The Alarm Clock

What is an album? That is the question I would like to examine in this post. I was lying in bed last night with the room pitch black except for the time, displayed in bright green light emitting diodes, seemingly suspended in mid-air (my alarm clock is black). I'm something of a day-dreamer and my most common way of drifting off is to imagine myself being interviewed by an enthusiastic Jonathan Ross and plugging my band's latest album. Just as I was about to start one of these day-dreams (well, night-dreams, but I wasn't actually falling asleep), I began to think about my alarm clock, and a vision came to me...

(Ekkeko (that's my band) finish playing, to wild applause; I walk over to JR while the rest of the band go back to the green room)
JR (standing up to shake my hand): Matt, good to see you! That's a great song!
MB (with mock sincerity): Mr. Ross.
(We sit down)
JR: So, Matt...
MB: Yes.
JR: You've gone too far.
MB (grinning): I don't know what you mean.
JR: Ekkeko, and I'm speaking to all of you now...
(Band appear on screen in green room, also grinning sheepishly)
JR: ...there is a line when it comes to being silly and artistic and infuriating, and you have crossed it, with this!
(Ross produces an odd-looking red-and-green alarm clock from under his desk and slams it down in mock anger)
JR: What is this?
MB: That's our ninth album.
(Nervous laughter from audience; I press on)
MB: It's called 'In A Month Of Sundaes' and it's out on Monday the 14th on Hazeceterea Records...
JR (interrupting): Matthew Bradshaw, it is an alarm clock, it is not an album!
MB: Why is it not an album?
JR: Because it's a bloody alarm clock! They are two completely different concepts!
MB (I produce a CD case from inside my jacket): Right, this is 'OK Computer' by Radiohead. Would you accept that this is an album?
JR (wrong-footed): Yes....yes.
MB: OK, good.
(I open the case and place the CD, shiny-side-up, on the table. I reach across and place Jonathan's glass of water on top of the CD)
MB: Now would you accept that it is a drinks mat?
JR (with mock exasperation): Yes, I suppose I would, but that doesn't make your alarm clock into an album, does it?
MB: No, but it does show that an album can be more than one thing. I mean, what qualities would you say an object has to have to be classed as an album?
JR: Why are you playing silly buggers?
MB: Just answer the question! What makes an album an album?
JR: OK, well, music. You need maybe forty minutes or an hour of music, on a CD or a vinyl or a tape, but not an alarm clock!
MB: Why not an alarm clock? It's just another, perhaps slightly strangely-shaped, format. I mean, it's a lot more tangible than a download and they seem to count.
JR: But does it have an album's worth of music on it?
MB: What is music?
JR: Oh for fuck's sake!
(Audience laughs)
JR: Is there a button somewhere on here that if I press it will play your new album?
MB: Well, you set the alarm, and when it goes off, it plays for up to 25 minutes which, I believe, makes it eligible under UK rules as an album.
JR: Right, so what does it sound like?
MB: Here...
(I press a few buttons and the alarm starts to beep annoyingly; the audience laughs)
JR: So it just does that for twenty-five minutes?
(The beeping continues)
MB: Yeah. What do you think? Is it your thing?
(Beeping still going)
JR: It's...oh, how do you turn this bloody thing off?!
(JR bashes the alarm clock until it stops)
JR: No, it's not my thing, it sounds like R2D2's had an error! Are you serious about this? Why have you done it?
MB: Well, I've always been interested in definitions. I mean, you go on Wikipedia, you see people have very definitely categorised Radiohead's albums, like 'this is their first studio album', 'this is their second studio album', etcetera. But who made that judgement about what an album is? I guess with those it was pretty straightforward, but I wanted to see how far we could stretch it. Like, you're a film geek, when you saw Casino Royale being advertised as 'Bond 21', did you not think 'hang on, they're not counting 'Never Say Never Again'? I mean, it was made by a different studio but it had Sean Connery in it. Sometimes the definitions aren't that easy to make.
JR: OK, so your core aim for this...'album'....is to get it recognised as 'Ekkeko's ninth studio album?
MB: Well, we want to see how far we can push it. I'd love it if NME reviewed it.
JR: What would they say, do you think?
MB: I don't know, I guess that's what's interesting. Also I want to see how well it sells, whether it's allowed into the album charts if it sells enough, all that stuff. Plus we've put quite a lot of thought into the look of the thing, we properly sat down and designed this like we would the cover art for any other album.
JR: Do you think your fans will be pissed off?
MB: Well, we did think they might be. But...
(I pull another CD case from my jacket)
MB: ...I think this might appease them.
JR (in a mock fed-up-with-all-this voice): Is that by any chance your tenth studio album?
MB: Oh no, we haven't even started writing that yet. This is an album by a side-project of ours called Okekke.

And at that point my night-dream dissolved somewhat. I began to imagine the arguments between Wikipedia users about how to define the Ekkeko alarm clock and the Okekke album. I imagine there would be a dedicated band of Ekkeko purists who would maintain that the alarm clock was an album because I had said so and the Okekke album, whilst very interesting in its own right, was effectively irrelevant when it came to discussing Ekkeko's canon of work. I imagine there would also be sensible people who would move that we were indeed playing silly buggers and that the Okekke album should be recognised as Ekkeko's ninth studio album whilst the alarm clock's Wikipedia page should have a grudging footnote that acknowledged the band's stance that it should be considered an album. Then of course there would be those who accepted the two works as our ninth and tenth studio albums respectively (we would release them a day apart in order to add fuel to this minority interpretation) and those who, perhaps most correctly in an official, UK-chart-rules sense, would accept neither as Ekkeko albums and would wait until the 'tenth' album was released and christen that the ninth.

The real twist, though, is this (let me now step into the future for a paragraph, simply to make the grammar a little tidier). Like Kid A and Amnesiac, the Okekke album had a twin. Whilst recording the back-to-basic, stripped-down rock tracks for Okekke's album, our main focus was actually on writing and recording perhaps the most innovative concept album of the 21st century. Classical scores were played out through warped guitars and confused synths. Jazz drumming pulled the tracks to edge of madness and back again. The lyrical poetry that framed the instruments' melodies and harmonies cut through politics, philosophy and religion to leave only love, despair and haunting beauty. But the world was not ready for this album. Hype would have destroyed it. Only if it arrived, fully formed in the listener's ears, unmolested by reviews and TV adverts and endless promotion would it make sense.

And so, about two years on from that interview on Jonathan Ross, at 7am GMT, every Ekkeko alarm clock across the world sprang to life. A strangely beautiful robotic voice counted 'un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith', and the album began.

The musical community didn't know what to do. NME were forced to amend their original review of the album, upping it from one star to five. The Mercury Music Prize panel awarded a special, retrospective prize to the album that would easily have won two years before had it not been for the fact that everyone had assumed the twenty-five minutes of beeping was the only musical content of the alarm clock. The album charts were forced to very carefully change the wording of their rules to allow the new surge of demand for 'In A Month Of Sundaes' to be represented. And in a studio somewhere in England, Ekkeko took a short break from recording their tenth studio album and allowed themselves to feel very smug.