i had been thinking recently about the breakdown of the generation gap, of the patricidal impulse as a generator of the new within music / culture....

what to you do, if you're a young person growing into music and thinking about making it, if your parents are cool? if they have really good, hip, broadminded and edgy taste in music? it would be stupid to reject all that great old music, and hard not to be influenced by being exposed to it from an early age (example: Maria Minerva's dad, who is a very well-known Estonian music critic and also TV personality, played her things like Nico's The Marble Index at a tender age... and many of my younger blogworld friends, i find out their parents would play stuff like the Cure or Japan)

the only actual generational rebellion in that circumstance is to have no interest in music, or only minimal investment in it (something to listen to in the background, decor for life, not a grand project or zone for identity formation),,, to use something other activity or culture-zone as the place in which identity formation goes on

but talking of this problem of having cool parents who turn you onto great music... a dad or mum that still takes an interest in current music, who might want to go to gigs with you or take you to a festival in the summer, the family sharing a tent...

reading a Quietus piece about hot new band S.C.U.M. this line leaped out at me

"Between shows, the Quietus managed to net keyboard player and sound specialist Sam Kilcoyne, son of Add N to X's Barry 7"

Add N To X was long ago enough so that the children are now old enough to form bands?!?!?

(Or was Barry a late-bandstarter, early breeder?)

at any rate, wow

weirdly S.C.U.M. are signed to Add N To X's label Mute

young Kilcoyne says "When we were making Again Into Eyes I asked dad if he wanted to produce it, but he wanted me to do it by myself. He was there for a lot of it, and gave his advice when he thought something wasn't working, but essentially he wanted me to do this on my own. I think if you take away Tom's vocals and listen to the synths, we really do sound similar to my dad."

unfortunately it appears they also sound quite a bit like My Bloody Valentine and Suede and Echo & the Bunnymen... seemingly mediated by (and this horrified me a little) by The Horrors

just the thought that bands are coming through influenced by the Horrors (Kilcoyne: "I'd never listened to My Bloody Valentine until after the Horrors' second record Primary Colours came out")

dearie me

here's a song by them



here's another one



and another



that one's a bit better, dank and thuggish, bit like Bunnymen circa Porcupine meets Love and Rockets meets Dr & the Mix (Jesus & Mary Chain's heroes/models) with a bit of early Sisters of Mercy thrown in

the more buried the vocals, the better