The Dark Matter/Dark Energy – The Membranes
(Cherry Red Records CDBRED 661)
Re-formed, ready for action, and in a distinctly spiritual mood, The Membranes present their first LP since 1989. Taking on the ultimate in weighty subject material, ‘Dark Matter/Dark Energy’ conjures up avalanches of sound, strangulated voices from the pit, yet, this band being one of the class of ’77, avoids sounding like hippie indulgence.
Opening with a burst of descending horror film chords and screaming guitars, coming on like Joy Division with added Gregorian chants and explosions, the guitars rise beautifully in ‘The Universe Explodes Into A Million Photons Of Pure White Light’.
‘Do The Supernova’ evokes a desert landscape, as the compressed bass guitar kicks in, in a ‘three to get ready’ style riff. A bracing interlude of distant drums and whooping/shouting vocals lead into an ever descending aeroplane rhythm. The exclamatory ‘21st Century Man’ takes us on a well-worn path of pounding, staccato drums and anguished Frank Booth-like voice, delivering a mundane lyric that ironically fits well into this spiritual song cycle.
‘Money Is Dust’s pedestrian drum and bass beat, clattering sticks, high-picked guitar notes and a touch of Wah-Wah moodily expresses its bitter sentiment, offering one of the CD’s more disturbing 1984-like lyrics, ‘Dance to the rhythm of eternal war’. ‘The Multiverse Suite’s wash of pizzicato strings, rattling cymbal strokes, phasing and whistling are a highly atmospheric backdrop to John Robb’s awesome Dark Matter monologue.
‘Space Junk’s lumbering, compressed bass comes in like a juggernaut as the guitar chops and slices, the drawling vocal taking us into a bullying funk stomp that doesn’t let up. ‘Dark Matter’s nervous piano figure and guitar plucking make for a prog-like Eastern style atmosphere, as an astronaut’s message plays over.
‘If You Enter The Arena, You Got To Deal With The Lions’ riff with choppy, scratchy guitars and a fast, shouty rap offers no end to its relentless assault. The trippy, ‘In The Graveyard’ with its wavering bird call noises, bass and rimshot, getting ever louder, as the voice, angry and shouty as ever, builds a rather trippy atmosphere for a song so named, ending in a restrained feedback fadeout.
‘Hail To The Lovers’ is a misfit in its rock conventionality, but the rising chords please well enough. ‘Magic Eye (To See The Sky)’s hurdy-gurdy churn opening fits well with the declamatory voice, building a rich, Eastern style rhythm that gently peters out. ‘5776 (The Breathing Song)’s urgent, stabbing strings and spacey panting support an electronic voice that has more than a hint of humour about it.
‘Dark Energy’s nimble bass intro becomes more beaty and rangy to the point of emulating surf stylings, the meandering notes above it delivering a pleasing track that could fit anywhere. Our closing track, ‘The Hum Of The Universe’ has leading light John Robb expounding his personal view of the universe, leading into a stuttering guitar riff, punctuated with sudden, crashing squalls.
If you have some misgivings about the idea of a punk concept album, you’re missing out on some thunderous, invigorating music on this powerful return to the studio by The Membranes.
The Mighty Scenester a.k.a Alex Eyeplug recently caught up with John Robb to speak more about the Membranes and life…
01. Do you remember the first single and first album you bought? What were they, why did you like them, and do you still like them?
The first singles I ever had were from my next door neighbour’s daughter who was older than us – it was lots of stuff from the sixties like Beatles EPs and loads of others which was smashed to smithereens like seven years olds would – I still remember hurling them around against the wall – it was thrilling – in many ways, perhaps, the definition of all my musical career since then!
The ones we kept, like the Beatles, were because their hair looked good on the picture sleeves and then when we listened to records when we were 8 years old they sounded magical.
The other one we kept was David John And The Mood – a band from Preston – not sure why we kept that one but it sounded great – we had no idea who he was but it sounded fab and is now worth a fortune!
Bought? Cmoon by Wings and Solid Gold Easy Action by TRex – at the time buying a TRex single was scary – it was considered girls music by the playground mafia! So I had to be sneaky with that one – I still have it to this day – Buying Cmoon was me hoping that it was the Beatles who had come back to save us all and who had seemed to have split a century before and not two years before… also it’s a great bouncing pop record and with TRex because everything about it – from the riff to the vocals to the sound to Marc’s hair was magical – it still is…
02. Do you collect records CDs etc., or do you exchange/give away/sell them when you’re no longer interested in them? Why do you think you do that?
I collect music but I don’t care about the format, I just want the songs – streaming is perfect for me – I move around a lot and I love headphones – I want to get immersed in the music, lost in its world – I never go off things and love everything I have ever loved which is not very practical but that’s the way it is. I can listen to the Glitter Band with the same sort of excitement as I would listen to Swans…
03. Do you feel that the resurgence of the vinyl disc is welcome, or not? Why?
They are the ultimate pop artefact – especially the seven inch single – perfection. The ultimate collectors piece. They are like antiques now in the way that a grandfather clock looks better than a digital wrist watch but it’s maybe not as practical and they both tell the same time! I still have loads of vinyl but can’t take it away with me! I understand why people love vinyl and why some younger people are thrilled with it – it gives a sense of authenticity and arguably sounds better depending on your system and your room and your ears! But ultimately the piece of music itself is the most important thing.
04. The strands of your career are varied, taking in writing and performing music, journalism, writing and public speaking. Why do you think this is? Or do you prefer one over the others, and if so, which one?
I see them as different aspects of the same thing really – get up in the morning fuck about with my hair and then deal with all the stuff coming at me – playing/writing/talking about music are all expressing music but the best thing is creating music out of thin air – grabbing the psychic electricity out of the ether – that’s the genuine magic and then playing the stuff live with people understanding what you are trying to play and say and making that connection – the communal moment. Public speaking can be thrilling – especially speaking with no safety plan and no safety net – that’s a real buzz and you get to explore the dusty corners of your mind and see what’s in there…
05. How much does the ‘effort vs reward’ equation matter to you?
Means nothing. Of course you have to work hard to be creative and get yourself listened to in a room full of shouting people but it doesn’t mean you deserve anything either money or sympathy!
06. ‘The North Will Rise Again’; how much was this a labour of love, and how much a necessity?
It was a labour of love and it needed to be done – I was trying to capture the lost voices like I did in my oral history of Punk book – the narrative of so much pop culture is edited to fit the agendas of the people telling it but sometimes the less so called ‘cool people’ are as important and their stories make the whole story more interesting. Maybe all this writing is a mixture of love and necessity – an insane need to document the chaos – maybe music is the same – whilst celebrating and embracing the chaos.
07. Staying with Manchester, do you think that the successive waves of bands the city has produced could have happened anywhere, or not? If not, what do you think it is about the city which produced these bands?
Most cities have their own characteristic. It could even be a mythology that people in the city create for themselves and may not even be true but is celebrated any way. I often wonder if Manchester is now, like London, too big to be defined by anything but then in the past in many ways it was beyond definition. In post-punk the Fall, Smiths and New Order were hardly the same but there was a common attitude that linked them. Manchester had so many factors – early access to Punk, Tony Wilson’s So It Goes show, a local media, a sense of purpose and people driving the scene along and then some of the true great poets like Curtis/Smith and Moz and many others an also a wilful ‘fuck you’ attitude and an almost insane self belief.
08. What do you think of nostalgia, generally; good or bad? Why?
In the internet age everything is nostalgia. Instant nostalgia at the click of a finger. You play a gig, come off stage and the gig is on youtube which makes it Instant nostalgia – it’s just that nostalgia is moving faster and faster! as Buzzcocks once sung – ‘nostalgia for an age yet to come…’ all culture is now current. Elvis is as new as Fat White Family. it’s all happening at the same time. The internet created and destroyed nostalgia at the same time and I love the past, present and the future all at the same time.
09. What would you say is the enduring legacy of Punk? Why?
There are many and they are complex – all the way from mohican Punks still in love with the music to the rebuilding of the whole of Manchester’s city centre – it affected a few people in such powerful ways that they took its energy and attitude and made their own version of it. It affected me powerfully but would I call myself a Punk? Would it actually be Punk to call yourself Punk and would I want my life and my actions dictated by a scene of people in London in 1976 whose music I loved but don’t want dictating to me how to behave and create! No way! We were always far too awakward for that! We had our own agenda, even our own madness to deal with.
10. What was behind the decision to re-form The Membranes?
Simple – My Bloody Valentine – who used to support us – asked us to play All Tomorrows Parties – which sounded like a great idea. It was a chance to revisit the idea of the Membranes – the freedom and the gig went really well. We did a clutch of other gigs at the time like Istanbul but I didn’t want to be a heritage act tending our mini overgrown cultural garden so I chucked away nearly all the old songs and made this new album – it should have been commercial suicide but it seems like everybody loves it.
11. The Membranes new CD is concerned with the nature of the universe. What led you and the band to write about this subject?
There was a meeting at a TEDx talk. I was talking Punk Rock DIY and I met Joe Incandela from CERN who explained the universe to me over dinner – specifically the idea that the ‘more we find out the less we know…’ the deep mystery of the universe and the specific mysteries of dark matter and dark energy matched by mood, which was both melancholic and also full of total wonder and I thought that would make an amazing album backdrop and open up a true mind blowing vista – a space to sing about life and love and sex and death and then in the middle of the album my father died which put the whole thing into very sharp focus. The idea of birth, life and death which ends with everything returning to the universe with the last track on the album – the tracks actually roughly run in order of life – starts with birth of the universe and ends with the universe and my father and then the rest of us in a sense turning into dust… I just love that idea and that image!
12. The CD seems to hint at a spiritual side to you. Do you have one? Please describe.
In a sense yes but when I met Joe from CERN we talked about this and the idea that the universe ends by fragmenting into a endless glowing particles of white light – and I said that’s like a heaven idea and he agreed – there is something deeply spiritual about the universe and its wonders but it is beyond religion but I feel that rush of wonder looking at the Sun and nature even in the middle of a busy city – that’s my spirituality although I also love Churches, Temples and Mosques and that sense of the profound.
13. Do you listen to current chart-based pop music? If so, what do you think of it, generally? Which artists do you like, and why?
The charts don’t mean the same as they did when I grew up – the charts are now just another micro scene – huge bands don’t always chart – the ‘pop pickers’ list is not a barometer of pop culture any more. Saying that there is some wonderful pop music that is brilliantly put together – even the acts that people don’t like like Kanye West make great pop music. Also it’s all pop music – from heavy duty drone rock to a soppy ballad – we are all embraced by the generous arms of pop.
14. Are there any genres of music you dislike? Which ones and why?
I like bits of everything – it could be a bass line here or a vocal there or a rhythm – after the sad death of Chris Squire from Yes I even found 2 of their albums that I liked – Fragile especially – amazing bass sound – I hated the Punk orthodoxy – that idea that you were meant to like certain music and hate other types – trouble was I couldn’t get my head around Yes at the time but I finally found a way into a fragemnt of their catalogue… I have no fear of any music – I will find a way!
15. Do you watch television? What sort of TV shows do you watch?
It hums away in the background and very little of it goes in. I love nature programmes from spring-watch to documentaries on packs of monkeys on the Ethiopian highlands , I love space programmes and all the factual stuff. Celebrity culture is for everyone else really.
16. What aspects of modern life turn you off? Why?
I hate the insanity of religious fanatics of all different religions, I hate the corporate greed and I hate the rudeness of people and anonymous internet bickering. All the bad stuff is coming true but so is all the good stuff.
17. If you could dis-invent something, what would it be? Why?
Dis-invent what a great word! I could say guns or weapons but then my father would not have done his part in shooting down V2 rockets in the war to keep the cities safe and ultimately help defeat Adolf Hitler – I think you have to deal with what comes… right now robots and AI look useful, but in century they could be a disaster, the internet is fucking brilliant and a total disaster all at the same time. Ultimately the inventions are fine it’s what we do with them that is the problem!
18. What advice would you give your seventeen year old self?
The tragedy and the genius of rock ‘n’ roll could well be that you remain that person forever…
19. Any shows, dates or other things that you wish to plug?
Best to join our facebook page: facebook.com/themembranes. We have a London gig at the 100 Club on Sat Aug 29th 2015 which will be celebration of the brilliant reaction to the album with Evil Blizzard and Je Suis Crabbi – it’s a great bill and will be a great night…
20. Can you tell us a joke please?
Why did the Camel have two humps?
Because it had emerged from the black hole…
Thanks to JOHN ROBB
Boss of leading music website: louderthanwar.com
Lead vox/lead bass with influential Post-Punk band Membranes: facebook.com/themembranes
Lead singer of Goldblade: goldblade.com
