Hair Relief (Manzine)

Sunday, 14 March 2010 21:19

Here's a recent titbit I wrote on the furtive and possibly made-up phenomenon of 'hair relief' for Manzine, an intelligent and satirical new men's magazine run by British GQ contributing ed Kevin Braddock. I don't normally write for (or rate) gent's magazines but this one is worth checking out (new issue comes with an illustration by the inimitable Ralph Steadman).

I am not a mac-wearing beautician-botherer. Let’s just get that out of the way immediately. I don’t head to coiffure shops deliberately in search of sexual ecstasy or sensual titillation. I go, like most men, to get my barnet chopped. But I don’t think I’m alone when I say that sometimes – and it really is only sometimes – there’s an erotic charge underlying the hairdressing experience.

I’m obviously not talking about getting a randy hand-job from some comb-and-scissor wielding temptress. I’m talking about a more subtle type of arousal: a bit of light and loose trouser movement; a mysterious twitching amidst the undergrowth. Like I said, it doesn’t happen often but it did a couple of weeks ago, and in Berlin, of all places.

It was mid-week, sometime after lunch. I walked past the salon and, utterly on a whim, decided to try for a trim. The shop was quiet. There was just one other customer - a plump middle-aged woman sat in a chair, her scalp an iridescent bloom of plastic and chemical paste - and the lady behind the counter, who happened to be a bit of a stunner.

Tall and lithe, she wore tight fitting clothes (all black) that accentuated a wonderfully proportioned set of feminine curves. Her face was elfin-pretty (complete with retrousse nose) yet she had that commanding presence common to many German women. She responded to my presence and request for a haircut with a distracted twist of her mouth as she bent her head to the open diary on her desk.

She nodded, pointing towards the wash-basins at the other end of the salon: “You want wash also?”

Yes. Yes I did. To be honest her nonchalance was already giving me a strange kind of horn. When her gleaming, chatoyant nails dug into my skull I felt hot silvery shivers of sensuality run down my spine. I realised, as I often do at these moments, how strangely intimate the haircut experience can be.

I closed my eyes as her long, thin fingers worked deep and slow into my cranium. I could smell her cheap perfume. My brain locked into the background music, a brittle, glossy combination of writhing beats and clipped, saccharine vocals. My body began to tingle and myriad seductive scenarios ran through my mind. I slyly opened one eye. The strategically placed mirror in front of me duplicated the girl at just the right angle. I could watch her from the side and admire her curves as she worked her magic.

A slight smirk played on her lips, like she was aware of my surreptitious surveillance. The minx!

My breath quickened as her hands started to move down towards my chest. But no, no. It was never going to go that far. Just my overactive imagination. For all its lascivious ambience, this was a hairdressing salon and not a brothel. But the subtle similarities were nonetheless real. The erotic sensation of having a total stranger play intimately with your hair; the thrill of having a female hand gently (but firmly) move your head to the desired angle; the unavoidable dry swallow as a breast lightly brushes against your shoulder.

Clearly hair relief and hand relief are different things. But in the curious realm of gentlemanly titillation there’s something to be said for having someone chopping one out on your behalf.

New book: The Dub Diaspora

Monday, 01 February 2010 20:25

Somewhat excitingly, I just signed a contract for a new music book. It's part of a new series being put together by Reaktion Books, entitled Reverberations.

The series offers a "new perspective on the significance of music to a wider cultural and historical understanding of particular times and places. By focusing on the relationship between artists, performers, music and place—rather than strictly biographical or chronological histories—the series allows writers with backgrounds in social and cultural history, ethnomusicology, literary studies, philosophy and geography to develop bold and original thematic approaches to a wide range of subjects that will reveal the ways in which music has, through the variety of genres and traditions, often expressed a strong sense of place."

More specifically, my pitch was to trace the dub 'virus' from its origins in Kingston studios across the cities and places where it has mutated into various guises and made an impact: hip hop and disco in New York; techno and glitch-dub in Berlin; drum & bass, trip hop and dubstep in the U.K. The book will also look at dub's profound role in creating the remix, hence the title - Remixology: Tracing the Dub Diaspora.

The manuscript will be delivered in September 2010 and (probably) published in early 2011; I'll be posting more info as the project takes shape.

Brrrlin

Thursday, 28 January 2010 22:32