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COR’DELLE

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While the boys of the backline were getting into it in a gentlemanly but thoroughly engaged way - the girls did not convince. Unfortunately, these two women looked as though they were doing a walk-through.

While Felicity Dunn sang well enough, she rarely delivered the songs. For the entire gig she stood with one hand in her pocket. This might pass for attitude if she evoked any, but it really did look as if she was standing around at a rehearsal. Her trumpet playing, while very competent, solid and with nice tone, was less than adventurous and sometimes failed to take full advantage of the chromatic spectrum of harmony underpinning. It left you wanting more in the wrong way.

Irit Rozenfeld's stage performance was also lack lustre. Obviously a talented songwriter and bassist, she sounded like a moderately skilled vocalist who wasn't really putting out. Her pitching also needed a little work at times - I put this down not just to ennui, but to the difficulty of pitching a fretless bass while singing (apparently she usually uses a fretted bass).

I wouldn't bother going on at length about this dearth of performance, as it's a trait shared by many indie bands with the belief that it is not cool to actually perform or entertain, because it might taint the purity of one's angst-ridden soul. (Having said that, I don't think this band falls into that category.)

No, the reason why this bothers me is that this band really is sophisticated - musical well beyond the average and in many respects they did a very good gig that “could” have been really superb. The songwriting was constantly interesting, often breaking out of the generous confines of 80s-style guitar-pop which seemed to be Cor'delle's core genre. Reminiscent of early Stereolab in its harmonic sophistication, but with satisfyingly twangy interlocking guitars, Cor'delle's obvious talent made the gaps in their performance all the more frustrating. If they were the average indie band I wouldn't have cared.

On the plus side, the guitar work deserves more than a mention because of its outstanding musicality. Always serving the songs, the boys used sounds and effects in a musically convincing way to create varied textures all the more satisfying for their rarity. They also managed the by-no-means trivial feat of balancing a twelve-string electric against a six-string so that both had presence and body.

Delivered with reasonable sound balance to a well-filled room of enthusiastic supporters, Cor'delle had a credit worthy EP launch. Their EP pretty well reflects the qualities and deficits of their live performance, making their coming album (due out early next year) an event to anticipate. If by then they have persuaded their front line to really put it out there and perform the songs, this could be a remarkable and even world-class band in its chosen genre.

REVIEW THE REVIEWER

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Take this opening paragraph: “There is something inherently disconnected about the music of Tujiko Noriko. The Japanese electronic musician’s delicately looped and layered avant-pop meanderings seem to float in cultural and historical ether.”

“Inherently disconnected”? Would not just “disconnected” do? But that would perhaps offend the author’s sense that a noun - bald, bold, strong and proud, would just not do the job.

Then there is the attribution of effect to modus operandi. We cannot with any certainty attribute any particular manner to the musician’s way of working — unless she has told us so — whatever the effect the music has on us. Whether the “looped and layered avant-pop meanderings” were manufactured delicately is not the point; that they sound delicate, is a judgement of their effect.

A rewrite of that opening paragraph might go like this: “Japanese electronic musician Tujiko Noriko’s looped and layered avant-pop meanderings float delicately in a cultural and historical ether.”

There you go; a bit of punch and a bit of promise, with just a touch of puff.

Another single egregious example is the repeated, tin-eared misuse of vocabulary that results from the mistaken notion that variety of expression is necessarily evidence of life. Thus: “And for Noriko, that ‘feeling’, at least in part, hails from a life much different to the one she lives today.”

Hails? What: “rains”; “greets”; “comes from”? Ohhhh, “comes from”; as in “due to”. I see. Well, just say so!

Now, I’m the last one to demand a mechanical adherence to syntax; Shakespeare, for one, was a hound for mixing it up; but, you know …

This article demonstrates how easily words can get stuck to each other and end up smothering meaning; and there is really no excuse for a professional journalist to be confecting such verbal, pre-chewed lard pudding. To wit: “inherent tradition”, “a staggering 12 albums”, “forging new and progressive musical languages”, “bright lights of Tokyo”, “juggling jobs”, “intrinsic connection”. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ve already eaten.

This habit of bringing out mouldy and stale lumps of language is akin to selling day-old croissants; often enough you’ll get away with it, but don’t be surprised if your customers, whether they complain or not, don’t come back. I suppose it could be considered an effective way of meeting new people; because you won’t see the same people twice.

In these days of microcassettes and MP3 minirecorders, the temptation is for a hurried reporter to reproduce the spoken gems of their interviewees word for word and then to sit the result amid the finery of a few connecting sentences and some puffery. It is a development usually to be lamented; but to end on a positive note - here it at least saves the reader from even more of this writer’s woeful prose.

“Clarity of expression flows from clarity of thought.” Who wrote that? Not this guy.

To read the original piece, click here.

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Building Huge Media Enterprises for Fun and Profit

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Feeble is a sculptor and painter who took up financial management as a hobby and soon found that, the more he increased his knowledge, the more money he made and the more he wanted to know. He is now chairman of Feeble and Foil Media, a moderately successful multinational with an annual turnover of $8 billion. He no longer has to sculpt or paint for a living, but still keeps his hand in on the odd mural or consults on public sculpture.

The book takes you step by step through the fabrication of social fashions, acquisitions, hiring and firing, skewing the news, accommodating government regulations and officials, networking with the Mafia, elbowing aside competition, creating de facto monopolies, freewheel carteling, crying poor, and cooking the books.

Appendices include international flight timetables, a list of countries without extradition treaties with Australia, and tips on “tipping” local officials. A final chapter of vignettes of some of history’s greatest and most heroic media moguls serves to whet the appetite to just go out and do it.

“This is a book, ain’t it?” said Arpu Fenelon, CEO of Big Bucks Corp, when asked for a comment.

Martin Heidegger’s Budgerigar by Sandy Soapstone

This first novel from the Melton teenager won Soapstone the 2007 Babel Award for Most Promising Cringer. The action, as we have come to expect from books with such titles, revolves around a poor Kurdish immigrant who has settled in Melton and finds himself unable to make the transition from oppressed hungry harassed hunted minority to an ignored, well-fed unemployed minority.

The story is told as seen through the eyes of Akhim’s budgie, Tanta, who’s wry commentary on the pathetic circumstances of Akhim’s life will bring a certain class of readers to tears, and others to laughter.

What Martin Heidegger has to do with the book, I’m budgied if I know.

“A powerful new voice in Australian literature. Felicitous phrases fall from his computer keyboard like bat shit on the grass,” wrote Germaine Greer in Britain’s London Revue of Beaks.

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Are you addicted to gambling? Rotten luck, what!

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