Niereich "Democratic System Fail" (Moreforecs): Cindy "Cindy Is Joining The Liberal Democrats" (Vent Germany): The Charlie Tipper Experiment “You Made Me Homeless” (Breaking Down Recordings)
If you were feeling bloody-minded enough, dear reader, you could argue that "Democratic System Fail" isn't technically a single, but we've got it on vinyl (albeit a sampler 12”, on which it sits, coquettishly preening itself, alongside three other tracks from Moreforecs' "Especial Aniversario" comp), and that makes it single enough in our book.
After overrunning our best of 2014 list, and fresh from his confident and trance-ish "7 Skies" crossover collab with Krischmann & Klingenberg earlier this year, Graz's Niereich unfurls an assured, minimalist combination of locomotive percussion and glacial synth which sounds not unlike Moevalith covering “Everything’s Gone Green” in a blizzard. And, after all, general elections are like blizzards. Blizzards of shit. Although I’m not convinced that the democratic system has really failed us: it’s just as arguable that we have failed it, what with voting a mendacious cabal of callous sociopaths back into office.
Next on the turntable is the ever-mysterious Cindy. She (he, it, they?) follows up last year’s frantic fantasy "In A Perfect World She Kills Marine Le Pen And Nigel Farage" with a new four-track 12" on Vent, “Cindy & Her Fuckin' Liberal Ideas For Track Names”, on which she cooks up a full-on sprinkling of the freshest European techno, liberally dosed with hints of acid (opener "Cindy + MSLWTE = Pure Love", which boasts a positively chastening acid line, is surely her finest moment yet). “Joining The Liberal Democrats”, the last song on the EP, is combative, muscular and frankly a bit repetitive, but derives added spice from the slivers of extra percussion which zig-zag frenziedly around the mix, like Chris Huhne trying to avoid a speed camera.
And we know that Cindy’s song titles are tongue-in-cheek (though the humour at play provides some cheer after a night of vintage, 1992-style election depression), but if she actually did join the LDs they might have a chance of winning some votes again one day, not least because she would surely kick out any remaining Orange Bookers before suppertime.
Best of these three, though, is the Charlie Tipper Experiment’s bespoke election single, “You Made Me Homeless”, clad in modest CD-r sleeve. There’s something a touch early McCarthy-ish about its brittle swirl of guitars, but whereas McCarthy would have written words of withering sarcasm, probably in the guise of a first-person narrative from an presumably unrepentant Iain Duncan Smith, “You Made Me Homeless” takes a different lyrical route, being a j’accuse from someone at the sharp end of Coalition policy, who contrasts his own travails with the warm parlours and living rooms of those who instigated them. Fittingly, any profits from the single go to Shelter.
The lyrical message may not be particularly original, but it does need saying (seemingly again and again). How many decades – actually, as evidenced by the William Morris tracts that Darren Hayman sets to music so movingly on his “Chants For Socialists” album, how many centuries - of the much-vaunted “trickle-down effect” *plainly* not working do we need to endure before those in power might admit it exacerbates inequality, and solves nothing?
The song builds to a plateau in which the protagonist’s plea – that the deeds of those who rule will come back to haunt them – echoes around the mix, accompanied by suitably haunting cornet trills. The fact that is all a victim of the relentless "austerity drive" can seemingly do – wish some kind of karmic comeback on an otherwise untouchable Establishment – only adds to the pathos of it all. That, and the deadening realisation that we now have at least five more years of this in store.
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