‘The news is a lie’
Words you don’t want to hear when we have, for generations, settled down in front of the television and absorbed every item on the six o’clock menu. Now it is everywhere and available at every minute of the day, making it a highly powerful and dangerous vehicle. People believe the news, that is a fact, what is crueller is that those in charge know this and they can manipulate what we see and hear according to their agenda.
For those playing catch up, here is the video for a single released by my friends Weak 13, that sums up our sorry state of affairs quite accurately. It has been designed, produced, directed and made fit for human consumption by the Count of Claymation, singer and guitarist Nick J Townsend, who I have the honour of knowing. The clay figures made so lovingly by his own fair hands, have now been in receipt of the following, richly deserved awards.
Birmingham Film Festival for Best Music Video 2025
Black Country Horror Shorts Film Festival for Best Music Video 2025
Bracciano Film Festival for Best Music Video 2025
Bangkok Movie Awards for Best Animated Film 2025
Now he is in the running for an award over in the US of A – YEEHAW!!
The song ‘Unpopular’ is a damning indictment as to how the industry aligns itself. For all the talk of fairness and generosity, the actuality is pretty grim. The battle charging rhythms – Wesley Smith on bass and Neel Parmar on drums set us on a murderous trail, bodies strewn left, right and centre as the words puncture like a rock hammer as we mastermind our exodus out of here. To see Nick and to hear him in territories that are not for us outliers is the reason that we must never give up the fight.
With the pervasive dark alley doom groove of the new single, ‘Hey You Down There’ taken from the double album ‘Aluminium’ available out in the wild, it is time to afford our friends here some grace. They are a metal that cannot be corroded, they have a strength that is substantial and a reliability ideal for construction, it is these attributes that will carry them through the unforgiving terrain we find ourselves in.
The grassroots is standing despite the continued underfunding, or blatant ignorance and inequality the Arts is suffering. Too many doors are closing; at this rate there will be no heart to break.
Hey you down there, just care, ‘cos I’ve got a life up here. Maybe that’s just my unpopular opinion.
Azra Pathan
Weak 13 – Unpopular/ Hey You Down There out now.