The 2kDozen 500: #55 - Boy Friend, "Egyptian Wrinkle"

First problem: I have no idea what an "Egyptian wrinkle" might be. I suspect it's a phrase for something interesting and I will turn ever so micrometrically in my moist grave, if I die without finding out what it is.

Second problem: In my attempt to discover what an "Egyptian wrinkle" might be I came across a review in the NME that consigned this album and the peeps in Boy Friend to some nth circle of Hell for making a record that lacks any "lingering conceit, construct or standout moment" and is the "welcome ... final nail in the coffin" of chillwave/witch house. My problem is that I'm quite a latecomer to the chillwitch party (and it makes great late party music, I'd suggest) and still not sure which genre stands where and who means what and how much it can drink before passing out.

I may have an oversimplified idea of the NME as a tightly-editorially-controlled hype machine and underestimate the degree to which freelancers can wander from any party line. BUT a lack of "lingering conceit" rarely seems to have troubled their writers in the past - unless "we're the best pack of landfill reptiles making music about deathly-dull, cocaine-hampered partying on the planet right now" counts as a conceit. It lingers on the parts of my tongue reserved for sensing creative bankruptcy, I can tell you that much. Ptooey!

So... It starts beautifully. "Rogue Waves I" could be the theme of a late Sergio Leone film: Once Upon A Time In Austin, perhaps? (They're from Austin, see?) Muted but with a cinematic fuzzy guitar line and a nice line in birdsong before an apocalyptic rumble takes over. "Rogue Waves II" book ends at the other side with the track reversed: rumble to "Julia Dream" style keys to fade. I'm a sucker for the backwards track.

"Lovedropper" puts down some "waste of time" with uplifting, blunt chords. "In Case" is a put down to a character that lies to themselves, although the lyrical message gets submerged in more reverb sweetness. "I didn't know the love we had wasn't your first," they sing on "Lazy Hunter", and I finally realise the band's name describes what this side project is about: all about the love life, oui? "Egyptian Wrinkle" (Aaaahhhhh!!! How my brain itches!) slides and glides in and out of witchy dream pop gears nice and smooth.

Nothing that will shatter the Earth, but warm and touching the right spots. Especially if you're looking to numb a broken heart with shivering sounds.

Rating: Witch Nails out of House Coffin

The 2kDozen 500: #54 - Julia Holter, "Tragedy"

This was Boomkat's #1 album of 2011, a response to Euripedes' "Hippolyta" (a warning against overzealous chastity and the vengeance of repressed sexual love) and quite a spooky affair.

I don't know much about Greek tragedies; but this is packed with atmosphere - in fact, atmospheres; like the mulitples of air pressure. There's a hefty feeling of David Lynch ("The Falling Age" in particular) and of Hitchcock - the theatrical double bass and fog horn of the "Introduction" give way to an eerie hummed vocal, presumably Holter herself.


"Try To Make Yourself a Work of Art" struts delicately like a Japanese opera. There's tape hiss too and a wheeling, ecclesiastical voice that has been trapped in a cathedral deep under the sea. Holter is from Los Angeles - Val Verde, more specifically - but there is a lush, yet ghostly quality to this music. Motley Crue it amn't.

 

"Goddess Eyes" has a crunchy, antique feel with the Talkbox vocals. "Celebration" takes on the appearance of pop trying to fashion itself with new fingers, but is a piece of classical composition at its core, including a woodwind freak out. And the pitched down sound of a combustion engine heading somewhere. Into the next track, "Lillies", in fact, which is full of chatter and birdsong and some Eurpidean text thrown in. Concrete music business with discrete pieces looming into focus and then back into the rear view.

The "Tragedy Finale" begins with some icily-creepy, dissonant organ sound - like Les Dawson guest starring in "The Birds". Choirs float in, only to be met with more woodwind, muttered male voices in fractured Anglo-French translations and doughty piano. It's a wintry album; suspended animation and big, black smudged noises in the corner of the woods. With the occasional baroque passage echoing in some cathedral out in the jungle on an ice-floe.

This feels different, a blend of composition, concrete music and whatever else seems to fit. The Greek theme continues with "Ektasis" next month, out for which I will be keeping an eye. And/or an ear.

Rating: Tragedy out of Cathedrals

The 2kDozen 500: #53 - Cocteau Twins, "Stars and Topsoil: A Collection 1982-1990"

This is being re-issued following its original appearance in 2000, a compliation of songs the Twins released on 4AD between 1982 and 1990. Seems pretty timely too - a less scribbled-over template for the dream pop that drips from the blogosphere today.

I was aware of Cocteau Twins at the time - especially by the time their last album on 4AD "Heaven or Las Vegas" in 1990 - but never listened to any of their albums properly. So ears on and let's (un)rock.

Interesting to hear how things have changed in twenty-odd years. The Eighties arrangements are crystal clear, not gauzed in fuzz; and the vocals sit cleanly on top, not swallowed as today by layers of angsty noise. And there is the matter of the made-up language that Liz Fraser trilled and swooped about with: not so many folk have run on with that baton. In fact, I can't really think of anyone else.

Big, icy drum machine beats set the first few tracks firmly in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction and Thatcheromics. But as the tracks are roughly chronological, you can hear the chill of the drums shrink into the background as Joy Division fades and New Order looms. The melodic bass throughout sounds like Peter Hook is chugging away in his Revenge-era, leather trouser pomp. After opening with tortured guitar on "Blind Dumb Deaf", confidence grows through the album until by the end, the jubilation has won out.

"Pearly Dewdrop Drops" is perhaps the closest thing to a hit that I recognise, not counting the 1990 stuff - as I devoured that year musically with the enthusiasm of a recently-socialised seventeen year old. It soars and swoops and swings its head from side to side at the indie disco as expected. Tickled a new coral shade of pink I am.

They can take as long as they like on this, it feels; time is as irrelevant as language. Something to be bent to their will. "Pandora" is certainly in no hurry; and Fraser's curious Latinate lyrical scat is in full swing. "Pink Orange Red" is Twin Peaks slow and (obvs) dreamy.

By the time of the tunes from "Blue Bell Knoll" in 1988, the band have achieved a pop self-confidence that has wormed its way into the structure of "Orange Appled" and "Cico Buff" as songs, reflecting the confidence that indie guitar music was building up with Pixies and REM and The Smiths and a myriad of other acts towards the end of that decade. It's not a straightforward version of pop; it's pop with its head inside out and the dreams trailing outside like a massively unruly hairdo.

"Fifty-Fifty Clown" and the last track, "Watchlar", have a very contemporary mix of some dessicated guitar wail, fluttering vocals and panther-like electronic throbs that could as easily have come out this month as 22 years ago. I can just hear them sound-tracking "Skins" now.

Impressionist and opaque. Were they the least Scottish-sounding Scottish band ever? (Possibly excluding Average White Band.)

Rating: Bluebell Dewdrop out of Orange Sugar Luck

The 2kDozen 500: #52 - Django Django, "Django Django"

Avant-pop from Edinburgh via Londonchestershire.

I've narrowly missed listening to this a few times already. Other albums have stolen in and seized my attention. But now I sit watching the Superbowl 46 and it's time to try and soundtrack it with some tunes.

Beta Band in my face. "Default" is sodden with their influence, vocally in particular. The three/four of them singing together in near harmony with Lothian accents. Guitars twinkle in and out as you might expect from a band named after M. Reinhardt. "Firewater" has a pleasing psychedelic stomp, going off on a "Day in the Life" style busride to close off. Hot Chip are another reference point: any thoughtful pop group comprising gauche young men getting out of their heads. Or early Depeche Mode. "Waveforms" breaks down into staccato baroque moves around the middle like The Beach Boys might. "Zumm Zumm" has a touch of the harpischord as well; very welcome.

Lyrically, I haven't been able to pin them down quite yet. "WOR" seems to be walking the path of the war/love metaphor, but is too slippery in plain sight. It also has a nice air-raid siren cranked out on it, which I hope they managed to drag into a studio somewhere, though I suspect they didn't. "Storm" is crisp and peacocky. "Skies Over Cairo" has a funny electro-boogie feel running underneath its cod-Egyptian business. "Silver Rays" quicksilvers its way to close the album.

Oooh. Spotify has a cunning version of the album with two of the band explaining what the songs are about. Lyrical themes include going-through-the-motions hip hop beefs, getting drunk, melancholy dancing, time travel to guide mankind through "the pitfalls of war and money", getting lost and losing what you're looking for, road trips, the romance of surf life, the vastness of history and being shipwrecked on a beautiful island. I'd say the chief lyrical inspiration is being in a band, a bunch of buddies in isolated places and a sense of joining in the flow of pop music history.

"Stitch the phrases together/Until something starts to make sense."

Playful, warm and clever with itchy melodies. Approved.

Rating: Sailing out of Mischief

The 2kDozen 500: #51 - Hype Williams, "Find Out What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, And Start Gettin' Reel"

Pointed in this direction by the mighty Yaaard (@yaaard) after a discussion on the chillwave/dreampop wonkblur phenom.

I'd got Hype Williams stuck in my head from another era and consequently thought it was guy from YooEss; but it was in fact (and remains) two art school graduates in Hackney, YooKay.

"Rescue Dawn" opens with an Autotuned baby screaming a nice wee tune and then lists Pokemon, mumbling a "Gotta catch 'em all" mantra. I like the kick in the gold teeth of the ubiquitous AuTune. "Blue Dream" sketches out a detective series set on the sun. "The Throning" comes across like a memory of a sexy dance looping as morning and the alarm breaks in.

The cover is a blurry Polaroid of a blow back. I don't quite buy the idea that all this blurry, tape hiss fake analogue wobble is an expression of nostalgic yearning. It's more of an invention than that. Yaaard traced it back to Boards of Canada. I think Burial gave it real momentum as well. Although the truth is probably more connected with advances in affordable tech. It says as much about time in the present (liquifying it and passing it through vials and diodes) than time in the present (experiences ready for re-processing at a moment's notice). My main gripe about the nostalgia idea is that my experience of imagining the distant personal past is very sharp and immediate, not distorted and phased at all.

So if it's not nostalgia, then what language are they using? Perhaps it's more a case of the massive clipping in our minds as we try to process all the information (both real and imagined) that presses on us at every turn: the fuzz of too much signal. The nostalgia for an era when things didn't work so smoothly perhaps - the Bladerunner future, the Dark Star future that may already have been digitised out of existence. This chillwave is the sound of culture unable to cope. Pop never got to eat itself: it got took up in the tide of itself instead.

Rating: Untitled out of Insouciance

The 2kDozen 500: #50 - Porcelain Raft, "Strange Weekend"

Felt quite well disposed to this before I'd heard it. Although the name didn't make so much sense - smooth travel, perhaps?

"Drifting In and Out" opens things neatly. It has that chillwave thing going on, but wrapped around a pop-rock sensibility. Touch of the MGMTs. "Shapeless & Gone" even has a resemblance to The Jam's "That's Entertainment". That kind of snappy melancholy that Noel Gallagher is always reaching for with his stubby little toe-like fingers.

Then comes "Is It Too Deep For You?" and I'm starting to think I may grow a little tired of the blur. It's beginning to sound a bit passive-aggressive: "I hope you're in a nice hotel/../With someone who cares over you". And his voice sounds slight; "No, you didn't mean to hurt anyone/I'm sure". And it becomes more and more apparent he's just strumming away on an acoustic guitar. He's not drifting off into an oblivious cloud with world-weary resignation (as some reviews have suggested), he's hiding in the gaseous sound to take catenaccio pot-shots. "Needless to say I had the last reverb..."

By the time we get to "The Way In", I'm already on the way out. Do you read what I did?

Rating: Mama's Boy out of Roma

The 2kDozen 500: #49 - Azari & III, "Azari & III"

Everything I've heard of Azari & III up until now, I've loved. So this album is going to have to work pretty hard to fuck up my good vibrations. A classy House revival number like this will always get my thumbs up.

A carnivorous attitude to enjoying themselves and (as with The 2 Bears) very much on the up. But this is a less communal vibe, this is eyes locked across the dancefloor. More than just eyes: sweaty bodies and all that. I'm not sure whether this is just association on account of nights spent in sweaty rooms taking in the detail of other bodies, but this is not the music of escapism. It's a willing indenture. Maybe it's the titles - "Reckless with Your Love", "Hungry for the Power", "Manhooker", "Tunnel Vision". It's not a trip to the moons of Saturn, is it? It's not an astral expedition to the Himalayas of the soul. It's about getting nasty.

But I like to think that there's part of the music that also lights up the more tingly circuits in the middle parts of the brain - not primal, not lizard; but the more mammalian, glandular parts of human nature. Most of the frequencies sit within that cocaine-friendly, AOR upper register - all handclaps and congas, no Millenial doomy bass-bins. All tongues and the hairs on the neck, all electrical, all skin. No guts, all shimmering glory.

Nice cover art as well: an Empire State handjob. Ambition is the utter appetite that burns through the middle of this album. Everything is there for the taking. Even the architecture.

"Infinity" (as you might expect) and "Change of Heart" reach out a little further for the phasers: the latter with acid arpeggios, a sleeker 4 to the floor mechanism and a breathy female vocal line, drifting over and over.

By the time we're at "Undecided" the keyboard stabs and bouncing bass thums are reaching a febrile sense of urgency again and cavernous paranoia - "Undecided/Is there something not true/Inbetween me and you"? Even touches of Prince to the vocals here - maybe laying a finger on exactly the sexually ambigious spot where Mr Nelson used to hang out. The she with desire in her eyes in the closer "Manic" is "so schizophrenic" and they give her the soundtrack to match.

It's not out in the UK yet - but there is a link here - http://azariandiii.com/post/news/8044269491/albumpreorder on their website.

Rating: Steaming out of Every Pore