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Oh yes, there was that time I went to the Shellac ATP…when was that? 2002? Five years ago? Wow, the spider-legged freak dog that is the whippet of time really is racing off round the track these days, nose hard pressed to the hare’s bum, ears flapping like a pair of winning betting slips being presented to the bookie by a gleefully giddy old man. I’m just looking back at the line-up now, and I swear to god I don’t remember of those bands. Which is kind of where I was heading, before I got sidetracked by the dog thing – I didn’t see Shellac play once. Not for the want of them trying though – they were playing every day, and putting themselves on first so as not to clash with…ummm, all those other bands I don’t remember seeing. It kind of felt like they were trying too hard. I felt a bit bossed around really, like I was somehow obliged to go and see them, and I didn’t like it. Stupid, yeah, I know. Those same feelings kinda extended to their records – clearly a lot of effort went into them, and I appreciated the drumming, and I appreciated the guitars made out of corrugated iron and nails, but it all felt a bit too worthy and left me slightly cold.
But I did see them the year after. I think someone must have tricked me into it, probably had me following a piece of shiny paper to the venue (damned magpie hypnosis!). And Shellac did a song about the end of radio, shouting “is this thing on?” at a microphone which to me at least was rather obviously on, a song which may have just been about the creep of mind-numbing commercial radio, but seemed to have another meaning, maybe something about a disconnection between the artist and listener…between me and them. Was I hearing them now? What about NOW? The song’s incredible tension bounced a loose screw into place for me, and I began to see something about what make people so devoted to a band whose record release cycle is so gappy that they have even now gone as far as to name an album in tribute to the whippet of time itself.
And, speaking both as a late convert and a canine-fixated fool, it is rather fine indeed. The feline-fixated amongst you – this means you, kittypants – can purchase from Boomkat.
The brilliantly named Raccoo-oo-oon – scratch that, make that infuriatingly named, I’m copying and pasting from hereon in – are sneaking in to the New Weird America campsite in the middle of the night to set it ablaze. Their fifth/first album Behold Secret Kingdom (depends how you count them…doesn’t it always with this sort of band?) is a glorious cacophony of riffs, drones and skronk.
The ominous guitar rumble and SHOTM shouty-preachiness of “Black Branches” should have set the smoke detectors all-a-bleepy in plenty of time for them to get out without their long, matted hair in flames (although I think I may hear it going off at the end of second track “Mirror Blanket”, and are those screams I hear in “Fangs and Arrows”…so perhaps…too late). Behold Secret Kingdom continues in this fine freeform…ummm…form, although it is when the masses of sounds coalesce into some sort of order on the towering “Antler Mask” that they achieve their shamanic nirvana, with its six minutes of Albert Ayler sax, Sonic Youth riffs, JOMF scratching and a middle section of white noise. You’ll need to stick your head in a bucket of cold water after listening to this.
Available from Release The Bats.
It was nice to be back at the Royal Festival Hall at the weekend.
Despite having a seat way way way at the back.
Despite all the people who arrived late and wandered around aimlessly so as to block my view.
Despite the fact that they double booked my seat.
Despite the fact that I missed half of the quite brilliant Valerie Project trying to sort out the double booking.
Despite the over-officious orange-jacketed security staff attempting to prevent any swift resolution to the double booking.
Despite – mapsadaisical recurrent theme alert – the queues for the toilets (didn’t they put more in?).
And despite – I may have mentioned this already – the fact that there was a double booking.
Despite all that, stamping around on the bat and ball carpet whilst looking out over the Thames fair warmed my heart after a few years away.
I was unaware that Nina Nastasia had a new album out – the last one seems like only a few months ago – until she started playing some new songs at Homefires the other week. Her solo rendition (blimey, now there is a word with a whole new meaning these days) of these was pretty fine; having heard the versions recorded with drummer Jim White I now think this is the best album she has been involved with – as opposed to her best album.
For this is a true duo album, and she can’t claim it as hers. Nastasia sings her disturbing lyrics of love gone to hell – with a particularly stalky bent this time - in that disarming voice of hers (the effect is not dissimilar to being drowned in a swimming pool by a popular light entertainer), but White’s drumming elevates this to a whole other place. The way he bides his time before kicking “I’ve Been Out Walking” up to its powerful climax; you can tell Steve Albini was involved with the recording. The way on “Odd Said The Doe” he wriggles with imagination, finding rhythms that no-one else hears, seemingly both in and out of time. The way he underlines the darker sections of “The Day I Would Bury You” in dark pen, once, twice three times. The skittery run-out groove of “How Will You Love Me”. This is proper drumming, no doubt; restrained/powerful, improvised/thought through, sensitive/blustery. Fans of Chris Corsano, or even Rashied Ali (this includes you, I would hope) will find a lot to admire in White’s virtuoso performance.
Available from Fat Cat
In my rush to trip over myself to get at the new Islaja album, I almost missed this very fine release from her labelmates and chemical friends, Kemialliset Ystävät. Truth is I had never really been moved by their ramshackle charms until now. Their new s/t record fills out the gaps between the home-constructed instruments and campfire chants with a much fuller and denser sound, enough to peg the tracks to the ground and prevent them flying away in the wind. As a result, they’ve created a little place you can stay in for that bit longer than previously.
The communal krautrock elements (such as “Superhimmeli”) will inevitably bring to mind Faust, Popul Vuh, and whichever of the two Amon Duuls was the one which lived in a commune. Continuing this geographical theme there are, aside from a load of infuriating Finnish typographical furniture, Indian sounding drones (“Merkkejä Iholla”), strings (“Tulinen Kiihdytys”) and horns (“Lentävät Sudet”). The sound is fleshed out with all sorts of unidentifiable instrumentation, bashes, bonks, binks, burbles and the like, as well as half-buried choirs and occasional animal noises, to give a warm sounding improvisational album. Odder than most, for sure, but this is a Fonal release.
Available from Boomkät.
Monkeyman has been tormenting me this year with her repeated playing of The Adventures Of Ghosthorse and Stillborn, and repeated entirely un-operatic singing of the operatic singing sections of the album. Seeing as it was her birthday, I took her to see Cocorosie play at the art-deco surroundings of the Bloomsbury Ballroom. By the end of the performance, any last remaining barriers to my acceptance of the brilliance of the Casady sisters had been well and truly dismantled.
I have no idea whether support act Rio En Medio were any good or not. They were very quiet. The noise from the main bar at the back was very loud. The chatterers were probably upset about not finding, or not getting into, the tunnel of light that was the Long Bar down the side of the ballroom. Or about being given a can of warm Red Stripe. Whatever the reason, this was not one of those magical occasions where a low decibel performance has the effect of hushing a crowd into silence.
The incredible beatboxing of Tez more than made up for this. He was like a one-man/no-machine Mark Ronson album, perfect hip hop beats, breaks, decks and effects (OK, without the decks) slipping sections of things we all knew – Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing”, Prince’s “Kiss - without dropping the beat. We were all dancing to a geeky looking bloke with Dennis Taylor glasses who was doing little more (little more! Ha! I should try locking myself in a room for a decade impersonating drum n bass records and robots and see how far I get, shouldn’t I?) than just shouting and spitting rhythmically at us. It was great (Youtube action here).
Cocorosie were a joy right from the off, with Sierra unfurling that impressive classically-trained voice (although I couldn’t help thinking about Sarah Brightman, god help me), and Bianca squawking deliciously and faffing around with toys and bells. Tez brought (most of the rest of) the noise, which must save a bit of money somewhere in transportation costs, although presumably that is spent on the grand piano and the harp. They danced, hugged, and kissed, with little sense of end-of-the-tour ennui.
The set heavily favoured said new album, featuring the irrepressible hip hop of “Animals”, an Antony-free “Beautiful boys” (with its “pimps and queens, criminals and queers”), and a would-be-twee-were-it-not-for-the-lyrics-about-Iraq “Japan”, which featured an assorted bunch of hangers-on gyrating on stage. We were left wanting more by a cover of Kevin Lyttle’s rnb hit “Turn Me On” from a few years back which replaced the unedifying bump and grind with a haunting lusty ache.
I do enjoy the trend towards holding concerts in non-traditional venues, and this one is a beaut. An 1851 restoration of a 14th century parish church, with all the interesting features you would expect from such a building. I was particularly taken by the large plaque on the church wall, erected on the instruction of someone who died in the early 1800s to commemorate his giving £100 per annum in perpetuity to local “poor boys”…as long as they were not chimney sweeps, watermen or catholics. No blacks, no frogs, no Irish indeed. There were a few things you probably wouldn’t expect from such a building – the knot design garden out back, the display of antique gardening equipment, and the cafe selling stuffed peppers, blue cheese salad and pinot noir. I could have accurately predicted a lack of toilet facilities, but I’m not about to spend another review going on about that…
Klima, then. The new venture from Angèle David-Guillou, occasional vocalist with the headliners. French, obviously. A three piece, with the Piano Magic drummer, and a guitarist who looked disturbingly like Liverpool legend Ian Rush. During the wankier guitar bits, he pulled faces like I imagine said striker would pull when running up to take a penalty*, feigning that he was going to thump into hard, low and right, but at the last second cunningly dinking it left instead. The music was fairly forgettable, which is a shame as I have heard it sounds much more interesting on record, and Angèle has a rather lovely voice.
Leafcutter John was probably always going to be the most interesting of the three acts. Playing songs from his album “The Forest and The Sea” with collaborator Alice Grant, we were treated to laptop and guitar (obviously), melodica, spring, balloon, children playing whistles, looped vocals, and a discursion on the healing properties of a particular brand of hand cream. There was a great deal of invention on display; the treatment of the various sounds produced was most impressive, from the twang of the drumstick under the guitar strings, to the electronic crunch of the slinky.
I was a leetel beet disappointed with Piano Magic. While there were some good moments where they sounded a bit shoegaze or a bit French Disko, any trace of subtlety from their records was submerged under a whole lot of noisy bluster. I was tempted to wander off for a look at the displays of old lawnmowers…
*Although, as everyone knows, Jan Molby took the penalties.
I seem to remember commenting at the end of a review of Kieran Hebden’s last release, the Tongues album with drummer Steve Reid, that I had no idea where he was going to go next. If I had really put my mind to it (or, erm, done some cursory internet research) I should have worked out it would be a new Fridge album. With the live, loud, jazzy bent of his recent work, and the considerable benfit of hindsight, the reformation of the decade-asleep Putney three-piece seems pretty logical.
The reunion with Adem (lovely man, nice glasses, sturdy acoustic fare on Domino) and Sam Jeffers seems to have been a fruitful one. The band slip effortlessly back into their post-rock gear, and I slip comfortably back into my post-rock listening costume, and much happiness ensues. “Clocks” ticks along in Tortoise fashion, “Eyelids” is crunchy, riffy, like “Chroma” from Semaphore, in “Oram” crystal forms from sonic tumble a la “Sun Drums and Soil”, while “Insects” curves off improvisationally from from the orbit of Rounds. It isn’t entirely a retrospective affair; the title track melts tambura over an electric hip-hop fire and blazing drums, sounding totally fresh and exciting. (An entirely personal and probably regrettable observation to close: the pleasant twang of “Comets” would have sounded brilliant accompanying the run-through of the leaderboard at the US Masters. Make of that what you will).
The extra decade of experience of the protagonists has resulted in a confident, well-produced and most grin-inducing album, making previous Fridge releases sound disturbingly raw and naïve in comparison. I can’t remember the last time an album made me feel ten years younger. They should sell this stuff in Boots (they do sell this stuff at Temporary Residence).
The Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery has an installation which consists of a perspex box filled with thick fog. Upon entering, I found myself quite disorientated, and struggled to navigate through this dense atmosphere, with shapes and colours appearing without warning in my personal space. Soon I found myself focusing less outwards, and more inwards; a heightened perception of my own little block of space within a confusing world, a space in which my thoughts rang out loud.
I love the new album from Finland’s Vladislav Delay, or Sasu Ripatti as his mother would no doubt call him (although thinking about mothers calling their children by their “stage” names does amuse me – can you imagine: “Ghostface! Would you be able to drive me to the bingo tomorrow?”). It is initially a dense sonic fog full of unpredictable movement, requiring considerable concentration to find your way through. By the end you are so enveloped in this new place, with its own internal logic, that the rest of the world may drift out of focus. For heaven’s sake, don’t listen to it when driving.
Whistleblower plots a course towards the angular ambience of early Aphex Twin, lush soundscapes punctured by off-kilter programming, but takes an early detour into an unsignposted no-man’s-land. Rhythms are taken apart and reassembled, piled precariously on top of one another, like a game of beat Jenga. “Stop Talking” is much more serious than that though –the rumbling of bombs, the ack-ack of shelling, the whoosh of planes flying low overhead; the title and the ominous ticking of clocks hint at a deeper meaning. In all respects, this is a significant work from a great artist.
Listen to “I Saw a Polysexual” and buy the mp3 release from Delay’s website Huume (for a mere six Eurogroats). Traditionalists can get a real physical copy from Boomkat.
Lying in darkness, listening to the sound of blood rushing round my head, pulsing, throbbing, quickening. Tendrils of light snaking through sticky eyelids, kaleidoscopic patterns and colours dancing, blurry outlines forming in druggy fog. A strange sensation grabbing at me, one I vaguely remember…happiness…that’ll be it. I get to thinking about that Guns N Roses song, thinking that I’m pretty sure Axl has been in a coma himself as there is NO WAY he could have written about what it is really like, with all the cheap investigations and crass communications that you tend to experience at the less dancy end of the Glasgow scale if he hadn’t actually been there and done it.
With their new album, noise duo Growing have created an album to soundtrack anyone’s ascent from a state close to PVS. They lapse into a comfortable reverb-drone state (I’m hearing Spacemen 3) and drift in and out of it for the course of the record, creating impressionistic whorls of fuzzy dreams, and reaching rapture by the end. Vision Swim is a more disciplined effort than previous releases, but provides more than sufficient stimuli to keep the synapses ablaze.
I love this record. Listen to the first track, “Limbo” here. Vision Swim is available from TmU here.
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