Released 3rd October 2016.
Album details and photographs can be viewed at:
ayearinthecountry.co.uk/fractures-2
Password: EMBERS
Fractures #2 is a fever dream of 1996...
I am often drawn to particular points in time when there appeared to be a schism in things, when things went out of joint or changed on a pin-head. 1996 would be one of those years.
In many ways it was the point at which any widespread consideration of alternatives to monopolistic capitalism was put to bed in the UK: Labour, the main left-wing political party, had dropped its more utopian public ownership intents and overt constitutional/actual opposition to laissez-faire or neoliberalism views and ways, rebranding itself New Labour.
They would soon be in power for an extended period, not so much flying a populist, pragmatic red flag but more a PR spun rosé banner or at times a compromised mauve pennant that would fly in line with prevailing winds.
They were not an island in this nor is this an exercise in that often popular sport of Labour Party bashing: such behaviour was to a general background of the ascendance and adoption of those neoliberal ways.
Running in tandem there was an ongoing quietening, marginalising and neutering of effective opposition or other voices and possibilities, which seemed to gather pace at the time as the country headed towards an epoch of what could be called capitalist totality.
Accompanying such goings on in the halls of power, the bright lights and dazzle of the media circus and cultural cycle of Britpop/Cool Britannia and the insistent beats of variations on dance music had begun to curdle, to stagger away from their initial fresh faced attractiveness to become stumbling, bleary eyed or just dulled versions of themselves - chummily subsumed as the partying went on a little too long, a little too late into the night.
Rockstars would soon be taking tea at Number 10, the UK government’s headquarters, once New Labour had won a dance-gone-pop soundtracked landslide general election victory.
For myself personally, it also marked the very beginning of the end of the headiest days of youth.
At this time and for a good while after I often lived and worked in the very heart of metropolises, immersed in their subcultures: my life was predicated in large part on the very particular young man’s ire at “the man”, nightlife, clubbing, music, dancing, fashion, dressing up, drinking, coupling and exploring swathes of often fringe culture - all the obsessions, enjoyments and passions of youth.
Much of that gradually (or sometimes not so gradually) faded away or transformed.
I now find myself living far removed from any such bright lights and big city, the dressing up and dancing but a memory - a world far, far apart, almost that seems to belong only to the worn and aged pages of a faded, forgotten magazine.
Fractures #2 is a raw mixtape of memories and echoes of those pages, of 12”s bought because of the primal rush their electronics would bring on when listened to in a record shop, the lucky dip of unknown records bought hopefully from the racks of bargain basements, the more blunted/triphop beats to be found in intriguingly designed/obscure sleeves and to times lost in the seemingly endless dreams of a club; a time when the future burned with the brightness, optimism and idealism of youth or at least the rearguard sparks and embers of those other voices and possibilities.
It is both a last hurrah and a possible heralding fanfare: totalities of system and thought are not imperishables, no matter how strident or unyielding they may seem or claim to be. There is very little that is immutable, which does not crumble or suddenly fall with the passage and layering of time.
A certain dogmatic economic/philosophical fundamentalism may have been busy enveloping all else and deeply embedding itself but those other embers may yet flare again or new hitherto unknown seedlings of thought may find space and take root amongst the, for now, uniformly furrowed landscape.
Released as part of the A Year In The Country project, a set of year long journeys through and searching for an expression oan underlying unsettledness to the bucolic countryside dream; an exploration of an otherly pastoralism, a wandering amongst subculture that draws from the undergrowth of the land, the patterns beneath the plough, pylons and amongst the edgelands.
For more information contact:
info@ayearinthecountry.co.uk