Hit The North: AFFAIRS OF THE ART

The Manic Street Preachers, famously, didn’t have the nerve to quit after their first album – which is what they had promised. But when Joe Greene states that no matter how good it gets, or how successful it becomes, his music project, Documenta, is living on borrowed time, there’s a steeliness in his demeanour that suggests you’d better chose your wreath in advance.

It’s not like he’s ever made a secret of this. The first Documenta album came out bearing the title Drone Pop 3, the next Drone Pop 2. So the one currently being planned and plotted doesn’t really have anywhere else to go.
“Yes,” he laughs, “that’ll be that. In recorded terms anyway, Documenta will be wound up.”
Which, when you hear how good Drone Pop 3 and 2 are, may strike you as crazily self-defeating. Although when you also hear Joe’s rationale, it may conversely strike you as eminently dignified and sane.
“I never wanted Documenta to be a ‘band’, never wanted it to go along the traditional path. I wanted it to sit outside of all that and have a finite lifespan. Funnily enough, restricting it has liberated it in a strange way. When you know you only have a certain amount of time, you try to fit as much in as you can.”
A schoolboy Spacemen 3 obsessive, Joe’s ongoing obsession with the motorik end of the psychedelic spectrum is evident in every recorded moment to date. The two Drone Pop records provide a masterclass in restrained soulfulness and slow-blossoming beauty. For all their artful minimalism (“I like the strange things that happen when you ask people to play the same chord for six minutes. The weird textures that appear out of nowhere”), these are albums brimming with passion.
“I’m conscious that making music is a real privilege,” Joe explains. “Others see it as a hobby. I’m not like that. I was reading recently about Russian punk bands stealing the acetate form hospital X-ray machines. It’s the only way they can afford to press their own records. I find that really humbling and inspirational – that people are still driven to those lengths to make music. I think you look around at popular music these days and it’s become the preserve of the privileged again. I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s background, but if music is only being made by a certain group of people, then the whole thing is going to suffer. It’s heartbreaking to see sections of the community unable to make music unless their parents subsidise them.”
It’ll be a cause for selfish mourning when this brilliant project winds up, but the underlying integrity of the concept means that when the last note sounds on Drone Pop, we should crack open the corks and toast Documenta as a brilliant success.
“There’s a conservatism to popular culture these days that’s permeated deeply,” Joe rues. “People who make music seem to be preoccupied by commercial concerns. You should be painting a picture, not painting a wall. There are too many painters and decorators out there – not enough artists.”