Wow! This last lad has a lumpen flow. But as the album moiders on, it seems these are the least of our problems. He likes his schlocky horror. The cover is like something from heavy metal lore. "Schizophrenia" sketches out a picture of a guy with a mullet and a face "like a corroded nutcase" and knife-slicing. And just a list of medications.
Hmmm. "Sharon's Fetus (The Pre-kill)" is really fucking charmless. "I got something to say/I killed your baby today/And it doesn't matter much to me/As long as it's dead." And while we're at it. "Megan Fox is begging for cocks/I'm get her pregnant/Spread her legs and hatch the eggs in her box" on "I'm Like Howard Stern" is just one of the fuck-witted celebrity rape fantasies he cracks along with.
There's a political dimension too. Well, not political exactly. But "Tough Jew/Rabbi Holding Guns" points out that "Hitler was a homosexual cock-sucking dick-blower". So, you know... "For The Streets" gives me an idea of what Jay-Z might have sounded like if he was Hebrew - same straight-forward beats and some trebly fluttery business to balance it out. And it's full of Yiddish. That's not quite enough to do it for me though.
It sounds like he had a laugh doing it. A really nasty hollow laugh. I'm getting the hip hop fear again. Which suggests it will all dull in my mind as all my previous anxieties about other artists and artistes. But at the same time he voms up shite like "I got raw talent/Pages of pun/This is an amazing song/My talent is raw." (I'm not kidding.) Usually I start to hear the cartoon in the exaggerated shit and I feel better; but Necro is pushing the cartoon so hard that it scares me.
"Pump this shit, bitch/Suck this dick/You're a piece of shit I made out of my rib/..Lick those balls/That's the reason you were born on this Earth/Let's get perverse." That's the closer. You think anyone could be serious about that wank?
Never quite heard ear-to-ear with The Antlers. Though I don't suppose I've actually listened to a whole album. This all sounds fairly easy-going though. And it's only a four-track EP, so if it's horrible, I don't have to put up with too much.
"Endless Ladder" sounds as it titles - loping guitar sounds slowly tumbling tidally over each other.Nothing much going on at all. "Crest" involves some muted brass into the business, but still there's no rush. It's all downbeat and private investigator on "Zelda" as well with the occasional shivering guitar noise to keep things honest. But I literally have nothing else to say about it.
Seams is from the UK and lives in Berlin, the irresistible techno city. Is it because the place smells so much of the future? I've not been there in over ten years and it may be the future has slowed down there just as it has folded in on itself most other places; but its techno credentials can't be any coincidence.
The album is a compilation of two EPs. "Tourist" kicks off with "Hung Markets", and I don't really know what that means. Is it a financial metaphor, like a hung parliament? Or is it something you'd see out in the Far East or South America or something? I suppose the title of the EP would suggest the latter. There's some slightly sinister thumb piano going on over a live recording of drums and live commentary, slowed down a pitch or two, for "Carnival". Trippy brooding qualities are therefore encouraged. Jubilant woops becoming yawning roars. More roughly-recorded speech is looped on "Nachtmusik" over crystalline synth chimes that dangle in the air like a chandelier. It's cheery, but rolls around in empty space - not quite reaching anywhere. "Platz" also has some street-drumming running underneath. Perhaps it's that techno city future energy that Seams is trying to harness on this EP. But it seeps out the joins a little. It's a little too domestic and comfortable. Too touristy perhaps?
"Sleeper" starts a little darker with "The Glow", more clautrophobic and studio-bound without the happy wanderings recorded for the first four tracks. The bass pattern is more ominous, and there is no escape through leaky dynamics as earlier. "Potential" should be ripe with lurking energy - and there are little Four Tet speckled dances in the mix, sunshine peeking out from between the leaves. There's a spiralling Orbital feel to the opening of "Punch" that carries on through. It has the most drive of the tracks and I like that. That drive is what techno has more than any other musical genre: it's the music of getting to places of trains and autobahns and fast-motion photography, of human geometry and the cosmological picture in motion. The pace drops to doodling again on "The Long Wait" and it has a real 8-bit feel to it, fuzzy Eighties Atari games console bassline with some tension torquing in and out of the melody. It's a grower not a shower. And a slightly curious title for an album closer, no?
I've read a few blurbs about this saying that Shrag may contain the best working lyricist knocking about. But more gracefully put than that. Big words. Or maybe she uses small words. Do I really listen hard enough anyway?
It's not too long since I listened to my first Shrag album, and I got the whiff of gang culture (in a Grange Hill sense not South Central) and Riot Grrrl and shouty singing. That's three whiffs, isn't it? I like the smell anyhow. It smells like you can build stuff on it. A little like a less sly version of The Chap.
Opener "Tears Of A Landlord" winds up its windmill arms, building up the rock & roll shapes in a massive wind tunnel. Not what was expected. Space rock synth drifts. Punk funkier on "Show Us Your Canines", but I'm not sure what the title is about. (I've tried listening, but the Lympics keep putting me off.) (Actually, it's not just distractions; there's something that non sequits from one lyric to the next. Something slippery.)
"You're The Shout" is an interesting mix of laid-back rage ("I'd like to rip his heart in two") and positive thinking camaraderie ("I know you'll be just fine/'Cos we'll make our own time"). It's all about bodily bits and salty emotions. "Tendons In The Night" in fact. At the other end are the "synthetic" pleasures of "That's Static" that keep you worn and thin.
Something moving about in the townscape, but I can't lay my finger on its pulse. It's good.
More Micachu, the second appearance in the 2kDozen 500.
It's
less spooky than the "Chopped & Screwed" live album from last year.
But it is all wound up and firing in several directions. Very few of
the tunes stick around for longer than three minutes, several don't even
make it to two. This gives them the air of pop music - both the length and the panicky fidget. "Holiday" is a case in point - rhythmic but out of sync, melancholic bits that flit past almost unnoticed, rattling sounds. The pop nerves are all a-jangle. And that's when they're on holiday.
Machinery gone loose at the fly-wheel, this is. A runaway pop traction engine at the county fayre. "Glamour" might be quoting TOWIE, I'm really not sure until I hear "Shat aap". Terse titles all the way down the tracklisting.
"Oh, I want to jump into the white sky/But I never try." That song is rather ominously titled "Top Floor", but there is a sense of pressure throughout. The closer "Nowhere" is rife with a heart-bothering bass-line, high up the fret, and a noise like a brass pipe being sawn through - which is more likely heavy human breathing.
Got her break childminding small members of Tom Waits' family, I understand. There are no obvious musical parallels for me to pull out with my ears.
"Put on your Peacemaker/And call on your God of War," she sings in a mini-choir. It steeples upwards with a minaret tilt and goes in all kinds of word directions - words with a sexual theme. This is "Peacemaker". "Have I gone to Heaven/Or to hospital?" she asks on "Hospital (Win Your Love)", a tune stuffed with quotable lyrics. I'm pretty sure the only hospital song to sound quite so poppy. "The Drugs Don't Work" it amn't.
I'm not so keen on the vocal gymnastics on the title track, but they are gone before too long before "Ode To Banksy" shimmies its way over. "You come invisible to paint the town," she taunts (I think) over a Revolver-era Beatles squawking guitar line. I'm reminded of the last MGMT record. By the sound of this song. Not by something else. "My stencil is dope/Just follow the rope." She comes at these songs from unusual angles - thematically burrowing into details on the edge of the hipsterverse. "Dig This Record" is aimed at crate-pulling vinyl junkies, at least superficially: not sure what she's actually singing about. It ends with train bells.
"DNR" is more acoustic, but still busy. As though trying to keep itself preoccupied and not dwelling on the subject matter; hospitals again and suicide. "A lonely heart was the black hole/That done him in" weaves into and out of the lovely, sweet finger-picking tune and harmonies. When she sings "I'm a big bird/I'm a hungry bird" on "Deeper Devastation" I believe her. Maybe I'm a little too gullible.
Massive bass camel struts its way slowly into the picture with Hudson and Lunice between its humps. Omar Shariffs, the pair of them. That is "Top Floor" and I like it. "Gooo" is more at the controls of a low-riding tank, jumping about on its pistons at the lights, stereo shivering the air with heavy intent. Big, heavy noises lurk in the clouds.
"Higher Ground" is more military and brass-based, infra pulses of synthetic tuba marking their territory. Oriental echoey chops and baby noises underpin "Bugg'n" - a fruit machine of noises coughing up surprises while a laid-back bassline and minimal hi-hat map out the limited possibilities. Then "Easy Easy" wraps up the questions with even less predictable noises: breaking glass, electronic swanny whistles, choral humming and I'm not sure where it ends up.
Some more AOR songwriting going on here. A guy from New Zealand. I might not quite be in the mood for this, but let's give it a go.
It's quite delicate and complicated. Overtones of one of those cigarello adverts from the Eighties on "Lick Your Wounds". "The Listening Times" has the sway of some Forties tune, setting sail for the tropic of Capricorn and shuffling with suave notions. Big, cavernous, sombre piano and that Lennonesque double tracked vocals opening the scene on "Bicycle Riding": the mood of the piece though sighs with ennui ("I've seen it all before/I've seen it all before"), the least happy song about riding a bike you'll likely to hear.
"The 03" seems to be about begging for bus fare before its hinges swing open onto a chorus of MacCartneyian dimensions with plans to write a letter to the editor. A soft shoe shuffle introduces "Early Kneecappings" (which is a great title), and I suppose shuffling would be fitting. It's a blackly slinky beast, which may or may not be about peer pressure in a rather blackly inverted fashion. Slinky too is "The Bisexual", about a man with "his eyes on dessert"; the tune unravels into the distance in an unresolved fashion as our narrator "contemplates disaster". Cymbal tap and end.
There's a jazzy, dawn walk of shame atmosphere surrounding "Dessau Rag". Dessau was the place where Kurt Weill was born. This is not likely to be a coincidence. Even though there are no words, I can hear moral values leaking all over the place. The album closes with "Legends", which pulls together a couple of character sketches while the band continue to make espionage noises in the background; jagged guitar jumping from the shadows, violins keeping the nerves on alert, bass smoothing over any cracks.
They sound like a crisper version of Tindersticks; the same after hours feel, but an altogether more confusing narrative mood. It is a tale of shady characters with shadier motives and back stories. Violins often scribble over the endings to obscure the matter. Probably best they stay in the dark.
"Whatever happened to all the people/Who gave a fuck?"
Cian kicks off this first album in his own name with the soft, swirling, double-tracked vocal MoR business that I recognise from cameos on Super Furry albums like Love Kraft. A man with more than an ear for Lennon and Dennis Wilson, but the fingers to go with it. "3rd Time Lucky" doesn't sound very lucky at all; the final chord on the piano taking an age to fade away.
The music feels far removed from my palette really. I'm not sure how to grapple with it. But I have been able to work out that it's about love. Melancholic, life-affirming love: the kind that grown-ups write about. There's also thoughts about life is a rollercoaster - on more than one tune. If the music and his voice wasn't quite so heartfelt (or as good an imitation of heartfelt as it is), then I would not be interested. The rollercoaster metaphor will normally be dropped like a cold hotdog with shitty onions; but it survives. Likewise, the idea that life isn't a "dress rehearsal". I'd like to see some peer-reviewed evidence to back that claim.
I wonder if "Martina Franca" is the inspiration for all this? Or rather, whether there is an actual someone behind all this; or whether it's all fictional? I can't make up my mind whether there's a real Martina or not. The tune is very close to Heroes & Villains.That much I can say. "Rollercoaster Ride" has a bit of a Euro-sophisticated sound. But it sounds like these few basic elements, lyrical and musical, are used together over and over to diminishing effect.
Cian has such broad interests, I would've hoped to hear more of an acid influence or something a bit more orechestral. He works better as a contributor than the whole show, perhaps.
Taking it back to the Y2K and Aesop Rock and those back-pack hip-hop times, when a tiny rebel alliance tried to hold back and corrupt the Infesticon bling of blood diamonds and porno jacuzzis using only quirky, psychological rhymes and vaguely proggy beats. It was kind of the hip hop equivalent of emo, I suppose; but probably had a considerably older demographic, ten years or so, especially in the UK. Not much of a trace is left, but doth some love remain..?
Fuzzy drum kit beats and keyboard leaning and keening backing vocals while Aesop (real name Ian, which I think is a bit more exotic in the States) almost literally spits lyrics out of what sounds like a full mouth. Garage hip-hop if ever there was such a thing. "ZZZ Top" is a great title. "Cycles To Gehenna" is a more confusing title, but it sits atop a marching mix of organs, handclaps and thoughtful, paranoid noises. Big hurricanes of evil noise for he and the like to surf over.
The torrent of words is such though that I can't pick nearly enough of them up on first listen. And I'm listening to a schedule, peeps! "Zero Dark Thirty" drafts in a mournful cello and some motorik bass noises, kill switch dangling uselessly by the side. There are two parts to "Crows", but I don't really understand either of them. It's quite dense, I suppose. I like dense. "Kings taste terrible and rest in peace/Raw/The rest are recipes": any ideas? The tracks are fast, short and busy.
"Homemade Mummy" lists the instructions to make exactly that. I'm not sure why; must be some social commentary. More pacey workout on "Saturn Missiles" with the same high levels of surreal imagery and rimshot drums. Five years of stuff backing up, dammed up and released: "I never lost tic tac toe to a live chicken/../Worn the same hoodie everyday like Mumm-Ra." Doesn't sound as though he's had fun. Star Trek alarm noises.
Big sky watery synth noises on "Gopher Guts" as he spills those guts about "being accustomed to a stubborn disposition". One of those statement-type statements. That's the closer, but Spotify have a couple of extra tracks with Rob Sonic. "Dokken Rules" has a nice leaden-footed monstrous funk to it. Blueprint turns up on "BMX" as well, which has the same swollen warped noises, and he supplies a typically business-model point: "Debating whether rap's real/'Cos broke motherfuckers are the only ones that have skill." It's nice that Aeshas found someone to play with.
In fact, nice to hear him back. More listens to come.
Trying to keep it quick with an EP. I love EPs. My favourite might be either "Madchester Rave On" or "Slates" by The Fall. That was a ten-inch one, so "Slates" might win. Fascinating insight stage one: complete.
There are some muscular, broad noises rippling across the EP. Pieces of the Hitchhiker super computer Deep Thought have been chipped off to make the key stabs on "Brazil", for example. Plenty of fashionable chill house noises and some stopping and starting. It all sounds very standard issue youth. I like the momentum. "Gallapagos" has a running arpeggio all the way through that means it becomes the soundtrack to an Eighties cop movie: Another 48 Beverley Hills Cops And Cash, or something
"Mirror (Roam)" is a centripetal little beast, rubbery hoover noises and some tight, clipped beats. A little like Burial, but less foggy and more coke and champers in the toilets. None of this sleekness takes it away from me though. It sits where I like it. There's something in the lyrics about "a child who needs pushing", but it passes me by, washed away in the flooded sound of a thousand liquidised Commodore 64s.
I was listening to an interview on 6 Music with Sinead O'Connor last weekend about her musical upbringing and she mentioned how the Irish charts of her young life were bursting with terrible country & western music. This album belies what was going on away and underneath those charts. I was also listening to Radio Cymru on the way to my brother's house in north Wales and that music is still there. Send help.
I first heard of this collection a couple of months ago. Finders Keepers records up to typical mischief. There appears to be a lass with no clothes on the cover, which is disappointing. Not sure why. I can hear the sweaty intensity of the underground (as Girls Aloud never put it). Chant! Chant! Chant!'s "Play It Safe" could have a contraceptive message going on, perhaps? Looking for culture everywhere, I am.
Virgin Prunes up the ante somehow, and you get the idea that they made more of an impression, which I suppose they did seeing as I've heard of them now. They've composed a tribute to cigs as well, which you never hear enough of - "Twenty Tens (I've Been Smoking All Night)". A skittering doubling up of Johnny Rottens over some paranoid garage guitar.
Operating Theatre were staring out the same window as Ultravox when they came up with "Austrian". There is roughness and readiness, but the last track of theirs, "Eighties Rampwalk" is seriously like early Boards of Canada. There's a Dublin accent that could curdle butter on Stano's "Town", about "walking out into the black maze" of a weekend night out. "No worries," he says. You can't any more Dublin than that. And the guy appears to have a massive lisp; the wet one that sounds a bit like a Welsh ll. Are there two kind of paranoid, nightmarish post-punk themes: the micro- and the macro-. The Peridots are macro, projecting out their unhappiness into the world and planning out the grim, gurgling "No Water". Then others go micro- internalising the chaos around them and reproducing that in their music.
Choice's "Always In Danger" sounds like it's being sung by nuns. As an Irishman by passport, should I really be perpetuating these tired idea about Ireland in the Eighties? I suspect I shouldn't. PH's "Last Days" ticks a fuckload of boxes: homemade electronic instruments, portentous slightly tuneless lyrics, sense of doom. I like it. "Avenue B" by Major Thinkers (great band name!) attempts to persuade me that Devo in fact came from Mullingar and not Ohio at all. Even the lyrics have devolved into singing "Avenue B/It's the place to be" over and over.
SM Corporation do some great tinkering as well, up through the night soldering and waiting by the letterbox for posted bits to arrive from catalogies. Hissy, tinny drum sounds and strident keyboards. Human Leaguing by example. "Discoland" is the sound of Tripper Humane standing next to a cassette recorder with another lad occasionally singing about being drunk and/or plastic. It's the burning urgency to bridge the gap between they sound they hear in the heads and the noise they make with instruments, that's what sucks me into this stuff.
All these unheard pockets of the world and the recent past, lying so close to where I am now. It's drilling for oil, it is.
"Angel of the Night" sounds a bit more like "banjo in the night", I can tell you that much. I don't know if he was involved with Ariel Pink, but there is a similarity. I know he was involved with Animal Collective.
There's a sense of Goth theatricality (2004's "Mental Breakdown" in particular). There's a reference to "fucky eyes" (I think) on "Bennington", which reminds me of The Chap. "Big Dumb Man" is also dancing on some hysterical edge between operatics and piss-taking pastiche: "Big Dumb Man can't convey/Any emotion". "Lost" is even further off on some random wander around a piano with arhythmic bass and "madcap" vocals.
"Rock The Bone" threatens to do just that, as John does an Elvis experience: "When I call you on the 'phone/You'd better rock the bone." It's all tinkling, crystal synths and clumsy-finger bass; something that fell down in the last drop of Eighties rain. Very b-side business. "I Don't Eat Human Beings" is a great title; the tune has some great noises; but there isn't much of a tune there. Or anywhere. They were unheard for a reason, as the old adage might go. "So far away from love" sounds such an Eighties lyric too. Like something The Bunnymen might come out with. "My Hatred Is Magnificent" sounds like a Blancmange out-take.
All in all, nice atmospheric scraps and threads with some silly arse vocals served on top. Cheese on toast.
A double LP of metal? Oh, dang! Not the best idea for picking up the pace of the 2kDozen 500. Even if it is anti-Glazer.
They come from the Blue Ridge Mountains, I read; and they are definitely at the melodic end of metal. The bass merely grumbles and the drums tom about; very little terror exercised or exorcised. "Twinkler" doesn't exactly sound like a black metal ode to Shataan, does it? This is not a criticism. (Anyway reading this blog can tell you that I don't do criticism, purely blather.) It does have something like a metal wasp buzzing around in the background and the lyrics are self-mythic. A title like "Cocainium" is a bit pretentious in that hollow way that metal bands reach for a latinate word to impress audiences. Always backfires, even when the actual track isn't that pompous.
Everything doubles up with these guys - vocals, guitar lines, albums. Nothing exceeds like excess. "Back Where I Belong" sounds a bit like Hotel California. In fact, quite a lot like Hotel California. Aren't The Eagles meant to be very litigious? Or is that just between themselves? They certainly don't sound very happy about coming home, "Next to you/Stuck to you." Some bad synth thunder clouds hang over the end of the track.
Bombast dons its leather trousers for "Sea Lungs": "Why so sad?/Your tears are no match for mine." Aaah, the well-trod path between emo and metal. Are they musics that reflect the size of the feelings inside with large, slow-moving sounds? Is that the link? The Yellow side closer "Eula" is the second tune in a row to remind me of U2's The Unforgettable Fire in two (quite different) albums. Why am I listening out for that? I don't even really know that album. "If I had a heart/I would waste it on you," more of that almost-romance stuff. It comes across as a bit more socially-able than the darker, more extreme metal business.
So is there any difference with the Green album? I hope to Jeebus this isn't the sexual jealousy side, because I fear enough for their relationships as it is. The "Green Theme" has plenty of drift, bending notes that call monumental post-rock to mind more than the rigid categories of Der Metaal. All the different masculinities that are conjured up.
There was more, but the computer crashed. And I cannot be jiggered to write it out all again. Suffice it to say I was getting curious notes of The Osmonds, Chesney Hawkes and just not metal. I couldn't even hand on heart describe it as hard rock. "Walking the line between the righteous and the wicked," maybe they're just as much good ol' boys as the antebellum porch would suggest.
"Some people say there's a golden light/You're the golden light."
Wow! This album seems a bit more upbeat about the world than most I've listened to this year. The talk of chill wave or whatever doesn't quite ring true, because his vocals ring pretty true and clear themselves. There's not the same sense of an emotional cocooning in sandblasted sounds as other mumbling chill types have been manipulated in front of. This has more of an Eighties template - big, bright, clearly-defined sounds.
"Five Seconds" has some rich, glacial doom-laden sounding synths, like the doorbell chimes of Dis, lord of the Underworld. And the lyrics are of a romantic colour than the usual ironic self-loathing or inaudible shuffling. The lovelornity has clearly-defined edges. Whether they're entirely honest is a different matter. "Confess" may not be an entirely accurate description. It's all in the second person though, eh?
"Patient" reminds me of Depeche Mode a bit with guitar from Brian Eno-era U2 before a farty percussive run through that puts me in mind of John Craven's Newsround. I've just a review that was fiery with disgust at Twin's cheesy postures and loverboy lyrics. It really doesn't bother me so much. I guess a line like "I'll cry/When the movie's over" is saying nothing new, but it says the same thing in a very slightly different way. I don't know; I can't summon up much fury.
Usual levels of mistrust build up during the album, untrustworthy and cheating women out there. That seems a staple for pop albums about "love". Always slightly depressing, those power struggles. "Be mine tonight" he echoes over and again before the hidden track (hidden on Spotify how exactly?) rounds things off, still sounding like a Ridley Scott film. A bit.
Things have got a bit fitful again of late, and so again, after all my brave work in June, the 500 has slipped onto its arse once again. Let's see - to do the required amount of listens this month means I need to do another twenty-five in the next ten days. Two and a half a day! Silly Coc!
So this one has been bubbling around a few days, I've ended up listening to a track or two at a time, which is no good for this process. If it is a process... (See? This is the kind of enervating mood I'm in at the moment.)
"Dennis Bovine" is a mix of old school reggae and the more Nation Records world music end of the spectrum. Actually, there is no spectrum - much more of a kaleidoscope. Even more old school roots sounding on "J'ai Change", but in French, so as to meddle with my expectations. Then "You Wonder Why" is the same track with English lyrics; I think I like this. "The House of Games" is solid, propulsive maschine-dub with some wonderfully dirty brass sounds.
The only concern on "Nu Rizzla" needs no further explanation. I'm not sure how instrumental Adrian was in the formation of the Nineties dub and reggae but it seems to carry very Nineties flavours. The hard, maybe pilly edge on the otherwise warm dub sounds. A kind of cheerful paranoia; that fin de siecle business. The social conscience of "St. Peter's Gate" getting stuck into some Ms Scrooge. "Monastery Of Sound" features plainsong as well, which is pretty Nineties. The ingredients of a trip twenty years to the backwards are there. Feedback of hip hop being re-introduced to its source, perhaps.
"Forgive Yourself" and "All Hands On Deck" have plenty of paranoid rattle going for them. The second of them beaches up fairly suddenly at the end. And my insight beaches up too. Laters!
This is the stuff that guitars and cute lads with long hair were simultaneously cast from the molten fury of Hell for. Or something. Always when I hear music arc off in this languid, stoned direction I feel my inner adolescent reaching out for an easier version of myself, hoping this music will somehow rub off in my general direction. Just right balance of easy, noisy and romantic; a successful culmination of many different musical strands. At least it was when it was early Teenage Fanclub pulling the strings. The sound peeks out of the eternal, and these guys assume the position.
"Bad Luck" features the slidy, bendy vocals and guitar, which represents a delicious summery laziness. "New Plans" is short and acoustic. "Pictures of Stone" is another little vignette of a tune. "Old Trick" has a slight touch of the Crazy Horse about it, it does. It clocks in at a massive 4:59 as well, so it's the epic tangle of the album. There are lyrics, but these do not seem to be a priority. "Dopamine" is the big bottom-shaking, swaying at the bar, feedback-squealing delight that opens up the business very capably. The focus of a squealing guitar is a very beautiful thing.
Hang on, they're from Manchester? Have I really not been paying attention? (When I have I ever been paying attention? Eh?) I had actually made the classic assumption of presuming they came from the States, but they're from some of the ashes of Nine Black Alps. They were a good band too. The closer "No Goodbye" does sound more Manc-erer though, to be honest.
Rating: Languid Romance out of Better Teenage Selves
This is from 1998. I can't think of another record from 1998 off the top of my head. It's not a year that screams CULTURAL MASSIVIVITY!! And there aren't many any things that scream out that kind of gibberish; no, sir.
A lot of weed is suggested. Weed and broken circuit boards woven together in fuzzy, deathly, paranoid fuckscapes. Family Aphex Twin on a music-making holiday. The instrumental electronics swinging open my rusty mind hinges and opening out onto reservoirs and mountains as fucking always. The title "I Do Because I Couldn't Care Less" sums up the vibes - like a less mischievous and more malevolent Aphex. It's also a kick in the temple of an insistent, angry bassline, thumping tubs out into space.
There's some Frank Booth from Blue Velvet halfway through, then "Torment" is a scatter-acid locomotive of a tune. Shitting out broken pieces of moon base security alarms and shooting lasers into the sun. For me personally, the torment is minimal. It bites mouthfuls of ace and spits them out into colourful arcs. "Energy Vampire" is sleeker and more PVC, as you might expect. Still homemade and cavernous, but tighter. In a disco made from a compound of ice and rubber. "Disko Slique" also bears glacial needles, only the hand claps keeping it attached to the planet.
"Cry" has more of a Shogun Assassin feel to it. Like some razored-up cunt making his through a virtual world, slicing folk up that cross him. Carpenter's ghost is swirled up for "Assault On Radical Radio" - or perhaps it's just the title that evokes JC. So many sounds become electronic signatures, I guess. (Ah, no! He is quoted at the end. Nice, nice.)
Big drifty tunes from the man-lover of the moment.
And "Thinkin Bout You" is right at the start as well. So the intent is stated. Well, after the weirdly evocative Playstation start music, plugging me into Tekken 3 and 1997. Why is there a track called "Fertilizer"? I'm not sure how well stitched-together Frank's mind might be.
"Sweet Life" is brassy and warm and tinkles soft with electric piano. It's like there are chunks of Curtis Mayfield that have been lifted out and reworked. Another one of the periodic reshufflings of soul/R&B - like The Neptunes or Marvin Gaye or Prince. Maybe not such a big leap, but you get the idea. I can't quite settle on where "Pyramids" is pitched - ideas are drifting about. There's a beautiful uncertainty in his voice, which sits well on top on the rolling synth buzz. I think it's re-locating Cleopatra to somewhere like Las Vegas, which is a neat idea. And it's in no hurry to get anywhere. There is plenty of space to explore. Ocean by name... Frank by name for that matter...
I wonder why I like this stuff, the smoothery, so much more now than I think I would have done as a younger lad. I imagine I would not be interested in what I saw as a lack of drama in the music. I always loathed soul music in the Eighties. Maybe I'm happier now. "Super Rich Kids" seems a strange angle to come from. In fact, most of the lyrics across the album seem concerned with estrangement and a sense of disassociation, just like we imagine the rich brats. I can taste the ennui on the back of my tongue, life trajectories rounded by success back up their own arses. "Real love/I'm searching for a real love" as the piano stamps with a Seventies intensity over Taxi Driver trumpets.
I really enjoy the fact Frank knocks about creatively with Odd Future. It's such an odd grouping, suggests people challenging each other. Puts me in mind of Outkast. "Crack Rock" loops about on old drums and older organ stabs. There's a similar urgency to "Lost" as well. And the same global scale: Los Angeles to India and Tokyo. An international blur. "Monks" is a bit of workout, lyrics about monks in the pit, "moshing for enlightenment" and "a coke-white tiger" sent to guard him.
"If it brings me to my knees/It's a bad religion/.../It's a bad religion to be in love with someone who can never love you." He's not having a great time, is he?
Philosophical kicking about on "Pink Matter" with Andre 3000, his happier musical cousin, and some tangy, psychedelic guitar sounds, stretching out across the gulf of lonely understanding. It cuts off sweetly sudden-like too. "Forrest Gump" is mingling surprises again, lust and tenderness and longing working together keenly.
"End" sounds ill, sounds like the Odd Future virus has snuck in and ravaged underneath the smooth, sad vibe; bubbled it with angry rusting bile. And it ends with someone ending the day. A really remarkable album, although I can't pick out what the remarks should be on.
Rating: Beautiful Uncertainty out of Dark Smoothery
Dark paranoid business. You can smell the weed a long way off, some evil hydroponics. The production is just as murky and homegrown. It's grime, but not as I know it: some injections of other bits and pieces, a bit of UK Garage on "Circle 1" (which also has a sample from Little Fluffy Clouds) and a bit of Autotune wobble and Garage Band strings on "Nothing Like Me Pt.2". I'd never heard of the lad until Frankie "Hip Hop Thursday" Boyle bigged him up on Twitter. Definitely worth a listen.
It opens with "The Fence" that has sparse beats with massive handclaps backing up the tale of him deciding to do music when he was in prison. "F64" inches about in short sentences, dark mutter. Menace in the swollen bass of "Dead In This Ting", backing up the angry vocals about murder and that. "I'm just rhyming/Passing the time/It's too easy/I'm trying to master my mind" he says with a chuckle in his throat.
"Lights Out" is approaching a sing song. The sound is so scary, that the title "Facing My Demons" is worrying; but it is one of less nightmarish tunes. There are thrills and skills aplenty. "L D N" (produced with real gritty swagger by Balistiq) is one of the stand-outs, slapping down "other MCs" over some sadistic bass and shuffling ninja drums and electric guitar, letting better know that he will rip off any gun metal grey BMW he comes across. It's maybe the nearest to full-blooded hip hop on the album. It should probably the theme for the Olympics - if the opening ceremony was a reworking of The Omen. "I'm everything dark/I'm always last of all."
I need to make sure I keep an ear out for his album proper. "Some are screaming King/But who crowned you?/I'm screaming Sith/From Mount Doom."
More Peel stuff; just so much to catch up with. And so little time to do it.
Progressive rock spilling over into 1982 when very few people wanted to admit to listening any such stuff. Peter was in Van Der Graaf Generator and he was born in 1948, so at the point of this album, he was only 34. But he sounds much older. Looks older on the cover too. Prog was always a pretty timeworn music, I suppose. Music from a time when you could be born just after The War and still be only 34 when Donkey Kong was in the arcades. Weird.
Anyway, post-punk seems to have muddled itself together with prog on this album. And it's not shit. Post-punk's ability to eat everything in its path and shit out confusion and excitement. Skittering sax and guitar on "Seven Wonders" - "I don't know what it is you fear/The shift is nothing to be afraid of." That sounds post-, dunnit? "Paradox Drive" is maybe more New Wave, pop music riven with edginess. "The Unconscious Life" has more of a cabaret about it; another meeting point for prog and punk, I guess. Reminds me of later The Divine Comedy, the similar way round a tune.
"Accidents" sounds exactly the way the tune was written. There's something about his voice too. Like The Human League: flat and not flat.
Exotically un-exotic. Prog vanilla with chocolate prog sauce.
More late Seventies Peel disco. I wonder if he ever played any of this stuff at discos? By the time I was listening to his shows in the late Eighties, he was complaining about requests and playing obscure trance tracks by The KLF. But then why would they sit on his shelves unplayed?
So I decided to listen to it. Not many surprises. "Shake" shook. "You Can Count On Me" cheeses. "Messin; With My Mind" doesn't mess with too much of any of the sort - although there's a noise like the beginning of "Monkey", which is pretty cool. Gets straight back to funky bass and brass stabs. Lyrically, tales of lust, persuasion and manipulation - the traditional disco fodder: everything going through your head as you size up your dancefloormates for sexual availability.
"Baby Baba Boogie" invests heavily in a slightly shonky sounding synthesizer. Which tickles my fancy. "I Can Sing" rounds it up, although people will have worked that out by the last track anyway. It's slow and comes over a bit Stevie Wonder.
Another Peel selection. Kraut-flavoured indie from Scotland that still had the Scottish bits sticking out. Some long tracks too, the opener was over twelve minutes. And some timely Tour artwork as well. Using the record shop method of buying albums on the basis of name and design, judging records by their covers. It's like the seven inch bin at Square Records in Wimborne Minster all over again.
They definitely sound more laid-back than a few bands of their ilk, as though this album was something they put together on their lunch break.Well, a few lunch breaks perhaps. "Jellyneck" sounds quite a Scots title - something to do with necking tramezepans. Sounds like that too.
I don't remember any real insights. But I liked it. I liked it.
Rating: Taking The Cycling out of Krautrock And Showing It Everyone
hairy Butter were towards the end of the night's work. They were chosen on account of their name, but the cover also caught my nocturnal eye. I also saw that they were on Lo Recordings, from whence The Chap emerge, clutching clever songs about girls and clubbing. So a listen I gave...
I got a little scared more than once as the repetition, fuzzy paranoid sounds and crippled loops gave me cause for strange thinks in the witching hour. And the repetition is on an industrial scale. Light industry, you know, like tiles or making lawnmowers or something. DIY enablers. Not belching steamy industrial fire into the night sky. Scares me after a bit, although I refuse to turn it off. I'm reminding a bit of Cassetteboy, but there are few lyrics.
This is Peel stuff. I imagine pale-looking child/men with dark-sounding imaginations. The kind of child/men that have cleavage on the cover of their albums. It was disturbing music, but that's not to say I didin't like it. But scary.
Some more Golden Age monuments from the Peel Archive. But another album I never really listened to. I think at the time, Gang Starr was a bit too jazzy, a bit too subtle for me at the time. I wanted Public Enemy bellowing at me, or the cartoon postures of De La Soul or The Jungle Brothers. But there is a flow, again I can hear links being forged between Eric & Rakim and Biggie Smalls. And there isn't much (or any) cussing either. Conscious rap; how I loved that idea.
Very much based in the same R&B and soul patterns as Classic Hip Hop as well. I think they've been forgotten a little since their heyday. Perhaps because they didn't side with any larger lineages that we can trace from today. No Dre influence. No hint of Sean Sugar Puff Sugar Daddy. So their gene pool died out a bit really. Maybe it reached its perfection and had nowhere to evolve to. Angels with turntables but no genitals.
I'm not sure where the ideas of hip-hop hypermasculinity ("not to be bragging or lolly-gagging") have gone. It's the word. Guru says something about being raised a Muslim (I don't know if this is a metaphor) but it seems that the masculine power is in intellectual discipline. "Check The Technique" is heavy with adulthood and seriousness. That version of hip hop seems to have dipped below the radar these days - everyone's partying or thugging or rockstaring or the three of them piled together. Who's watching the cooker?
And from slick and silky disco business, cocktails at the pool bar and sultry sunsets to twitchy limbs and songs of conscience. This is not the new Shrag album but from 2010 instead, but I've intended to give them a good earing since I read about them in ArtRocker magazine.
Riot Grrrl business in the yelps and the straightforward bass playing; welcome developments. Brighton sea air fills the mind nostrils, yeah? And all the breathless punctuation, and the breathless singing. Never more like a fanzine made into music through prosaic magic.
"Ghosts Before Breakfast" gets stuck in with a gearbox bassline and that Britpop kind of guitar sound but before it was Britpop, spindly rather than Byrdsian. And chanted choruses. My nostalgia gland is glowing white hot.
People in harmless gangs, banding together to frig themselves an identity, rubbing themselves against what they aren't to find a new them. That's what it sounded like.
Rating: Banding Together out of Glorious Necessity
This is a lovely album, a mixtape with magnetic oxides in his eyes and spools in its lungs. And from a band I don't find easy to love. The mix was wide and narrow and broad and exquisite. There's a Bibio mix of Clark, some hypnotic Konono No1, Carl Craig mixing Tony Allen: there's a fruity smell of love around the whole enterprise. Some real affection for the music, not just posing. I don't know.
As the collection continues, there is a bit more of a chill in the wave, but it works; it still stalks around from a different angle. JR Seaton gets all locked and laid-back hysterical, wobbly walls of disco tumbling down. In Flagranti spit out some real sirling disco strings - and what a great Seventies name for a band that would be: perfect. Some house music flourishes, presumably of the now than the then. "We Call Love" houses sweetly from out the blocks. "Mushrooms" is Marshall Jefferson narrating a trip over some delicious, Balearic beats.
It was all genuinely exciting, even while I was ploughing through that that wasn't.
This was cheating slightly as I had already heard Galaxie 500 albums,
but I thought I hadn't heard this one. And what better band for the
2kDozen 500 could there be than Galaxie 500? None better band.
I hadn't heard this album before, I still think. Even through they tend to drift together in my mind a little. And it seems more playful than I remembered Galaxie 500 to be. All I knew of them as a kid was a loop from Indie Top Ten on The Chart Show, which must have been from 1990 or so - "Blue Thunder". It was the bit when they sing "I'll drive so far away" over and over. It sounded more ethereal then than it seems to now. But I suppose that's the nature of stuff being looped out of context.
This album is a bit more neurotically paced. Like the mid Eighties were. Even Happy Mondays sounded neurotic in the Eighties. It was enervated response to sleek, glistening Thatcherism and its rocket fuel momentum. It was a kind of protest music; like Belle and Sebastian in the middle of the Brit Pop fuckfest. And "Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste" is a great title. Although you get the feeling from the album it's exactly what they wanted to happen.
Having been scalded by the hot shit pouring out of the NME website, I thought I'd return to a more trustworthy reservoir of musical business and the Peel Archive. The album art looked pretty straightforward - man cut out of paper playing a guitar cut out of paper pasted onto some paper.
The music was bluesy guitar music of the kind you expect to hear in films with Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in or seedier corners of the Hughes/Landis continuum - finger-snapping, slow-dancing, dirty roadhouse blues. And some of the track intros have some great bad-tempered swearingy chatter - "Roy's New 6am 3 O'Clock Blues" is real peach. And who doesn't like finger-snapping, slow-dancing, dirty roadhouse blues? Constipated people and imams.
Sounds as though Roy enjoyed a drink or two, and tormenting a musician or two; but then what would the blues be without drink? Some of the album veers off into nasty, Eighties Teletext music; but when it gets dragged back into the public bar, it sounds good.
Rating: Mark E Smith Charm Offensive out of American Blues Delta
So here's the thing. I had a lot of after hours work to get done the last few days which meant I could listen to new albums but couldn't spend time recording my thoughts on them. So, rather than fall further behind and/or have to re-listen to them, I've decided to sketch out only my most easily-remembered impressions and leave the rest to the plughole of history.
It's only when I'm typing it out that it occurs to me what a weirdly disturbing title "Body Faucet" is. It sounds like some epidemic gone really rancid and liquidising the innards. (Or is that just me?) I hadn't heard of the band before, but was nudged in their direction by the NME website, thinking that it would be new and maybe even a little fresh.
It started with cowbell and Vangelis drift and I thought it was promising, but then a heavy grade irritation of an adenoidal sneer kicked in and all hope was washed away in its snotty tide. I think there were over voices, but I decided to turn my face away and listen only with the back of my head. I'm sure I had a cleverer observation but it was Wednesday and therefore, never going to last until now. Hipster bonfires and cats videoing themselves being sick on their own furry little smartphones. Instagram rock!
A bit more Peel - after all the Fairport Convention albums. I liked these guys. Seen them a couple of times. They fair rattle along, drums clattering and bass being pulled at manfully. "Heart Fog" takes a bit longer to get going but the sweaty Camden Lurch velocity is achieved before too long. The laidback female vocals and the space between the lines of music suggest The Breeders' first album "Pod", one of my favourite albums going.
"See-Saw" is more of the same: blunt, fuzzy bass and an all-round fuzzy sound as though it was all recorded in a living room somewhere. Sounds like the Dr Who theme tune as it chugs towards the endgame. There is no nonsense and again I find myself not missing any nonsense. There is a kind of magic in the music; it's powerfully simple. It's even called "Kevin" for the sympathetic love of Mike! I get the idea of a sitcom about an irrepressible kid and the scrapes he gets himself into: "I'll help you, I'll help you/No need to crawl about."
They sound a bit like a missing link between Sonic Youth and Stereolab on "The People"; this would be a very welcome retroactive development. Is this pub indie: the Dr Feelgood of alternative rock? I like those early Nineties, a lot of good stuff was wondering about. There's some birdsong on "Curly Lips" which is freaking me a little at this late hour.
Then "Everything, All At Once Forever" sees us off. Same grumpy bassline, some more abrasive guitar and barely audible vocals thoroughly tangled in the weft of the music. For twelve minutes this goes on. And then it stops.
Back to the JP Archive for the first time in a wee while. I'm sure this is a gent that I have on tape playing at one of the Keeping It Peel nights on Radio One with Rob da Bank. Never caught the name, but I'm fairly sure it's the same kind of tunes. There are loads of them on his record shelves as well. So many that The Fall didn't get a look in in the first 100 albums in F.
"Poor Boy Long Ways From Home" is one of the tunes played. It's beautiful, rustic, easy-going music, so I'm a little surprised that I'm enjoying it so readily. There's no unease, no tension, no electronics and no lyrics. "Some Summer Day" sounds as sunny and wistful as the title would suggest. The lyricism lies in the guitar playing itself, I suppose. Fingers whirl and dance on "Spanish Dance" with tune and accompaniment all dealt with by the two sets of fingers and thumbs.
Judging by the titles, it may be that John was a bit of a fan of the auld Jesus - "In Christ There Is No East or West" and "I'm Gonna Do All I Can For My Lord". There could be a country element or a bluesy element with the whiphand at one time of another, but the main feeling is one of contentment. Contented fingers plucking away. The "In Christ" tune does maybe sound a bit more liturgical than the other tunes, but it's hard to get a grip on the music. "Dance Of The Inhabitants Of The Court Of King Phillip of Spain" doesn't sound as though it'd be a mass of slide guitar; but it is.
It keeps on coming and while it doesn't get my heart beating must faster, it doesn't get tired either. Well, "Fare Forward Voyagers" is over twenty minutes long, so I rushed through that one a bit, As I want to do another album before bedtime. It's far slower to get going with the melody picked out slowly to begin with before slotting into familiar business. "Desperate Man Blues" doesn't really sound that desperate at all. An ounce of that desperation would set me right.
Yet more from the musical allotment of Geoff Barrow, what a yield this season! Firstly, the Quakers hip hop meta-project; then the Mega City soundscapes of Drokk! And now the second album from Beak>; possibly the most exciting of the three releases. Bristol may have the trip hop, but Portishead has the kraut hop imaginary film soundtracks.
"Spinning Top" starts with the sound of a spinning top before a very satisfying kraut drum and bass rhythm starts up. A touch of the Thom Yorke warbling, which was no stranger to kosmische rock before he broke out the Creep action those years ago. "Yatton" had already been burning down the outside lane in auto cruise control. It's a cracking start, let me tell you, dear reader; a cracking, pulsing, rumbling start.
"Egg Dog" could be the raw electronic soundtrack for a kids' animation that ended up a little more depressing than anyone expected. That kind of situation. Endless elastic loops of sound stretching out into eerie patterns. With live drums adding to the tension. Very DIY and intensive. Every track seems to cover a new angle of the kosmischosphere. All slinky and space age for "Liar" like a serpent made out of 1970s space ships, curving itself against the glint of the sun as its overly-optimistic and outdated systems steam and fizz with antique intent.
There's supposed to be a Beach Boys influence on this album, but I haven't heard it yet. There is a beautiful, senile keyboard making beautiful noises on the rhythmless "Ladies Mile", punching holes through the future it came from, projected out of a different present. Sounds a bit like robot cats having robot sex. A spooky chanting chorus kicks off "Wulfstan II" before a highly-developed masculine bassline shimmies its hips around. Spooky voices continue to rattle around in an imagined forest. There's even time for some damp snare action to keep things ratcheted up. Some very psychedelic ivories are tickled to within licking distance of the edge of the universe.
More quasaring about on "Elevator". "Deserters" blasts out some sandblaster guitar over thoughtful bass and that jazzy kraut drumming again. Perhaps the drums are the most distinctive legacy of krautrock. The guitar is PiL-like: the Seventies PiL, not the current version. "Deserters" is also the only word I successfully make out and quite the Somerset accent it sounds too. Deezzurrturrs. "Kidney" rounds off with skeletal action and big swinging gaps you could drive an ennui through in geological time before swelling up to a horribly big volcanic climax. Nice.
