Graham Duff by Xavier Itter

We’re thrilled to present this ‘year end’ guest post from Graham Duff. Graham is the creator of Ideal, the cult hit dark comedy that ran for seven series on BBC Three. He is a well-known music fanatic and personally selected Ideal‘s eclectic soundtrack. Seen in a small role in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films as a “Death Eater,” he recently co-wrote the BBC sitcom Hebburn with comedian Jason Cook. In 1992, Duff’s one-man stage show “Burroughs,” based on the life of William S. Burroughs won him a Brighton Festival award.
 

 
When industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle reformed in 2004, it was never going to be just a case of regurgitating their back catalogue. Their ‘comeback’ albums Part Two: The Endless Not and the largely instrumental Third Mind Movements proved that TG were still ahead of the pack.  But perhaps one of their most intriguing and unprecedented ideas was to rework Nico’s highly regarded 1970 album Desertshore in their own image.

However, in October 2010, bassist, violinist and vocalist Genesis P. Orridge quit the group at the start of series of European dates, leaving Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti – now operating as a reinvigorated trio under the name X-TG – to complete both the tour and the Desertshore project. Then, only a month later, Christopherson suddenly passed away. Tutti and Carter elected to continue with the album, incorporating both Sleazy’s initial recordings and an impressive array of guest vocalists.

Antony Hegerty, Marc Almond, Blixa Bargeld, visionary film director Gasper Noé and porn star turned actress and singer Sasha Grey all lend their vocal talents to this stunning collection. Hegerty’s unique voice is supremely suited to X-TG’s grand and spectral reimagining of “Janitor of Lunacy,” Marc Almond delivers a perfectly judged performance of “The Falconer,” one of Nico’s most beautiful songs. But it is Tutti herself, whose vocals - neutral yet achingly human - best capture Nico’s spirit. If her performance on “All That Is My Own,” with its opening squalls of guitar noise and pulsating electronic rhythm, is restrained and plaintive, then her interpretation of “My Only Child” is frankly heartbreaking.

With its stately packaging, sleeve notes and funereal aesthetic, this is clearly a commemoration of Christopherson’s life and work, as much as it’s a celebration of Nico’s legacy. Meanwhile, on The Final Report, what should have been a new beginning turns into a full stop. This is the music Christopherson was working on with Tutti and Carter after P.Orridge had fled. Highlights include the insistent brutalist throb of “In Accord” and the brief but detailed “Um Dum Dom” which pitches a heavily treated Christopherson spoken vocal into a chiming tick tock rhythm.

Either one of these releases could easily lay claim to being album of the year. But as a double album they are frankly unbeatable. No one could have predicted the story of one of modern music’s most innovative and influential groups would end like this. But then of course very little about TG was ever predictable.
 

 
Italian born, London based Mauro Remiddi delivers a flawless album of dreamy hauntological bedroom pop. Porcelain Raft’s debut is alive with subtle but insistent earworms. Remiddi’s vocals frequently sound genderless and on the fuzzy glide of “Unless You Speak From your Heart” or the gentle buzzing synth bubblebath of “Drifting In And Out,” Porcelain Raft come across like a more bleary and ragged Saint Etienne. There are some beautiful and subtle arrangements and the mood is often blissful. But there are moments of woozy self doubt and unease, which prevent this from descending into being just another postcoital soundtrack. In fact, there’s a real artfulness in the way Remiddi mixes gorgeous lulling melodies, with minute glitches and submerged dissonance.
 

 
Whilst recent releases have seen Hoop focussing on a more stripped back acoustic feel, The House That Jack Built sees an artist embracing the sonic possibilities of the studio. And it’s probably her most satisfying album thus far. Her ability to craft singular and unpredictable melodies remains undiminished and her world view is still pleasingly off kilter, yet the mood is often effortlessly uplifting. Neither overly polished nor overtly lo-fi, the album boasts some intricately structured arrangements which still retain some rough edges. Lyrically Hoop has always been keen to mix self examination with a wider range of topics than most, and the self-explanatory “Ode To Banksy” aside, these songs see her at her most enigmatic.
 

 
As if completing and delivering the X-TG double header wasn’t enough, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti also released this understated masterpiece earlier in the year. A collaboration with kindred spirit Nik Colk Void - guitarist and vocalist with the exceptionally fine post-industrial outfit Factory Floor – this set was recorded at the London’s Roundhouse for the 2011 Mute Records festival. Carter’s unmistakable churning rhythms provide the pulsing bedrock for Tutti and Void to explore the textural and percussive possibilities of their electric guitars. A largely instrumental excursion, this is a deeply entrancing album which not only easily sits amongst Carter Tutti’s strongest work, but also harks back to the majesty of Heathen Earth era Throbbing Gristle.
 

 
Bass man Wobble is a genuine maverick spirit. Sadly, much of his output over the last decade has tended towards a thoughtfully produced but strangely anonymous world music lite. Even the much longed for reunion with early Clash guitarist and former PIL sidekick Keith Levene only produced a patchy and frequently uninspired album and EP. It would seem that Wobble was saving up his best tunes and ideas for this far superior collaboration. Manchester’s Julie Campbell (aka Lone Lady) also seems to have been inspired by the project, as all her vocal lines here show a strength and grace which is sometimes lacking in her solo work. Levene makes a couple of guest appearances, most noticeably on “Phantasms Rise…” With its perfect balance of groove and dissonance, it’s a song which could have sat very easily on PIL’s Metal Box. But this is an album of light and shade and there’s even a hint of Supernature era Goldfrapp about the disco throb and sensual moan of album stand-out “Feel.”
 

 
This quiet, foggy, unassuming debut from a duo comprising Liz Harris of Grouper and Jesy Forentino of Tiny Vipers is way more than the sum of its parts. An expansive album (6 songs in 40 minutes), Foreign Body occasionally brings to mind Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s early minimalist experiments on No Pussyfooting and Evening Star. Whilst its shimmering elegaic vocal lines suggest a female fronted Sigor Ros. This is definitely an album of one mood, and, with its gentle, contemplative drones, delicate ethereal guitar washes and half buried melodies this feels like modern devotional music. “Silent From Above” is as close as Mirroring get to a conventional song structure, but even here, a simple vocal and folk guitar figure is eventually submerged in spectral echoes and blissed out atmospherics.  The perfect early morning record.
 

 
One of the exciting things about Brooklyn based Laurel Halo is the way her music engages with the emotional, the physical and the intellectual aspects of sound. Previous releases under her King Felix alias have buried her vocals in the depths of the mix, but here they burst into the foreground. And it was clearly the right move. Her vocal lines are anything but route one and several melodies have a nicely warped feel. The range of structural approaches is deeply impressive too.  “Carcass” has a minimal euro-techno pulse, where “Years” would not sound out of place on the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach. Halo also understands the power of brevity. Where many electronic artists like to stretch out, she keeps things lean and concise. The music frequently floats free into beatless space where synths create great melodic clouds of sound, but it’s her dextrously programmed rhythmic flourishes which underpin the album.
 

 
Dissonant, histrionic, morbid and claustrophobic are all words you will hear applied to this collection. Admittedly, these are all apposite descriptions of the most difficult album on this list, however, it’s also one of the year’s most rewarding listens. Scott’s increasingly oblique but vivid lyrics would appear to focus on geopolitical struggles and abuse of human rights. Meanwhile, his dynamic and genuinely experimental musical compositions are, at times, truly frightening. The most easily digested track is “Epizootics!” which manages to blend beat poetics, a lopsided percussive shuffle and loud, near celebratory horn fanfares. This is undeniably a very dark album, but there’s also humour and wit here. Witness lines such as “Nothing clears a room like removing a brain” or “I’d like to forget you just the way you are.” Scott’s journey from 60’s hit parade heart throb to modern day avant garde soundsmith is a fascinating tale which has been told many times. But the story shouldn’t overshadow the man’s actual artistic achievements.  After all, how many artists could be said to be producing music which genuinely sounds completely unlike anything else?
 
Read the rest of the list after the jump…
 

 
Ideal creator Graham Duff DJ’ing on WFMU:

I’ve put together an exclusive hour long music mix for New Jersey’s WFMU radio station, for the show ‘Do or DIY’ hosted by People Like Us. It’s available on line from 8pm to 9pm tonight, then it will be archived. The mix encompasses off kilter electronica, opiated indie and blissful horror film scores, including pieces by The Anti Group, Ennio Morricone, Wire and Bachelorette.

Playlists and archives for Graham Duff on DO or DIY here.

Below, Graham Duff as “Brian,” tripping, in Ideal:
 

 
This is annoying: The BBC have decided to cancel one of its very best comedy series, Graham Duff’s brilliant Ideal starring the great Johnny Vegas as Mancunian pot dealer “Moz.” I’m a huge, huge fan of Vegas and Ideal, it’s one of the most-sharply written and acted comedies of the past decade. It’s got everything: Dope. Sex. Severed limbs… It’s also a rock snob’s delight with a terrifically curated soundtrack. Duff has actually used Throbbing Gristle’s music in the show and has even name-checked Carter-Tutti (aka Chris & Cosey) in a dog whistle meant for only a certain percentage of the viewing audience (I love stuff like that).

Here’s what I wrote about Ideal when I was guest-blogging at Boing Boing a few years ago:

One of my favorite British TV comedy series — and I’ll be blogging about several during my tenure here at Boing Boing — is a show about a Mancunian pot dealer called Ideal (geddit?). It’s consistently well-written, extremely well-acted and provides comic genius Johnny Vegas with a role worthy of his almost Shakespearean-level verbal talents.

Vegas, the funniest fat man since John Candy, is “Moz” a small-time weed merchant who may or may not be agoraphobic. But Ideal, which has so far aired for four seasons on BBC3 and is scheduled for a fifth beginning in early 2009, isn’t a comedy about drugs per se, it’s more about the dramatic device of Moz’s bohemian line of work bringing whimsical (and psychotic) characters in and out of his flat all day long. “Ideal” is truly one of the best things on television anywhere in the world right now and thanks to the wonders of technology, should you decide it’s something you would want to watch, there is surely a way for you to see it, too. Just get your hands on it, trust me, you’ll love it!

I have seen every episode and own the DVDs. My lovely wife Tara, who also has great taste in TV, forwarded this most depwessing and distwessing news from Graham Duff’s Facebook page. I’ve counted her saying “It really sucks that they cancelled Ideal!” about eight times in the past hour:

As some of you may have heard, the BBC have decided against commissioning an 8th series of Ideal. The reason given was that the new channel controller wanted to make a clean sweep.

It is a source of both pride and frustration that, at the point of cancellation, Ideal was attracting its biggest ever audiences, its highest profile guest stars and its best ever reviews. And the show is now being screened in more countries than ever before - from America to Finland and beyond.

I just want to say a huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who has appeared in the show and worked behind the scenes over the last 7 years and 53 episodes. And a very special thanks to everyone who has supported the show and spread the word. We really wouldn’t have got this far without you.

It’s been a truly wonderful journey and to work with such a genuinely amazing team has been both an honour and a solid hoot.

Best wishes
Graham xxx

Not only is this sad, it’s stupid! What TV channel controller worth their salary makes the decision to yank a show that’s been on for seven years and has a growing international audience??? (Not a declining audience, an audience that is getting bigger worldwide every year—what gives?). How do you justify wanting a “clean sweep” over creating profits from a proven hit in a corporate environment, anyways?

WHO IS THIS PERSON WHO CANCELLED IDEAL?

And why do they still have a job?

Someone needs to organize a protest! Maybe mail this moron rolling papers care of the Beeb?

This sucks! It’s a travesty, I tell you! Let Graham Duff know how much you love Ideal at his Facebook page.