My Philosophy: Mylo
Interview by Julian Baggini for The Philosopher's Magazine
Around 12 hours before we met, Mylo had been headlining at an East London warehouse gig, performing a DJ set with the MySpace sensation Lily Allen as his warm-up act. The night before that he'd been doing pretty much the same in Ibiza. Such is Mylo's life since his debut album Destroy Rock and Roll became an undergound, and then a very much overground, hit in 2004.
Flashback six or seven years and it's hard to believe that Mylo and Myles MacInnes, to give him his real name, are one and the same person. As an Oxford undergraduate reading philosophy and psychology at Brasenose College, MacInnes tells me, “I wasn't particularly into music or going out, I was just quite obsessed with my subject. I also had some ear problems at the time and my doctor told me to avoid playing music and loud places.”
As Mylo, MacInnes has become one of the hottest and most critically-acclaimed acts in electronic music. But it is philosophy, not music, that's in his blood.
“It kind of runs in my family,” he told me over alfresco lunch at a gastropub in an unseasonably warm North London. “My great uncle was JL Austin and my grandfather was Stephen Toulmin.”
Still only 28, MacInnes obviously never met the great Austin, who led Oxford's ordinary language school in the post-war years. “I do remember going to see the Ryles for Christmas though. I remember this magical apartment in north Oxford where everything was red, which was probably just a Christmassy glow. They were really nice people.” Although only five or six at the time and so presumably not familiar with the import of Gilbert Ryle's classic The Concept of Mind , he was aware that his grandparents were “quite proud to have their acquaintance.” [READ MORE]
Mylo - "Drop the Pressure"
Revisiting a Bleak Album to Plumb Its Dark Riches
by BEN SISARIO for The New York Times
Lou Reed refers to it with an understatement that borders on dismissal.
“It was just another one of my albums that didn’t sell,” he said dryly at a West Village cafe recently.
But get him talking a little — and a little talk is all one can expect from Lou Reed — and it becomes clear that “Berlin,” his bleak, Brechtian song cycle from 1973, which he is performing in full for the first time at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn for four nights beginning tomorrow, is a treasured high point in a what has been a lifelong project of pushing at the aesthetic boundaries of rock ’n’ roll.
“It’s a great album,” he said. (He has also called it a masterpiece.) “I admire it. It’s trying to be real, to apply novelists’ ideas and techniques into a rock format.” He mentioned William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., Allen Ginsberg and Raymond Chandler as literary models.
“But it sounds so pretentious saying that.” he added. “It just sounds too B.A. in English. Which I have. So there you go.”
Mr. Reed has gathered a starry group of friends to help turn “Berlin” into a semitheatrical, multimedia performance. Julian Schnabel has created sets and will be filming the show, and Mr. Schnabel’s daughter Lola has shot film scenes with the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, which will be projected onto the stage. Bob Ezrin, who produced the original album, will be doing musical direction with Hal Willner. The indie darling Antony will appear with a children’s choir and will also sing backup with Sharon Jones, queen of the local retro-soul scene...[READ MORE]
Lou Reed - "Caroline Says II"
Sunday Smorgasboard
Arcade Fire - "Five Years" (David Bowie cover, live @ 1st Ave in Minneapolis)
Spoon - "Jonathan Fisk"
Deftones - "Knife Party"
Division Day - "There Is No Telling"
Pinback - "Fortress"
Imperial Teen - "Million Dollar Man"
Johnny Cash - "When the Man Comes Around"
Thom Yorke - "Black Swan"