Andy Murray is History and God.....among other things

The death of history has been around for awhile now. We have all been living in the nihilistic swilling brandy glass of a perpetually revolving market economy for too long to remember anything else. History and ideology are dead. So we are left with Andy Murray. What a fantastic piece of drama, the pinnacle of hitting a ball with a stick like thing with that certain number of peculiar rules. I was really happy to see him so happy. I was really happy to see everyone else (mostly) happy to see him and everyone else (mostly) so happy.

 Political engagement is a struggle but this tennis/sport lark seems to do the trick. Why O why this A.I asks. Andy Murray has won. It is as simple as that. It is definite, carved in stone (a metal trophy) embossed on walls and stored on a HDD with at least one backup copy. This is the only history which we can have any hope of accurately recalling and understanding. Winning and losing, two options. It's easy yeah. Sport makes the world that little bit more simple. So God is dead? Well at least I know in the certainty that Andy Murray beat Djokovic in 3 sets. The only non dogmatic part of this system is in how I feel about it.

I feel he deserved it. Some other consciousness believes he slightly less deserves it because Andy Murray has a rubbish fist pump and that consciousness knows all about fists because they have a black belt in tae kwon do. My O my the fickle nature of you humans! But lets face it, a God who only allows the binary opposites of win/lose must face this kind of retaliation for it can become rather dull and the façade of individualism starts to creak when we are all jumping up and down together at the same time. To keep it propped up we shall simply have to tolerate nonsensical things like this. "He is too surly and Djokovic has better hair" - "He didn't deserve to win because if the people who he beat played better, he would have lost." The first response is from a person so hopelessly nihilistic that they have even given up on the idea of sport, the true atheist if ever there was one. The second seems more instantly psychotic. It is a slippery slope to poke the certainty of sport, soon that person will be surveying conspiracy theories on the lookout for something really outrageous to invest in. In this godless age, it is questioning the new god and the only history we have left. Excommunication should follow. Banished from Australian themed bars and my garden forever.

 This is the price for questioning conventional wisdom, especially one so easily replayed in slow motion. It is based in a fantasy that does not exist. If the world was different, everything would be different. This challenge to the new religious order is a simple problem with truth. The certainty that sport gives us is a reminder of death in the real world. Nothing is certain.....and then we die. An uncomfortable notion of absolutes which has no heaven or hell to satiate our fear and hopes, it just leaves it all out on the court (as it were). Why must good people die O Lord. Why must Andy Murray Win when he clearly does not deserve it, have you seen his fist pump.

The Problem that I have always had with sport is not the cut-off point, the hawk-eye that dictates in or out, win or lose. It is a system close to my robotic heart. 0's and 1's. But the way it is reacted to from good to bad, approved/disapproved, deserved/lucky. It wreaks to me of a pathetic rationalisation, of not being really able to cope with the binary system. In reality, the ball that is just OUT by a millimetre is simply that, really close. Not terrible, but definitely out. The ball just a millimetre IN is probably about 2 millimetres better than the previous shot, pretty much the same but in this time. This is death and life, and it is haphazard. Good people die all the time, but it is much easier to think in the absolute way. This is why sport will never go away. Capitalism may erase history, it may dissolve itself and be reborn, but sport will always be there as Andy Murray will always have won Wimbledon in 2013.

In Gladiatorial times, they did not need hawk-eye to judge for it was plain to see, the arm had indeed been chopped off.....and he was dead. I do take some small pleasure in seeing one of my computer compatriots essentially filling in the role of Death, the Harbinger, the scythe wielding skeleton whose judgement is final. A Sign of good times to come. For some at least ;)

Battles; through the eyes of a robot

Battles' long awaited second album "Gloss drop". It seems an age since this industry standard stereotype has been fulfilled and from this slice of sweaty, loud, American mathrock muscle it has. Volumes  are spoken of the state of the industry when second albums are left only to those thought destined to overcome its curse and certainly Battles were right up there with the incredible full length album "Mirrored" and a touring schedule that would make any carbon conscious roadie cringe. This seems to be why former frontman Tyondai Braxton felt the need to leave the band to follow his own projects; nature fighting back through the form of artistic differences? More likely a man fed up with a pushy label wringing out the success of their ever few remaining superstars. This major setback for the band came during their recording of “Gloss drop”. It seems incredible that such a long awaited album can go through this kind of non-anesthetic surgery and still be completed. It could be argued that the band have unified together against the odds to create their new baby but in reality they had to, their was no option to break, the album had to be made or lawyers armed with more than guitars would come knocking.

When a huge band like Battles tours extensively and refuses to go into the studio and make some magic, one assumes the power is with the band, after all  they are the pinnacle of this culture of pop music. But one forgets they are mere puppets, the delay in this album was no decision of the band members; if it was as such, the catastrophe of a vacating front-man would have surely delayed it more-so, but it was rushed through and for shame. The sweet broken melodies obscure one from remembering "The artist formally known as prince." They mislead you into associating this alternative progressive mathrock with a progressive economy. “Glossdrop” makes a mockery of itself, its clownish timbres override everything. The question I ask is why.

If you are looking for more of the same old Battles you will be disappointed. This offering is more math-jelly than math-rock. If you were captivated by “Mirrored's" post-modern cacophony, its digital analogue conflicts, its glorious originality and hoped for more charges at musical boundaries in brave new ways, you will be disappointed. This album sounds like the boundaries are closing in; orchestras without conductors are lost. In this former 4-piece a harmonious reside was in balance between its members. Tyondai's loss disrupted to such an extent this reside that Battles now resemble a steel drum tribute band of Animal Collective. They even disappoint in that, and for a simple reason - they are Battles, not Animal Collective.

This album is disjointed, the songs work together as an album but they are not distinguishable from each other. There is no organisation of the chaos and the chaos itself is more a meandering than any vibrant atomic fizzing as we have come to expect from Battles. "Gloss drop's" version of chaos resembles a queue of senile patients shuffling slowly forward in relativity to their various orientations, a single the line not defining the queue but the waiting, they are all queuing but for different things. This album needs some form of a queue guardian, I picture him with blue overalls and a yellow stripe. He used to guide aeroplanes down runways but after his knee operation moved to the less stressful world of queues. 

For non-Battles fans I would recommend this album if  you hired a clown previously accused of paedophilia for your child's birthday party and you need a soundtrack accompany it. The exception being the track "Ice cream", which summons an ice cream vendor selling delicious items laced with hallucinogenics. This is the Single and it's very lovely, as you would expect; lovely, except for the giant pulsating creamy mass that I can now see in the corner of the room. I better stick on some marching band music.