This week, instead of telling you about some dusty ridden gem (or turd) I have found and bought, I’d like to discuss some of the CDs I’ve given away. Why? A little part of me dies every time I see the Britney Spears: Greatest Hits album lurking there on the shelf of Oxfam. That is, every time I enter the establishment.

Oh, how I regret the foolish decision my fourteen year old self made when culling her records, subjecting the orange, shiny, black hot pants-clad Miss Spears to the ‘out’ pile. She, along with Chris Brown’s Exclusive, were embarrassing. A few years later, my ears begged to hear ‘Toxic’ and I kicked myself. YouTube is so not the same.

But clearly, I was not the only teen to remove her puke-pop from public view. The Sugababes, Ne-Yo and N-Sync always seem to crop up on those dusty bookshelves in the back. They’re emblems of greasy forgotten youths that many of us are keen to forget. But these artists, these pseudo-pop icons, were there for us during that awkward stage, stood by us as our skin turned blotchy, and played in the background as we put our hands on the shoulders of our date at the school disco. So don’t just turn away when Britney pouts at you from the CD rack. Pout back, remember and regret.

Most genres with a description including the word ‘experimental’ can suggest one of two things: impressive innovation or incompatibility. Experimental metal band Sunn O))) (pronounced just as Sun) thankfully belong to the former category. Hailed as rock’s most progressive band, Sunn O))) have been wowing and weirding out audiences with their eclectic combination of sounds since 1998. Their latest album is the product of the band’s 200th concert celebrations in Norway, and collaboration with Norwegian band Ulver (Norwegian for wolves), who are similarly known for progressing from their black metal background with self-styled avant-garde ways.

And so Terrestrials is born, opening in a biblical manner with the track ‘Let there be Light’. The band’s characteristic guitar reverberations and distortion give way to a backing trumpet melody, not out of place in a spaghetti western, and a violin riff appropriate for a Hitchcock film. The careful layering of riffs and harmonies eventually gives way to a symphonic explosion, with a broadly minimalist touch. One would be forgiven for mistaking the distinctive guitar drones of ‘Western Horn’ for those of a tambura and the faint voices actual ghostly screams, resulting in something both hypnotic and eerie. And bringing the album to a close is the most melodic track of them all, ‘Eternal Return’, characterised by its slow progression of piano chords, dramatic synthesiser, and the vocals of Ulver’s Kristoffer Rygg – the tone of which would be envied by Mongolian throat singers. The collaboration between the two groups is at its most fruitful here, where the metal past and the experimental future reach their climax.

The name Terrestrials is perhaps ironic for an album which can sound so other-worldly. Together, the three extended tracks form a magnum opus for the bands, paying homage to both each other and a wide range of genres. The experience of these songs live would bring visuals that introduce a new dimension to this esoteric genre. But the audio alone might bring you closer to that musical Nirvana achieved only after cycles of reinvention.

The first time I listened to Burn Your Fire…, I wasn’t sold. I was rushing about on one of those afternoons where all your deadlines seem to come at once. I thought having something described by NPR as “the musical equivalent of a deep, questioning stare from a lover” would be a calming influence. Instead I quickly became frustrated by how derivative it sounded; a less fiery Liz Phair, a more boring Feist, even a Leonard Cohen rip off.

Despite all this I’d heard good things, so I thought I’d give it a second chance. This time it was an unhurried afternoon, the sun was bright and warm, and the change in the music was stunning.

Sitting back and letting the music wash over me, I kind of understood what Olsen was trying to do. The music is wonderfully languid and content, whilst the words paint a picture of unhappiness that gives an intriguing contrast.

Her voice is a little flat at times, but her writing style is engaging and personal, and she’s got some great lines on here, like ‘High & Wild’s’ “I’m neither innocent or wise when you look me in the eyes/You might as well be blind”.

I still think the album is a little boring though, and as I’ve mentioned you have to be in the right mood to listen to it. But when you are, it really hits the spot.

Paris DJs Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho have collected sounds from the Middle East and North Africa and, together with a host of producers, exposed it to the beats of early acid house to create the quintessential Saharan sandstorm with Collections, their debut compilation LP.

After opening in symphonic style, the trademark Berber-esque beats become apparent in danceable drum riffs. In many, the vocals of popular singers, such as Hanaa Ouassim and Omar Souleyman are combined with manipulated melodies originally played on the traditional Arabian instruments and fleeting synthesiser interludes. Other tracks, such as ‘Couronne’ (produced by Professor Genius) reach the heights of plain off-the-wall psyche- delia, culminating in the track produced by Acid Arab themselves: ‘Berberian Wedding’. Finally, some tracks such as ‘Sahra Min Tahab’ purely focus on the integration of Arabic instrumentation and acid house beats.

While it could be said that the more experimental tracks do not sit so easily side by side with those with characteristic loops and drops produced with the dance floor in mind, the album as a whole is unmistakably an oasis of well-executed experimentation of two genres not seen since Chemical Brothers’ Galvanize.

Garage rock duo Royal Blood have done a lot in a year. They formed, made Matt Helders of Arctic Monkeys their number one fan, and became one of 2014’s biggest ones to watch in almost every new year music forecast, after only one single and B-side.

“It’s incredible. It was only a year ago that we were at our regular jobs,” says vocalist and bass player Mike Kerr. “It’s hard to know why people like Royal Blood, but probably for the same reasons we like it. I think that’s the best way to do it really, trust your own taste and hope that others share the same taste.

“I guess we’re unique in that there aren’t many two pieces, but we like to think we make a big noise for the amount of people there are.” And they do. Debut single ‘Out of the Black’ is overdriven, shouty, loud, and totally addictive. “You made a fool out of me,” barks Kerr over frustrated minor riffs, as Benji Talent, drummer, slaps out a competitively rowdy drum line in perfect mirror to the bass. It’s pure, unadulterated rock music.

“There’s definitely something very exciting about where rock music is going at the moment. The trouble for me with being in a rock band is the connotation of some crummy CD you get free with the Daily Mail. We just like to write songs, and do it in a really primitive and aggressive way. And yeah, you can call it rock for now, that’ll do.”

I ask him why he uses the word aggressive. “Obviously I’m not an aggressive person, but there is something about music which I suppose is quite similar to sport. You get this release, and you can almost be someone else.”

Has rock music always been his genre of choice when writing music? “The last five years for me have been about rock. That’s where my heart lies. That, and heavy blues.”

But the passion for music has been ever present. “I originally started off playing piano when I was six, and by the time I was twelve I was obsessed with music. But when you write songs at fifteen, you don’t know who you are, and you don’t really know what music you want to make. I’ve been in a band that sounds like Coldplay and I’ve been in a band that sounds like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. You find and explore yourself as you grow up and this is what I ended up doing.”

Having grown up with his band mate, Mike sees his and Ben’s friendship as a key to their success. “It’s amazing. It’s like a school trip everyday. It’s never difficult, because we started this band to have fun.

“We started writing songs together a year ago, but I’ve known Ben for years, since I was 15, so this year doesn’t feel as rushed as it does for people who have just discovered us.”

But of course, a lot of those discoverers have arrived since the summer, owing to the powerful free patronage from one of the world’s most famous drummers, Matt Helders. Less than a year after he sported a Royal Blood t-shirt at the Arctic Monkeys headliner Glastonbury set, Mike and Ben will be performing in front of 50,000 of Alex Turner and co’s fans as they support them during their Spring tour. If you can’t wait until then, they’ll be stopping by the Oxford Art Bar on the 26th of February. Be aware though; Mike says, “someone might get hurt.” You’ve been warned.

Marty McFly, the fresh-faced hero of Back to the Future, is the quintessential gawky movie teen. The familiar frustrations of being 17 and in love and pursued across the space-time continuum by Libyan terrorists are adeptly captured by the film’s star actor, Michael J Fox. At the time, he was 29 years old. He does a decent enough job, but other attempts by adult actors to channel the teen zeitgeist are less successful. Speak to anyone who was watching TV in the early 1980s and watch their eyes glaze over as they recall with horror the cheesy mugging of 29-year old Henry Winkler as teen heartthrob ‘Fonzie’ in Happy Days. 

By and large, though, I can overlook the elasticity of these casting decisions. Real resentment only sets in when I watch cringingly inaccurate depictions of the teen experience. I’m sure I am not alone in feeling a deep-seated resentment, bordering on pathological hatred, toward Holden Caulfield.

The snotty teenage brat around whom J.D. Salinger based The Catcher in the Rye is deeply irksome and mind-blowingly self-involved, and I hate him and I wish he was dead. The themes of teenage angst and alienation, which supposedly make the novella such a draw to the young adult audience, only serve to make my skin crawl. Holden Caulfield is supposed to be an icon for teenage rebellion- in reality, he is an icon for pseudo-existential teenage whingeing.

But then I am a snotty teenage brat myself, and would be the first to concede that I am deeply irksome and mind-blowingly self-involved. Occasionally I even dabble in a little pseudo-existentialism. Perhaps the reason I abhor Holden’s constant self-loathing is because it strikes a little too close to home. Adult critics can read the book and glance back with a knowing wince at the petty tribulations and earnest anguish of their teenage years, while my own notebooks full of heartfelt doggerel with titles like “Late-Night Poem To My Future Wife” and “Thoughts For A Girl I Saw On The Train” are a painfully recent memory.

Maybe the problem is not with the adults constructing insufferably self-indulgent teen characters, but with my inability to look past the manifold embarrassments of my own youth and young manhood.

Cuntry Living’s website is emblazoned with the slogan, ‘CUNTS NOT DEAD’ and it was with this in mind that I took my very much alive cunt down to LMH for a cut and stick session which would set the wheels of the Hilary 2014 issue in motion. For those who have not come across it, Cuntry Living is an Oxford-based feminist zine which publishes articles on all aspects of gender and sexuality and opposes all forms of oppression, subjugation and degradation.

The website’s fairly militant assault on all things patriarchal is written entirely in Caps Lock and accompanied by the contact email, ‘[email protected]’. This kind of irreverent campaigning is a far cry from OUSU’s polite calls for change, and conjured up images of a modern-day feminist Baader Meinhof network, operating large-scale clandestine printing outfits from deep within the recesses of the Rad Cam. With this in mind, the fairly genteel surrounds of the LMH Old Library came as some surprise – the frustration expressed in the articles was set against a delightful neo-classical frieze, and the thick plush of the carpet was bouyant to my militant footfall.

The ‘cut and stick’ sessions are a cornerstone of the zine’s history: in order to produce a publication it’s pretty cost-effective to cut up other publications and stick them back together with a different message. Thus Levi’s ‘Let Your Body Do The Talking’ slogan can be pasted ironically next to an article on consent, while Page 3 boobs are slapped onto a chiselled Adonis. The process by which Cuntry Living is created nicely corresponds to its content: by cutting out magazines’ objectifying photos and lazy headlines and transplanting them into a sheet of A4, the reader can see them in a new light – out of context, they seem ridiculous, and  serve as a neat and funny accompaniment to a heavier article.

The lo-fi feeling of chatting about identity politics with a pair of scissors in one hand and a Pritt stick in the other also conjures up a pleasantly grassroots, Instagrammed vision of activism before the internet: it’s what one vaguely imagines university would have been like in the 60s, before change.org could assemble all the causes in one stock petition format and render them all slightly less compelling.

I was welcomed by houmous and discussions on vegetarianism before getting down to some deeply therapeutic cutting and sticking. Three out of four hand movements quickly devolved into an undextrous grab at a nearby bag of Malteasers, but I did manage to decorate an article on the feminist dimension of Girl Scout camp within an hour.

The zine has spawned a Facebook group by the same name which swiftly eclipsed Wadham Feminists as Oxford’s go-to page for feminist-minded debate. As a predominantly passive member of the Facebook group, I’ve come to consider myself a well-intentioned and passionate feminist whose theoretical understanding of issues discussed is less extensive than that of its more vocal members. Debates feel like a fast-paced but enjoyable tutorial, where you’d never have come to the conclusions your tutor is outlining but you try to write them down as quickly as possible so you can use them in the exam. The arguments I skim read as they are drip-fed to me via my newsfeed flag up new considerations to bear in mind when applying feminist thinking to real life, and have provided me with a handful of ideas that are now impossible for me to un-know. I find myself dissecting rather than laughing at jokes that play on gender tropes and stereotypes, for example;  jokes that I previously  accepted without question.

These positive aspects are hindered by Facebook’s inherent drawbacks. You can’t see faces or judge  tone of voice, and the currency of likes creates arbitrary ‘winners’ on every post with a woeful lack of nuance. There is also a conflating of opinion with identity when debating on the relentlessly ‘personalised’ medium of Facebook – your photo and name preface every immortalised comment, meaning that, in Oxford’s tiny bubble, words can alter people’s perception of you, for better or worse.

This fear of silent hordes watching you from their laptops as you misrepresent your understanding of intersectionality may be irrational but it’s still there: you can’t see your audience and they can’t see you. Being challenged by an individual in such an echoingly vast forum can feel as if every one of the 1748 members is against you. You flounder, imagining that your silent audience has branded you less feminist than Robin Thicke eating a sandwich prepared by Pussy Riot under duress. Posting can be rewarding but also opens you up to the unappealing binary of ‘likes’ versus a fairly nerve-wracking and potentially time-consuming public exchange.

So the zine can be read but is not interactive, while the Facebook group is interactive and enriching but in a very Facebook kind of way. The humble cut and stick session, therefore, gets rounds these problems by actually letting you meet people face to face and talk about things you think, or are unsure about, in a genuinely pleasant environment. CUNTING AND STICKING ARENT DEAD.

Dear Cherwell, 

When a diplomat finally gets to take leave of wherever he has disappointingly been posted, he is permitted to write his “parting shot,” in which he is finally allowed to let the world know how almightily disgruntled he has been for the past few years in Tazbekistan/anywhere other than New York or Paris. Here is mine. 

I love Lyon. I really, really do. It is a beautiful city nestled at the foot (feet?) of the Alps and is filled with what my 16 year old sister would refer to as “Instagram potential” (cute squares, crumbling book shops, cats in berets and so on and so forth.) Most importantly it isn’t Paris which, let me tell you, is actually pretty horrific when seen from any point of view other than a honeymooning American couple snogging under the Eiffel Tower.

However, my time here has not all been quaffing and croissants. I have learned that one can be just as miserable drinking wine in a café on the banks of the Rhone as drinking contraband Red Bull in the Lower Gladstone Link.

For in between my forays into French life, I work as a Language Assistant. When I signed up for this, I pictured rosy-cheeked Angeliques and Rémys sitting in a sunny classroom bedecked with posters and charmingly bemusing “drawings,” hanging on to my every word as I read them Very Hungry Caterpillar. This dream was quickly shattered by a swift google street view search of my lycée (not école as requested), a concrete monstrosity which is tucked delicately between a ramshackle garage complete with tyre mountain and a cobbler whose peeling façade hinted strongly at having other “business” on the side. I was based an hour out of Lyon in a suburb called Vaulx-en-Velin which is essentially rougher than a badger’s arse.

I reserved (a bit of) judgement and waited till I met my first class to pass it completely. This didn’t take long. It transpired very quickly that I was working in a dramatically failing school with a fairly large population of students who were unable to speak English or, more worryingly, French. This of course would be for some a challenge to be relished, someone with visions of changing lives, writing poetry blah blah. This someone was not me: a 20 year old student with about as much control over children as Miley Cyrus has over her own career.

I yet again decided to experience another class before finally deciding that I hated France, my job and all children. Yet no evidence to the contrary made itself known. In the course of three months I: was verbally abused, confiscated a spliff from a kid rolling in my class, had to deal with a high, drunk, vomiting 11 year old, witnessed the confiscation of home made bombs from 12 year olds and discovered some kids trying to nick my purse. This from the country who refuse to create their own word for “le binge drinking” as it is, dans ses yeux, an ‘orrible breetish custom.

It isn’t all “action – réaction,” though. Some of my students do occasionally take their headphones out for long enough to listen to me, and some are truly brilliant. I have one student who came up to me after a lesson about Edinburgh and tell me that now she knew she wanted to not only go to university, but in Scotland. Job done.

So all in all – my message is this. Come to France. Better still, come to Lyon. It is an enchanting city, the gastronomical capital of France and the public transport is cracking. You can eat your body weight in baguettes, drink wine till you fall into the Rhone and cycle about wearing stripy tops. Do not, no matter how many “inspiring” lyric gap fill exercises you may have prepared, be a teaching assistant.

Love,

Poppy

If brevity is the soul of wit, then writing and performing sketches must be the divine spirit of comedy. Popular culture is overflowing with the empty husks of attempted hilarity, but if you’re in Oxford seeking the thrill of a carefully crafted joke, look no further than The Oxford Revue for a very merry time.

This year’s Hilary Revue, entitled Family Values, is surreal, unpredictable, absurd, and absolutely hilarious: simply everything good student theatre should be. It is impressive how a cast of only five members can instantly capture the audience’s attention and keep them howling with laughter until the very last minute.

A particular shout out is in order for Will Hislop’s impeccable accent and impersonation of pretty much every single Made in Chelsea toff. Some of the highlights of the evening included the case of Harry Potter performing obscene
gestures towards the audience, unaware of the fact that he has forgotten to put on his invisibility cloak, as well as the moving story of how Ant met Dec at the audition for Byker Grove, reminiscent of the ‘Elephant Love Medley’ from Moulin Rouge.

Other audience favourites included two friends’ journey to the middle of the earth, appropriately accentuated by Stealers Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’, and a young lady’s suitor in denial of being in possession of a ‘man handbag’ – the line, “I don’t read Men’s Health, Men’s Health reads me” be a conversational icebreaker at Park End from now on. The Revue have outdone themselves once more.