Thanks to Emelie H for sending me an English translation of that Swedish interview. Turns out it was me behind the ‘cute and puppy’ mention. Here’s an excerpt:
Fuzzy Dreamy Pop With Fosca
The British indie pop group Fosca has released a new record on a Swedish label. Fria Tidningen met the band’s frontman, the writing dandy Dickon Edwards, over a glass of wine.
Emily Dean at Boyz Magazine has described the British pop band Fosca’s frontman Dickon Edwards as Andy Warhol meets Oscar Wilde meets Quentin Crisp. It is a good description. In Mr Edwards, both Warhol’s artistic skill, Wilde’s sarcasms and Crisp’s quick and philosophic reflections seem to be observable.
I meet Dickon Edwards at the Crystal Plaza just before the bands gig at Landet by Telefonplan in Stockholm. He is radiating a brisk calm, where he is sitting with crossed legs reclined in an armchair, sipping white wine. The singer, guitarist and writing dandy Edwards is dressed in a pinstriped suit today and is convinced that trainers should only be worn on the track. Sophistication and reflection personified.
The theme of the new album is the outsider, the person outside the norms. Edwards describes the record as “cute and puppy”. Cute and puppylike, and with prominent guitars.
– But it is guitars without rock and sweat. It is not heavy metal and it is not the Rolling Stones. The guitar contributes to an organic sound. It is fuzzy dreamy pop.
Dickon Edwards has, in connection with the release, published a book with a selection of his lyrics, poems and diary entries.
– It contains texts that I wrote ten years ago, but also later work. You develop, you’re a walking cemetry of the former you. The book is a monument, a compression of everything that is me. And as I said, you are mortal; you won’t for instance have time to travel everywhere you want to. But with a book your words can travel around the world instead.
I also like the idea of the book (and indeed, blog) as telepathy and time-travel, albeit one-way only. I’m thinking up these words in a room in Highgate on April 15th 2008, and they then – I hope – journey into the minds of others in different places, different countries, at different times in the future. Maybe in the far future, when the Internet will run on sunshine (or if wet, rainwater).
***
Tim C suggests a theory that deliberate Quiet Carriage offenders are a kind of ‘conformist’s rebellion.’ That such people react as an after-effect of swallowing so much zeitgeist and fashion and hype – the rush to be a part of what everyone else appears to be doing and following, from giving a hoot about the minutiae of celebrities’ lives to indulging the growth of high street homogeneity, to getting the latest upgrade of the latest gadget for its own sake. Certainly true of the man on the Colchester train back, who used an i-Phone – the latest mobile of choice – to chat under a ‘No Mobiles’ sign for the best part of an hour. For conformists feeling lost and sheep-like, even gullible, tiny things like this may be a small way of saying ‘I exist. Really.’
If that’s the case, if the only way for some to make their existential mark in the world is by these petty acts of revolt, rudeness and inconsideration – litter dropping is another one – then they need to get an outside view of themselves fast. And that’s coming from ME…
