The 2kDozen 500: #94 - The Notorious BIG, "Ready to Die"

Biggie Smalls was a big, panda-eyed signifier for me of the transition from the Golden Age of Hip Hop to the slurry of the mid-Nineties onwards - Puff Daddy this, hip hop slaughter porn there. No time for the lad at all. Not least for inflicting Bad Boy Christing Entertainment on the world for a solid decade or so.

But it's his anniversary around now. And there was a bit of "Juicy" on Annie Mac's show on Radio One last night. A lot of talk about his easy flow: talk I've been hearing (and dismissing) that kind of talk for the best part of twenty year. And I've lost sight of the plan behind The 2kDozen 500: to try and edge me out of my comfort zone and glimpse new treasures with shiny ears.

I wonder to myself whether this will always be the trajectory: middle-class disapproval turns to nostalgia-blurred appreciation. Happened with NWA and Ice Cube. Happened with all kinds of guilty pleasures. Christ alone help me if it helps with Oasis. That would represent the final suspension of all critical faculties and the onset of brain death.

So what do I have here? Gritty skits about would-be assassins realising they've got red dots on their heads. Sex recordings with a woman and the "mafia-smoking motherfucker". Biggie choking on big chronic blunts and that, like he was coughing up a donkey's lung. I like the incidental music from the opening montage of Biggie's life - "Superfly" onwards - to the background of the skits.

"Juicy" and "Big Poppa" have both been rolled in the Puff Daddy shit, but reading the credits I see that most of the production by Easy Mo Bee. It's drawing on more soul samples than I'd remembered, more mellifluous and historically-minded, closer to Cypress Hill and that paranoid chiba skidding bass noise. The flow is interesting - sounds like a slightly blunted version of Ice Cube. More of a West Coast influence than might have been prudent to admit at the time. But no big bombastic wordplay or imagery, which at the time I to felt was a let-down, but I can appreciate the skills now, putting things plainly without having to stretch to strange rhymes.

"Respect" has a Jamaican flavour and I find out that his parents were both from the island. I suppose there was also some voodoo gangster chic for yardies in the Nineties, like in "Predator 2". But it must've been a nod to his folks. Ends with some gobbling - but the misogynist skit stuff (if I'm feeling very generous) seems tempered by some giggling. "Friend of Mine" and "Me & My Bitch" is the usual lazy thinks though. Sigh.

Then "Suicidal Thoughts" is a suitably lysergic, undercut of paranoia and self-pity. "When I die I want to go to fucking Hell/Cos I'm a piece of shit." Though if I had Sean Coombs mumbling in my ear I'd be tempted to end it as well. And so Biggie does. Big cow heart fades out, as the little one faded in at the beginning.

Rating: Tiptoe out of Slaughter Fashions

The 2kDozen 500: #93 - Ceremony, "Zoo"

Begins with a Black Sabbath stroll up and down the scale. "Hysteria" is good punk sing a long business.

I don't know about Ceremony. They come from Frisco and they play(ed) hardcore, a superspeedy variety known as "powerviolence" that sounds adolescent as all bedroom Hell. Now they're recording for Matador, and Matador's Mama didn't raise them to release no unutterable shit, did she?

The third track "Repeating The Circle" has a beefy whine about it, some post-punk throb. Maybe it's a little retrospective; but I'm knocking on forty with ever-decreasing knuckles, so cut me some fuck-slack. "World Blue" has enough snot within to counteract and undercut the confident production - and isn't overburdened with lyrics. "Quarantine" is too close to a Sixties' suburban garage to ruffle many feathers; but I'm reminded of The Horrors' first album, which I eventually liked. Liked rather a lot in a bullshit in an indie china shop kind of way.

And it keeps cranking out the dumb, echoey garage punk, and I keep liking it. So that's pretty straightforward then. "Hotel" sways about in the lobby of itself, toasts itself in a grubby bar, then falls over. "Ordinary People" has something to say about "a house of cards", but I think the buttresses of our society remain untouched. Nice knicker elastic guitar solo to close it off. (I'm running with the first metaphor that comes to mind. Perhaps not the best plan, but I enjoy it.)

There's something very old school punk rock to titles like "Nosebleed" and "Community Service". Quite reassuring. As if to say, there will always be shopping centres and BBC2 and cans of cider. I can't make much out from the lyrics. But the feeling is there.

Rating: Hulking out of Garageland

The 2kDozen 500: #92 - New Build, "Yesterday Was Lived And Lost"

There's something about Al Doyle's voice on this that disturbs me, has me think I'm not going to like the album. That I might find it too whistles and bells and lacking emotional tug. I'm a grumpy fuck at the minute and no mistake. Too much emotion/no emotion: I shouldst make my mind up.

I can't shift the sense of an Eighties run-through. It sounds like Hot Chip a bit, like The Knife a bit. But more pedestrian. After The 2 Bears pushed out some sunny house nuggets earlier this year, I was all for Hot Chip side projects (even with actual Hot Chip-ness on the horizon); but the first few tracks light not my touchpaper.

I like "Schism of the Mind": perhaps because it features fewer lyrics. It has a bass bubble and a limping cowbell. As if sensing my early dismissal, "Do You Not Feel Loved?" counteracts my negativity with a swift move towards genuinely-anthemic house music. Hands in the air, yes; but wearing smug white clothing and expensive shades, fuck no.

"The Third One" slips back into the strangled pop/rock mode, smells too much of a studio. Smells like the theme tune to some cop buddy movie released around 1992 that never did that well. They need to step nearer the good keyboards and further away from the bad keyboards - the ones that seem to have a "Bad Version of ZE Records disco funk" button on them.

I do not see pop visionaries. I hear the unhappy ghost of Kenny Loggins. "Mercy", that counts for you too. I don't know who died and made me Emperor of Contempt but they got me here just in time.

"When the city is asleep/And the news is coming in/Of another city's sudden, sad demise" is a very curious way to start a song. Mysterious. "Finding Reasons" has an emotional centre, if a rather strange one - and I like the random guitar wail that scribbles itself all over the last third. And the trailing steel pans that see it off.

And they're back on "Last Gasp" together with low-in-the-mix strings and a parpy synth. Which also works for me. No cathedrals are demolished by it, but it moves neatly along. Then it ends with advice on how "to escape the silence and the muttering".

I get the feeling of someone thinking about what they're doing. But it doesn't quite come off. Pop fingers they haven't.

Rating: Hot Chip Henchmen Getting out of The Wrong Car

The 2kDozen 500: #91 - We Are Augustines, "Rise Ye Sunken Ships"

I like it when a band puts the single that you've (or for argument's sake, I've) been hearing plastered all over XFM and 6Music and Radio One for weeks at the beginning of their album. It reminds me of exactly why you bought the album in the first place while at the same time getting it all out of the way. (I don't actually like it. But I enjoy the paranthetic freedom that sarcasm can bring...)

It's "The Chapel Song" and it annoys me. But at least it's short. I can't quite put my finger on what annoys me about it; but it's something to do with the yelping vocal and the leaden imagery and the weak-arse names of band, track and album. Something like it. So I'm giving myself a treat and settling down to some quality irritation. Trying to step out from my comfortable zone area.

First listen brings up unflattering thoughts of a Never Mind The Buzzcocks style identity parade of would-be Arcade Fires: I think it's that military snare. I've read a couple of reviews that explain the back-story of the songwriter's family being blighted by schizophrenia and suicide: and "Headlong Into The Abyss" is one of many tracks that tackle this headfirst. "I ain't goin' to wait around/For some pill to kick in" sounds like it's coming out from a mouth contorted by pain or emotion or despair. But the music seems so pallid and lumpen and I don't hear the beauty or grandeur that it seems to be reaching for. It might be a case of my aversion to the idea of redemption through rock'n'roll, the Springsteen Complex.

"I've got cathedrals in my head/And I think my Daddy's dead...Got a drunk for a mother/Got a saint for a brother" lays the whole family picture out on "Juarez". The geographical angle is interesting too: "East Los Angeles" also sets things in a Hispanic context. I don't know what the religious background might be - but they're based in Brooklyn, which suggests a desire to find a somewhere to save yourself. And no-one does redemption quite like the Catholics, eh?

"Book of James" reeks with the sound of redemption. Again I think it's that lonely slapping drum sound. It makes me think of The Boss and those thoughts never lead in a worthwhile direction.

I feel certain that I'm being churlish. This is the product (or the by-product) of some terrible pain in the lives of a whole family. And I hope putting it together helped him to heal and feel better about the whole thing. But the music (for the most part) does worse than nothing for me. It grinds against my sympathies.

The last four tracks win me back on a little onside. "Patton Street Hospital" has more slashing grunge in the mix, which makes more sense to me as an expression of emotional pain. As does his slow moaning of "Oh, James" (his dead brother's name). But I guess that's my own musical/suffering dialect. It has a touch of Pixies - but then there's a "hoo hoo" chorus and my involvement evaporates.

"Strange Days" is also more of the Black Francis persuasion, and addressed more towards the death of his mother - "She's gone/She's gone/She ain't ever comin' back again/So I got to turn a page". And "Barrel of Leaves" is more reflective than the rest of the tunes. The vocals are calmer, ballasted by resignation perhaps. "I'm all out of words here/They all left me last week." "The Instrumental" closes and there's some elegaic punch in there too, mostly brought by the brass: brass is beautiful and always touches my heart. The pain feels transmogrified and released.

Comparisons have been made with Eels and "Electro-Shock Blues". I didn't like much of that album either. Maybe I'm dead inside.

Rating: Rise Up out of Redemptive Rock Patterns!

The 2kDozen 500: #90 - Belbury Poly, "The Belbury Tales"

Wandering around the dustier corners of the music library, I see this is the fourth album that Belbury Poly have released. I didn't know they'd done so many. I was only aware of them via a connection with Moon Wiring Club, which I may in fact have imagined. But here they are.

I'm reminded of the last Broadcast album with The Focus Group and it's tone of witchery in the woods and public information films and creepy kids. But this is much more crisp and dry. The blurred, myopic shimmer of "Investigate Witch Cults of The Radio Age" created massive waves of paranoid feedback, whereas Belbury is as neat and self-contained as Midsomer Murders. Both are looking outwards and backwards - but from very different emotional spaces.

The tiny opening track, "Belbury Poly Logotone B", is possibly the scariest of the album. It transports me back to the time when the world was far smaller, far more tangible and in the twentieth century. A period and a sensation of experiencing the past that I've been thinking about recently. What cultural value was stored in physical objects in those days - VHS, handwritten diaries, mixtapes?

"My Hands" is steam-powered synths and a spine-befuddling manipulation of some spoken word into a clever song structure, about "something within me to fill the empty space left by God". (Yeah, I remember God being in that weird, physical place I used to knock about in.) "Goat Foot" is a Howard Stapleton funk with Near East attachments, agreeably discordant. Tomorrow's World live from the Hagia Sophia. "Unforgotten Town" also has a TV theme feel, even if it limps along a few feet behind.

"Cantalus" has a cheery waddle about it, making the most of a new live band - and some far from live choral Oooooh. "The Geography" has fused what sounds a Scots folk song with some fake flute and atmospheric noises. I like it. "Chapel Perilous" borders on Primal Scream with a new bass sound, but then doesn't quite go anywhere.

"Summer Round" sits at the end, a hallucinagenic,unblinking toad (in a good way) - until midway through some automotive machine burst in the picture with some sleek sounds. Arpeggiators set to arpeggio! It ends with the sound of a wasp. As all albums should. Albums and picnics.

Rating: Folky Business out of The Drawer

The 2kDozen 500: #89 - Julia Holter, "Ekstasis"

This has been trailed as her more poppy album after the creeping sounds of "Tragedy". On first listen, I'd agree: it's much more songy in structure.

"Boy in the Moon" seethes with idiosyncratic magic, an agile balance between angelic bubbling electronic chords and creamy, claustrophobic string sounds. "This plane is taking/Off," she breathes as the music moves into an ambient, exploratory tone, starlight lapping on its bow.

"Fur Felix" (please excuse my missing umlaut) begins as parlour Goth before there's a neat baroque turn and then a brace of fog horn versions of increasingly slack guitars. I like to think that this slackening is a destruction of their power. Though I'm not sure to what end. "Goddess Eyes II" is a return to a tune/theme of the last album: but once more a full cream version with a clean version of her voice atop a Laurie Anderson vocoder ghost. A relentless build of sheet over sheet of musical ideas. "I can see you by my eyes are not/Allowed to cry".

"Moni Mon Amie" moves nice and slow, also building up a powerful momentum through the arrival of more and more lines of keyboard, bass pulses, tinkling notes, muttered whispers and triumphal singing. Some ekstasis here I imagine. "Four Gardens" develops into an Indian flavour with sitar-like notes being bent over the drone. Even wedges some loose sax playing at the end.

The closer "This is Ekstatis" sounds as though she has been up all night painting and mixing in a cement mixer to produce the right sound. It's certainly a cooler, more dubby idea of ecstasy than I'd think of myself. Breathy pants and jazzy saxophone fingering. It's effectively in two big sections - as cellos get involved and space to breathe opens up. Then it stops.

All in all, not as arrestingly strange in parts as "Tragedy"; but still capable of stimulating the eccentricity gland without too much effort.

Rating: LA Pop out of The Bedroom

The 2kDozen 500 #88 - Lapalux, "When You're Gone"

Languid Balearic introduction with glassy bass undertones. Then as the song gets going, sluggish Quaalude hand-claps and fuzzy, rambling honky-tonk business. It sounds like a lot of music around right now, but also sounds different. And hissing rain ALWAYS sounds great, right? "102 Hours of Introductions" it's called.

"Moments" too takes in the same semi-familiar swoop, a High Street of sounds and a jungle-ful of different sound beasts, roaming about and taking bites out of this and that. Something about the cover doesn't quite gel with it all though - too Roxy Music: this isn't music for ambassadors to mate to. "Gone" begins with more found sounds fumbling with the keys. What are human voices in this music? Looking to stretch the authentic voice into something else, something that feels more than it sounds? More wobbly synth vegetation, plushing up from the undergrowth.

"Yellow 90's" also has a sweet intro - sounds like electrified steel drums or neon lights translated into noise. But the electrification is even somewhat torturous for the metal. Even once it settles into a more familiar rhythm, there is an uneasy yellowness to it - the colour of mental agitation. The title reminds me of Nevermind sleevenotes - yellow water in the swimming pool, mulatto, albino, et cetera.

The title "Gutter Glitter" stands out - but I don't think this is an album of filthy glamour. Again, that's why the cover is false. This album doesn't have a seductive sheen or magnetic aura. It has poise, yes. But it's more intent and reflective than the idea of "Gutter Glitter" might suggest. Unless he's actually watching the water in the gutter glisten. That I could imagine.

"Face Down, Eyes Shut" closes out the album. Rolling bells and strangled Beach Boys acapellas and idle whistles. Waves on the shore, but with every microscopic piece of trash and jetsom and bacterial life visible in the tide. I read the word "amniotic" in another review and I liked it.

Rating: Low Swirl out of High Life