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Day: 20 June 2017

Interview: Spoon

Written by Jacob Nicholas on . Posted in Music.

Spoon are a band perpetually at the top of their game – every single record they have released since 1997’s Soft Effects has been seemingly effortlessly great, and they only get better the more you listen.

This year’s Hot Thoughts is no exception, the band once again creating a blinder of an album better than anything since, well, their last one.

With this latest success in mind, as well as the band’s upcoming UK dates with Adam Buxton (which is a frankly genius choice, Buxton’s ridiculously consistent brilliance making him comedy’s answer to the Texan indie rock greats), we called up multi-instrumentalist and generally lovely man Alex Fischel to talk everything from ambience to impeachment.

We started with the response Hot Thoughts has received, and Fischel was happy, though modest, about its near-universal critical acclaim. “It seems like it’s been pretty good”, he told us, “it’s been a fun thing to get the new songs together and play them for people.”

The record has been described by many critics as quite a big departure from Spoon’s previous work, and whilst it is clearly the same band, it uses a very different set of textures and colours to their previous work. “Yeah I’d say so,” Fischel agreed, “I mean for one thing there’s certainly a lot more keyboards – and not just piano or natural, more acoustic sounding instruments – we opened up more of a synthesizer world a little bit and kind of went down that road.”

The guitar, the traditional cornerstone of a Spoon record, is now a far less integral element. As Fischel said, they’re “still on the record, but when they’re there it’s more of a statement”.

Fischel is responsible for all the synths in Spoon, so was this shift down to him? “I’d say I had something to do with it, yeah”, he told us, “I mean that’s my instrument, that’s what I learned to play music on with piano, and then through that you kind of expand as you learn about more.”

However, he insisted it was not a conscious choice to bring his talents to the front. “It wasn’t really a decision, it kind of just happened”, he explained, and instead he believes the shift is really more of a continuation of what came before. “The last song we worked on for the last record, They Want My Soul was ‘Inside Out’ and that was already kind of going in that direction a little bit, where it’s more keyboard-based, more soundscape-y, and I think we kind of just picked up where we left off when we started working on the material for Hot Thoughts.”

This more experimental turn was perhaps also down to producer Dave Fridmann (most famous for his work with the Flaming Lips), but not in the way you might expect. “His place is kind of out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York,” Fischel told us, and this relative isolation even limited what Spoon could listen to whilst making the record, as “in the kitchen there’s a little CD player and that’s the way you can listen to music.” This meant they listened to a somewhat limited selection of music, at least compared to the infinite choice of something like Spotify.

“We burned some mixes,” Fischel elaborated, listing the likes of Talking Heads, Thee Oh Sees, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, as well as Lodger, Bowie’s weirdo peak (or nadir, depending on how you feel about these things). These records can all clearly be heard on Hot Thoughts, and with good reason – according to Fischel “you end up listening to the same stuff over and over again cos you had to go and make CDs if you wanted them.”

Bowie in Berlin is perhaps the most obvious influence on the album, especially on its two ambient centrepieces ‘Pink Up’ and the stunning ‘Us’. These two tracks are the biggest departures, and are totally different to anything Spoon’s done before, so we wanted to know how they came about.

Fischel was more than happy to tell us. “’Pink Up’ is more of a studio piece,” he explained, “that one just grew and grew and grew and eventually we were like OK!”  He was also particularly pleased with the focus on texture over traditional melody. As he put it, “there’s proper vocals on it, not just the reversed effected vocals, but they don’t come in for a while, and I like when they come in but it’s not the whole focus of the song.”

The closing track, ‘Us’ came about almost by accident. “So originally we were looking for a sax player – again Bowie – to do a part of a song, and I live in LA and I have a friend who knows a tonne of different musicians, so I went to him and asked if he knew anyone and he recommended this guy Ted Taforo,” Fischel began, “and Ted went over to Britt [Daniel, Spoon’s singer and guitarist]’s and listened to the song, and I think he listened like twice and was like “OK! I know what I wanna do.”

Britt hit record and he played through the whole thing, then he was like “OK give me one more track” and played through once more and harmonised with what he’d done originally, in time and in rhythm and all of that. He was in and out real quick, it was like thirty minutes or something.”

“Later that night Britt went back to listen to it”, Fischel continued, “and he muted the rest of the song and just left the saxes and was thinking wouldn’t it be cool if we just did a song based on those saxes? And that’s how that song came to be.”

This shift towards a more ambient is something the band, or at least Fischel, would definitely like to explore further. “I would love to”, he enthused, “I love that kind of stuff, I’m a huge Brian Eno fan.” However, a more experimental sound makes it more difficult to play these songs live, and Fischel said the band are still trying to figure them out for a live setting. “I mean playing ‘Us’ I don’t know how we’d do that. We’d need a sax player, none of us can really do that”, he admitted, “but ‘Pink Up’ we’re working on getting together right now, we haven’t physically tried playing it yet but we’ve discussed it a lot.”

Hot Thoughts is not just noticeable for its experimentation, however, but also its tense atmosphere. The song ‘Tear it Down’ is perhaps the most explicitly political track (“let them build a wall around us/I don’t care I’m gonna tear it down” goes the chorus), but the whole record seems to be at least partially influenced by the political turbulence surrounding us.

The album was recorded before the U.S. presidential election, though, and the band were hoping it would just be a reminder of past times rather than reflecting any ongoing crisis. “When we were making the record we were hoping that this would be like dust in the wind and this point, like the record would come out and this wouldn’t be an issue any more”, Fischel said sadly, “but unfortunately things didn’t work out that way, and we have a pretty messed up situation right now.”

Messed up situation seems to be putting it lightly, “Oh I mean there’s so many different issues to talk about, that’s a whole other conversation”, agreed an audibly despondent Fischel. “It’s really messed up. It’s depressing. It’s constantly depressing. It’s every day waking up and seeing the news and thinking is this real? This can’t be fucking real. And it’s real.”

However, Fischel does look for the positives, even in as bleak a situation as this. “If anything, maybe it’s given people a sense of renewed spirit or resilience or duty that they feel to start standing up and speaking for what they think is right”, he told us, “cause this cannot go on much longer, it’s just the worst.”

And how much longer does he think it will go on? How long will Trump will last? “Ideally not another day, but I’m on a watch list for saying that now probably”, he laughed, “you know, he has his four years, and hopefully by the time those four years are up people come to their senses and we can right the course a bit.”

But for Spoon, things are still on a seemingly constant upwards trajectory, and the band have a packed schedule to capitalise on the success of this fantastic album. “We’re gonna do some shows back here in the UK and Europe and then do more shows”, Fischel explained excitedly. “Shows shows shows,” he added. Shows.

And finally, what advice does Fischel have for any bands just starting out? “Uh, ah, oh,” he laughed, “I don’t know. Don’t listen to me. That’d be my advice.” Well he may not be a brilliant motivational speaker, but he’s a brilliant musician, and we can’t wait for the next inevitable Spoon masterpiece.

General Elections 2017: Don’t forget to v-sign

Written by Will Baldwin-Pask on . Posted in Opinion.

Elections can be conceptually reduced to being, in essence, a single-answer question. What do you make of the country at the moment? Who do you think should be running this ship? Is Electorate Group A or Electorate Group B right? And if so, are they racist? The power mongers ask, the people respond. Fairly straightforward, it would seem.

But the best elections, such as the one we have just experienced, tend to produce more questions than they answer. Questions around Brexit, austerity, Theresa May’s employment, the point of UKIP and the state of the party system have arisen since last Thursday’s bizarre result. There is one thing in particular that I have been asking myself, unable to get the image of Mrs May’s victory-but-somewhat-concession speech outside No. 10, looking like a rather dour member of the Council of Ricks, out of my frazzled head. And that is, how many more times will democracy leave us at the discretion of governing forces before they realize that it won’t always work in their favour?

Theresa and the Tories played with fire: they thought they knew what Britain wanted and ended up wasting a fraction of their mandate, chasing their fantasy majority. After the April 18th announcement, their poor follow-up action gave away soft goals to a spirited Labour party; the Tory party leadership’s drastic overestimation of Conservative popularity, campaign competency and public attitude became evident 51 days later. The whipped-out weapon of democracy had backfired.

Theresa May has said this was about getting more support for her Brexit crusade, but many suspect the Conservatives were more interested in wiping the liberal parties off the playing board, as public opinion at the time suggested would happen. It has been widely reported that the Prime Minister never really wanted to play snap with the election, which is easier to believe given her denial for so long of there being another one until 2020. Perhaps this is why she has been allowed to hang on to power, becoming now a scapegoat for a decision made by someone else.

This was nothing new. David Cameron of course lost his job after committing rather blatant governmental negligence, promising something to the public he himself never wanted. Though Farage and UKIP can be given some credit for fanning the fires of the EU debate, it was Cameron who went from a negotiating approach to a full on In/Out Referendum, thereby bringing it to the realm of mainstream party policy. As an antithesis to Miliband’s Labour and an appeasement to those voters eyeing up the UKIP alternative, Cameron assured the British people he would leave it to them to potentially make a decision — one he would never have made himself.

Not only did Cameron casually throw around guarantees of a referendum to tease votes, but he completely underestimated the importance of effective campaigning in his favour, as well as the profound consequences of direct democracy.

Perhaps the poor turnout and resounding rejection of the Alternative Voting Referendum from 2011 gave Cameron and his team reason to believe the British public would shrug their shoulders or side with the path of least uncertainty. This was a glaring miscalculation. Instead, he became like a parent who doesn’t think their child has it in them to make it to university and offers them a grand for every B and above they get in their A levels, then silently weeps as they cruise up to halls for freshers in a new Yaris.

Cameron may have respected the will of the people, but he did not respect their willingness. The discontented took their chance to change something. Economic frustration reared its many heads. Some even suggested the Leave result was a big fuck you to Cameron and the establishment. In the end, his toying with democracy cost Cameron a fundamental change to British politics he had overtly feared, as well as his job.

A brutal lesson learned, right? Apparently not. A scrap for the PM spot ensued and Theresa May emerged from the corpse pile to take national leadership. For a while, it seemed she had learnt from her predecessor.  Ten months after Cameron’s demise, this clearly was not the case.

The moans of Brenda from Bristol were heard around the country after the snap election was called in an attempt to twist the knife stuck in the opposition. Democracy was once again being used for personal and political validation. Some have argued this was a gamble. Others have argued this was greed. I for one sided with the many that, regardless of their political sympathies, could see the sense in May’s approach.

But what started as an astute move soured as campaign scrutiny kicked in. The Tories took what they saw as the simple approach and made the election into a personality contest to bury deadpan Jeremy. The thing is, that would only work if you have a personality yourself to fight with. And I’m sorry Theresa, but no one likes a wheat field vandal.

Again, economic frustration appeared, rejecting further austerity in favour of Corbyn’s idealism. Young people put down their phones and turned up to bring some balance to the polling station demographics in an unprecedented performance. The landslide that should have been instead drowned in a cesspit of the Tories’ own making.

The election was impacted by, and reflective of, too many fascinating variables to squeeze in one article. A fundamental confusion over what Brexit should be is evident. The beginning of the end for the mainstream press is tantalising. Yet, there is one thing people should now realise: trying to second-guess the British public will not always work.

The snap election was an attempt to reaffirm the government’s dominion in these complicated times. Thirteen lost seats later, we can see the misjudgement. What this proves is that democracy is a bit like masturbating; it is important to practice every now and again, but force it too many times and you will end up only hurting yourself. I believe it was Thatcher who said that.

Elections and referendums should be savoured for when appropriate and needed. By using it as a tool for personal success, politicians are inevitably blunting its effectiveness. Democracy is not to be thrown around arbitrarily and at the right time, leave all complacency at the door — you don’t know what the British people are capable of.

Presume at your own peril. Here’s hoping for some breathing space before the next time we have to cross a box.

Apply to join the 2017/18 Editorial Team

Written by Jennifer Sterne on . Posted in News.

Applications to join the Editorial Team for 2017/18 are now open. This is your chance to work for the biggest student newspaper in the country and gain authentic journalism experience.

The experience you will gain working for a student print publication will be invaluable and enhance your CV immeasurably. Previous section editors have gone on to careers in the national press, public relations, and broadcast journalism.

All current students at the University of Manchester are able to apply and you don’t necessarily have to have worked for The Mancunion before — our only requirement is a demonstrable passion for journalism.

You have until 11.55pm on the 4th of July to apply.

Please keep in mind that successful applicants will be invited to training days on the 11th and 12th of September, which while not compulsory the training will be comprehensive and highly beneficial to your understanding of your positions requirements and the inner workings of The Mancunion.

To apply, please fill in the application form at the bottom of this page. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact [email protected].

The positions available are:

News Editors – In charge of producing six pages of The Mancunion every week, including the all important front page. News Editors will have to demonstrate a keen awareness of the student area of Manchester to enable them to find news stories, and understand the workings of student politics, as they will have to follow the work of the 2017/18 Exec team closely. The News Editorial team will consist of a Head News Editor and two Deputy News Editors.

Science and Technology Editor – In charge of the Science and Technology page of The Mancunion. Works closely with the News Editors and shares their contributor meetings. The role will involve keeping up to date with all the scientific developments at the University.

Features Editors – In charge of two Feature pages of The Mancunion, which can include in-depth investigation articles or interviews. The team will be made up of a Head Features Editor and a Deputy Features Editor. Both editors will have a desire to follow-up and investigate stories within the student community, and the ability to encourage other contributors to do the same. They will also have imaginative ideas about who The Mancunion could invite to be interviewed.

Opinion Editors – In charge of designing two Opinion pages a week, with a focus on articles which have a predominantly student focus. The team will consist of a Head Opinion Editor and a Deputy Opinion Editor. The editors will be in charge of chairing meetings with Opinion contributors and ensuring that a balanced range of views are represented.

Music Editors – In charge of three Music Pages a week, which will include reviews of gigs, albums and longer features. The team will be made up of  Head Music Editor and a Deputy Music Editor, who will be in charge of keeping an eye on review opportunities and the sharing out of these between contributors.

Games Editor – In charge of one page in The Mancunion each week. Run by just the one Games Editor who will be in charge of keeping an eye on new releases to be reviewed and commissioning longer features, always with a student audience in mind.  

Fashion and Beauty Editors – In charge of the two page centre spread of The Mancunion every week. The team will be made up of a Head Fashion and Beauty Editor and two deputies. They will have to keep an eye on fashion and beauty trends, particularly within the Manchester student community.

Film Editors – In charge of designing two pages every week. The team will be made up of a Head Film Editor and a Deputy, who will have to keep an eye on new releases to be reviewed and share these opportunities with their contributors. They will have to ensure their content and choices of films to review are with a student audience in mind.

Books Editor – In charge of one page in The Mancunion every week. Run by just the one Books Editor who will have to keep an eye on new releases to be reviewed and wider literature news and distribute these opportunities to contributors.

Food & Drink Editors – In charge of two pages every week. The team will be made up of the Head Food and Drink Editor and a Deputy. There is budget within The Mancunion for contributors to spend reviewing restaurants in the Manchester area, and the Editors will be in charge of co-coordinating this and ensuring that all places chosen to review are done so with a student audience in mind.

Arts Editor – In charge of one page every week, and run by just the one Arts Editor. They will have a keen awareness of the arts world of Manchester and be able to keep up with any developments, sharing any review opportunities with contributors.

Theatre Editor – In charge of one page every week, and run by just the one Theatre Editor. The Editor will be aware of the Theatre world of Manchester and be able to keep up with all the new shows, sharing any review or interview opportunities with contributors.

Lifestyle Editors – In charge of two pages in The Mancunion every week. The team will be made up of a Head Lifestyle Editor and a Deputy, who will write and commission articles on a range of topics that make up the student lifestyle. Topics can range from travel writing, mental health articles, advice columns, sexual health and much more.

Sport Editors – In charge of the four back pages of The Mancunion. The team will be made up of a Head Sports Editor and a Deputy. Their roles will include covering national sport developments, but their focus must be on University sporting achievements or local sport coverage.

Sub editors – These editors will be some of the last to read articles before they are published in print and online. It is a Sub editors job to ensure there are no spelling/grammar mistakes or factual errors within articles before they are published. They are also in charge of ensuring all headlines and excerpts are as eye-catching as possible.

The team of Sub editors will be run by a Head Sub editor and then there are an unlimited number of positions available on the team, as it is a time-consuming task, therefore it is good to be able to rotate the team.

Social Media Editors – A team in charge of overseeing high quality social media output on our Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram to ensure we reach a wide student audience.

All section editors are expected to work diligently with the rest of Editorial Team to ensure the paper produced weekly is to a consistently high standard.

The roles do require a significant amount of time to be committed, but this volunteering time will be printed upon your degree certificate, and will be highly valued by employers. We will also work to help you manage your time effectively to ensure you’re able to create a balance between university work and your editorial commitments.

Section editors are required to run weekly meetings for contributors to attend and pitch stories. They must act as mentors for their contributors and work to engage them in The Mancunion and help them to improve their writing and understanding of journalism.

After distributing the articles for that week they must then work to ensure all the content is submitted to our sub editors on time. They then must use InDesign, which they will get thorough training in prior to the first print deadline, to layout their section ready from print every Friday.

Overall we ask that all section editors work enthusiastically and passionately throughout the year to ensure all the editorial staff feel supported and part of a strong team. Our aim is to create quality journalism in an inspiring environment.

Apply here