itself.

"Whizz Bang" was never broadcast (well, certainly not at the time) and was never recorded until it was reworked as "Butterflies 4 brains" much later.

Indeed, I've always heard an early echo of The Monks' Shut Up in there as well ('Got a reason to laugh, got a reason to cry/got black cloud aura') but possibly imagining things.

Not actually one of my favourite sessions this - but I do like doomy synth stabs in Chicago, Now!

xxp: pretty sure Brix was out of the band at that point. back vox prob Marcia Schofield

It wasn't my favourite session at all and felt as I say like a sort of self-examination, but I liked the first two tracks a LOT, and thought that Whizz Bang had something really sweet going for it too. Chicago Now especially is great. Wondering what my favourite tracks so far have been...Australians In Europe, Gross Chapel, Hexen Definitive, Winter and a couple of others are definitely in with a shout...

oops :/

Haha oh wait Hip Priest obv, also Middle Mass

the insane thing is when Brix comes BACK in the band!

and Pat-Trip Dispenser, maybe ROD. That covers 'em all I think

I've got The Light User Syndrome which has Brix AND Nagle *head explodes*

I mean, it can't not be awesome, with them both there. I may be the world's biggest Julia Nagle fan, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Things kinda come to a head with the Chiselers single

^^^can't wait for the Peel Session of that...hope you can practically hear them fighting

2 weeks later?

WHAT BETTER TIME OF DAY TO LISTEN TO THE FALL

The War Against Intelligence - Fall in sardonic pop mode for a few seconds, and then drops inexplicably yet beautifully into frazzled drug-rock territory. Then repeats. Except this time the drug-rock has a sort of bagpipe violin. God I love indistinct noises. Something about a blot on the English landscape and then that wailing noise, which is probably a violin, and is now persisting into the verses, which in turn appear more driving and desperate than they'd first seemed. Background mud. Bloops.

Idiot Joy Showland - Faster, more 'basic' Fall here. I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's not bad. The bassline works nicely against the block chords in the verses. The chorus contains the line 'who the fuck are you sneering at' which is a little petulant by MES' standards, not that I'm one to quibble. The massive bass is the runaway star of this one. But even it's pretty meek by Fall bass standards, really.

A Lot Of Wind - Promising start, oh drones and tribal drummer deprived of one arm! Violinist! Atonal guitar splashes! One of those intangibly mystical basslines! 'You talk a lot about wind!' Now let's expand into something violently unpleasant, please. Violin winds like snare about song's rotten core. Aura deepens. Pop-phase Fall gettin' their hexen thang on. More! More! Guitars respond. Like a bird fighting a wind-tunnel, as the blast is slowly steepened. Soon the bird shall give in and find itself pinned to the wire mesh. Buffeted. The shock reaches goth-guitar mania. The spell passes.

The Mixer - Again with the violin in a starring role. The only track in this session which doesn't feature it (or feature it so imaginatively) is the throwaway, I'd wager (this song has far too pretty a tune to join it). Special mention to the drumming in this one, which is spry and yet completely 80's-inflected. The sort of beat the Pet Shop Boys would have jumped at. Consequently this feels like it should be a single, with a video. Top Of The Pops appearances. Remix by Robin Guthrie. Perhaps it's still too oblique and Kraut for that. And features too much background tannoy MES. Which I love, incidentally. Violin suddenly becomes much clearer in the last minute, like a gulp of fresh peach. And then a fade-out, because this band is not above such things.

I love the single double drumbeat in Lot of Wind that occurs just towards the end. They did this in The Quartet of Doc Shanley as well. Never ceases to delight.

Free Range - Oh yeah!!! Already a kick-ass number, this has been given DESCENDING ELECTRONIC BLEEPS to basically turn the intro into something wondrous. They seem to be a fixture in the rest of the song too. Need I add, the fuzzed-out guitar is a beautiful touch - this always was their grunge number. As well as one of their better rave-ups. We get some positively Coxon-esque guitar squalls, and yes, more background tannoy (which seems to be a regular feature of this Fall phase - indicative of a dark beast below that haunts indistinctly with garbled miscommunication).

Kimble - Caledonian air on a broken synth! Reggae! Well, that's a nice little jackknife. Make me believe this is more than a little genre exercise, guys. The field-recording plus broken synth refrain popping up every so often is this song's hook, and its salvation. Not that I see myself returning to this one much - the chassis is too pristine. Then in the last thirty seconds, everything retreats, and suddenly we have a much more interesting -

Immortality - What fresh synth-bass hell is this? We'd best be in for a big ol' vamp. It's got that quality a few Fall songs have, of conveying vast and fearsome things with the length of its swaggering bassy stride. Ideally flanged slightly. Played on one note. The actual bass is quite reserved; the synth is doing all the damage. MES' vocals are fitting on nicely - it's a slurred one. OK, I ended up losing a bit of interest, but the bass got better - my imagination?

Return - Atonal blasts of evil! The way that Fall songs ingratiate themselves with the listener is worthy of a snappily punctuated soundbite in 90% of cases. Dithyrambic buzzsynth rite. No sentence over four. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Well-deployed jangle. Back to the exorcism. Loving this cruel synth. Letter to Brix? Loving this cruel singer. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel cruel

Ladybird (Green Grass) - Oh good lord, this one has a great fucking tune! And the guttural percussion is a sweet touch which has crept up on me. It's like the concept of snappy, cut and shut songwriting has kidnapped our MES and battered him about the head and neck until he has conceded to its whim. The drumming and of course the whining vocals of protest at this situation are the only signs of struggle. Maybe there's a weird electronic whizz or two. That's just the probe. The truth-telling probe. DO NOT LIE, MARK EDWARD SMITH. DO NOT LIE. IT WILL COST YOU. DO NOT LIE.

Strychnine - OK, I'm guessing this session was culled from the height of their early-90's rave period. Begins beautifully with unearthly burbles strangling a piano. Then we have a snappy, too-bright pub-bombing of a song. Guitars made from chain-link fences. Yelps of a man intent on producing this wrong. It sounds wrong. It's absolutely supreme. Not much more to say except that this is some of the best 'clean' guitar I've heard on a Fall song. Whistling death.

Service - More piano, this time syncopated and sombre, as the skittering rave-drums form a premonition of Levitate. That album shed all 80's vestiges; this song retains them in synth-sound and guitar-sheen. Something polite about MES' vocals on this one too. It's going to be too long, I think. Bass needs to decide whether it is pop hook or funeral bell. It isn't really either. Maybe it's both.

Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room - BENDY MOAN OF SAD GUITAR. OH FUCK YEAH! Opening salvo is pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear. It's desperate, poisonous, brash, bold and SYNTH STABS because this song is fucking JJ Leigh in the shower. I don't mean it's fucking her. I mean it IS her. Bates represented by the effects-shattered dignity-bereft guitars. Mental disintegration on a stupid synth. Loopy calculations of a death-ticker. Swoons back into the guitar refrain and integrates. Produce that shit! Flip it! Reverse it! Dicking around with the idea of demise! MES, you flaming demon, you sound afraid! Synth stabs like the church organ now! Guitars suddenly threnodic! All is massing into real FUCKING tears!

Kimble is top ten Fall material for me. Beautiful - glass shards, smashed crockery, drunken piano, the clockwork music box theme from Sinster Waltz, the way it falls apart, winds itself up with Hanley's bass, brief moments where it comes together, it's just so loose. Smith's dry sinister delivery perfect over the glittering sound.

And that Infotainment Scan material is great too - Ladybird Green Grass continuing the hidden Brechtian theme of this period (Shift Work, Code:Selfish and The Infotainment Scan) 'Before the grub, comes the moralist'. Good example of a compassionate Fall song as well.

Service one of my favourites, contemplative, great for a clear Autumn day.

Strychnine is a great Sonics cover and Paranoia Man in Cheap Sh*t Room is one of those ones (see also 50-Year-Old Man) where Smith seems to take a version of himself, what he would have been without The Fall/art perhaps, and writes a song round it. Love that song. Yep, great session.

M5 - Rollicking bass with damaged whining of synth and a neat chord-change. I never thought I could love this phase of the Fall to this extent but they never lost it, not ever. It's not even a particularly brilliant song, or a brilliant performance, but somehow it conveys a brilliant band.

Behind The Counter - Sounds like it's about to remind me that The Fall do rockabilly. Oh wait no, actually - it's a song I've heard before - a sunny song. I don't really feel the need to justify any feelings about this song. I'd rather just listen to it. It's nothing special again, but it's intensely comforting. Deliberate choice of words. Spoken-word segment of surrogate dad. Is it any wonder MES is childless? He has all of us to care for. Synth imposition followed by hysterically distorted bass. Ah man, they've still got it. Bears repeating. In case you'd even considered forgetting this, you will be nudged.

Reckoning - The synth is pretty and again the dominant factor. It's ever so slightly corny. But that's ok. This isn't by any means a blinding session, but it's a highly reassuring one. The sound of a band playing well within itself, not needing to go big. Ornate.

Hey! Student - More of a violent one, this. Nicely spewed guitar. I think I've had a bit of a surfeit of this sort of thing? Actually, this isn't bad at all - it's a very linear, synth-deprived, hellish trawl through a song that wasn't designed to suffer this much but is now tasting some harsh realities of life. Hey - like the titular character! Hey! Hey hey! As if to back this up, everything begins to chime and there's a background squeal. MES is taunting us! Us young men. You can tell, because his voice goes manic and he blurts. And YELLS!

This is all stuff from their most 'forgotten'/overlooked phase, and I am enjoying it, really I am. Apart from Strychnine and Paranoia Man, not much so far in the very top bracket, but there hasn't been much at all below 'good'. Consistent and biding their time. I'm sure Kimble and Service will grow on me - they have good raw ingredients and plenty of mystery.

One more for today I think.

Not their most amazing session, although I do like this particular version of Behind the Counter. I actually find it pretty wintry - those wheezing keyboards. But I also like the 'always underrated, you never can encapsulate us' bit at the beginning and the spiel in the middle which ends '... and transport you to a town that doesn't exist.'

The changing way the keys and guitars interlock is great (see an awful lot of their supposedly repetitive songs - there's often not two sections the same, Two Face for instance, or My Ex-Classmates Kids).

Do like Hey! Student as well, very different from the locomotive like album version, but just as good.

One more, one more! Is that the Christmas one? I think it must be.

Glam Racket - Star - Handclaps and pop-guitar fuzz - a statement of populism! Enough chord-changes to justify the love of millions who wouldn't usually love The Fall. Although god, those vocals and lyrics are a little confrontational. Ooh, that Brix, she's going IN! If it's her. It is, isn't it? She came back to the band? Yeah, this is the session that by all rights should have Bonkers In Phoenix on it. Now I'm going to sulk about that. And then, I had to PAUSE a session for the FIRST TIME during this whole project because I suddenly developed loads of things to say in the last 10 seconds of the song. A: HOLY FUCK YOU AMAZING BASTARD MES you just fucking THREW IN the distorted vocal samples from the BIP intro JUST AS I TYPED THAT. But I only typed it so that I might be able to follow it up with 'but it really doesn't matter because this is AWESOME', which it is. It's got an absolutely killer tune, a great dual-vocalist set-up and a quite fucking marvellous performance. However, silence assails me. RESUME

Jingle Bell Rock - That is a really distorted, evil jingle bell! I love you MES. Somehow the concept is validated by the jingle bell being a terrible sample. And the song enshrined by being just over a minute of GREAT MUSIC. Oh shi-

Hark The Herald Angels Sing - Haha, and now they're reminding me they used to be classified as punk! Sex Pistols meets Christmas Carol. AAAAAAGH OMG BRIX WTF AAAAAAGH awesome! This is SUCH cheeky material! Such a fucking cheeky, impudent, playful session! God, I need to get hold of Cerebral Caustic if it's all like this. Hahaha, I am REALLY loving this session. For reasons I haven't loved the other sessions. The guitar isn't atonal, the drums aren't murderous, and the bass is positively fluid! But the attitude...the attitude is stone-dead ridiculous.

Numb At The Lodge - I just love the fact that MES got Brix back in the band either to completely fuck around with her voice, or to get her to completely fuck around with the rest of us with her voice. Like some kind of post-nuptial trolling. They actually sound more brilliantly in league than they did while married. Vocally, at least. The disconnect between her exaggeratedly tuneful warbling and his invigorated, aggressive ranting, newly sharpened, is that of a pair of great comedians. The song itself is super, sly, and this is a marvellous, essential session.

XD

*puts on Bonkers In Phoenix which is probably one of the 20 best things recorded in the history of music*

I think this was about the time when on their Christmas Eve gig in Germany, they all got in a huddle on stage then came out of it and threw rose petals on the audience.

Numb at the Lodge, specifically the session version rather than Feelin Numb, is an incredible pop song, just incredible, so hooky. Again, top ten material. Not sure nowadays that I don't prefer the sparse 12" version of Glam Racket, or Mark Goodier session version, but still, I remember hearing this session after a friend had taped it for me and it blew my mind.

This session was the blast of seasonal cheer I think we all needed tbh - it's probably top 3 so far. Well, definitely top 5.

I gather sessions 22 and 24 are the stone-dead corkers remaining? Not that I will prejudge.

(you have little idea how tempted I've been to skip to Session 22 or the Peel Session 'Blindness')

(Session 22 because of your write-up on the poll thread, I must add!)

The Fall throwing rose-petals at the crowd is indescribably awesome, which is probably why they did it