The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills

The banal doesn't sit well with fiction. The novel insists, too often, on action of one kind or another. It is left to theatre - "Waiting for Godot" perhaps - or comedy, "Viz" or "Early Doors", to find an artistic mode for the passing of the days. Occasionally attempts like Sylvia Smith's "Misadventures" have not been well received. Yet banality is one of the tropes - perhaps the main trope - at the heart of Magnus Mills' is fiction. Perhaps its because most of his characters are workers of one sort or another that this is the case, although in his latest, "The Forensic Records Society", the whole people who actually work are George and Alice, the licensee and barmaid of the pub where the majority of the (in)action takes place.

Two record collecting nerds would sit round each other's house, listening in turn to three records of the other's choice, an unspoken set of rules meaning that their comments on each were of the minimum. They were beyond taste, seeing that as merely opinion; yet tacitly they shared certain values. I'm reminded of when I was a teenager and three of us would come back from Birmingham laden with records and the rule was that we had to listen to the other's purchases, however much we hated them.

James, the leader of the pair, has a plan, that he suggests to the narrator, as his willing foil, that they should start a Forensic Records Society at their nearby pub on a Monday night. They do so, and gradually, draw in other blokes (always blokes), to their Monday ritual. Like early Christians or prototype Marxists, their club develops rules, and is both rigorous in the applying of them, and solemn in the seriousness of their purpose. Time passes in a vacuum, regardless of how many records they play it is always a surprise when last orders is called.

On ejecting one person from the club for arriving too late they find that he has set up a rival - a "confessional" records club, on the next night. Infiltrating this night they find it is very different. That people confess their feelings brought on by a particular record, and pay £5 for the privilege; it is attended by a mixed crowd, women included, and the leader becomes a bit of an icon.  It's like Simon Bates' "Our Tune" mixed with "The Matrix."

In the mean time, the pettiness of James' rules causes disquiet amongst the members, even as they turn up to listen to classic 7" singles. The song titles are planted throughout the book without explanation, so we too can almost become members of the club. There's a debate going on about the "perfect" song - not because of artistic merit but because it lasts for exactly three minutes, the "three minute pop song" being more a thing of legend than reality. This is the kind of thing that gets the men who attend this club excited.

Our narrator, common to many of Mill's characters, is unworldy whilst having a highly developed sense of his own perceptions. He slowly comes to realise that James is seeing Alice, the barmaid, who nonetheless remains incredibly frosty with himself. She has, it turns out, been singer on a very rare demo single, and the plot of the novel - if there is one - swings around this being heard. Alice, in her turn, has strong views on the narrator, describing him as someone who  doesn't like music.

The humour in "The Forensic Records Society" is in how Mills, as ever, works wonders on a tiny, restricted canvas, and draws out of it all its comic possibilities. The uncertain time keeping of the meetings is part of it. In Magnus Mills' world even physics can bend to the comic possibilities of the narrative.

Things come to a head of sorts, when a 3rd rival organisation, playing records that are more "meaningful", comes into existence. There's quite a few nice digs at the world of the record collector in this narcissism of small differences, from those who fetishise the object, to those who want the innocence of the classic jukebox 45. Amongst the many records listed, there are rap and ska and indie and classic rock and soul, but not much room for ABBA or house music or anything too modern. Even an avid record collector such as myself only recognised about two/thirds of the titles.

Its a short novel, but more packed than the above description can give a sense of, since in talking about the banal and the unimportant, there's clearly bigger things going on here. One reviewer calls it Animal Farm "with much better songs", but I always think Mills is less interested in metaphor, than in the small systems that exist within our everyday mundane society, such as the rules of the forensic records society, or the maintenance of headway that bus drivers pursue in a previous of his books. This fondness for an enclosed, regulated society, and what happens when the rules are broken or not fit for purpose is a way of exploring how men (and it is always men, the "love interest" like Alice, is hardly there at all) negotiate the world. That the world is not quite the one we perceive, is part of their charm.

This latest novel seems the closest in many ways to his debut "Restraint of Beasts", and like that its ending is uncertain, and ambiguous. The return to an every day setting after some of the more fantastical or out of time settings of recent novels is a welcome return to his home turf. It's one of his best.

Art Currents

At the start of March I was in Oxford for the first time, ostensibly to see the Jeff Koons show at the Ashmolean, though that was really just my excuse to go down, as I was off work for a week, and needed a trip away. I have always liked Koons, as more than any other contemporary artist he seemed to embody the times in which he creates. Sure, he's a late pop-artist but what he always brought to the table, as good artists do I think, is an unabashed sense of the work itself. Post-modern times require post-modern artists and Koons came at it without shame. His best work, some of which is shown here, really does stand the test of time. His balloon rabbit, made from stainless steel, is an iconic image - I used it as a cassette cover as far back as 1994 - but in the presence of it, you realise how good it really is, unphotographable in a sense, or rather, its reflective surface will reflect back the photographer, so its impossible to get a "clean" picture of it; also, being a 3 dimensional object, its appearance on postcards and the like reduces it to something less than it is, a flat Warhol surface, rather than the Oldenberg readymade that it is more akin to. Similarly, his floating basketballs are things of delicate wonder. You can see where Hirst got his ideas from maybe, though here we get the title "One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank" rather than "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living." Koons doesn't like the word kitsch to describe his work, as that's an arbitration on taste, and in many ways, his work has always been about stripping back the pretension of art to being - like Warhol's soapboxes and soup tins - something that you can imagine anywhere.

The exhibition at the Ashmolean has this first room of Koons classics, which are great to see, but do somewhat diminish what is there besides. The centrepiece of the second room is "Balloon Venus" which sees Koons playing similar games of reappropriation with "antiquities". This dialogue with art is why the show is at the Ashmolean, though oddly, its not really the Ashmolean's art that is being discussed. The superstar artist of course can plonk his franchise anywhere in the world for a few months before moving on. This room of "antiquities" - paintings scribbled on, or large scale recreations of other's works, seems more crass, though they are as bold as what came before. Its clearly monied art that exists because of that money. Its impressive but somewhat lacking in either wonder or humour. I preferred the third room, the Gazing Ball series again finds recreated classical sculptures and the like, but has a blue glazing ball added to each - these, apparently, can be found in the mid-west, as ornaments outside peoples houses, little baubles which you can look in and be reflected back in. They reminded me of the sort of art you see in Dr. Who, in a museum of the future, where Mona Lisa's and David's have been given a SF makeover. Yet, this isn't his purpose - the glazing balls are an American commonplace, which doesn't make them work quite as well in a British context where they just appear exotic.

So it was a small, but interesting show. In the video accompanying it, Koons, looking less like the Anthony Robbins/Jim Carrey of old and a more groomed Nicholas Cage, or perhaps more accurately, a well-heeled business school professor, talks about how having a family changes his views on things. There are no sex games with Cicciolina in this show then. The Guardian review has plenty of pictures, but I agree with the conclusion really, its a show of surface, not much more.

Back in Manchester I managed to get along to Niamos centre, an old ballroom in Hulme which has its own grandeur and is now back in use as a community-run venue. There was a music conference, Unconference, with the band PINS performing alongside others. They have changed lineup since I last saw them, and added more electronica to their garage pop, but it as a fine gig regardless, despite the "suits" in the audience not being as lively as their usual crowds.

I then got over to Bury Art Gallery, where one of my favourite local artists, Sarah Hardacre was exhibiting as part of the "Architecture Now" exhibition. Her prints and collages appear alongside cardboard building designs by Maurice Shapero. I've usually only seen one or two of Sarah's pieces at a time, but its instructive to see a much larger group of them for even if the format is unchanging - seventies porn pictures juxtaposed over urban scenes - what she does with them changes a lot, and seeing a whole group, with some Bury specific ones, made me smile more than the overinflated Koons work did.

Smiling was the order of the day at the third show I've seen recently - with Cherry Tennyson's solo show at Paradise Works. Half of Two Days of Everything brings her work from out of the studio and into the gallery; more readymades, more collages, but here with artefacts rather than paintings. The work feels fully realised, with aspects that are surreal or abstract, but with an impact that seems more subtle than that might apply. These works seem quite architectural in their own way; quite "made".  Its on for the following 2 Saturdays, so well worth a visit if you can find the time.