I toyed with the idea of  buggering off, I toyed with the  idea of deleting the blog etc. but  actually I'm  simply going to transform  it.  I am not the same person I was when I started this about five years ago, and I'm certainly not the same as a writer, I  don't think. I am writing (fiction) on and off and  my style  has become simpler and simpler, so looking back on earlier work is a bit painful.

I'm also, I have to say, optimistic about the  future, and not just on a personal level. 

A couple of  months ago I rang an old friend to meet up for a drink and had to talk briefly to his wife, who doesn't  really like me. Later he told me she'd  said, "Carl  sounds different, he didn't try to make a single joke."

She was right, Ahhh, free at  last! 

Anybody still carrying a torch  for Techno Animal's mighty "Brotherhood of the bomb" would have  been hard-pressed to deny the sheer sonic delight that was Death Grips. On one  level it was contrived Math-rocky smart-arsed take on Blog-cultures obsessive re-churn of the obscure and the unlikely juxtaposition (dude!!! you sampled Magma!!) with a kind of horrible schoolboyish obsession with instability and dark thoughts. WOOOOOOO!!!! I am a PSYCHO!!!!!

Or, it was a colossal piece of  Grand Guignol messthetics. I chose the latter approach, despite misgivings and had to admit to finding it thrilling. Plus it  pissed on that Odd Future record. Which I also quite liked.

Ho-Ho. Sign this.

Anus Metalicus

Hipster Black Metal. Had to happen didn't it?

Though as far as I can make out Mount Eerie beat eveyone to that a couple of years  ago. Quite  like that Mount Eerie/Microphones stuff actually, should give it all another serious listen.

Y'know  what though? I think I'm going to stop using the term Hipster. I think I over-applied it and  that maybe it was unfair to begin with.

Let's use the  no-less-odd coinage positive Black Metal.

First of all I absolutely love that Liturgy album. Yep, pretentious academic theorizing is exactly what Black Metal needs. Plus covers of  My Bloody Valentine (bloody awful as it happens, but it's the thought that counts). Plus, a kind of rickety/dry/No-Wave sparse and spartan intensity, as  much  Glenn Branca as Burzum all added up to an intoxicating new direction for rock in general, above  and beyond the impact on the Black Metal scene alone. So many  people "came of  age" in  different scenes in 2011 that earlier moaning (my own) about lack of ideas/pastiche/hipsterism seem retrospectively misplaced.

Again, as with the Ferraro and Lopatin stuff below it felt like something new was happening: if there was some real or imagined confluence between Dubstep and Drone metal, it will be interesting to see if there is any overlap between positive BM and post-dubstep. I reckon that  Rustie likes a bit of  Black, innit.

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So obviously the other major PBM bands had releases this year too, and I dug them both. I really  like the pretentious/unpretentious thing going on with these bands that  punctures all the solemnity of the scene. At some  points that solemnity has seemed vital,  now it feels a little bit unengaged. Ideas are  always  important of course  but they're especially important right now and it's good to see these bands come along and  inject a certain contrariness and debate into what could otherwise be a rather hermetic and inarticulate scene, ironically, given how generally smart Metal fans are.

So obviously  Wolves  In  The  Throne  Room and  Kralice  got  my  vote (again).WITTR are  often  referred  to  as  Eco-metal, presumably because  of their  reliance  on  images  of  a  pastoral/sublime and  I like the  term, adding a potentially  transformative, political  edge, plus  they're  kind of  down-home, rustic types. Regular  Joes. Black Metal as the new Heartland  Rock.

 Death Metals' smartest man (he wouldn't like that description, I suspect) Hideous Gnostic, Caina had a new one out too. How's about that Caina, eh? and  his heroic  disregard for any presumed listeners/fanbase. He's a one off and  as I've  said  before, locates  Black Metal (and  hardcore and  post-rock etc) in a particular long train of Englishness, especially in his willful iconoclasm. An album that travelled  far and  wide...

...... taking things off in a whole different direction really, and partly falling in with  Darkthrones' (only  partially  successful) return to Eighties'  Hardcore.

Though these guys expressed that interface most successfully and  produced, through a  pretty  fulsome  combination  of  hardcore  and  Black Metal  an  absolute  riff-monster. In terms  of  sheer cathartic rush  not  much this  year  came close. Plus  they had a good line  in  essentially Arty post BM too.

Though  my  favourite of  them all and maybe  my  favourite album of  the  year  was  this bit  of  Dadaist Black  Metal from Finnish band Oranssi Pazuzu. Something  of  a conceptual joke given the  band  members' other  activities, nonetheless it  opened  up all kinds  of  new  sonic  and  structural possibilities  for  metal. Was it just Blackened Hawkwind? Maybe  so, but it was still a rare and  otherworldy blast of satanic space junk.

Here's the message: change or  die. Change or remain undead/half-alive. Change is a kind of death  anyway, die in order to be reborn. Be keen to find new loves and new hates.

Tense, hoarse, sweaty, paranoid, frustrated, frustrating, belligerent, panicked, lost, pleading, apologetic, hopeful, 31 Knots were as turbulent and exhausting as ever on Trump Harm. It's  hard  to  precisely  explain  how  their  music  seems to happen to them  rather than being something they  themselves  have  created: less the  bliss of the  jam "losing yourself in the  music" than  it  is a sudden  panic-attack or  a surge of  semi-mystical and traumatic  insight, though,  again, there  is  none  of the catharsis of  thrash or  hardcore. 31 Knots  are  pensive, watchful,  dwelling on and within particular moments, mumbling through pockets of reprieve, subject to sudden surges of  elation followed by regret and melancholy slumps; masturbation, political bile, sexual and social inadequacy, guilty insight, cryptic truths just beyond their grasp, "bitter ellipsis in search of a sentence".

Like Vampire Weekend if they'd ever had to pick through a skip for furniture.

So yeah that Jamie Vex'd eh? Basically I don't think he's done anything I haven't really liked, and he kind of got out of the moody end of Dubstep almost the instant he released its definitive record, didn't he? That  album of Vex'd  offcuts last year was great, I saw  him live a few years ago on an evening of Dubstep drabness around the time of the In System Travel stuff and he shone. Basically he seems like a younger (generations') version of Kevin Martin, restless, innovative, smart and largely incapable of making records I won't like.

Someone else LIOMRIWL is that Dan Lopatin. He's  got better with each release it seems and Replica is basically pretty minblowing, isn't  it? I'd be keen to know what  else it  sounds like, or how retro sounding it is (unlike the Wire album of the year a bit back Rifts) to me it sounded/felt pretty new. In  fact this and the new Ferraro (who I haven't much cared  for in the  past) made me think, immediatley: this is the work of great artists.

 Actually the titles alone on the Ferraro record were worth some kind of prize.

Yeah, I love those records. Fuck it, I'll  say it: 2011 was a brilliant year for music. Actually it felt like  a germinal year.

I actually listened to quite a lot of music this  year so I reckon  I'll  do an  Albums of  the  Year thing. Basically everyone I've  liked over the past  few years released a record  in 2011 so it was  kind  of a bumper crop for me at least. Tune of the year, from  probably album of  the year, though, was this bad boy.

Can anyone out there do a post on 70s' Australian Cinema for  And  What Will...?

I reckon  we  also need something  on Polish  Cinema of  the  70s too, he  said, not  looking at anyone in particular...

Gobsmacked! Ralph takes things off in a whole new direction.

Funny....I've  just been having exactly this discussion  with  someone and  contemplating  something  very similar  myself. She is of  course completely correct.

So long Nina! See you when I get there.

Currently  listening to Bangs and Works Vol 2. Amazing stuff, really, but keep flashing on this as UR-Choon behind loads of the tracks.