Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 15:18:54 EST 
    From: Dez (100702.123@COMPUSERVE.COM) 
    Subject: Various Stuff

There is an immense amount of exciting British music being made at the moment,
coming from a complete disregard for categorization. Tricky, Goldie, Autechre,
Flying Saucer Attack, Disco Inferno, LFO - just to name a few off the top of my
head. Hardly a week goes by without coming across something new and exciting.
This stuff really is the music of the next millenium. Unfortunately, a lot of
this new stuff remains unheard, and certainly under-exposed, due to press and
radio's pathetic obsession with a load of retrogressive dunderheads, grouped
together as the bollocks that is brit-pop. It's the last desperate roll of the
dice for people still obsessed with formula-rock. Does anyone think that Oasis
could sell two million copies of a record if they were offering anything new?
What they supply is fraudulent, derivative and above all safe. They sell records
to people who want a safe, all-white alternative to what is happening in dance
culture and away from the mainstream. Tunes like they used to write. Oh fuck off
- if I want tunes like they used to write, then I'll listen to the ones they
used to write - the Byrds, Big Star, Led Zeppelin or whatever. It's all been
done and done better and fresher. It's not even that it's no longer possible to
sound fresh using guitar-bass-drums (a format now more than 50 years old - well
over half of the history of recorded music!). Pavement can still do it, the
Muses can still do it - My Bloody Valentine even use that format. No it's a fear
of the new. Perhaps it's a reaction to the incredible advances in technology
over the past few years. People want something old and familiar to cling to.

4AD seem to be sitting a little to much on the sidelines for my liking. Sure I
still love a good proportion of the records the label puts out. I wouldn't
really quibble with anyone they've signed over the past few years, since the
appalling Spirea X at any rate, and the consistently under-achieving Heidi
Berry. But I'd like to see Ivo et al looking around a little more for something
a little more surprising. Beggar's Banquet have Main, Flying Nun have
LaBradford, Go Discs (home of the Beautiful South!) signed Portishead. It seems
that other labels, formally much more conservative in their approach than 4AD,
are branching out. I'd hate to see a label that has given me more pleasure over
the last 16 years than any other be left behind.

Sorry it turned into a long rant - Dez