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.

Targets are to Labour what alcohol and age are to the Lib Dems: a fatal weakness. From targets to cut NHS waiting times to inflation targets, they seem to have caused the country nothing but trouble. But the higher education sector seems to have been hit even harder than most.
The government aims to get 50% of all young people into higher education by 2010, and although there seems no hope of actually achieving that goal, universities might actually die trying. Admissions offices are swamped, and if public exams really are getting easier, they have no way of sifting the good from the unintelligent.
The government’s solution has been to inflate the importance of public examinations. A new A* grade at A-level for those who attain 90% or above will have been  introduced by 2010. Further to this, Edexcel is now suggesting a results analysis service which offers students, and potentially university admissions officers, full feedback on every exam question they answer.
In the face of accusations of elitism, Oxford is presented with specific difficulties. It cannot reverse Labour’s decision to put more pressure on sixth-form students by focusing on exam results. But it is obvious to everyone that independent school pupils do disproportionately better in exams than those at state school. The University needs to find a way to ignore results at a time when the government is trying to highlight them.
Everyone, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) to the Times Good University Guide, recognises that Oxford is trying hard to widen access. But as our News Focus demonstrates, these good intentions have not so far been translated into a significant improvement in admissions statistics.
A Guardian article of 20 September reports that one third of Oxbridge students come from only 100 UK schools. Worse still, at Oxbridge’s five top feeder schools, four in ten students are successful in their application. You wont find a don in Oxford who doesn’t wish things were different, but the change has not yet been made.
Can Oxford ignore the money factor by sticking with tactics which have already failed it for twenty years? As the IPPR has only recently confirmed, they aren’t working. It issued a harsh but long overdue assessment this week, commenting that Oxford and Cambridge “will be judged on their attainment and not their effort”. It’s all very well promising to widen access, but targets are unmet and will remain so until at least 2016. By that time, a generation of university students will already be national leaders.
At first, interviews seem like a good way to level the field. By coming face-to-face with a candidate, tutors can try to bypass the unfair extra training paid for by some parents of private school candidates. But the advantage remains: if private school pupils can be trained to write essays in a way that appeals to higher educational styles, can they be trained to talk in the same way?
Many college interviews are designed to make 16- and 17-year-olds cry; if they don’t, the test is passed.
At the moment, positive discrimination is also at interviewers’ discretion, turning some colleges into state school refuges while others gain a reputation as public school havens. Perhaps it’s time to make affirmative action a positive policy at the Admissions Office. It seems to be working, as a temporary measure, to eliminate corporate and institutional racism. When inequalities are evened out, the less urgent issue of discrimination against private school pupils will reassert itself as an injustice.

By Sam PritchardThere is not enough new writing performed in Oxford. Mounting a production of a play written by a student is a demanding challenge in a programme dominated by popular classics and heavyweights. The frantic speed involved getting a play into performance doesn’t leave much time for the development and exploration of a fresh script. However, it is a worthwhile undertaking, as The One That Got Away shows.
The play takes a look at the character of Henry (Satbir Sky Singh), an old man whose comic encounters on a park bench are not all that they seem. What seems to be a farce based on innuendo and misunderstanding turns into something altogether more tragic as we discover more about Henry’s actual circumstances.
There are good things about Cathy Thomas’ script, but this it is a long way away from the finished product. The piece has a winning and engaging quality in its comedy and a desire to invest its central character with a more serious interiority. It takes its lead from the tragi-comic approach of a play like Anthony Neilson’s The Wonderful World of Dissocia. However, it has none of the sharp comedy and genuine pathos achieved in that show.
I felt vaguely as though a dressing up box of tired jokes and impressions had been emptied all over me. Monty Python voices, melodramatic parody and hyperactive children all featured. There is also a puzzling sequence in which a spy mistakes Henry for an informant; I initially took it to be a joke about gay pick-ups, which goes to show how deeply anachronistic much of the comedy is in this piece.
This is a play that has been badly served by the process of its development. It all has the feel of something rushed, squeezed in between a series of other projects. The cast are energetic and engaged, but at the moment all they can do is sketch out a series of possibilities that the writing opens up. The direction is frankly sloppy and inconsistent. It shows none of the care and attention that a play in development should merit.
My hunch is that The One That Got Away could be an ambitious evening of theatre. However for an audience it is a mixture of painful birth pangs and frustrated potential. You should support it, but you’ll also have to puzzle out what kind of play it really is.Dir. Steve Lomon
Burton Taylor, 9.30pm
4th Week

I’ve never been a fan of the word “admissions”. Entry to a fairground is an admission. The red-faced explanation you make to the A&E duty nurse, as you recount how that got there, is an admission. That getting there in the first place: that, too, was an admission.

 And in evoking notions of pain, embarrassment and fairground folly, the phrase is also the perfect description of the Oxford interview process.

 It’s my aversion, nay, dread of the word that has caused me to never step foot in the University’s Admissions centre on Little Clarendon Street. I’m willing to overlook the fact that it looks like a run-down Thomas Cook; what I worry about is walking into some Admissions Anonymous session. “Hi, my name’s Bradley and I’ve been addicted to crack [colloquial term for UCAS Track] for three months now…”

 I don’t think many people share my irrational fear of the word. I doubt that it is the main reason for state schools’ underrepresentation in Oxford. The job of James Lamming, the Student Union’s access guru, would be pretty easy if it were.

 No, there are two entirely unetymological reasons why Oxford is overrun with smug columnists with double-barrelled surnames and a penchant for words like “unetymological”.

 Firstly, and to the detriment of everyone in Oxford who has even the slightest tendency to regionalist ridicule, too few people with easily-mocked accents are applying here.

 And then there are the lamentable practices of these tutors, who insist on applying their years of expertise in picking the candidates who show the most promise and who will give them the most pleasure (OK, least pain) to teach.

 Luckily, the change required isn’t as drastic as some fear. All that is required is a standard Oxford response. Namely paperwork.

 To avoid tutors exercising their good judgement, the Oxford Application Form (OAF – you couldn’t make it up) should be updated to reflect the realities of modern funny-accented Britain. Hit fifty points and you’re into Merton. Twenty and they might spare you a room at Harris Manchester.
For example: Which of these groups might you be interested in joining at Oxford?

 – Oxford University Labour Club (+5 points)
– OU Conservative Association (-10)
– OU Polo Club (-100)
– OU Mugging Grannies To Pay Tuition Fees Society (+15)
– Cherwell (-10,000)

 Perhaps the interview format could be adjusted slightly, just to ensure that you really can’t play polo and you really can mug grannies. (The techniques are surprisingly similar.)

 But it’s exactly that human touch in the interview process that you can’t beat. (Well, that tutor touch.) I’d take twenty minutes in front of a tweed-jacketed nutcase over application form nonsense any day. Besides, tutors would sooner take part in a mass Macarena than be replaced by forms that do a worse job than them.

 Of course we can make the ordeal more friendly and approachable for those not used to dreaming spires and the like. You know, T-shirts with “Hi, I’m Dr Smith, no question’s too stupid”. That said, the freshlings will be in for a shock at their first tutorial.

 But that’s it. Once the myth that Oxonians are hard-working no-mates is dispelled and once the world is convinced that academics are fluffier than blow-dried Care Bears, we can do no more.
Yet more is what is being asked of us by ministers, who want every university to financially and managerially support a city academy or trust school. I can’t think of a worse precedent to set (unless they asked us to, say, kill someone).

 First of all, have they seen how this University is governed? Would you trust your children with the Vice-Chancellor?

 Secondly, where do we draw the line? Or are we going to have to fix everything for the government, right back to child poverty and social inequality, where this mess began?

 Much as it hurts, we must firmly refuse to clear it up: we’ve done all we can.