Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Satire is not dead, it hasn’t even been resting, it has just had reached a saturation point because politics and the human race have done such a great job in spoofing itself, and for a reasonably intelligent species, for a group of immensely able naked apes, we have immense perversity in being able to doubt our own existence and predict our own downfall at the hands of others as if we still believe in the Gods of old.

What marks us out, in between outstanding logic and the despair of farce, is the way we can use comedy as irony and for those who feel as if the world is out to get them, making a prophecy is only the start in the modern age to being proved right when the Apocalypse Prediction comes true.

The immensely popular Chris Tavener song, Apocalypse Prediction, plays beautifully on that sense of irony, that if you suggest that the world will end soon as many times as possible, eventually you might be proved right but ultimately, like those who spread panic with the absurd Y2K virus or listening to much talk about ancient Mayan prophesies, in the end satire always suggest what will be, will be and what we should be doing as a species is to enjoy life, not to gloomily predict what will be the next thing to kill us as if we take some pleasure from making such rash observations over wall charts and the flow of an abstract mind.

This tremendously catchy song is one of great influence, it is in the art of the folk singer to observe and peel back the scene so that those who listen are aware of some of the more interesting characters in life, it is an art that a poet or a folk singer can do with satire bordering on sarcasm but without making an example of someone’s unhealthy fixation; such is Chris Tavener’s skill that Apocalypse Prediction is brutal but damningly cool, a treasure in a minefield of easily suggestible souls.

Ian D. Hall