A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion.
Last week's Oblique Strategy card said this- Use 'unqualified' people.
I came up with Mancunian punk group The Nosebleeds and their calling card Ain't Been To No Music School. The Smiths, Gang Of Four and Shane MacGowan and The Popes with Johnny Depp guesting on guitar all followed. The Bagging Area community was inspired to suggest Ed Harcourt's Kakistocarcy, Bob Dylan getting the pros in to nail Visions Of Johanna, Billy Bragg, Paul Bowles, Sparks, The Shaggs and Fire Engines- thank you to Brainlizard, Darren, Rol, Ernie, Walter and Chris and to JC from The Vinyl Villain who nominated himself for a pair of musical contributions he's made this year, once in live in LA and again on the forthcoming Broken Chanter album.
This weeks Oblique Strategy is this- Tape your mouth.
I turned the card over on Wednesday evening. I ruminated a bit on the double meaning of tape- one could be to cover one's mouth with tape, to be censored or to self- censor, to keep the vocals out and focus on the instruments and the other could be the instruction to record one's mouth. These things percolated for a while and a few ideas floated towards the front of my mind and then on Thursday morning this miraculously appeared on the internet and it replaced all the other ideas that were simmering gently...
Boots On The Ground is a collaboration between Massive Attack and Tom Waits, the first new music from either artist for a long time. If you're going to tape a mouth for a new song, a powerfully 2026 anti- war, anti- authoritarian song, then that mouth may as well be the that belongs to Tom Waits- his mouth sounds like no other.
The music- clacking rhythms, some very late period Massive Attack piano chords- is claustrophobic and tense. Then Tom Waits starts up, a voice as old as time, commenting on the growing militarisation of the police in the USA, the BLM protests of 2020 and the anti- ICE protests of this year, the murder of US citizens by ICE and by chance of timing, the repeated title phrase coinciding with Trump's illegal war on Iran, one in which he is so far out of his depth he cannot even see the shore any more. Waits recorded the vocal some time ago and Massive Attack, never a group to rush things, haven't got the track completed until now- when it transpires the moment is exactly right.
Waits takes no prisoners. 'Fucking ass machine gun war... holler and burn down cities... federal pricks... air conditioned fuckstick loafers... killed a brown man... he rotted in the sand and all they found was his boots on the ground'
There's an unsettling pause partway through, Wait's breathing and a choral swell rising and the music twists and turns inside itself. Then Waits recovers his flow and the piano comes back in. In the seven minute version/ film of Boots On The Ground, there's an entire section after five minutes which is more or less just the sound of Tom Waits breathing at the microphone. Tape your mouth.
Last weekend Massive Attack's 3D (Robert del Naja) was arrested while protesting in London against the ban on Palestine Action. 'A few hours in a police cell... is a small price to pay', he said later.
Tape your mouth, say your piece.
Feel free to drop your own suggestions into the comment box.
1 comment:
Idioglossia is a private language, or a unique and often unintelligible language system that develops among a small group of individuals, typically within a family or close-knit community.
Tracking back to the mid eighties, 4ad boss, Ivo Watts-Russell, in a radically impure act of cultural appropriation, wasn’t much concerned with who was behind the extraordinary recordings of the Bulgarian state TV choir he'd just heard, he merely loved how alien they sounded.
He certainly didn't care who the women singing were, what they were singing about, or where they are now. He wanted them to remain originless. “Frankly, the repeated listening didn’t pique my curiosity any more,” he told The Quietus in 2011.
“I loved the anonymity of it. I loved not really knowing. I’m sure Marcel Cellier (the choir's producer) might have told me, or I might have asked him, but I have forgotten the details, because as I said, I didn’t care.”
Personally speaking, I was equal parts confused and intrigued by the album, which deliberately came with no explanation as to its creation or creators when it hit the shelves in 1986, leaving me to wonder how and why the label was releasing something quite so raw in contrast to much of the rest of its otherwise dreamy, ethereal output.
This track - https://youtu.be/hQ2edpENPes?si=gzbdeyZqablSLkgO - perhaps best captures the uniquely surging, ecstatic physicality of the choir's sound, which went on to have a profound impact on the careers of Lisa Gerard of Dead Can Dance and Kate Bush, among many others.
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