The Uncertainty Principle

Half Baked

What with this being my final week of my part time work at the Palace of Westminster, I decided to eschew my traditional packed lunch (ham and salad on brown: 2 rounds. one granny smith apple), in favour of a brief snackette wholly more suitable to my sophisticated metropolitan surroundings.

It was in weighing up the various merits of Cheddar vs. Emmental that I was reminded me of one of my favourite bits of trivia regarding a popular carbohydrate.

The good people at Pilot Foods reckon:

Almost every region has its own variety of ciabatta bread: ciabatta from Lake Como is light with a crisp crust, in Tuscany and Umbria it is denser and in Rome it is usually seasoned with olive oil, salt and marjoram

Ciabatta, in fact, is not traditional at all. It is not 'rustic' but 'urbic'. It is only just Italian.

Ciabatta was first brought to the British market in 1985 by M&S. Along with Sundried Tomatoes it has reached such promienence in the diet of the well-heeled purely because it is seen as Mediterranean and Italianate.

This is a good job because it is rubbish as a sandwich casing.

• It is difficult to slice horizontally, though pointless to slice like a sandwich loaf
• The gluten-heavy crust makes tough jaw work
• The tasty though starchy innards mean minutes of chewing before you taste the filling

It was actually invented in 1982 by a Venetian miller Arnaldo Cavallari in an attempt to fight the Italian corner of the Roman bread market which was then flooded with cheap Gallic Baguette imports.

My children, you have been lied to.

Sounds of the Underground

Inspired by yesterday's edition of the Observer Music Monthly I decided to post some musings regarding the effect geography has on pop music on Go Listen.

Friends unfortunate enough to share tutorials with me at Uni, will notice my trademark tactic of getting out of answering questions by posing some more.

Cardio-vascular horror

On two seperate occasions yesterday I noticed a particularly grating cliche deployed in similar circumstances on BBC Radio 1 and Big Brother.

One failed competition entrant on Radio one described her emotional state after failing to win concert tickets as, 'heartbroken, literally'. Hours later, in the Big Brother Bedsit, Michelle claimed she was 'literally heartbroken' at her seperation from the other housemates.

I don't know why this offence against syntax so hackle raising, but it really is painful to hear. Though, it has to be said, probably not as painful as having one's heart literally broken.

A few months back, whilst in a rather unpleasant bar/club/wine-lodge I commented to a friend on the insufficiency of space given over to male toilets in the venue. "Yeah", he nodded from behind his pint,"they're taking the piss, quite literally".

This is a Streets Production

It had to happen. After The Streets' second album A Grand Don't Come for Free was released earlier this month to critical claim, there has been exponential rise of opposition to it on the uber-trendy music sites I am such a fan of. In response, I posted the following defence on Go Listen.

Nothing alienates people more than a simple argument by contradiction. So it is with some wariness that I launch into a direct contradiction of recent posting on the Streets second album. Nevertheless, I feel moved to leap to the defence of Mike Skinner and, in particular, the musical prowess exhibited in, A Grand Don't Come for Free (AGDCFF).

He is, I would claim, a highly proficient, innovative producer; an MC of significant verbal dexterity and microphone presence and a musician of great originality and wit.

Firstly, the production technique. I would argue the Streets' production style is a retake of the first wave of new-school East Coast hip-hop of 1984/5 evident in the Boogie Down Production Crew's work with JVC Force and the improbably named Castle D.

This is a very clean sound made up of just two constituents. The basis of which is an uncompromising programmed beat that drives the whole track. On top of this is layered a looped sample or jagged scratches, cuts, stabs and backspins. While modern mainstream dance production covers up unoriginal and turgid music with layer-upon-layer of samples and a polyphony of beats and synths, Skinner keeps it straightforward. He is confident about his beats and rightly so.

The byword is simplicity. Skinner has updated this mid-80s production ethos. The samples are not multifarious and complex but minimal and atmospheric, creating the context for the vocals. This is in evidence by the house-club track backing to build the environment in ‘Blinded by the Lights' or the Coldplay-esque acoustic strum of ‘Dry your eyes' to soundtrack Skinner's bedroom after a break-up. The samples Skinner uses in his tracks brings one closer to the characters in the narrative, the House club, the bedroom, the football-clap of the betting shop, or the distorted beats of ‘Get Out of My House' which makes one feel one is in the flat where the argument is taking place, feeling the bass of next door's music reverberating through the walls with the line ‘you don't give a damn about my broken TV'.

AGDCFF is a significant achievement. Skinner's style should be seen in the context of sounds it emerged from, the intellectually bankrupt sounds of UK Hip-Hop and Garage. The 'garage musical' narrative concept works musically and lyrically. The narrative is so strong that the album is diminished if you don't start listening to it from track one onwards. The only real singles as far as I can see are ‘Fit But You Know It' and ‘Dry Your Eyes' . They are the only tracks that have a distinct identity and internal cohesion, separate from the rest of the album.


Far from glorifying the nihilism of the ‘sex drugs and on the dole' lifestyle, AGDCFF speaks articulately of the consequences of so living. There is no self-pity, nor is there self-revelry so prevalent in most hip-hop; just pathos and a frank, refreshing honesty. Take, for instance, Skinner's decision to keep the early take of the vocals on the first track, recorded when he had a sore throat because the harshness of his tones suited the raw edginess of ‘It Was Meant To Be So Easy'.

The decision to go for a strong narrative takes Skinner's lyrics to a natural conclusion. As every music reviewer in the world has pointed out, the emphasis on this album is not sharply spat couplets but story-telling. His best tracks on Original Pirate Material are not just the manifesto statements of ‘Let's Push Things Forward' and ‘Sharp Darts' but the narratives of ‘Don't Mug Yourself' and ‘Geezers Need Excitement' .

AGDCFF picks up the claim Skinner made in ‘Turn the Page' to: ‘Use defeat and past injury/ as my metaphor and simile'.

Such is his talent for finding metaphors for pathos in the everyday, Skinner doesn't need to depart from the narrative to convey deeply felt emotion. His powers of description convey all he needs to. In ‘It was meant to be so easy':

'Rushing to the cash machine, still a bit mashed and lean / Then of course a mandatory car, drives by and splashes me/ Get there the queue's outrageous/ ladies taking ages/ My rage is blowing gauges/ how longs does it take to validate your wages?/ At last my turn comes/ press the 50 squid button/ Insufficient funds / Today I've achieved absolutely nowt/ In just being out of the house, I've lost out / If I wanted to end up with more now / I should've just stayed in bed, like I know how'

Skinner's lyrics portray a phonetic love of language. In ‘Fit But You Know It' he plays on the word ‘Rude', ('Not rude like 'good' / but just rude like 'uncouth''). In the eerie and ominous ‘Blinded by the Lights' Skinner underlines his loneliness through the transcription of a text conversation. In ‘Get Out of My House' Skinner's honesty pervades. Whilst the lyrics begin as an ordered call/response form, as the character looses his thread, so do the vocals. Repetition, restatement and self-contradiction threaten to unseat him. Finally, he takes refuge in his own inarticulacy; 'Yeah, You're not exactly...f****n'..y'know..'.

His vocal delivery adds to his rhetoric; managing to invest emotion and gravitas in a humble side-swipe. Whether he's talking about ashtrays needing emptying or allegorising, (‘I saw this thing on ITV the other week') Skinner places heartfelt and believable emotion into every line.

AGDCCF also exhibits a semiologist's devotion to signs and symbols. Certain themes and signs repeat themselves and are cast in different illustrative roles: his broken TV, the vagaries of mobile phones and of course his £1000 sterling. More broadly, ‘Blinded by the Lights' serves as a antithesis to the joyful and uplifting statement of raving in ‘Weak Become heroes' ; while his use of the verbal imagery of the Roman garrison in ‘Empty Cans' echoes the metaphors of ‘Turn the Page'.

AGDCFF doesn't satisfy all those who loved the dance-floor potential of ‘Original Pirate Material' but it is a remarkable achievement worthy of attention.

I have recently recieved a personal stream-of-consciousness review of the Streets Brixton Academy Gig from a close friend. The highlights:

"Every so often both Calvin and Skinner would ask the audience if they wanted a drink. Then proceed to hand out beer and water, but also had the most impressive thing I've ever seen on a drumkit. On every bar possible hung an upside bottle of spirit attached to a speed-pour. Mostly brandy ... Skinner insisted on starting some of the BIG songs by inviting everyone to jump and shout. Then as the song started, and we did, he stopped it again to tell us we weren't being jumpy or shouty enough. Fit but you know it had three starts. Simple but effective....a perfect mix of both albums. The only disappointment was that they didn't play live favourite "Give me back my lighter" or merge "Lets Push things forward" into Ghost Town by the Specials....Highlight was arriving at the gig only to realise I was standing right behind Dizzy Rascal who was being rirpsed by girlies. He finished his chat then turned around and barged right past me, causing my mate...to spill his drink. He's just a Rascal..."