mapsadaisical

There’s something funny about Finland.  I’ve never been in any other country where someone has buttonholed me in a pub and asked me “what are you doing here?  This country is terrible”.  He bought me something to drink – well I think I was supposed to drink it, it was actually confectionery dissolved in alcohol  - told me he was thinking about killing himself, and then put some Pearl Jam on the jukebox.  I’d hate to say that sums the place up – off the top of my head, it doesn’t mention the wonderful lake and island scenery, or their often innovative approaches to government (hey, that sort of thing impresses me). But there can be a strange mood about the place, especially when the sun isn’t shining.  Which, to be fair, is quite a lot of the year. Read the rest of this entry »

Like Portishead’s skulk back out of the shadows with Third, Massive Attack resurfacing to curate Meltdown, or (trippier if not hoppier) Dirty Den reappearing after his assassination by daffodil a decade previously, here is a comeback I didn’t foresee.  After a couple of utterly sui generis records on the Aphex Twin’s Rephlex and XL in the late ‘90s, Leila Arab has hopped back on her bike for another crack.  And she won’t let the small matter of being booed by some brain-dead Bjork fans deter her either. Read the rest of this entry »

“Hello darkness my old friend, it’s time to jerk those tears again”.  With a sly quote from Simon and Garfunkel, a bit of self-parody, and some not-inconsiderable internal restructuring (“efficiencies”, euphemistically), Tindersticks are back.  I think I must have seen their last show in their old formation (which at the time looked like it may have been their last ever), when they performed Tindersticks’ Second at the Barbican as part of the Don’t Look Back season, and now their first as a three-piece - albeit one heavily augmented by strings and brass and so on.  Once again they were performing an album in its entirety, in order. Read the rest of this entry »

Who can forget the great indie huff Alexander Tucker caused when he stepped on stage with Stephen O’Malley as part of the Maximum Black “festival”; such great umbrage was taken at their unmelodic riffing. Tucker sawed at his cello with maniacal glee, O’Malley threw metal shadows over the walls, and loads of people went boooooooooooo what time is Final Fantasy on? I loved it, obviously. Surprisingly, I’m also loving this, his new album on the festival that is also a label and an authority to proceed, ATP. Proceed. Read the rest of this entry »

Tape’s last album Rideau is a massive favourite of mine.  Its languid mix of guitars and fizzing electronics reminds me of that strange and seemingly-mythical land, summer.  So, with winter’s long and gnarled fingers finally beginning to loosen their grip on Britain’s wizened ankles, I’m especially pleased to have a new soundtrack to accompany the sound of it been kicked in the face and tossed to the southern hemisphere for them to deal with.  Listening to Luminaire, I’m feeling ready for whatever that fairest of seasons can bring.  Except those stupid bastard-faced insects (wasps, are you reading?), which will inevitably make me squeal and flap like a deflating zeppelin. Read the rest of this entry »

Philip Jeck’s latest album for Touch, Sand (alliteratively aligning itself with Seven, Soaked and Stoke), is even more explicit about its reflective nature than usual, coming as it does with a quote from Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Chariot” on the cover. Like the poem, the album feels like a heavy-hearted reminiscence on the course of a life, with its long-distant highs long worn away by the falling sands of time. The end result is almost unspeakably moving, and may well be Jeck’s masterpiece. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a huge monument on the Greenwich peninsula in the shape of a giant white female breast. Nobody knows exactly what it is for, but it is believed to have been erected as part of some pagan celebration at a particularly auspicious date in the calendar; perhaps the big tit symbolised the free-flowing wealth that they hoped they would be sucking on in the future. Unsure of its true significance, UK Plc sold the thing off to some Americans who believed they were buying an actual female breast; they also bought a plot of land in Croydon where they expected to begin digging to excavate “her” genitalia. On arrival they soon discovered their folly, and began a major recontextualisation of this once sacred place: from mammary to mammon; from nipple to Nando’s. Read the rest of this entry »

Bloody hell, The Wire didn’t make much of this, did they?  What did Portishead do to them, come round their office and stick a Mika CD in a Mika Vainio CD case?  “Two good tracks, but the rest sounds like animal faeces being sucked into a giant hoover while the circusmaster just stands around collecting cash”, they said, although I paraphrase a bit.  By any other yardstick, including that deployed by what seems like pretty much the entire population of the internet - who, given the leakier-than-a-Tory-cabinet nature of that vast land, probably all have this on mp3 already - this is a stunning album.  It is far better than we have any right to expect from a band who –again, like a Tory cabinet – haven’t existed for the last decade.   Read the rest of this entry »

“Tickets for Marc Almond…any spare tickets for Marc Almond?”.  It was obvious that the ticket touts were having a bit of trouble pitching this one.  “’Ere Trev…what’s this Current 93 all about then?” “To be honest, it is just another example of your run of the mill apocalyptic folk band…visions of the second coming of Christ, eternal damnation, what have you.” (a pause) “That “Tainted Love” is a good tune though, innit? Spare tickets, any spare tickets, I’ll buy or sell!” Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Mobius took to the stage for the very first time in the UK to open this year’s Ether ragbag on the South Bank. Shuffling on to stand behind their desks, this looked more like the opening night for a symposium of retired German scientists; actually that is probably unfair on the spritely Rother, who is still a few years away from collecting his autobus pass. In front of footage of themselves as far younger men, and facing an extremely diverse and expectant crowd, they began to tinker with their boxes of wires. And, slightly worryingly, a laptop. Read the rest of this entry »