The world famous UK/USA music industry, which once glimmered as one of the brightest beacons of our culture, is disappearing. Just like every great bureaucratic empire it is becoming arrogant and languid. Some of the most important faculties of our musical culture have been lost.

Take the radio for example; independent radio used to be a decisive force in feeding new talent into the public ear. But try calling your local radio station and asking them to play a favourite song of yours; if it hasn’t already been on an unstoppable loop for the past week, then they will almost certainly say no. Maybe they will refuse to justify this, but they might just tell you that ‘we couldn’t play your music, even if we wanted to’. Today, play list selection is usually done by big media companies. Big business wants big money, and the big money is in the mainstream market, whose agenda is set by big business; it’s circular. And we, on the receiving end, are being told repeatedly what to like.

In times gone by, musicians and artists might justify radio airtime by selling well in record stores, or maybe just by creating a local buzz. There was a stronger sense of importance in buying records and going to gigs to support an artist on their path to success. The result was a meritocratic ascension; the people genuinely interested in music as a progressive art would fuel and guide the industry. The retrograde system of today means that money comes first, always. The radio in the United States, though it has improved, is in a state far worse than our own. Media giants like Clear Channel operate over 800 radio stations. Such companies have been accused of using market research programs which involve playing new music to random people from the street, in exchange for a tasty pizza treat, and asking them what they would do if they heard it on the radio. Answers such as ‘turn it down’, ‘change station’ or even ‘turn it up’ are considered negative, since they suggest that a listener is being made to think actively. The thinking listener is more likely to later change the radio station, resulting in lower ratings and consequential advertisement revenue loss for the company. The favourable response to a candidate song would be “do nothing”. Such blatant profiteering and lack of artistic integrity by such powerful media companies has been damaging to American music and consequentially our own.

The UK does tend to follow the US. Huge UK success was enjoyed, for example, by the Disney bubble: artificial acts like the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus. How do their simple songs manage to be so successful? It’s as if they’ve been manufactured to a template. Our mainstream popular music is getting plainer, and it’s partly been driven by the changes in how we listen. Music is talked about less in a critical sense, and it becomes easier for everyone to accept that what the charts tell us is popular, is the best music around.

But precious few of today’s ‘big acts’ are even close to rivalling the longevity of John Lennon and Freddie Mercury. We really need to assert considerable independence if we’re to explore the best music being produced today. The charts are becoming of decreasing significance to the enlightened; websites such as Pitchfork appear to be taking their place as the best music guides, offering sincere, intelligent recommendations. There are so many exciting new acts waiting in the wings that the mainstream music industry seems unwilling to gamble on.

The sense of artistic responsibility and integrity is fading, and the mainstream music industry is starting to be seen by many as an irresponsible money maker. The attitude seems increasingly to be that it’s hardly worth changing things too much, once we know ‘what sells’. We’re being sold the musical equivalent of Mr Whippy: it’s cheap, it’s everywhere, and it’s full of added sugar.

Take a quick listen to ‘Four Chords’ by The Axis of Awesome. It’s a parody of mainstream writing, and exposes 50 modern pop songs as all having exactly the same basic chord loop, including modern classics such as Paparazzi and Poker Face by Lady Gaga and MGMT’s Kids. It’s one of those things that maybe you didn’t want to know about, like finding out that the clouds on Mario were identical to the bushes in every aspect but colour. That’s how it is now.

The criterion of talent has diminished to the point of transparent superficiality. The major labels invest in sex, shunning musical brilliance. Young musicians clamour for the support of the Big 4 (Sony, EMI, Universal, Warner), but the few that may attain it are often hastily railroaded into writing music which ‘will sell’. Mr Hudson is a fine example of this in recent times. His melodic indie-pop album ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ from 2007 is so unlike his 2010 R’n’B coops with Jay-Z and Kanye West that it’s hard to believe that he’s the same human being.

Despite all of this, there is a silver lining. Today, record labels are facing the digital download revolution. Money is moving away from album sales and you’ll find that many new laptops don’t even come with built-in CD drives anymore. The growing internet is allowing bands to self publish, and promote themselves, and music is being shared more between friends online. It’s a chance for music to shed its industrial bonds a little again. Hopefully people will begin to think more about music, as business loses its control over what it is that we hear, allowing more innovative artists to come to the fore. These artists will need our support.

Consider this about the current situation: the creative process undergone in composing a piece of music is little different to that in writing a poem. But poems are approached critically and thoughtfully by any reader, inspiring colourful opinions. When presented with a piece of music, it seems acceptable to consider in it an extremely shallow sense; to hear it but not to really listen.

Recorded in a converted barn in their home state of Oregon’s Pendarvis Farm, The Decemberists’ fifth full-length solo album is a deeper foray into the music of their homeland than any of their previous work. From the harmonica that bursts onto the opening of ‘Don’t Carry it All’, both country and western are staring you in the face throughout. But the most inescapable influence is that of R.E.M, whose Peter Buck was hired to play on three of the ten tracks. As a consequence, songs such as Down ‘By The Water’ and ‘Calamity Song’ end up sounding like outtakes from R.E.M’s Automatic For The People more than anything else, and singer Colin Meloy’s drawling vocal quality is undoubtedly partially attributable to Michael Stipe. Yet the album does have its highlights.

As is so often the case, the simplest choices prove to be the best ones, and Meloy’s songwriting is most effective on those tracks where he leaves the barn-dancing behind in favour of simpler, acoustic forces. On ‘January Hymn’, he evokes maudlin and melancholic images of winters past, sung to a wistful melody as his guitar winds around circling riffs below. The similarly acoustic ‘June Hymn’ harks back to Neil Young and the better, more bearable sides of American folk-rock. But at other times, such as on ‘Rox in a Box’, the music just sounds as if you’re cringing your way through a Morris dance. Fortunately, The Decemberists have had enough songwriting experience to weave melodies sweet enough and lyrics weird enough for one to easily forget the questionable stylistic choices on this album. Unfortunately though, there is nothing special enough on The King is Dead to win them any fans outside of their already loyal fan base.

White Lies’ first album was impressive, debuting at number one in the UK album charts following its release in 2009. An interesting mix of Editors- and Killers-style indie with 80s Joy Division pop, the group scored hits with the (ironically) uplifting ‘Death’, and the infectious ‘To Lose a Life’. Their second full length album remains very much within the same indie/80s formula, yet in spite of some inspired studio production and expressive textures, Ritual lags in places. McVeigh’s voice is not to everyone’s taste – it might be considered rather a ‘love it or hate it’ kind of voice – but if you like the sound of Ian Curtis (Joy Division), you will appreciate this.

‘Is Love’ opens the album on a high, after a few deceptively bland few opening minutes of whiny synths and plodding drums are revitalised by the introduction of a turntable, breathing new life into the song. From there a steady layering of instruments brings the song to a powerfully dense finale. Following on from this is the album’s first single ‘Bigger than Us’, demonstrating the catchy songwriting familiar from ‘To Lose a Life’; here McVeigh hits his highest notes on the album with ease. ‘Peace and Quiet’ is an oddity: while not instantly catchy, it features some wonderful contrasts between spacey synths and conventional guitar work, building to a peak but mysteriously fading out to leave only the background tracks playing for considerably too long. This song captures the more spatial ambience of the first half of this album.

‘Streetlight’ marks the beginning of the second-half lag. Reminiscent of the melody from Joy Division’s ‘Love Won’t Tear Us Apart Again’, it is at this point that the novelty provided by the 80s-inspired style begins to wear thin. ‘Holy Ghost’ provides a brief return to a fantastic slice of softcore rave-rock, but the remainder of the album does not offer up anything new, and ‘Come Down’ leaves one feeling rather as if the band has, by this point, drifted off to sleep.

There is much to enjoy on this album, especially if you appreciated ‘To Lose a Life’. Yet despite some fantastic moments, this is not, regrettably, as slick as their debut.

‘Neither of us finds the contents of our heads particularly interesting’

Thus claimed Nick Zammuto, one half of The Books, in a recent interview. But, whatever they might have you believe, for nearly ten years the duo have, in fact, been making some of the most unique and creative music around. Over the course of four albums, The Books have developed themselves a niche all of their own, falling somewhere between Four Tet’s folk tinged electronica and the cut-and-paste mash-ups of The Avalanches. And following the success of last year’s acclaimed The Way Out, Temporary Residence will be reissuing The Books’ first three albums in the coming months, starting with debut Thought For Food.

The Books have described their work as ‘collage music’, layering live instrumentation (mostly acoustic guitars and violins) with spoken word samples taken from an abundance of obscure sources. Although this might all sound like rather pretentious formalism, The Books’ sense of humour is on show throughout Thought For Food, cutting their samples in such a way as to playfully distort their original meanings. On ‘Contempt’, the band constructs an absurd conversation between two men – “Do you like my ankles?” “Yes, enormously” – and ‘All Our Base Are Belong To Them’ declares “Welcome to the human race…you’re a mess” before kicking into full flow.

One of the few tracks to feature Zammuto’s vocals prominently, ‘All Our Base…’ hints at the direction the band would take on their peerless sophomore effort The Lemon Of Pink. Striking a precise balance between their experimental leanings and more traditional song structures, the track represents one of Thought For Food’s finest moments but, at the same time, does highlight the weaknesses of some of the more formless pieces on the record.

With this album, The Books were just beginning to explore the possibilities afforded to them by their idiosyncratic methods. The music here is at once deep and intelligent but at the same time light-hearted, almost goofy. Like kids in a candy shop, the sense of wonder with which the band treat their source material is infectious and one will find it almost impossible to listen to Thought For Food without a smile on one’s face.

In the wake of James Blake’s emergence into the mainstream towards the end of last year, the atmospheric, subdued colours of post-dubstep have become more familiar to us, and Blake’s success is likely to stimulate further explorations into this murky underground scene as the year progresses. One man who is receiving much critical acclaim for his experimentation with similarly sparsely-textured sounds and relaxed beats, is singer-songwriter and producer Jamie Woon, who recently came fourth on BBC’s sound of 2011 list. Cherwell spoke to Woon this week, ahead of his gig at the Jericho Tavern on 19th February.

It all started for the 27-year old Brit School graduate in 2007, when his ethereally beautiful electro-soul track ‘Wayfaring Stranger’, was remixed by smooth dub-steppers Burial. Despite the song’s wide-spread recognition, Woon was in no hurry to build on this first step towards fame. Instead, he took time out to reflect on the direction of his sound: ‘I wasn’t ready to make an album until now: record companies are looking for a finished package’. He goes on: ‘It seems that, for example, Radio 1 now shows far more openness to new stuff’. Indeed, a few years ago it was unlikely that, however accomplished he might be, Woon’s brand of soulful but minimal and self-produced music would have won over the major record label Polydor, to which he is now signed. His forthcoming album, MirrorWriting (due for release the 4th April) has, then, come along just at the right time, with 2010 seeing an explosion in musical eclecticism that is inspiring more and more artists to delve into the underground scene. Woon agrees with my suggestion that over the past couple of years, his music has met Blake’s sounds somewhere in the middle of a spectrum which ranges from neo-soul at one end, to ambient IDM at the other: Blake, having come from the latter end, seems to be progressing towards a more soulful strain in his music, while Woon, having already perfected his vocals, is using them to great effect in a more ambient, layered sound-world than his early material.

Nevertheless, Woon is keen to emphasise the centrality of the melismatic vocals in his latest tracks. I am somewhat surprised at first when I ask him to describe his sound, and he classes it as ‘R’n’B’. When he expands on this categorisation, however, summarising his work as ‘groove-based and vocal-led’, I realise that his music actually goes some way towards rediscovering the true essence of this genre, reaching back to its roots in soul and blues. His influences include mid-90s R’n’B groups such as Boys II Men as well as celebrated singer-songwriters Lewis Taylor and Jeff Buckley. Despite his wide range of musical inspiration, his sensitively ornamented lyricism remains entirely his own, and coupled with an immaculate rhythmic timing one senses an innate musical understanding lying always at the surface of his work. His characteristic touching poignancy is particularly apparent in his latest single ‘Night Air’, (produced by Burial), which leaves its haunting melody snaking through your head for hours after listening to the song. I ask him what we can expect from his debut album, to which he gives a seemingly contradictory answer, labelling it as ‘groovy and upbeat’, while also ‘reserved and ambient … definitely a ‘night-time record”. Yet listening to ‘Night Air’ justifies this statement entirely: his mellow voice belies a lively, percussive beat, while the call-and-response effect between his voice and a sampled chorus gives an eery, crepuscular feel to the record.

It becomes apparent that Woon has had music flowing through him from a very young age. His mother, Mae Makenna, is a Celtic folk singer, who has provided backing vocals for artists from Michael Jackson to Bjork. ‘I was never particularly encouraged to take this path’, he says, ‘and I had no formal training. My vocal style happened, I guess, by osmosis, through listening to my mum’s records. It was, as a teenager, watching her making and recording her music that inspired me to do the same’. He describes her as the ‘biggest influence’ on his music, although his work has come a long way from his earlier more folk-derived songs as ‘Gravity’.

It will be intriguing to see how the singer translates his laptop-produced songs on to the stage, a process which he himself describes as a ‘challenge’. What can we expect from his gig in Oxford next month? He describes the set-up as being a synthesis of ‘live and recorded elements, real and electronic percussion’, backed up by complex programming and sampling, along with his four-piece band, comprising of keyboards, bass and drums. His softly-spoken, thoughtfully-layered vocals will be at the heart of the performance, and, for all those not acquainted with the works of Flying Lotus, Mount Kimbie and James Blake, this gig will be worth attending simply on the strength of his velvety, mesmerizing voice.

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever… The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits… – Ecclesiastes

This epigraph to Hemingway’s ‘The Sun also Rises’ crystallises the idea of the eternal and magnificent power of nature in stark contrast to transient human experience. In ‘Asperatus’, an exhibition by Jericho-born photographer Nick White, the awe-inspiring power of nature is captured through a series of cloud formations that the artist witnessed in the local area. There are also rarer phenomena such as comets and upside down rainbows known as circumzenithal arcs.

Art Jericho is a new and independent gallery tucked away behind Walton Street: a real hidden gem. It specialises in painting and original prints, and most importantly has given local artists the recognition they deserve. Nick White is no exception – a former medical photographer, he has developed and refined his vision in pursuit of bold and rare skyscapers that have fascinated him since the age of eight. The result is a competent, engaging and charming collection of photographs backed on aluminium which perfectly capture the transformative and transcendental power of nature.

The space in itself is beautiful, and as the rays of sunlight fill the gallery all at once, the Oxford bubble seems like a distant memory – somewhat ironic given the fact that the vast majority of these photos were taken in Oxfordshire and the surrounding area. One of the many highlights was the eponymous Asperatus, an image of a newly discovered cloud formation which towers majestically over the Oxfordshire countryside. The scientific seamlessly merges with the artistic to produce beautiful and mesmerising photos of the sky, retaining scientific integrity through captions which explain the formations in perfect detail. There is also a photograph of the Northern Lights taken in Buckinghamshire, lunar formations and a still of the cloud that caused the floods in Boscastle.

Warmly recommended, ‘Asperatus’ is the perfect escape from every essay crisis, and is a truly inspirational collection of photographs. Just try not to get lost when trying to find this gallery.

What do you think of when you see the Rad Cam? If you’re a frequent visitor to its collections, sadly, it’s probably work. Essays. Drudgery. All the more reason to visit the enthusiastically-titled ‘Rad Cam!’ show at the O3 gallery, with two local artists’ interpretations of the Oxford icon.

You won’t able to look at it the same way after the vibrant colours of Emma Dougherty’s plasticine and found-object constructions. Her work lends itself to the gallery’s unusual layout, which offers many different perspectives from which to look at a particular image. On one stairwell is a series of Dougherty’s pictures, each in a saturated block colour, which from far away make the library look like it has spires and minarets. It is only when you get closer that ‘Rad Camblage’ (2010) reveals itself: Dougherty has used candles, dice, iPod headphones and many other objects of the same colour to create a refreshingly innovative interpretation. Gone are the damp greys and browns of a typical rainy day’s ‘Bodding’. Dougherty’s work instead reminds us of the Rad Cam’s harmonious proportions and graceful vertical lines by reproducing them in a way that is unexpected, eye-catching and fun. This is even more the case in ‘Poly Cam’ (2010), a collection of tiny hand-made clay images on a brightly-coloured circular backgrounds which plays with the building’s status as an Oxford landmark, multiplying and reducing it to resemble a child’s badge.

Tim Steward, the other artist on display, undertook classical training in London before returning to draw from the architecture of Oxford. Steward’s black and white pieces in graphite or media contrast well with the vibrant hues of Dougherty’s design. His drawings use fragmented lines and discontinuous areas of shading to evoke the form and size of the building whilst not entirely delineating its structure. In some of his pieces the frenzied mark-making becomes almost an end in itself, so that the Rad Cam seems to be exploding outwards. In ‘Rad Cam 50’ (2010), one of the most successful drawings, Steward uses loose but delicate lines to evoke a moment within the architecture: the outline of one window, the intersection of a pilaster with the edge of the dome.

At times it can seem like the only people interested in Oxford architecture are the passing hordes of camera-laden tourists. This is exhibition is pleasing proof that this is not the case, and challenges us with representations that play with what we expect.

‘What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters.’

This quotation from ‘2666’ defines the work of Chilean Roberto Bolaño: submersion in the unmanageable, the feared and uncontrollable rather than the exquisite.

The black-and-white stills of Bolaño freeze the author mid-cigarette in his round glasses, wearing a shrewd beetlish expression: dishwasher and vagrant, traveler and poet, dead in 2003 at the age of fifty from liver complications, ostensibly from his hedonist bohemian adventures. It was four years after his death that Bolaño began to garner attention in the Anglophone literary world with the English publication of his ‘Savage Detectives’, a polyvocal literary manifesto. This reputation was cemented in 2008 with the obliquely named ‘2666’, widely regarded as not only Bolaño’s masterpiece, but – hyperbolically, one might assume – one of the masterpieces of the late twentieth early twenty-first century.

‘2666’ is constructed in five parts which share two spiritual centers: the search for a mysterious and obscure German novelist named Benno von Archimboldi, and the search for the answer to the unstinting femicide in the Mexican desert city of Santa Teresa, a stand in for the real violence in the border city of Ciudad Juarez.

Could the comparisons with Cervantes, Proust, Musil and Joyce be awarded purely on the basis of size? (‘2666’ clocks in at just under 900 pages.) But no, the book lives up to its hype – spanning a century, both hemispheres, the safe and imperiled, civilization and savagery. At the base of this rich and dense novel are Bolaño’s perennial themes: fear, estrangement, and the surreal nature of reality. ‘2666’ is sprawling, epic, a Borgesian garden of forking paths which at any point might converge or split. It, like Bolaño’s other novels, gives voice to madmen and lovers, hysterics and vagrants, men and women who daily defy obliteration.

His debut ‘The Skating Rink’, released this year in paperback, brief and much narrower in scope than Bolaño’s later works, contains the seeds which will ripen and be returned to: possession and loss, culpability and unexpected communion, characters who are helpless to oppose fate, to rouse themselves and defy the unnamable, unavoidable delirium. In ‘The Skating Rink’, three male narrators – a petty government official, a middle-aged opportunist, and a wandering poet – take turns narrating the strange story of an ice rink built in an abandoned palace in a Spanish seaside town and the subsequent murder it houses. But don’t be afraid of ‘The Skating Rink’ being one of the ‘perfect exercises of the great masters’; it isn’t. But it is a warm-up act for what was to come.

To offer a pop culture reference, like Desmond in the second series of Lost, who saved Dickens’ ‘Our Mutual Friend’ in order to leave himself some comfort in his last hours, I struggle between wanting to read all of Bolaño’s novels in succession, and spacing them out. Despite his publishers promising a stream of translations to come, it is unavoidable that at some point the fountain will be sealed up. We are left with the finite, and yet Bolaño’s novels (at least the ones I’ve read) pursue the fissure between finite living and infinity, between knowledge and guesswork, contradictory truths, and the surreal unknown. As the omniscient unembodied narrator says in ‘2666’, ‘Great scientists, great mathematicians, great chemists, and publishers knew that one was always feeling one’s way in the dark.’ Tracing that path is some consolation.

Judging from this preview, it’s hard to see why Troilus and Cressida is one of Shakespeare’s least known plays. It seems to have it all – fight scenes, star-crossed lovers, and many witty one-liners. But it was very rarely performed until the 20th century heralded a mini revival. Now director Rafaella Marcus leads a talented team of actors who bring these characters to life and give the play the performance it deserves.

It takes place during the Trojan War, as political disputes amongst the Greeks are balanced by the love blossoming in Troy between gallant Prince Troilus and the smitten but shy Cressida. In the Greek camp, Lucy Fyffe shines as the scheming Ulysses, with her careful and measured diction making sure that her long monologues keep the audience’s attention. Chris Adams and Charlotte Salkind are excellent as the young lovers, utterly convincing both in joy and in the face of utter disaster. Richard Hill steals the show with a hilarious portrayal of Cressida’s interfering, bawdy uncle. The comedy that ensues when he is onstage only heightens the tragedy that later follows, when Cressida is forced to go to the Greek camp as slave to Diomedes in exchange for a prisoner of war.

The production gives Shakespeare some interesting twists, including the regendering of Ulysses and Aeneas, which helps them stand out in the otherwise all-male Greek camp, and the addition of a chorus, giving the play an appropriate air of the Greek tragedy. A brilliant production of an excellent play: how better to fill 3rd week?