Difficult Times by Adrian Tchaikovsky: An electro band get a weird gig

“There’s a gig,” says Clawhammer Dougie Jones, or at least his little homunculus trapped in its window on my laptop.

“What gig?” In the window next door, our vocalist Alana Domingo mirrors my utter disbelief. “There aren’t any gigs, Doug. The gig economy left the building.”

Doug blinks at us, that beatific way he has. Like he’s some guru of wisdom about to change your life with a handful of words; like the colossal hit of mescaline he took on that US tour 20 years ago never wore off.

“My people,” he tells us, an opening that has never, in the history of music, led to good things. “A paid gig.”

And he sends over a figure on the chat channel, and Alana spits out the cheap wine she’s swilling and I think about the rent, and the risk.

“I mean…” And the rent has a loud voice, but so does my health. “I don’t know if I could even be in a pub’s back room now. Not with, y’know, actual crowds.” Not that “crowds” is exactly how I’d describe most of our audiences this last decade.

And Doug’s damnable smile’s gone nowhere. “Pete,” he tells me. “Invite only. Select audience. Twenty max. And outdoors. Clover, my people.” And, seeing our reluctance eroding in the face of his eternal optimism, “Cosmic String rides again.”

A brief history of Cosmic String.

In the seventies, a variety of physicists built on previous models of the universe to come up with a theory describing, to my limited understanding, that the universe might be shot through with constantly vibrating strings, and their vibrational frequency, as a musician like me might understand it, was actually what made all of causation sing.

Now this was explained to me by a then-young guitarist called Doug Jones, whose understanding of the actual science very quickly devolved into all-encompassing uses of the word “quantum”, so I never did get my head around it. It seemed very profound when you were high as a kite at three in the morning.

And so, in the nineties, Doug, Alana and me called our fringe electro band Cosmic String on the assumption that we were going to be the universe’s next big thing.

That didn’t happen. More people have a comprehensive understanding of String Theory than own a copy of the single Cosmic String album. Because yes, every band does its mad concept album eventually, but starting with that was probably a mistake.

Somehow, though, in a manner just as ineffable as the cosmic strings themselves, we stayed together. Alana does web design on the side, and I write advice columns under the pseudonym Auntie Sheryl, but when Doug calls, somehow we’re always free.

“Then a guy’s bustling out of the house. It’s the actual Lord of the Manor come to greet us in person”

Clawhammer Dougie Jones, so called for the frankly uncomfortable way he holds a guitar, was like that before the mescaline. A look on his face like he’s not hearing you first-hand, but through an imaginary friend whispering a bad translation into his ear. Goes through life like he’s the disguised prince not quite sure why he’s still mucking out stables in his late-forties. Somehow never been knifed and dumped in a canal. Not that Alana and I haven’t been tempted. But in this year of our entire industry withering on the vine, he’s got us our gig.

“Man reached out,” he explains earnestly as I take my battered van up literally 2 miles of drive through lush parkland. “Big fan.”

Alana’s eyes are wide as an owl’s, because we know our fans and they generally don’t have the money to contribute to a ko-fi account let alone own a stately home. And that is, for real, what we’re approaching now. At first I think it’s one of those crumbly Downton Abbey-style piles that survive on tourism and period dramas, both of which are currently as dead as the live music scene. Closer in, it’s new-build, real Grand Designs stuff, and that colonnaded front isn’t flat but concave, a great angled architectural dish. In front of it, where you’d expect a nice gravel drive and some pot plants, there’s a stage being built even now, with the sort of big amps even God would need a mortgage to afford, and a lighting rig. And I slow the van to a crawl and exchange stares with Alana because somehow Doug has come through for us, this once.

Then a guy’s bustling out of the house. It’s the actual Lord of the Manor come to greet us in person. He’s plump, affable, balding with a little Poirot moustache. He greets us by first name. We can call him “Mountjoy” apparently. He’s super-enthusiastic. I don’t like him. Reminds me of too many promoters and agents who ended up screwing us over. Apparently he’s our biggest fan, and that makes zero sense to me. He talks and talks and somehow that sense of about-to-get-screwed-over doesn’t go anywhere. But it’s not as if we’re about to turn around and leave.

Mountjoy has some people take our bags, and some other people – he’s got a lot of people – bring our kit inside. Maybe, before the main event, we could do him the honour of a little set. Just him, just to warm up. He’s got a room ready upstairs.

Because Doug won’t, I negotiate hard for a sandwich and a sit down first, and we get them. Possibly it’s the best sandwich I ever had. And it’s served on a silver tray by an actual flunkey. And Alana and I exchange more looks and we ask Doug, basically, what the hell?

“Man loves the music,” is all he’ll say. “Man gets our vibe.”

“Okay, but we’re just doing the regular stuff,” Alana says, because by unspoken agreement the concept album Shall Remain Buried. And Doug waggles his eyebrows and smiles his smile.

The room Mountjoy takes us to freaks me the hell out because it’s full of insects. Well, not actual insects, but there’s a big bronze bug on one wall, and a glass case of actual deceased bugs on another, and some bug-related art, and all the same kind of bug. As it happens, it’s a bug we’re all intimately familiar with because that one year we did the US tour, these bugs were on tour, too, and they were a hell of a lot louder than us. Every set was done to the backdrop of this chorus of CHEE-CHEE-CHEEEER. And the kicker was, these things are almost never about, basically. There’s one lot that come out every 17 years and one that does 13 years, and I think the year we toured, both of them coincided and killed off even the tiniest chance that the tour would go well.

But apparently Mountjoy’s a fan of them as well as us, and this room is decked out in cicada-themed art, save for a bust of some bald guy at one end.

Doug and I set the gear up. Alana’s sorted her mike and is making small talk with our audience of one – and at least that’s a crowd size we’re used to. The topic gets round to the art, as you might imagine. Mountjoy guides it there, mugging like one of those promoters who knows they’re not going to pay up at the end of the night. Except we already got money up front, so it’s not that; there’s something he knows that we don’t, and he’s just bursting with how cleverly he’s screwing us over.

“This is my ideas room,” he tells us, and what nasty crawly ideas he must have. “This is where we meet, my associates and I, your audience. It was here we had the idea to book you, actually.”

“These bugs remind you of us, huh?” Alana asks unenthusiastically.

“It’s a survival mechanism, you know,” he says, waving at the cicadas. “Emerging in prime numbered years. Puts them out of sync with any predators or parasites that might try to match up with them and take advantage of all that bounty. It’s like hiding from time. Very clever.” He caresses the big bronze bug.

“So, is this Doctor Cicada?” Alana asks, of the bust.

“That?” Mountjoy’s self-satisfied smile ratchets up another notch. “That’s Enrico Fermi, my dear.” And nothing more. Apparently Fermi’s self-explanatory.

I google the name later, but half the Wiki entry won’t load and by that time the guests are arriving.

Anyway, we play a few of the old bangers for Mountjoy, the proper club stuff people can actually tolerate. Me on keyboards, Doug’s guitar, Alana trilling through the jagged, staccato lyrics. Fast electro stuff, loud, aggressive synth, seriously dated. Not what you’d think Mountjoy would like, and indeed he doesn’t actually seem to like it much.

“Mr Jones, I was hoping for your other work.”

Doug gives me the full cheese of his grin. “You tell that to Pete, man.”

Mountjoy’s smile is strained. “It really is quite important that you play what you’re known for.” And from a drawer he brings out the bloody album. The thing that sunk our nascent career 20 years ago and made us the laughing stock of even our tiny corner of the music biz. Cosmic Strong, the sole commercially available recording of Cosmic String, Doug’s goddamn concept album. And yes, it’s what we’re known for, but not in a good way.

Like I said, the mescaline only brought out what was inside. Doug went through his life husbanding a little flame of destiny inside him, and the bad trip brought it into full inferno. Doug was going to reinvent music. And he did. And it was like reinventing the wheel if you decided it would be better square. All these mad time signatures, uncomfortable numbers of beats squeezed into the bar, flights of audio-phantasy that sent freeform jazz musicians crying for their mothers. Alana yipping and barking out weird sounds and words seemingly at random, except none of it was at random. Doug scored everything down to the last beat and it all had to be perfect. We spent months recording it and nobody actually listened to it all the way through.

Except, apparently, Mountjoy.

So we play him our greatest hits, three tracks from the album. It comes back to us, in the same way that a terrible fever dream does. All those awkward shifts in tempo, seven beats to the bar, then 11, then 19. The thundering, irregular bass resounding from the wings of the bronze cicada like an extra set of cymbals. And Doug’s face. The look he only ever gets playing these pieces, like he’s listening to something angelic and far away, straining for the music of the spheres.

We thought it’d crush him, when the album flopped so hard it broke records. He took it in his stride, a prophet not honoured in his own country. A man whose genius would be recognised in due course. We came to commiserate with him, and he was weirdly elated. “We sent something new out into the world, my people,” he told us. “It’ll come back to us some day.”

Apparently, this is the day.

The weird thing – the thing Doug doesn’t see – is that our man Mountjoy doesn’t actually like the experimental music either. There’s something eager in his face, but he still winces at the discordant bits sane people wince at. He suffers through the performance as though he’s been promised a chocolate if he gets to the end. And when we’re done, his lavish praise doesn’t really seem to have much of the fan in it. Like we’re his new skivvies and he’s delighted by the shiny spoons without needing to know what sort of cleaner we use.

And I look back at those cicadas and old Fermi and the ideas room and it’s almost as if Mountjoy showed it to us just to make sure we didn’t get it. We were the hired help, after all. He didn’t want us turning up with ideas of our own.

That’s the thing with Doug. You tend to assume that vacant grin has a vacant head behind it, and Doug’s skull is just crammed with stuff. Just not anything useful most of the time.

By then the guests are turning up and my old van becomes odd man out in a field of Beemers and Mercs.

They’re a varied lot. Some we recognise, even, though not from personal acquaintance. Two are definitely tech moguls, keen on private rocket launches and owning websites that have become common verbs. A couple of TV science bods, next, and an actor best known for belonging to a religion that believes aliens will cleanse your chakras if you pay them enough. Some others we don’t know, and it’s one of those I find in the cicada room before the set, while Doug and Alana supervise Mountjoy’s tech team for the outdoor setup. She’s a woman about my age and she looks like a university lecturer, which is exactly what she is.

“This is where you guys do your thing, right?” I say, to break the ice. I wonder if they wear robes and cicada masks while deciding to hire obscure music acts for their parties.

“Doctor Bakirtzis.” She sticks out a hand. “Helen.” And I respond, “Pete Matelot” and she has no idea who I am. Given she’s come for a special command performance of the band I make up a third of, that sends out warning signals.

“I consider myself here as an observer from the other side,” she tells me, and I nod wisely. She’s up by the bust of Fermi. Apparently, he had a paradox, or that’s what Wikipedia says.

“My favoured explanation is that they really are out there,” she says, when I bring that up. “The universe is too big for us to be alone in it. Only it’s a dangerous universe, Mr Matelot. Especially if we’re not alone. Anyone who manages to survive long enough stops shouting out ‘Here I am’ and finds a way to hide. Tucks themselves out of sight and communicates on channels nobody would think to listen in on. What do you think?”

“It all had to be perfect. We spent months recording it and nobody listened to it all the way through”

I think I am out of my depth. I’m only the bloke who plays the keyboard. “So not a fan, then?” I manage, tipping my head towards the stage set-up we can see out the window.

“Ah yes, the band,” she says coolly. “Has Mountjoy explained to you what he’s trying to achieve here?”

“Doctor,” I say, heartfelt, “we are Cosmic String and there is no way in the whole history of the universe that we will ever achieve anything.”

“Maybe it’s best if you’re right.” And she seems very serious. And it’s not as though I’m unused to being the most clueless man in the room, but still.

And Doug’s all manic energy, when I get backstage, outside. Just like when he was working on the album. Alana gives me a look which says Deal with him, which usually means that he’s off his head right before we need to go on. Right now the only thing Doug’s high on is Doug.

“The audience, man,” he says. His fingers are twitching like spiders on their ninth coffee.

I agree that Mountjoy’s private guest list is a bigger house than we’ve played in years. That’s not what he means, though.

“It’s like the whole universe, my people. Cosmic strings,” Doug says. Alana rolls her eyes, but we’re getting Full-on Doug and he’s not stopping any time soon. “You never felt like you were calling out to all of creation?” he asks us. “All my life I’ve heard them singing back, right at the edge of my ears. ‘Cept that one time in the States, when they were loud and clear.” Meaning the mescaline. “Like nothing else ever sang. Like music never was. But I got it, my peoples. I wrote it down in here,” nearly poking his own eye out. “You never thought you had a destiny, man?”

“Just play keyboards, me.” I look to Alana. “Mountjoy hear him like this?”

“Mountjoy came in here and fired him up,” she says. “All plucking the universal strings and frequencies and time signatures. All about contacting the other. How they’re out there. Like him and his posh mates are part of a cult or something.”

“The other,” I echo. “Like… aliens? He knows in space no one can hear you jam, right?”

“Cosmic strings, man,” Doug mumbles. “Real big, but real small. Li’l loops of them everywhere. Just need to pluck them right.” He mimes his guitar, currently sitting on its rest out on stage. “Universe is your sounding board, they hear you just fine in space.”

And then it’s time.

As we’re going out, I squint at those people out there, the tech giants and the celebrities and the scientists. They all have their nice seats and their nice sandwiches and they don’t look like a cult. But there’s a dreadful intensity about the way they look at the three of us. They nod to each other and brace themselves, all done up in black tie and gowns as if they’re at a reception just waiting for the ambassador. And behind them’s the perfect curve of Mountjoy’s new-built mansion, the back wall of our amphitheatre that’s going to catch and project every sound we bang out.

We start the first awkward, jumpy rhythms that nobody else plays, the difficult times and carefully irregular rhythms. The dreams that Clawhammer Dougie Jones had on tour, where he heard the hidden voice of the universe.

By the second song I find my form and steal glances at what’s going on around us. The audience isn’t enjoying so much as enduring the music. They’re not really looking at us. They’re looking past us into that big night sky the curve of the house is throwing all our sound into. My vision keeps blurring and jumping as though the world’s vibrating in 19/8 time. There’s stuff moving at the edge of my vision, crowding in from a weird axis I never thought about, like height, depth and breadth had a bastard sibling they hid away in the cellar until now.

And Doug’s smiling like a martyred saint, as though it’s him, and not all of them, who knows what’s going on. And out there they’re all waiting, the self-appointed elite waiting for the inestimable privilege of first human contact with the other.

The thing is, let’s say Mountjoy is right, and there are things out there that speak to each other using a weirdass rhythm and frequency and whatnot that nothing else in the universe operates on. I think of those noisy cicadas, which went to such lengths not to be jumped by their enemies. And if you were some alien which really, really needed to sing to the universe, but at the same time absolutely didn’t want any other species to hear you, just how happy would you be if some clapped out 90’s electro band began broadcasting on your wavelength from a specially designed amphitheatre that was just maybe interacting with the vibrating strings of the universe.

“My vision keeps blurring and jumping as though the world’s vibrating in 19/8 time”

And if the cosmic strings are all around us, then just maybe so are they.

The crowd’s gone still now – I’d say quiet, but Doug’s jumpy, skittering compositions are all I can hear. And that’s a good thing, I decide. And it’s a good thing that whatever everyone’s staring at, so aghast, is behind us, because I don’t want to have to see it. I crank up the volume on the amps, because right now a part of the universe really is singing back at us to the rhythm of those disjointed time signatures, and it isn’t happy that we’ve crashed its cosmic party.

I see overturned chairs and expensive shoes heading for Beemers and Mercs they’re never going to reach. Mountjoy’s round face melts like candlewax. A flickering shadows everything there is, like insect wings, and all of it beating to that damnable jumpy time signature. And we keep playing the set, and we’ll play it 10 times in a row if we have to, because just maybe that’ll be camouflage enough to make them think we’re theirs, rather than this reckless humanity that’s gone and poked their hidden hornet’s nest. And Doug’s face is the blissful sky-turned mask of the prophet whose apocalyptic time has finally come.