100 Percent Rock review

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Booker and Goldsmith Prize shortlisted author Magnus Mills has a reputation for thinking outside of the box, and he demonstrates his thoughtfulness and dark humour in managing to make The Forensic Records Society simultaneously charming and iconoclastic.

Ostensibly a story of obsession for vinyl records – two friends create a society for listening forensically to records, without comment or criticism, but soon fine that their uncompromising approach results in splinter groups that challenge the beliefs that launched the obsession in the first place – this also works as a very wry and clever parable of modern religion. Mills even uses terms like dogma, purity, devotion and schism, along the way, signposting the religious fervour to which the group apply their love of vinyl.

There’s a palpable joy in instantly liking a book – and as a vinyl collector and wordsmith, The Forensic Records Society had this reviewer hook, line and sinker from page 1.

Rest assured that non-vinyl addicts will find much to engross and enjoy here. Passages such as this one prove that this is about far more than listening to records:

“Was it really beyond human capacity, I pondered, to create a society which didn’t ultimately disintegrate through internal strife? Or collapse under the weight of it’s own laws? Or suffer dangerous rivalries with other societies?”

Mills’ talent is deeper than most, and it’s a thoughtful journey portrayed here, complete with a rather enigmatic finale which we’re still pondering, but which seems entirely appropriate under the circumstances.

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Bookmunch review

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“For about 190 of its 192 pages, The Forensic Records Society is the kind of blast regular readers of Magnus Mills will have come to know and love” – The Forensic Records Society by Magnus Mills

Magnus Mills’ books are always puzzling, deceptive in their simplicity. They seem to be about something ostensibly straightforward (like building fences or living in a field) and then – well, depending on your point of view, I suppose, they open themselves up for interpretation. So his last book, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, could have been about the kind of rivalries you might expect to develop if a group of different people chose to live alongside one another in that aforementioned field – but it could also have been about immigration and the current state of the world. Similarly, his latest, The Forensic Records Society could be about what it’s about (a group of men who get together to listen to records) or it could be about the way in which religions develop. Or societies. Or life, the universe and everything. But let’s rein ourselves in to start with.

To begin with, two friends (our unnamed narrator and his friend James), who enjoy listening to 45″ singles together (and who cherish the thought that “there were some records that were never heard on planet Earth unless I (or James) happened to be playing them”), decide to form a group to be held each Tuesday night at their local pub, the group being dedicated to listening to music without comment or judgement.

“a society for the express purpose of listening to records closely and in detail, forensically if you like, without any interruption or distraction. There would be regular gatherings, and membership would depend on some kind of test to make sure people are genuinely interested.”

James quickly reveals himself to be something of a stickler for rules – refusing entry to latecomers, quashing debate when it arises and marking a role for himself as leader. A gentleman who is turned away goes on to form his own (much more popular) group, in which people listen to records and then confess (with hordes of women wearing I Confessed t-shirts as they attempt to encourage others to join the rival group). A young woman who is turned away develops a seething hatred of our narrator even as she takes a job in the pub and seems to start a relationship with James. There are shortcomings, misgivings and misunderstandings. There is “bickering, desertion, subterfuge and rivalry.” Our narrator comes to wonder:

“Was it really beyond human capacity, I pondered, to create a society which didn’t ultimately disintegrate through internal strife? Or collapse under the weight of its own laws? Or suffer damaging rivalries with other societies?”

For about 190 of its 192 pages, The Forensic Records Society is the kind of blast regular readers of Magnus Mills will have come to know and love. You’ll read and you’ll follow what is going on on the surface of the book and you’ll wonder (as you always wonder with a Magnus Mills book) what is going on beneath the surface, whether the action is metaphorical, whether you are picking up on all the clues etc. And then the book ends somewhat abruptly and in a way this particular reader didn’t quite get (to the extent of wondering what we’d missed). But that is one of the joys of reviewing. We know that there are people out there smarter than us who will do a good job of explaining to us what we missed.

Any Cop?: End aside, The Forensic Records Society is a delight, not a million miles away from David Keener’s This is Memorial Device in some ways (in that this is a book that will appeal to a certain kind of music fan) and sure to puzzle and entertain his many fans.
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Storgy review

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‘The Forensic Record Society’ is written by the award winning, Booker and Goldsmiths Prize-shortlisted author Magnus Mills. With a surreal exploration into the world of records that is as hilarious as it is enlightening and yet told in the fantastic style that Magnus Mills fans will recognise from the get go. Mills opens the lid on the secretive and somewhat fanatical world of vinyl record collectors in a fresh and engaging way, with many a laugh, cry and exclamation of his brilliance at bringing his characters to life in all their quirky, geeky goodness.

So, as we all know there has been a surge in vinyl records since the turn on 2014 with its height in popularity exploding in 2016/17 with some artists choosing to release their records in the outdated but somewhat unbeatable format of the record (think what David Bowie did with Black Star). Everyone has chosen to embrace this outdated art form and because of that the sales in vinyl has skyrocketed with everyone raiding their parent’s lofts, charity shops and online to see if they can pick up a vintage LP of the Beatles, David Bowie, Rolling Stones or Black Sabbath. I must say I have personally loved the renaissance of the vinyl record. I benefited from this craze, fad, whatever you will call it by having parents that had a brilliant and eclectic taste in music – and who never threw any of it away just stored it in the loft, it may have been my inheritance but I guess as they keep telling me ‘You can’t take it with you’ so I’ve been enjoying it.

Mills has his finger firmly on the pulse of popular culture with this release and I think that the book will find its audience within those who are currently enjoying this surge in its popularity. Mills humor and exposé on the intricacies of the vinyl world show his eye for detail and I think the ardent fanatic would even find the time to have a laugh at themselves, and find themselves mirrored in Mills main protagonists James, Dave, Peter, Kevin and Mike to name a few. The book is not the best-written book I have ever read, I don’t think it is going to be winning any awards, but it is damn fun and I really enjoyed it!

When I began reading I couldn’t help but make some connections with the novel ‘Fight Club’ by Chuck Palahniuk; two men with a passion for a particular subject in Mills book it’s vinyl records – in Palahniuk’s its fighting. Set up a society for the appreciation of their art by picking apart their beloved art form, honing the listening experience – The first rule of The Forensic Record Society is you don’t speak about The Forensic Record Society! They also set up the club in their local pub, The Half Moon where many others join their cause as news of their society reaches other fanatics who want to join their club; somewhat mirroring the Fight Club route – there are more similarities I’ll touch on later.

‘We could form a society for the express purpose of listening to records closely and in detail, forensically if you like, without any interruptions or distraction. There would be regular gatherings, and membership would depend on some kind of test to make sure people are genuinely interested.’
‘You mean a code of conduct?’
‘Certainly,’ said James. ‘We don’t want any charlatans.’
He stirred the tea while I considered his idea.
‘Where will we hold these meetings?’ I enquired. ‘Up the pub?’
‘Good thinking,’ James replied. ‘Actually I hadn’t planned that far ahead, but now you come to mention it they’ve got a back room they don’t use, haven’t they? We could borrow that.’
James had a sparkle in his eyes which he usually reserved for only his best records, and I had to admit the feeling was infectious. Was it really possible, I wondered, to connect with others like ourselves?’

With the clubs notoriety, counter groups soon set up sticks, and tensions are heightened within The Forensic Record Society and their core group of followers. I loved that Mills drops in here observations made about modern society; the consumer culture that we have that if we don’t like something then well we’ll just set up our own thing and call it something different (but with it pretty much being the same). Shop somewhere else where we can get what we want – and that’s what I love about Mills comedic writing in his previous work but especially in this novel, the other factions have only set themselves up in The Half Moon on other nights, which I can only say severely peeves off our Forensic Record Society!

‘Towards the end of the week I received an item of mail in the post. Inside the envelope was a leaflet:

Confessional Records Society

Meets Every Tuesday

9PM

Half Moon

Bring A Record Of Your Choice And Confess!

As I read the words I felt a cold chill running through me. This threatened to undermine all that James and I had achieved, and I wondered who could have been behind it. There was no covering letter or return address; nor did I recognize the handwriting on the envelope. Yet the term ‘Confessional’ sounded vaguely familiar, and I spent a while sifting through my memory trying to locate it. Eventually, though, I gave up and went round to see James instead. It transpired that he’d received an identical leaflet.

‘Nothing to be concerned about,’ he remarked. ‘Plainly a total fraud.’

‘You mean it’s a joke?’ I enquired.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘I think they’re quite sincere, but these meetings are run by deluded individuals who attract similarly deluded newcomers.’

I also thought that the introduction of Alice reminded me a lot of the character Marla Singer from Fight Club – there I am again talking about Fight Club, but the similarities are uncanny. If you swapped the rehab clinics and cancer support groups for a group of music loving likeminded people you’d have Alice – but I am sure they’d think she was a cancer to their recently formed club; turning up to throw major spanners in the works and cruelly effecting the group dynamics. But I felt the novel needed this female input – Mills books focus on ordinary lives and the quirkiness behind their exteriors; people who you meet day-in-day-out and with a heavy cast of male characters I really enjoyed the introduction of Alice and all that she brings to the book!

I loved this book for a few reasons Mills has a true gift at writing about the ordinary but in doing so his words transform the ordinary into something special; like a car crash, you don’t want to watch but can’t help but be drawn in. Mills prose, characters and evidently his story are arresting at times.

I enjoyed this book because I am a music fan; and I think that within the fandom of music this book will find its home, Mills showcases his brilliant descriptive and observatory power within ‘The Forensic Records Society’ which at times I found to be right on the money satirizing a whole collective of people and their fanaticism – if we are all honest we each know someone that would fit right in at this club! The book’s also a slim one; I read it within a couple of sittings – making it ideal for a gift, ideal for someone who loves music and ideal for Record Store Day 2017.

I should also take the opportunity to mention the fabulous jacket design for the book – David Mann has done a tremendous job on the book; so much so that when I received my copy I thought it contained an actual vinyl record. The embellishments to the cover help in my opinion make the book striking and I’m sure will no doubt raise interest and help bring this book to the attention of the music fan in all of us.

Should you judge a book by its cover – with ‘The Forensic Records Society’ you should!

‘Hours later I woke up alone in a strange bed. I had no idea where I was, but in the next room I could hear music.’

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Spectator review

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Fabulous music and the vinyl fanatics
Magnus Mills amusingly conjures the rivalries of records societies, obsessed with the finer points of yesterday’s tracks
Andy Miller

Every year at this time, as trees come into bud and flowers bloom, middle-aged men (and a few women) sleep overnight on pavements to ensure they don’t miss the year’s crop of Record Store Day releases; April may indeed be the cruellest month if one fails to acquire that limited 12” picture disc of Toto’s ‘Africa’. It is with such dedicated individuals that Magnus Mills’s new novel is concerned, memory, desire and vinyl being the constituent parts not only of Record Store Day on 22 April but also this authentically square book. The Forensic Records Society has been printed to look like a collectable 7” single, complete with die-cut dust jacket resembling a vintage paper sleeve.

For nearly 20 years Mills has been entertaining and occasionally perplexing readers with his enigmatic tales of thwarted expeditions, projects and schemes, stories which may or may not be allegorical. From his debut with the 1999 Booker-nominated The Restraint of Beasts to The Field of the Cloth of Gold, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2015, Mills has excelled at the comedy of administrative process and mild exasperation. In his novels and short stories, as in life, men (and a few women) sit around in groups debating the right way to do something without ever quite understanding what the others are getting at. In this respect, The Forensic Records Society is classic Mills.

The novel begins with a discussion of exactly which member of The Who yells the words ‘I saw you!’ at the very end of the group’s 1966 single ‘Happy Jack’ — drummer Keith Moon or singer Roger Daltrey:

James gazed at the turntable as it ground to a halt.
‘That’s Keith,’ he said.
‘You certain?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Not Roger?’
‘No.’
He played the record through for the third time. This was the agreed number of plays, so he then removed it from the turntable and returned it to its sleeve. As he did so he gave the label a cursory glance.
‘Fabulous music,’ he remarked.

A few points are worth noting here. 1. Mills never refers to either The Who or ‘Happy Jack’ by name. 2. James’s remark ‘fabulous music’ is an obscure joke, Fabulous Music being the name of the group’s publishing company printed on the record label. 3. This is in part a novel about dogmatic belief and how it can lead one astray, foreshadowed in the exchange above. 4. The member of The Who shouting ‘I saw you!’ is in fact neither Keith Moon nor Roger Daltrey, but the guitarist Pete Townshend. 5. I have no doubt the author is well aware of all this and that, by pointing it out, I have fallen straight into a trap of his making; see point 3.

The aim of the Forensic Records Society is to meet in the back room of a pub and listen to records properly, three at a time, with solemn respect and without recourse to personal interpretation. Among the group’s founding members it is an article of faith that theirs is the only correct way to listen to records. ‘I remained convinced that my original theory was correct,’ states Mills’s narrator. ‘There were some records that were never heard on planet Earth unless I (or James) happened to be playing them.’

But as the society grows in number, splits and schisms occur, leading to the foundation of rival organisations such as the Confessional Records Society, the Perceptive Records Society and in time, inevitably, the New Forensic Records Society. For once, the issue of whether Mills is writing allegorically seems beyond doubt.

The Forensic Records Society is also, as one might expect, tremendously funny. Mills is one of Britain’s best comic writers, and this is an excellent introduction to his scrupulously amusing world. If you are the sort of man (or woman) who has ever sat around debating why Mark E. Smith clearly sings ‘Plastic Man’ on The Fall’s 1980 record ‘How I Wrote “Elastic Man’’ ’ * — or the sort of woman (or man) who knows someone who does — you will love this book. Buy one on Saturday to go with that Toto single.

*The answer, according to one FRS member? ‘To be controversial,’ of course.

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The National review

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An ode to vinyl in The Forensic Records Society

Keith Bruce, Arts Editor

If, like me, one of your pet hates is seeing people listening to music through earbuds while reading a book (how can they possibly be giving both art forms the requisite attention?), you’ll sympathise with the two main protagonists of Magnus Mills’s latest comedy.

The book’s unnamed narrator and his mysterious friend James are the founders of the Forensic Records Society, a club which meets in the back room of their local pub, the Half Moon, to listen to vinyl records in the most stringent of circumstances. Comment or critique is strictly forbidden during each meeting. Instead, each of the club’s all-male members simply takes turns playing the singles they’ve brought with them to a rapt handful of fellow devotees.

Broadly speaking, Mills is clearly satirising the geeky quirks and foibles of your typical vinyl-obsessed bloke. To that extent, one is reminded of Nick Hornby’s 1995, record-shop set novel High Fidelity. But with its deadpan wit, and its typically Millsian knack for finding the absurd in the everyday, The Forensic Records Society is a more subtle, eccentric and skilfully-rendered read. Like many of Mills’s novels, it’s a farce of sorts, each little plot twist further endangering the teetering house of cards that is the book’s titular club.

The first sign of trouble for the forensics comes when a record-listening group that allows – indeed actively encourages – discussion announces it will hold a rival night at the Half Moon on Tuesdays. The Confessional Records Society, as it known, is run by Phillip, a charismatic and ultimately somewhat messianic figure whose motivation, we understand, has something to do with James not allowing him entry to a previous forensics meeting when he was a few minutes late.

Much to James’s chagrin, the Confessional Records Society – "Bring a record of your choice and confess!" runs its simple credo – instantly proves much more popular than the Forensic Records Society, and is also a huge hit with the women, who return from the Half Moon’s back room wearing T-shirts proclaiming "I confessed."

The way that Mills’s latest book demarcates the different ways in which men and women tend to consume music is insightful and amusing, the point being that, generally speaking, women’s relationship with popular music seems to be more joyful and far less anal-retentive.

James, who is at one point found attempting to play his entire record collection in alphabetical order, perhaps captures it best: "She thinks we’re all emotionally retarded", he says, relaying a comment that Alice, a singer-songwriter and barmaid at the Half Moon, has made about him and his fellow forensics.

As further factions emerge and James and the book’s narrator struggle to preserve what they see as the impeccable standards of the Forensic Records Society (and its ever-shrinking membership), Mills continues to delight the reader. It’s a neat device that all of the records played in the book are only ever referred to by their song titles. Thus you find yourself stupidly pleased, just as a member of the forensics might be, when you know who recorded one of the more obscure records mentioned, or when Mike, one of their number, says "What’s all this about leaving a cake out in the rain?" and you know he is referring to the gnomic lyric of American songwriter Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park.

As is typical for Mills, each character in the Forensic Records Society is painted with the broadest of brushstrokes. We don’t know what they look like, far less what their back stories might be. Mills’s unique and addictive literary style engages through other means. Teasing and delayed gratification are firm favourites, hence the thing you expect/want to happen only happens much later or doesn’t happen at all.

The author also elicits a strange pleasure through repetition. His characters often repeat the same action or return to chunks of dialogue they’ve already said. The effect is like an exploded catchphrase or an in-joke, but you welcome it.

If you’ve ever obsessed about records, you’ll find plenty to laugh at here, but Mills’s masterful comedy also alights on little pockets of profundity. Musing on the differences between the attendees of the Confessional Records Society and the beleaguered bods of the Forensic Records Society, the book’s unnamed narrator reflects thus: "For reasons of their own, they regarded records in a completely different light to us. They viewed them as little more than props and accessories, and saw no intrinsic value in the records themselves. Accordingly there existed a gulf between the two persuasions which could never be bridged."

James McNair is a frequent contributor to The Review.

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Guardian review

Camaraderie ... the Simon Pegg film The World’s End.
Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

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This deceptively slim novel about blokes at a pub vinyl night could be read as a disguised retelling of the Russian revolution, or any great human falling out

In the house of fiction, blokes are the cavity wall insulation. Usually they are out of sight and mostly they are taken for granted. If a bloke appears in a contemporary British novel, he will be there to pop round and fix something, to give someone a lift into town or – at his most prominent – to take all the blame for stifling the life chances of an intelligent and passionate woman.

A few writers have dared to put lots of blokes in their novels. But Martin Amis’s characters aren’t really blokes because they are too wordy; when you cut them open you find Amis and a slang dictionary. Nick Hornby’s may be blokes when we meet them, but his novels are often about the long and difficult climb out of blokehood. Magnus Mills, though, ever since his 1998 debut The Restraint of Beasts, has made blokes the absolute centre of his fictional universe.

It is a modestly sized universe, because blokes above all want to relish and do honour to what is right there in front of them – be that a meat pie, a diesel locomotive or, in the case of the Forensic Records Society, 7in singles.

Where else but in a novel about blokes, and where else but in a novel by Magnus Mills, would you get a highly emotional scene that reads like this?

I swiftly averted my gaze when James rejoined me carrying two full glasses. He placed them between us and sat down; then he slipped the record from its sleeve and put it on the deck. At this point I sensed that James wished to say something, but being constrained by his own rules he was obliged to remain silent. Instead, we passed a minute or so watching the froth on our beers settle.

You wouldn’t know it, but this is the moment the entire novel has been building towards. It’s the resurrection of a dead friendship through the sharing of a great secret – a demo 7in single recorded by a barmaid called Alice.

We are in the back room of the Half Moon, the pub where the narrator and his best friend have established a Monday night gathering. James is top dog, and his rules are simple. Each member of the society brings along three 7in singles. In strict rotation, these are put on his portable turntable, played and listened to silently, forensically. Afterwards, there are “no comments, judgments or quotations”. Language is to be avoided as totally as possible. Why?

In a piece called “Writing for the Theatre”, Harold Pinter wrote: “We have heard many times that tired, grimy phrase: ‘Failure of communication’… and this phrase has been fixed to my work quite consistently. I believe the contrary. I think that we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves.”

That’s why blokes, even when they are actually pledging their undying loyalty to one another, do it by apparently sitting and watching the froth settle on their beers. Blokes are men who keep themselves to themselves.

Mills uses some blokes in the back of a pub to tell a massively ambitious story But Mills has far greater ambitions for the forensic records society than just to tell a story about some blokes in the back room of a pub. Or rather, he wants to use some blokes in the back of a pub to tell a massively ambitious story. His agenda is there in the title, in the word “society”. It also slips out in a few suspiciously rhetorical sentences midway through the book.

Was it really beyond human capacity, I pondered, to create a society which didn’t ultimately disintegrate through internal strife? Or collapse under the weight of its own laws? Or suffer damaging rivalries with other societies?

Within weeks of the narrator and James placing their first advertisement, they have been joined in their listening sessions by Chris, Mike, Dave, Barry and Rupert. Apart from a brief description of their hair, these blokes are only distinguished from one another by their musical tastes. (A playlist compiled from the novel would include lots of classic 60s rock but also some ska, funk and post-punk.) The Forensic Records Society’s idyll of pint-drinking and beard-stroking is destroyed when a rival society establishes itself on Tuesdays in the same small back room. It calls itself the Confessional Records Society, and has fundamentally different values.

For reasons of their own … they regarded records in a completely different light to us. They viewed them as little more than props and accessories, and saw no intrinsic value in the records themselves. Accordingly there existed a gulf between the two persuasions which could never be bridged.

This leads to “bickering, desertion, subterfuge and rivalry”. It also leads to a story that could be read as a disguised retelling of the Russian revolution, or the Reformation, or the Sunni-Shia schism, or any great human falling out. As soon as you form any kind of “us”, Mills suggests, a “them” will form in response. In this, The Forensic Records Society is like Animal Farm but with blokes for pigs, and much better songs.

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Intro

I was intrigued by the Spectator review of Magnus Mills' book. While I am waiting for it to arrive, I'll post the reviews available online.