Momus Gives His Creation Albums As Free Downloads

Momus: 'Hairstyle of the Devil' (1989)


Momus: 'Cibachrome Blue' (1992)


Momus: 'Rhetoric' (1994)

Talking about favourite blogs: if I didn't have such a short attention span and if I didn't hate reading long texts off computer screen (especially here in a local free Net café amidst the clamour of 10 - 15-year old boys coming to play RuneQuest and shoot-'em-up games after the school), I would pay more attention to the Web diary of Momus where the Scottish-originated artist and writer -- born as Nick Currie in 1960 -- gives his regular views on art, culture, politics and naturally music, his own and of the others.

Anyway, I try to give at least a brief daily glance to what Mr. Currie is saying, so I recently noticed he's going to give for free (or for a voluntary donation) six Momus albums recorded for the legendary Creation Records, according to certain fans some of his best. In his own words from the blog:

"Six Momus albums -- the ones I recorded for Alan McGee's Creation label between 1987 and 1993 -- are out of print. Creation doesn't exist any more, and in theory Sony owns the rights to these albums, but isn't doing anything with them and probably never will. In the meantime, only Russian pirates are profiting, charging punters for illegal downloads.

So, during the rest of December, I've decided to release mp3s of my six Creation albums here on Click Opera, for free. Think of it as a sort of Creation Advent Calendar, with a new old Momus album every couple of days. If you're the sort of person who likes to donate to the artist when you download, do it here. But it's not really necessary; these albums paid for themselves long ago. Think of this as a Christmas present. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!"

All six albums are now online:

The Poison Boyfriend (1988)

The Tender Pervert (1988)

Don't Stop The Night (1989)

Hippopotamus (1991)

Voyager (1992)

Timelord (1993)

(Momus also added a post-script on Alan McGee of Creation Records.)

This is the era when Momus (the name borrowed from the Greek god of satire and mockery) took cues, alongside the more obvious Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker and David Bowie influences, also from such contemporary electronic artists as Pet Shop Boys, to his witty, ironic and bittersweet songs of literary style, wry commentary and "tender perversion" not unfamiliar with controversy. As is found from Wikipedia entry, in his time he has managed to anger both the trans-gender electronic music pioneer Wendy Carlos and Michelin Tyres (comparing the famous Michelin Man to a blow-up doll), not to forget songs mentioning paedophilia, necrophilia, adultery and Tamagotchis.

I have to say my own knowledge of Momus' music is more sporadic and limited to owning some albums from this era of the late 80s and early 90s. Though the artist himself comments the album in question: "This is really just a funky book-end, pleasant enough as a mood piece, but not really essential", my own favourite Momus record is the futuristic-themed Voyager of 1992 (where 'Cibachrome Blue' video seen here is taken from) -- and he even had a gig at Yo-Talo in our measly Tampere during those days, which I remember witnessing.

The other connection Momus has to this country is the Man of Letters documentary film made of him in 1994 by Finnish director Hannu Puttonen (who also created the videos for 'Pornography', 'Marquise of Sadness' and 'Rhetoric' by Momus) -- the film is available as a DVD with extra material on Cherry Red Records.

Momus @ Discogs

We Are All Prost... Marketing Personalities

Erich Fromm interviewed by Mike Wallace, part 1 [2] [3]

Indie pop intellectual Momus on Erich Fromm's concept of "Marketing Personality" in his latest blog entry: "Notes on the Marketing Personality".

The Pop Group put it more bluntly: "We Are All Prostitutes".

"Music Has Lost Its Futuristic Edge"

The Art of Noise: 'Beatbox' (1984)

A very interesting article from The Guardian (Friday 20 April 2007) (and Momus commenting it).

From the article:

... Music writer Jon Savage decides what of today's music to listen to by dividing it into two camps: the ersatz and the truly current. "My yardstick about modern records," he says, "is does it sound as though it could only have been recorded in 2007? If it does, great; if it doesn't, boring."

But Savage also feels that, especially when it comes to rock, "music has lost its futuristic edge". And his fellow music writer Paul Morley agrees. "Instead of music moving forward," Morley says, "there was a moment - which you could pin down to around Britpop, or even earlier - when it started to fold backwards on itself. Instead of music having an idealistic need to create a future, to change things and have enough optimism to believe that could happen, it has ground to a halt."

[...] the ideology that fired Morley in the 80s, when he was making music with the Art of Noise. "In a way we anticipated what was about to happen," he says. "We described it as raiding the 20th century: this century of incredible innovation technologically, emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically, which you could raid for influences, putting together a bit from here and a bit from there to create something astounding." Where Morley and Art of Noise differed from 21st-century bands, however, was in their lack of respect for the past. "Coming from a post-punk world, I was very committed to originality, to moving forward," he says. New production techniques had given rise to a new vision for music, and he was determined to be at the forefront. "Rock cliches were going to be buried in the past - even guitars. We were moving into the future: you could kind of believe that was true."

[...] "I cannot help but marvel at how peculiar that is," says Morley. "Something that was meant to be a radical music has become truly conservative, in that it conserves: it's recreating shapes and riffs and sounds that have happened before."

He's not the only one troubled by this. "I cannot stand the fact that so much rock music is ridiculously retro," says Savage.

[...] Another crucial change in the consumption of music has, says Morley, made it harder than ever for the truly original to be heard. "The coverage of music has been democratically spread into the broadsheets, radio and television; pop music seems to be everywhere. But in a funny way that means there's more interference to finding new music. So much that is familiar is being declared the 'new' thing by the record industry, the advertising industry and the mainstream media, anything that is truly unfamiliar and moving forward is more neglected than ever before."

[...] "There is a world," [Morley] suggests, "where, when people say, 'Where are the new Beatles?' the answer is the internet. We've got the new thing - we just haven't been looking in the right place for it."

Momus Bashing MySpace

The problems of political correctness:
"To join MySpace or not to join MySpace...?"

You can read Momus bashing MySpace here. Gee, I guess now I'm supposed to feel guilty about having our own presentation there. Mike Not's and my friend Sakke called MySpace "social ring porn". I suppose it's another fad like iPods now and hula hoops in the 50s.

I don't know about this, then. Face it, the sad fact is that the whole world is these days owned by megacorps and greedy oligarchs like Rupert Murdoch. It has an effect on everything: what you read on papers, see on TV and movies, what you eat and drink, how you spend your leisure time. And so on. Everything bears a corporate stamp in these glowing halcyon days of neoliberalism and market economy. Politicians keep flapping their gums about the virtues of entrepreneurialism and free enterprise, which is a big joke when corporations do their best to swallow the small fry (that is, private entrepreneurs with their own small businesses) in the end, and we are eventually heading for one McDi$neySoft megacorp ruling it all. You can do your best to put your filters on, but mostly there seems to be no running away from that.

Then, could we also see a positive side too here? Sociologists keep talking about New Communalism (as opposed to old-fashioned Communism), which has its various incarnations everywhere where people put their collective efforts together to create something benefitting all, and -- this is important -- not necessarily gaining personal profit out of it: Linux operating system and Wikipedia as some of the most obvious examples. Could it be understood that even corporate-owned communities like MySpace could potentially create similar links to empower people: for example, in MySpace's case connecting private citizens, musicians, artists, fans and so on, in putting them into direct contact with each other, and letting also those voices to be heard that might otherwise be shunned, making people aware of those? Browsing MySpace I've noticed it's far from any homogenous community: everyone seems to have their own little slots there in the sweet spirit of anarchism -- alongside music and arts people already mentioned the whole political and religious spectrum and all possible mainstream and fringe and hobby groups represented from American gung-ho Republicans and Jesus freaks to Greenpeace, gays and Satanists. There are also loads of spoof pages doing nasty parody of people like Murdoch, Bush and their ilk. There's no way to put a lid on or control all that motley crew.

Well, before you get me wrong, I don't want appear as any MySpace apologist (or a Murdoch fan, vade retro!), just trying to weigh both the positive and negative sides here. OK, I know I'm naive. And us with our little Kompleksi duo, we do have our own selfish and opportunistic reasons involved here at the end of the day: to promote our music, which happens by creating contacts and also possible fanbase. Damned if we try, damned if we don't?

Comments:

DJ Orion (in Finnish)

PCL Link Dump

Oh well (blows a raspberry). Why do I get a feeling that people are taking these things far too seriously? We can live with MySpace, we can live without it. For us it's just the icing, it's not the cake.

And This Is What Momus Thinks About Pissis

Momus comments pissis here:

"In the double bind of the Virgin-Whore complex, women are supposed to be more pure than men – sugar and spice and all things nice. Yet when they fail to achieve this artificially high standard—especially when young, or drunk, or on the make—they're accused and castigated out of all proportion to their sins, which are usually no worse than the sins of anyone young, drunk or on the make ... The term pissis ... reminds me of Picasso's series of paintings of pisseuses (picked up by Serge Gainsbourg in his song 'Five Easy Pisseuses')..."

Momus On Finnish Youth Styles

The cult pop intellectual Momus (a.k.a. Nick Currie) comments here the looks of Finnish youngsters you can see at Hel-Looks site:

"It's understandable, if a bit depressing, that so many Finns are wearing H&M, the Ikea of the garment trade ... And why are so many Finn-teens wannabe Japanese? ... back in the 90s the Japanese did these styles so much better than today's Finns ... Japanese teens in 1997 looked totally 21st century, whereas Jenni and Aaron ... in 21st century Helsinki, look horribly, terminally, criminally 1997 ... I can't help thinking that cities and their styles are quite closely tied to economics, and that there's a pecking order, with global cities like New York, London and Paris inevitably sporting more creative street fashion than second division provincial cities like Helsinki ... Enhancing versions of the traditions of your locality, rather than copying the Japanese styles of the last decade, is the way to dress in a fresh and contemporary way, it seems to me."

I wonder what Mr. Currie would think about the Finnish pissis style favoured by teenage girls...?

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