Deerhunter are nothing if not productive. Last month’s Halcyon Digest was the Atlanta-based psychedelic foursome’s sixth major release in as many years; not surprising considering principal songwriter Bradford Cox’s battle with Marfan syndrome, shortening his life expectancy, and perhaps a wish to release the most material possible. More explicitly than in previous work, Cox’s illness is disturbingly prevalent lyrically in Halcyon Digest, lamenting in Basement Scene his aversion to growing old, while Memory Boy and Desire Lines express a vehement repulsion of solitude. However, album closer He Would Have Laughed (this year’s Nothing Ever Happened, Deerhunter fans) documents the boredom associated with ageing and perhaps an acceptance of his position.
Had Coldplay written major hit Clocks after spending their youth listening to My Bloody Valentine rather than U2, then first single Revival might have been the result; guitarist Lockett Pundt produces the band’s most agreeable pop melody yet, however he really comes to the fore in self-penned Desire Lines. Beginning in the same vein as the current American surf pop scene advocated by Best Coast and Wavves, the album’s seven-minute centrepiece eventually culminates with Deerhunter’s trademark hypnotism. Stand-out Helicopter is the band at their thunderous best, as waves of warped guitar drone to a climatic crescendo of Cox’s longing whines concerning loss of company and a minimal existence, from the peculiar viewpoint of a fictional Russian prostitute.
For all their somewhat downbeat lyrics, and colossal, engulfing, none-too-uplifting production, Halcyon Digest stands true as Deerhunter’s most life-affirming work yet. Saxophones and mandolins are delightfully unexpected additions to the band’s perpetually overwhelming sound, which was in danger of becoming monotonous and overbearing had it not been tweaked and improved over the course of their relentless output, which hopefully will not be capped anytime soon.
Wednesday 27 October 2010
Monday 18 October 2010
Oroonoko - Aphra Behn, 1688.
“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn...for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.”
Virginia Woolf
Oroonoko, Aphra Behn’s most studied novel, was particularly revolutionary; while its publication in 1688 is widely heralded as the birth of the English novel, a black protagonist and female author are surely the more staggering aspects of Behn’s glorious portrait of an African prince enslaved and disparaging representation of white supremacy in the quickly expanding British empire.
African tribal prince Oroonoko, who the author claimed to exist, is unanimously adored by all that meet him. Behn ceaselessly praises the man’s physique, appearance, character and heart throughout, and it is such attributes which highlight the injustice of his fate, as he and his maiden lover Imoinda are captured as slaves by British traders from Surinam in a radical account of the barbarism of slavery.
Aphra Behn is known to have worked as a spy under King Charles II, however debate rages as to whether she actually visited the South American colony. While her descriptions of tropical landscape and indigenous people are generally accurate, minor descrepancies are suggested. The majority of Europeans named in the novel were named as true contemporaneous figures, a somewhat peculiar example of poetic license to use if Behn had not travelled extensively, as few Western characters escape positively. One Englishman who escapes without condemnation in Oroonoko is George Marten, a loyal Cromwellian, while Royalist colonists appear malevolent and sadistic. Behn herself was a famously militant supporter of the monarchy, thus her coupling of tyrannical brutality with political ideology unquestionably not in line with her own seems bizarre.
A sentimentalised love story which established amatory fiction as a precursor to the modern novel, or a cruel reminder of British colonial cruelty in a time of social and scientific turbulence? Oroonoko is unquestionably, and, most importantly, a valuable representation of each.
Virginia Woolf
Oroonoko, Aphra Behn’s most studied novel, was particularly revolutionary; while its publication in 1688 is widely heralded as the birth of the English novel, a black protagonist and female author are surely the more staggering aspects of Behn’s glorious portrait of an African prince enslaved and disparaging representation of white supremacy in the quickly expanding British empire.
African tribal prince Oroonoko, who the author claimed to exist, is unanimously adored by all that meet him. Behn ceaselessly praises the man’s physique, appearance, character and heart throughout, and it is such attributes which highlight the injustice of his fate, as he and his maiden lover Imoinda are captured as slaves by British traders from Surinam in a radical account of the barbarism of slavery.
Aphra Behn is known to have worked as a spy under King Charles II, however debate rages as to whether she actually visited the South American colony. While her descriptions of tropical landscape and indigenous people are generally accurate, minor descrepancies are suggested. The majority of Europeans named in the novel were named as true contemporaneous figures, a somewhat peculiar example of poetic license to use if Behn had not travelled extensively, as few Western characters escape positively. One Englishman who escapes without condemnation in Oroonoko is George Marten, a loyal Cromwellian, while Royalist colonists appear malevolent and sadistic. Behn herself was a famously militant supporter of the monarchy, thus her coupling of tyrannical brutality with political ideology unquestionably not in line with her own seems bizarre.
A sentimentalised love story which established amatory fiction as a precursor to the modern novel, or a cruel reminder of British colonial cruelty in a time of social and scientific turbulence? Oroonoko is unquestionably, and, most importantly, a valuable representation of each.
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