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Underground > Radio & Music >

Invisibles soundtrack

05:40 / 30.08.03

i was re-reading issue 1 of volume three and during the entire sequence of everything becoming engulfed into the supercontext i had the weird feeling that born slippy by underworld was playing during that scene. now i am motivated to make an invisibles soundtrack for the whole series. anyone got any suggestions(other than the songs already mentioned in the book of course)?

06:58 / 30.08.03

I'm drunk and tired so I can't be bothered to make a link but we've already got a thread on this... check it out.

09:54 / 30.08.03

There'd be a fair amount of Kula Shaker, apparently. No-one wants to hear that.

14:05 / 30.08.03

I'm glad I'm not the only one who associates Underworld with the Invisibles. "Two Months Off" from their last album "A Hundred Days Off" has Glitterdammerung written all over it. And of course "Cowgirl" from "Dubnobasswithmyheadman."

Does anyone know if there's any connection between Grant and Underworld? They seem to fit together so well...

17:53 / 30.08.03

There was quite a lot of synchronicitus (is that a word?) thematic malarky going on between the Invisibles and Primal Scream's (still brilliant) 'Exterminator' album.

I remember discussing it with Grant Morrison at the legendary meet-up all those years ago and agreeing that, yeah, it sounds uncannily like a soundtrack to the comic in places.

(Quite how Primal Scream keep managing to do that thing of releasing a REALLY KICK ASS record and following it with an utterly dire & pointless record is still a great mystery to me..)

Also you'd have to stick on the tracks that get directly mentioned in the series - "David Watts" by the Kinks (which I heard for the first time today bizarrely enough) springs to mind.. there are probably more..

20:27 / 30.08.03

underworld and primal scream (most notably the exterminator album) really do spring to mind when i read the invisibles. i really do like to listen to them while reading the series. i usually associate primal scream with the second volume and underworld with the third. for the entropy in the uk tpb old punk albums really sound good with it.

is kula shaker really that bad? i've never heard anything from them, and i hear a lot of people giving them a lot of shit.

09:39 / 31.08.03

a few more records that I think provide the right kind of vibe;

The Orb - adventures beyond the ultraworld
Monster Magnet - dopes to infinity
Pink Floyd - piper at the gates of dawn

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:56 / 02.09.03

If you drank a lot of cider at the SU friday night disco in the mid 90s then you could probably listen to Kula Shaker without wanting to vomit up your own pelvis bone.

They weren't much better or worse than a lot of the indoe-Britpop bands that got signed up purely because that was the fashion at the time and money was thrown at anyone who sang in an English accent. Crispin Mills misfortune was to be posh and to talk about Indian mysticism when most journos only wanted to talk about a Tikka Masala, so he got painted as a bit of Nazi, which was unfair, though their first album did have a couple of Nazis on the cover IIRC.

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:05 / 02.09.03

How many times - it wasn't unfair, Mills said "Hitler knew a lot more than he was letting on" in the same interview in which he described his desire to have flaming swastikas as part of Kula Shaker's stageset. The latter is just about defensible as misguided given the symbol's usage prior to and outside of Nazism; when coupled with the former it really, really isn't. In addition, a lot of their "Indian mysticism" schtick was in itself offensive Gap year claptrap - they were always going on about how much more enlightened poor people are, and I'm sorry, but YES that *is* less forgivable when you're as rolling in cash as Crispin "grandson of Sir John" Mills.

Mind you, I was always more concerned about the incident when the band guest-reviewed the singles of the week in NME and Mills explained that he didn't understand hip-hop or r&b because - I quote verbatim - "I'm not a 'black bitch'..." They seemed to get away with that one though.

Tryphena Absent

14:23 / 02.09.03

The question remains- Crispin Mills, Nazi or mindless twat? I'm going for the latter because I don't want to give him credit for actually having a brain. Incidentally I once owned a Kula Shaker album and it was really bad so I gave it to a friend who also enjoyed the Beautiful South. Enjoyed them so much that she squealed with glee, raised her hand and yelled that she owned a copy of their greatest hits album in response to a teacher while on a school bus to Austria. Social suicide anyone?

15:02 / 02.09.03

I think it's only a matter of time and distance before Kula Shaker start to attract a kind of cult audience .. just in terms of them being a bunch of naive rich kids utterly flying in the face of both fashion and common sense and singing about the daftest songs imaginable.. they are just a kitsch oddity in the making.. hipsters too young to have witnessed their terrifying rise and fall firsthand are probably gonna think they're hilarious..

But otherwise - "Hey, Krispin Mills was a bit of a twat, and he said some riilly dumb things!" - yeah, that's totally worth derailing a messageboard thread in the year 2003 for..

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:25 / 02.09.03

Fair enough Fly, hadn't heard about the reviewing incident and had missed the original Nazi thing and only caught up with the slagging off that went in the MM and NME letters pages which, of course, never give all three sides of the story. So, Crispy-Ian= Nazi Wanker. I retract my previous equivication.

17:35 / 04.09.03

There's a pretty good article about Crispian's problematical comments here:

http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1997/may/05-14-97/arts/arts3.html

I still love their music though, enjoy it quite a bit.

06:24 / 06.09.03

I imagine when king mob is in action some mudvayne would be playing, the doors when the gang is atop the mesa trippin balls.

16:30 / 02.12.03

thought i might resurrect this thread with a few of my thoughts, some of which have come up already:

Kinks "David Watts" duh.

Underworld "Born Slippy" first of all, "Born Slippy" -> Trainspotting -> Irvine Welsh -> bald Scottish man writing about drugs and pop culture -> GM. second, the pounding "MEGA-MEGA-WHITE-THING" screams supercontext to me.

Audio Bullies "We Don't Care" this song reminds me of Dane and his friends in the very first issue.

Gorillaz "Tomorrow Comes Today" "the camera won't let me go" - Gorillaz claim to be "the first virtual hip-hop act," blurring the lines between the artists and their fictionsuits having adventures in a post-apocalyptic weird zone. that's gotta count for something here.

Propellerheads/Shirley Bassey "History Repeating" kind of tongue-in-cheek here, but fun and sexy and cool.

MC 900ft Jesus "Dali's Handgun"the surrealism and implied violence suit the series well for me

Sekou Sundiata "Droppin' Revolution" "a lot of people be droppin' / 'revolution,' like it was a pick-up line / you wouldn't use that word / if you knew what it meant" this song is Boy to me, a sharp spoken-word critique of shallow revolutionary poses slipped into a jazzy atmosphere

DJ Spooky w/Kool Keith "Object Unknown" this one keeps popping up even though i'm not happy with it. i feel like both Spooky and Kool Keith should be represented on here, and here are the two of them talking about alien abductions. still, somehow, it doesn't work. any ideas?

Merzbow "I Lead You Towards Glorious Times" Merzbow's Venereology is the sound of the Outer Church, and "Ananga-Ranga" is too long for a mix CD.

i need more Britpop and a Josephine Baker track for Edith, but i don't know enough abotu either. any suggestions?

17:57 / 02.12.03

John Barry. And Barry whatsit, who did the screaming funk theme tune to Space 1999. More spy music, please, people...

19:03 / 02.12.03

The Beatles 'Say You Want a Revolution' - It's the name of the first trade for a reason. This sums up the series' themes in one song.

Radiohead 'Karma Police' - For King Mob in Volume II.

Doves 'Satellites' - Barbelith's theme.

Morrissey 'Everyday is like Sunday' - Mentioned in Volume III, a great song, and appropriate for the series.

19:21 / 02.12.03

Gotan Project - Budha Bar III

Fight Club Soundtrack

Magnetic Fields, they might me mentioned somewhere...

Future Sound of London - We have explosive

Akira Soundtrack

--

19:54 / 02.12.03

Personally, I find that the music off the first disc of Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2" sums up the Outer Church, esp. tracks 2 and 4. Eerie, chilling, and utterly devoid of life and emotion. I imagine some of Coil's stuff might work too. As for the archons, there's always the rape/death/fuck music of Whitehouse that is brutal, both sonically and lyrically.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

07:26 / 03.12.03

Ahh, still can't find the nigh-perfect mix CD I made for the series but here are some prominent highlights (in order, as far as I recall):

The Kinks: "David Watts" The No-Brainer.
The Dandy Warhols: "Neitzche" "I want a God who stays dead/Not plays dead/Even I can can play dead." Nuff said.
Radiohead: "Planet Telex" Just sorta "Felt Appropriate".
Louis Armstrong: "West End Blues". The definitive Sensitive Criminals jam.
The Chemical Brothers: "Power Move" Your one stop musical shopping for any and all Nevada Base Invasions.
Cornelius: "Typewrite Letter" Language deconstructed, inner patterns revealed, and it will only take you twenty minutes.
The Beatles: "Tomorrow Never Knows" Vol. 3 No. 1 Part 1.
Bjork: "All Is Full Of Love (Funkstorung Remix)" Vol. 3 No. 1 Part 2.

Now that I'm no longer constrained by the tyranny of round, I'll probably cook up a much longer and involved super-hot iTunes/Pod playlist, probably throw some Prefuse 73 on there (Suite For The Way Things Change A. Your Family B. Your Life C. The Most Beautiful Things D. Your Seeds for everyone and For Some But Not Me for Edith.) and, come on, you've gotta put some Rage Against The Machine on there for Volume Two. It's so meta. I vote for Guerilla Radio. "ALL! HELL! CAN'T STOP US NOW!"

Fuck! Yeah!

The resistable rise of Reidcourchie

09:30 / 03.12.03

Early Floyd and Leftism for Vol. 1.

Lateralus for Vol. 2.

Bowie's Outside No.1 album for both.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:44 / 03.12.03

[rot] I know this part of the thread should remain dead, but it tied in with what I was thinking at about 4 this morning...

Tryphena: The question remains- Crispin Mills, Nazi or mindless twat? I'm going for the latter because I don't want to give him credit for actually having a brain

I'm actually starting to think that wilful ignorance (ie mindless twattiness, as opposed to low intelligence) could be WORSE than evil. (It followed from a long train of thought about British politics. Ignore this part.) [/rot]

Anyway... back to the thread at hand...

Psychic TV's LOVE WAR RIOT- a cracking tune, with all the exuberance and glam you'd need, plus the esotericism somewhere in the mix.

Definitely Current 93's Lucifer Over London at some point during volume 3, for its Wicker Man-style Britishness given that added rock element (ie it begins with the riff from Paranoid before going all C93 apocalyptic folk).

Unfortunately, lots of Britpop stuff WOULD be very appropriate (unfortunately, cos it's just not my thang).

Coil's Tiny Golden Books would work SO well at various points... I'm thinking mainly of Dane's "trip-out" sequences... I can so hear that playing in the background, with the vocoded "with tongues of fire... then they left without a sound..."

Ether by the same band, for the Hand of Glory sequence at some point. Nice 20s style decadence, with a slow plonky piano...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:46 / 03.12.03

Oh, and I'm seeing the last few frames of "Best Man Fall" being played out in slow motion over Dead Can Dance's The Host Of Seraphim.

01

11:07 / 03.12.03

anything by Neurosis, especially for the cosmic desert shit, and definitely anything by International Noise Conspiracy for everything else.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

11:54 / 03.12.03

Songs which smack of weird quasi-spiritual Armaggeddon to me:

Future Sound of London Papa New Guinea Words cannot express how brilliant this song is. It's beautiful. Yet strangely evocative of submerged dead cities, somehow. Be great for the supercontext

AS WOULD:

Prodigy Naryan It's got that horrible little shit Crispin on vocals, but it's also got massif beats and chanting. And it's great.

ALSO:

Solanoid Lee Majors I'm throwing this one in on a whimsy. Instrumental. Portentous.

No star here laces

13:11 / 03.12.03

Every time anyone drives a car, you would hear T Raumschmiere - "The game is not over".

When Jack and Fanny dance, they do it to Turkish Belly Dance music.

20:40 / 03.12.03

"David Watts" started playing at the exact moment I walked into a record shop the other day. Fucking rad.