That's how the people of Nineveh are described the Book of Jonah, but we might equally claim it about the Germans. Or at least the political campaigners.As last Saturday's neo-Nazi rally approached in the district of Hausen here in Frankfurt, posters started to appear everywhere. They were, unsurprisingly, all attacks on the National Democratic Party of Germany, the NPD, who were protesting against the construction of a mosque in the area.Some of the posters just say "No Nazi". Others call for "religious freedom". But many simply state: "Gegen Rechts". Against the Right. "Links kommt" (the Left is on its way) is another common one. I've seen them all around Germany.There are two problems with this. One is that, by polarising the two stances, it suggests that you have to be on the Left to oppose the Far Right. This is not the case. Centre-right parties have no time for racist groups and are often quicker to call for their ban than the Left are. Compare David Cameron's firm stance on Hizb ut-Tahrir with the Labour government's decision to keep them legal. The second is the implication that you're either with the Nazis or against them. Many on the Right – the moderate Right – abhor the extremists but sympathise with their concerns about the changing face of Europe. They also want to uphold the original culture and values of whichever country the debate is taking place in. They are also worried about the potential problems of multiculturalism. But they don't believe they should be 'solved' with Nazi methods. And they don't want to associate themselves with the skinheads who march in the name of nationalism.Like the BNP, the German Far Right are not as 'right' as most people think. As conservative commentator Melanie Phillips has argued, their policies mark them out as pretty leftish. I don't suppose the NPD were there last weekend to march against high taxes or excessive nationalisation, which would really make them a right-wing party.
Maybe people should stop this polarised outlook and take those misleading posters down.
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By Chantal Hadley The nouvelle scène is, well, pretty self explanatory. It’s new: many of the bands in it have only released their debut albums within the last year. It definitely falls under the umbrella of rock music. And it’s French.Musically, the genre is pretty standard: you’ve got guitars, screaming vocals (which somehow seem less abrasive with the unaspirated aitches of a French accent), lots of guitars and a good solid drum beat. Synths play a pretty big part and the scène owes a lot to Daft Punk, Cassius, and other French dance music of the late 90s. Pravda’s ‘Je Suis French (Do not Touch)’ plays around with mechanising the human voice and has a slightly Stephen Hawking quality to it. Naast go one step further and their bassist Clod Naast (né Claude, naturellement) also plays the Hammond Organ. The fast-paced shouting match which is ‘Je Te Cherche’ has a brief respite in the form of carnival-esque organ-playing before Gustave Naast resumes yelling that he’s looking for you.Lyrically, many of the songs are just as full of attitude as the gutsy electric guitar riffs would have you believe. Common themes focus on defining their own generation and lashing out against artificial social stereotyping and pigeonholing. Pravda especially, in their songs ‘Je Suis French (Do Not Touch)’ and ‘A L’Ouest’ follow this pattern. Even on a basic grammatical level, there’s a lot of “je suis…” being thrown around. ‘Je Suis French…’ also shows the genre’s double-edged sword: they seem to want to retain their intrinsic frenchness, but with the music market, even in France, being monopolised by international artists, they don’t have a choice. At the very least, their easy command of two languages, often switching between French and English in the middle of songs, is impressive. Pravda’s myspace list them as being an Indie band and although Naast sometimes sound  a bit like (and have similar haircuts to…) The Fratellis or The White Stripes I wouldn’t go so far as to equating the whole genre with them.  Naast (Mauvais Garçon) and Les Plasticines (Zazie Fait La Bicyclette) are 1960s-inspired in many ways, but Pravda leans more towards electronica. The nouvelle scène likes to define itself, but I think perhaps it is still so nouvelle that it isn’t really sure what it wants to be yet. At any rate, the eldest member of Naast is 18, and Les Plasticines were all born in 1988, so the genre has plenty of time to grow into the shoes of rock française.

Cara Bleiman examines the relationship between music and politics.To ask whether music has the potential to be political is completely old hat, well old hat pins actually. The story of Stravinsky’s 1913 “Rite of Spring” premiere and the ensuing street-riot (where the pins made a violent cameo) is well-known, as are Shostakovich’s muffled and now considered rather ambiguous musical protests against the Soviet regime. However, it was with pacifist works such as Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem” of 1961 that classical music’s monopoly on the ‘political’ ended. From the Vietnam War to the fall of the Berlin wall, the new voices of revolt were all singing Rock. Last year, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘N’ Roll captured this era, focusing on the lead up to the overthrow of the socialist government in the then Czechoslovakia during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Mirroring the experiences of communist party member and Cambridge academic, Max, with his Czech ex-student Jan, Stoppard gave the foreground to a soundtrack of  Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Czech band “The Plastic People of the Universe” – who were ultimately the political heroes of the play. And the real-life story of the Plastics really lives up to their heroic portrayal; touring secretly under the auspices of lecturing on art they would sneak in tracks as supposed aural illustrations. Their songs weren’t overtly anti-communist but in their refusal to compromise on anything – from hair length to English lyrics – they made disengagement into dissidence with their front-man, Ivan Jirous, being sent to jail four consecutive times during those years.Fast forward to today and it’s the turn of pop musicians to hurl a few insults establishment’s way with the Iraq war and Poverty at the top of the agenda. With the rise of the commercialised music industry and the cult of celebrity the potential power of pop musicians appears limitless. The attempts of various music celebs, who get those itsy bitsy twangs of social conscience to change the world, have arguably left the world unimpressed. Such attempts at politically inspiring pop raise one question in particular – can you be successfully political if your means of expression are not earnest?The success of Red Nose Day proved that serious charitable aims could be furthered by comedy and set the mark for the do-gooding responsibilities of the new celeb class, but what seems to confuse our new generation of budding pop philanthropists is that charity is not the same as politics. Charity, is almost more of a religious ideal – a Christian virtue, in fact. Advocating love, kindness, food and water for all is certainly worthy but it isn’t all that contentious. It isn’t that surprising though that these advocates should produce average, accessible and uncontroversial sentiments when it is these exact characteristics in their music which have secured their existence as pop stars.Charity fundraising isn’t really the problem here though – because they are damn good at fundraising. It’s when pop stars make that leap to try and overtly inspire political action that things start to go wrong. Shakira’s song ‘East Timor’ is a fantastic example of political pop failure at it’s very worst. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an alright track if you ignore it’s political intentions – and by no means does music have to be serious and weighty to be valued – but to string together cliched critiques of the judiciary system, mass media, democracy and the west’s failure to provide adequate humanitarian support to East Timor with a neo-disco chorus of “East Timor/ Timor, Timor/ Ooh/ Ah, ah, ah, ah/ Ah, ah, ah, ah”, is utterly crass.MIA on the other hand, has enough of a revolutionary whiff about her to get taken seriously by both broadsheets and discerning ‘pop’ critics alike. With her father an activist in Sri-lankan guerilla group, the Tamil Tigers, and an eventful upbringing as a refugee in London, her credentials for producing ‘authentic’ political/musical statements are promising. Her most recent album Kala (released this August), is a multicontinental mashup resulting from an impromptu world tour due to VISA trouble and a blockade on her Brooklyn apartment (or so the story goes) and succeeds on two counts of Authenticity and Originality which would usually qualify her for Rock Heroism. But her collaborations with Timbaland and being just on the cusp of Nelly Furtado–like status mean we can’t really disqualify her from Popdom. MIA may be one of the first, then, of a promising new breed but although her work has a genuine political content it doesn’t mean that her listeners are actually inspired to act on it. This may have something to do with the more subliminal politics of sampling. Since Paul Simon made Graceland with the Ladysmith Black Mambazo choir he has been accused of taking credit and exploiting the music of a culture which wasn’t his own. Similarly, tracks like the Chemical Brothers ‘Galvanise’ use sampling almost in the same way as colonial folk-song collectors – absorbing up ‘exotic’ samples and translating them for western audiences. Part of MIA’s appeal to the broadsheet reader is this exotic otherness (dubbed ‘worldbeat’), but once placed in this box, her political views are to be admired from afar rather than engaged with and it’s with her own ironic manipulation of these expectations that she makes her best political statement.Music is at it’s most powerful when we let our guard down to it’s visceral sensations, which is when it’s politically dangerous as a vehicle to propaganda – but however overtly political a pop song may aim to be, this will always jar with our aural association, with it’s function as dance music, background music or entertainment and bar us from considering it as anything else.
The political power and scope of music will be discussed at the Battle of Ideas, a two-day festival organised by the Institute of Ideas on the 27-28th October at the Royal College of Art 
Cartoon by Sofia Kaba-Ferreiro

Six years after Kevin Douch founded Big Scary Monsters, the Oxford-based label has established itself as a minor fixture in the industry. Set up when he was a bored 6th former who, like so many others, thought “Wouldn’t it be cool to work in music?”, it gave Get.Cape.Wear.Cape.Fly his first break. It is now home to somewhat more obscure acts, the likes of Surrey post-hardcore band, Meet Me in St Louis and Kent post-rockers, Yndi Halda. Even so, Douch is unsure that his label is taken seriously: “Then again, who would with a name like Big Scary Monsters?”
Even so, the one-man label would like to think BSM could be a legitimate long-term home for bands on the rise. “I hope that the label won’t always be perceived as a stepping stone”, he explains, “Obviously the bands gaining the recognition they deserve is the main goal here, but if they can achieve that whilst with BSM then even better”.
Passion for the music is what drives Douch in his work. “I often get offered bands which I can see going on to sell a lot of records, but if I don’t like them I just can’t do it”. His current crop certainly piques his interest, Meet Me in St Louis a particular tip. “I think next year could be a good one for them: it’s so nice to see people singing along at gigs and leaving lovely comments on their myspace page”.
That sort of community spirit is at the heart of Douch’s vision for the independent label in the MP3 age, “something which might stand a chance of outliving the current record label mould”. Not that Douch knows, any more than the rest of us, what the future holds for the industry. Big Scary Monsters may never attain the prestige, or profits, of indies like Rough Trade or Domino Records. However, along with various other cottage industries across the country, and the world, it provides an invaluable service, supplying niche music tastes with the personal touch so lacking in the faceless multinationals that dominate the industry. In a time of great uncertainty for the music business, that might just be enough.
For more information, visit www.bsmrocks.com

By Roland ScarlettThe cheesy pop that defined the 90s is increasingly out of vogue and British music is searching for artistic credibility. Placing themselves at the forefront of this search are Hard-Fi. It is a mere two years since their happy-go-lucky, anthemic tunes propelled them to #1 in the album charts and secured them the accolade of a Mercury nomination. Despite all this, Hard-Fi are ‘maturing’ and the differences between Hard-Fi ancien and Hard-Fi nouveau become apparent on first sight of their new album.The ‘design’ of a plain yellow inlay with only the band’s name and the disclaimer “no cover art” was, according to drummer, Steve Kemp, no mere act of rebellion or publicity stunt. Rather, it was a “conscious decision to move away from the staid, boring art” record companies favour. In a time when album art is losing relevance, most frequently seen on a two inch ipod screen, Kemp believes Hard-Fi “had the bollocks to do something about it” and produce something bold. Peter Saville described it as “the white album of the digital age”. Kemp dismisses the widespread criticism of the music press.After the controversy comes the music; Once Upon A Time In The West sees the band’s original raw sound and poppy hooks being softened with the addition of strings and more solemn compositions. Though the band has changed much since their first album, they still deal in what Kemp would call “universal human emotions” of alienation, love and despair. Hard-Fi have ambition: they want to be an international band of the people. Kemp refers to Oasis’s ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’, a song to which “the man on the street thought ‘fucking hell that’s me’”. He hopes his music provokes the same reaction.Indeed, despite Kemp’s protestations otherwise, Hard-Fi’s second album almost strains itself to deal with international politics and the dangers of social exclusion. It almost seems that this second album is exaggerating what simply came naturally to the “chavs from Staines” the first time round. Will the band’s changing sound alienate their existing fans? Kemp doesn’t think so – the album is already #1. Still, as Hard-Fi have discovered from the controversy over their album cover, sometimes people prefer the familiar to bold, sweeping artistic statements or ‘digital age’ proclamations.

By Emma Butterfield**** I feel a certain affinity with Róisín Murphy, as she’s clearly a frustrated science undergraduate. Why else would she refer to oxytocin (a hormone implicated in pair bonding and mate selection) in the title track of the album? She lets slip her innermost thoughts again in ‘Primitive’, which is actually all about evolution. She’s obviously not trying to break America. ‘Primitive’ is also the cheesiest and most sincere chill-out track I’ve ever heard – it’s what you might expect of Engelbert Humperdinck if he was a female science teacher.‘Overpowered’ is stripped down to a ticking snare drum and a chirpy honking synthetic bassline, with her vocals dominating. The combination works best when she’s actually singing, and not pretending to be Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Parts of the album have a juicy 70’s soul sound that’s listenable, seriously tongue-in-cheek (I hope), and slightly at odds with the mundane electronica of the filler tracks. Surprisingly, her voice does better with the more challenging material, and warms up to the big declarations of ‘Tell Everybody’, by which point she’s exhorting us to tell everybody that she’s our baby. She’s clearly more interested in evolution than in feminism. This self-subjugation takes a slightly creepy tone by the final track ‘Scarlet Ribbons’, at which point she’s breathily whispering that she’ll always be our little girl, and do as we ask. Apparently this loyalty is due to the listener because he/we found a scarlet ribbon for her hair, rather than her Oedipus complex, but I’m not sure I believe her.‘Let me know’ is an unabashed booty call, set to a twanging funk with syncopated hand-claps – begging for sex never sounded so good. The clapping also features on ‘Dear Miami’, another lounge number which is so laid back that it doesn’t bother going anywhere for 3 minutes. She’s at her best when asserting herself vocally and lyrically – if she burnt her bra she’d be perfect.

 By Carl Cullinane 
***When is an album not an album? When it’s an agglomeration of an EP and some bonus tracks is certainly one answer, and the one which Montreal act Land of Talk offer in the form of Applause Cheer Boo Hiss. The EP was released in 2006 to much acclaim, and 3 new tracks have been added to the European release to bring it up to album length. Structurally, this does the record no favours, but it’s a strong collection of songs nonetheless.The album kicks off with the rollicking ‘Speak to Me Bones’, a propulsive crunchy riff allied to an aggressive melodic vocal. This combination is very much Land of Talk’s stock in trade. Female indie vocalists are ten a penny these days, but Lizzie Powell offers more rasp than honey. She is without doubt the band’s most potent weapon, settling comfortably in the Cat Power/ PJ Harvey tradition, if possibly too comfortably. There are moments here when Powell sounds more like Cat Power than Power herself.In second track ‘Sea Foam’ even the backing track sounds like You Are Free-era Cat Power. Derivative, yes, but it is done with enough brio to deflect such criticisms. ‘Summer Special’ rounds off a strong opening trio of songs, offering once again a striking vocal melody and no shortage of humour, as Powell looks down her nose at her surroundings: “Look at those girls/ So young, so young/ Still piss their pants.” Unfortunately, as the record goes on, the lack of variety starts to pall. The guitars keep crunching and Powell keeps howling. Of the extra tracks, while ‘Young Bridge’ offers a driving riff and ‘Dark Nature Places’ is pleasingly bittersweet, little new is brought to the table.
Applause Cheer Boo Hiss isn’t going to set the world alight, but it shows enough promise to indicate that Land of Talk have something to offer. They have an gift for melody and a freshness that has been lacking from much recent British indie rock.

As an applicant from an FE college to Oxford, I found some problems with James Lamming’s argument that many of the criticisms levelled at Oxford for failing to meet access targets are misplaced (“Where schools don’t have resources, we’ll be picking up the pieces“, last week). He stated that Oxford and OUSU are doing all that they can to encourage people from state school backgrounds to apply, and that any failures seen in the figures is a consequence of poor resources in schools and “bad government policy”.
While this is true to some degree, it releases OUSU from any obligation to look at the way it views access initiatives in the context of the university as a whole. There is no doubting the fantastic work that the access schemes in Oxford carry out, from the Oxford Access Scheme to the work of Target Schools and individual colleges; yet there is still room for some change. If the university argues that “talking to current students is helpful to pupils who want to know more”, then OUSU should lead the way.
The truth when it comes to access initiatives in Oxford is that too much disparity between them exists. The resources available to a college on an open day are whatever the JCR and MCR can muster, or whatever funding the school can provide. OUSU can offer only what is available within its budget, while the Access Office has more resources to offer, but is reliant on students having some knowledge of their existence and work.
OUSU should be an umbrella organisation that offers services and support to individual colleges, and this is no different when it comes to access schemes: there should be a focal point provided for colleges in terms of gathering information and best practice, whilst maintaining a close relationship with the work of the Access Office.
Although there is a dedicated Oxford admissions website, OUSU should look at providing information of its own for potential applicants. This could be in the form of an information pack that is sent to all those thinking of applying, clearly outlining what is entailed in the application process. This would be complemented by an OUSU admission website that will provide an accessible platform to find college alternative prospectuses and information. There is no substitute to hearing first hand accounts of current students, and OUSU is in the best possible place both to provide this and complement it with further schemes.
The misconceptions that exist concerning Oxford will always serve to dissuade certain people from applying, and while there is an argument that the university needs to work alongside teachers to rectify this, OUSU can also play a role in this respect. Simply expanding Target Schools will not fully alleviate issues over access. OUSU has to actively talk to students from Scotland, Northern Ireland, the East Midlands and North East, and not simply encourage them to apply, but ask why it is they don’t want to in the first place. Too often the assumption is made that the application process discourages students, but from working on regional conferences and in schools I found that issues range from funding concerns right through to moving away from home. OUSU needs to talk to those not wishing to apply and allay their fears through a comprehensive access strategy.
With the upcoming Student Advice Service reforms within OUSU, perhaps it is time that the position of Access and Academic Affairs was examined. The current remit for the position is enormous; not only does it require coordinating access schemes and open days, but there is also a heavy burden of casework and academic policy reports. It would make sense to divide the position into separate VPs as part of the ongoing reforms: one for access and another for academic affairs. This would ensure that ideas and policies are not obscured by worries in a conflicting area.
The current access schemes in Oxford are fantastic in their scope and work, but it is not enough to sit back and argue that it is the job of the schools to catch up. There is certainly work to be done alongside teaching staff, but greater centralisation and coordination, with a reformed OUSU at the forefront will go a long way to help this effort.

Ambition takes you places. Warwick University Students’ Union has two buildings which house seven bars, two clubs and a pub, a pizza outlet, a coffee shop, juice bar and a fish and chip shop. Due to campaigning it managed to secure £11m from the university to improve the buildings.
The two floors that OUSU occupies hosts one main conference room and a handful offices for the sabbatical team, the Oxford Student newspaper and Oxide Radio to work in. Scandalous in comparison.
Oddly for someone who was a JCR President and as a consequence went to OUSU council, I don’t think I heard any mention of a central student venue for the Student Union at the bi-weekly congregation of Oxford’s most politically active; which is troubling because such a venue is key to any attempt to solve OUSU’s problems.
OUSU needs a new venue which hosts several conference rooms, large office space, a bar, a club and more space for the Oxford Student and Oxide Radio.
My support for such a venue is based on the number of bops for undergraduates and graduates or charity events that our student union could hold in a new venue. It’s based on the increase in revenue from a bar that would benefit from NUS discounted drinks or from the income generated through shops paying rent to have access to the site and based on the ease of availability of rooms that clubs and societies will have for meetings and events.
My support is also related to welfare. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve negotiated past drug dealers, intimidating groups of people and abusive squatters to get into OUSU towers.
Surely negotiating through such obstacles is pretty intimidating for a first-year who has been the victim of sexual harassment or unfair rustication? Why should we as students tolerate a building that barely meets the absolute minimum required for the safe exit and entry of the disabled?
The usual comeback is that getting such a venue is too difficult and expensive, but that simply isn’t good enough. Yes, it will be difficult and expensive. But that’s why a new, well-publicised campaign needs to be launched by OUSU to fight for facilities fit for our student union. Getting a venue is a huge project that can’t be tucked away for a rainy day: it needs 110% commitment and a committee comprised of students, university staff and businesspeople to realise this goal. Last year, while informally chatting about this idea with last year’s OUSU business team, the now-abandoned Bar Med near Filth seemed to fit the bill: there’d be plenty of space for the sabbatical team to work with, enough space to fit the accommodation office (which is currently housed in Summertown, not the easiest of places to get to). There’d also be enough space for a bar and a club.
With the university planning on raising a billion and on embarking on a series of major building projects, now is the time to seize this moment in order to get the facilities that students at other universities take for granted.

The first time I played a careers “game” in year eleven, I got policeman. Last week the Careers Service asked whether I’d considered something in human resources or financial management. I reckon producing is somewhere between the two: a constant struggle to keep everyone happy (or at least, to keep everyone talking), to quieten down directors with over-zealous ideas for Shakespeare festivals or re-writing Pirandello, to con the techies into thinking we really could not survive without them, to convince cast that putting up a poster in the bar really will make the show sell out.
It’s a curious old muddle of jobs that comes our way, and often the most crucial are in the mix somewhere: Will Young will have already witnessed the strings attached to staging anything at the Union (and appears to be succeeding where Matt Trueman failed), and already Ben Monks and Chris Wooton appear to have been screwed over by the North Wall (what an idea for a student venue that was). Finally Hilary’s Playhouse producers are rumoured to have talked the management out of the patently preposterous idea of a student show at the Playhouse in 1st week.
That said, we have surprisingly little to moan about at times. The job alleged to be the loneliest and most stressful in the whole of this thespy world is as undersubscribed as ever, but that’s not to say that new blood isn’t coming through – Luke Who co-producing the Alice project? A Matt, a Dan and a David also feature on this term’s Producers list it seems…
Perhaps it has something to do with the (self-awarded?) perks of the job. There’s no thrill quite like seeing it all come together under your watch, with a wry smile in the knowledge of what’s really happened backstage: the cast going to bed or coming to blows, the techie tendencies to constant binging and black-out, and everybody to facebooking their way into future shows (Oh! the number of people who want to be Alice…) And all that’s aside from when you get a trip to Edinburgh or even New York to boot — was Razzmataz anything but Will Young’s swipe-card to C Venues? Is an Oxford Revue tour to the US any more than a holiday? Probably not, in both cases — but we’ve got to make our grip on the purse strings count for something.