ManBREAK Pixelvision: Do Not Adjust Your Set, Squint For A Clearer Picture
At Liverpool Live TV, watched by 20 sad bastards who like to watch their news presented with a big bunny and busty broads, frenetic vocalist Swindelli takes his host to his gym. "What do you think of Oasis's new album?" the North-West orange tanned, media personality asks. Swindelli, hits a punch bag, before introducing himself and the band in Russian and decrying the double standards of Robin Cook's Foreign Policy towards Indonesia and their brutal violation of human rights in East Timor.
Swindelli is a missionary man, even though he is loath to admit it and ManBREAK's serrated, agitpop rock is a heady antidote for apolitical nihilism. ManBREAK see themselves as the contradictory emotion that lies between destruction and creation. They want you to change your desires, pull you out of the spectacle of modern life that transfixes and leaves sections of people like hypnotised lemons, staring into multi-channel oblivion.
In their home-town of Liverpool the degracer oralist Swindelli, chews away at the shaking microphone perched on a dinner table delivering his Marxist ideology with aplomb. Swindelli's no fool and even though his name is a bastard mix between swindle and Svengali, over the course of the day, he transforms himself into an entertainer, polemicist or dynamic rock'n'roller, according to the situation. His hair spools over his long angular face like magnetic tape, he knows that rock'n'roll is the first language of subversion but does not consider himself as a man with a mission.
"I don't think that it is my position to stir up minds. All I'm trying to do is reflect how I see the world. It would be a bit presumptious of me to believe that I could actually change minds, particularly from a Marxist point of view. The emancipation of the working class is the act in itself. It has to be done by them. All we're trying to do is create a debate about disenchantment in society, a society that subordinates everything to the need of profit no matter what their political persuasions in power."
ManBREAK know they are out on a limb within the British music scene who, after the demise of Senser and the agitpop provocateurs of '93, including polemic Marxist rock hop power units, Consolidated, Disposable Heroes of Hiphopcrisy and Rage Against The Machine, have viewed dowdy class politics with scorn. In New Britain where the establishment from politicians to the Royal Academy, see associations with rock and artists as a way of modernising Britain, cynical observations are wiped away for lazy metaphors and an "It's Getting Better Man" optimism. Dissent in the ranks, from rock'n'roll to party activists, is seen as a barbarous act of disloyalty against the new spirit that sits over "cool Britannia'.
ManBREAK have also jeopardised their credibility in Britain by courting America, supporting Live in 25,000 capacity stadiums and winning heavy MTV rotation for their marauding single "Ready Or Not", celebrating the carnivalesqe spirit of teenage rampage. America's popularist taste-buds have not really been a reliable indicator of greatness. Remember Flock Of Seagulls and, more recently, Bush? Well, who could forget. But when I ask Swindelli why ManBREAK are out on a limb with British taste, he rplies, forthrightly, "It's a direct correlation with the apoliticisation that has gone on throughout society, especially the Thatcher years, but it goes right back to the '50s. The anti-nuclear movement, the CND, were ridiculed by the establishment and that was the high point of political activism. The '60s were the epoch on which it could have swung either way and perhaps revolutionary classes were slightly ahead of the working classes. As a consequence of that, as viewed at Tianemmen Square, if you are ahead of your class roots or general consciousness, it's elitist. So the ruling class take the offensive and de-politicise society. Today, bands and artists are representing that depoliticisation. A lot of artists must be aware of what's going on in the world, but they don't use music as a conduit for their observations."
Right got that, then? Radio One are unsure about play-listing their records, the music press see a rock traditionalism and a political rhetoric at work adn indie kids are skeptical. Swindelli, however, delivers his articulate creed with out the need for oxygen, volleying out words like a '90's version of Derrick Hatton. But Swindelli knows he's an entertainer, he has studied The Beatles alongside Althusser with equal relish. An archetypal subversive rock'n'roller, a latter day Jerry Lee Lewis, shake, rattling and rolling over the debris of late capitalism understanding the power of the persona to influence and inspire people. Fiercly self-educated, Swindelli wants to be an inflammatory rebel rouser who delivers a good time in 200 pound bomb blasts.
Hours before the event, Swindelli was meticulously constructing ManBREAK's spacious noise to suit the claustrophobic Lomax centre, alongside Snaykee, the gorgeous boy guitar hero, Mr Blonde on rhythm guitar, drummer Stu Boy Stu and bassist Roy Van Der Kerkoff. He is fiddling with sequencers, deliberating over the dynamics and cajoling sound engineers through his own undiluted willpower. Everyone around or connected to ManBREAK responded accordingly, his rigorous presence demanding and encouraging the best. On stage he is one part Beastie Boy, one part connvining rock soothsayer. Backstage he yells at one slightly over-awed, regional hack, half jokingly, "It's SHOW BUSINESS SISTER and I've got to SHOW because I'm living in SHOW BUSINESS, 'know what I'm saying SISTER?" The hack blinks nervously, stuck for a response. "More questions," Swindelli fires. "More questions. Test me out, I need to be stretched." She smiles, looking for someone to rescue her. "Give me a female perspective on pornography?" he encourages. His playing up, like all great role players, seizing the moment, informing and transforming, contesting, searching for a truth in his work. Swindelli takes his job seriously, balancing erudite provocation with devilish mayhem, destablishing media people, using their air-space as an opportunity to prick passive viewers. At the same time, there's an element of defensiveness that stems from insecurity. He knows that ManBREAK have not recieved the respect or credit that he feels they deserve. When he questioned his ability to reach and lift imaginations when his first band, 25th of May, failed, he responded typically by starting work on ManBREAK. "You can't give it up, I will not be beaten basically. I don't want to sound messianic. I know that there's a lot of music that inspires me. It's just important not to give up because you spend the rest of your life thinking about what could have been. I think on this occasion, if we get the next album done, I would be quite happy to walk away from it, knowing that my musical tastes are out of tune with the rest of people in the world and as a consequence, no-one else wants to buy it. That's fair enough."
ManBREAK's debut album, on One Little Indian, Come and See takes a didactic approach, screaming at you. It pierces your intellect with a sharp compass bathed in earth-moving activism and ballistic, in your face rock with punk serum sucked from the corpse of "Combat Rock" era Clash. Frenzied tunes with scabious riffs, harmonic vocals and pummelling hip hop beats. Rallying calls for stifled , adolescent troops patrolling the borders of suburbia. ManBREAK want to be understood, no metaphors or symbolism. So much so that they issue press releases that make sure us dumb music critics don't miss the point. "News Of the World" is "about people who masturbate while sitting in front of the TV while flipping channels". "It's On, the fuckin' stupefying boredom of suburbia". Come and See is a reaction against materialist, consumerist culture, it blasts with a prostylising mania akin to Peter Finch in "Network" when, in the middle of a nervous break-down, his hysterical tirade "I'm as mad as hell and I just can't take it no-more" becomes a cathartic anthem against monotony and the alienation of routine work. ManBREAK are determined that you get the message. Swindelli says "I can say more in an interview than I can say in a song. You're confined by the meter and without being too bombastic, to some degree, to tone it down or shape it to suit all the other factors that impose on the actual vocals."
If audiences are passive and apolitical, isn't it the fear of poverty that prevents them fulfilling or looking for alternatives? People move in forms of self-slavery because of their inability to deal with change and flux "I think that is a totally valid point but I feel as if I'm in the same position because my family background is not rich. I will not inherit anything when my family die. Although I'm in a quite priviledged position now, unless I'm successful in music or something the outlook is pretty bleak. One has to look at the future. It is affecting me and I have an analysis, but what about people who don't? They must be really worried. All we are taking about in a nutshell is democratic control over the world's natural resources. Why should that be in the hands of a few elite individuals? Once you attempt to answer the question and wrestle control from them, a general democracy will probably follow through with empowerment. Not necessarily immediately, but if you challenge the system and challenge those notions, that in itself enables you to challenge all the other notions that exist".
Your songs are a reaction against suburban reality. It's quite different to come out and oppose the defining logic of the times. Some critics believe that pop music is just a way of teaching adolescents consumerism because their first choices that they make with their disposable incomes are which records to buy, clothes to wear and clubs to go to.
"This is the only life we get, as far as we know. You have to try and extract as much employment out of this life as possible and some products of consumerism do give people a lot of pleasure. That's a problem with the Left's analysis, it can be a bit prosaic at times. Rock'n'roll does teach you to have a healthy irreverence in things and enjoy the good life. And this it the good life - playing music to people, travelling all around the world, not having any sense of immediate financial worries. I take your point, but I like to buy decent trainers and records as well."
Do you believe that culture should have an emancipatory, educational, subversive outlook? "If you don't have decent exposure to material, you're fucked aren't you? You may find things by chance but more often than not you won't. We live in a society of nonparticipating observers, whether it be in sport or in any of the arts. We what automatons." Is it a quest for knowledge? "Yeah. Undoubtedly. If I wasn't doing this I would dedicate myself to being an intellectual, learning and being a smart arse. I believe that people can do anything as long as there are no physical limitations. I know that no-one in this room could be an Olympic gymnast because they are too fucking old. Most people could learn to play guitars, learn another language if they were committed over a period of time. As long as you want to learn. It's an affront to mediocracy. A lot of good people do not get the opportunities to fully develop themselves so they drift."
Later on in the day we're in the relative quiet of a French restaurant.
As Greil Marcus said in "Lipstick Traces", even Marx liked his cigars. I wonder if the invincible Swindelli self-believer ever falters, and if his drive fails him?
"No. I get bored with hearing my own voice at times. I don't get self doubt about my observations of society and the apparent injustices and contradictions. I get self-doubt about whether of not I can pull off this musical career. I get that all the time. Up until last night I had self doubt about finishing this next LP but I said, 'If you get past the half-way stage, it's just run in then.' I've got a theme for the next album and that helps. A problem for me is - regardless of doing someting good, and although it works out in the end - during the interim period, I'm like, 'stop working now, do something else, watch television or something' and I get a little bit scared. It's like you are creating something that's a little bit too difficult to get your head around, and you might only grasp a particle of it. Maybe it's just being a lazy bastard."
-Written by Ron Rom; from Dazed and Confused
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