Tujiko Noriko, Bush Hall, 27/02/08

I’m a little confused by The Local’s expansion into the promotion of gigs all across London. When they were doing shows in The Kings Head (annoyingly apostrophe free – the Kings head where exactly?) in Crouch End it made sense.  Not least of all because it technically is my local.  But Shepherd’s Bush isn’t local to anywhere as far as I can tell – even its two tube stations aren’t local to each other.  Still, seems churlish to complain when the Local – in conjunction with the End Of The Road folks – put together evenings as enjoyable as this one.  And for a highly bargainous fiver too.  I would have paid several times that just to see Tujiko Noriko alone; she doesn’t exactly play here too often.

Willits + Sakamoto, Ocean Fire (12k)

So many words that begin with the letter S come to mind when I listen to this.  Perhaps I shouldn’t bother with the review, and should just post my suggested script for an imaginary episode of Sesame Street (the one where the door to puppet hell is opened after someone stencils the number 666 onto the Grouch’s stomach).  Perhaps I’m inspired by the ssssssssssssssss of the sea, much in the way that Christopher Willits and Ryuichi Sakamoto were inspired when they shared studio space to create the superb Ocean Fire.

Erik Levander, Kondens (Rumraket)

I can’t believe how much myself and Erik Levander have in common; it is just spooky. Parallel lives, pretty much. I was reading about how he had been working on this album for years, when a fatal hard drive failure sent it to the great virtual trashcan in the sky; then just this week, I became locked out of a spreadsheet I had been carefully cajoling into a state of analytical irrefutability, after I forgot the password. I had worked on that for hours. It had pivot tables and everything. Now that can’t be just coincidence, can it? Given his success at fundraising to attempt a recovery of the files, I’m going to try something similar. Except instead of money, I’m asking for donations of possible passwords. I’ve gone through all my usual ones – Bacharach and David song titles, mainly – but to no avail. Any words donated which don’t solve the problem will be recycled into my next review (believe me, you’ll never notice the difference). Help me out; it’ll take me at least half an hour to redo all that hard work.

Németh, Film (Thrill Jockey)

Like fellow-minded member-sharing slow lane travellers Trapist, waiting for a new album from Viennese collective Radian is like waiting for Godot. Or the Northern Line. The fact that the band even exists as a living, recording being is something you have to take on trust – if an experimental Austrian band fell over and there was no audience there to witness it, would anyone know they were suffering from “musical differences”? What on first appearance may seem to be an improvisational jazz-like set-up belies an ultra-precise modus operandi which imbues their work with the highest standards of craftsmanship, and demands patience in the listener. Such patience is rewarded with this, the outrageously good new release from founding member Stefan Németh.

Richard Youngs, The Telescopes and Pekko Kappi, Cross Kings, 16/02/08

Well this must have been the first time that I’ve seen the headliner for a gig moved to an earlier slot due to engineering works on the train line later in the evening.  How about that for a sign of these post-Thatcher, post-Blair, all decay and no fun times?  Can’t blame Richard Youngs for that though, whose live performance renaissance was set to continue at Kings Cross’s confusingly named Cross Kings, with or without the help of those chuggy-stoppy chuggy-stoppy stoppy-stoppy boxes on rails.

Aleph 1, Aleph 1 (iDEAL)

Ah, dear old Aleph 1: the cardinality of certain uncountably infinite sets. That old chestnut. Georg Cantor played around with this in his so-called continuum hypothesis which claims that there is no set whose size is strictly between that of the integers and that of the real numbers. Now I know what you are thinking: Georg old fella, that is crazy talk: you know as well as I do that there is no way of proving or disproving that sort of nonsense, particularly if you are going to bring in those stupid Zermelo-Frankel axioms. And I’m trying to watch the footy, will you pipe down? Oh, and it is your round, you insufferable long-winded long-dead long-bearded fool.

Autechre, Quaristice (Warp)

Would you want to see Picasso reduced to producing stamps?  Gaudi to designing a beach hut?  Whoever it was who did the maze in Hampton Court to pottering about in the garden?  That was my first impression when I heard that the new Autechre album Quaristice had twenty tracks, at an average of just over three minutes each, as opposed to the likes of Draft 7.30 and Untilted (which number among my favourites) with eight or nine at an average of eight plus.  What a waste, I thought. But then again…say you really really wanted a stamp?  Or a wooden shack on Whitstable Bay, or a well-trimmed hedge?  Maybe you would want Pablo, or Antoni, or, um, the fella with the big shears.   You’ll be left with something pretty special, that is for sure. 

Alastair Galbraith, Orb (Nextbestway)

Ah, New Zealand. That two-parted sheep pen. That master of incomprehensible empire-spread sporting activity (Twenty 20, being post-empire, doesn’t count). That home of absolutely no musicians I’ve ever heard of. Well, except those I happen to have written about in the last week. And Kiri Te Kanawa, obviously. And, from Dunedin, the enigmatic Alastair Galbraith. That last one alone should be good enough to stop me besmirching it by printing the fact that the ever-quotable monkeyman thinks it is “just like Britain, but in the middle ages”, but it seems it isn’t.

Hijokaidan, Polar Nights Live; Birchville Cat Motel, Gunpowder Temple Of Heaven (both Pica Disk)

I’m pretty sure that I remember saying that I’d be returning to Lasse Marhaug’s Pica Disk label before long.  I did say that, didn’t I?  It was quite recently, wasn’t it?  You can probably blame an extraordinarily enthusiastic shop assistant for this prolonged spell thrashing around in its choppy waters, which are more than stormy enough to sink a ferry a few hundred metres off Blackpool beach.

Lasse Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love, Stalk (PNL); Hild Sofie Tafjord, Kama (Pica Disk)

Enough of the calm records! If I keep listening to those I’ll never get anything done, I’ll just lie around in my underpants thinking about starting to plan to do stuff. Which doesn’t always go down so well in an open plan office (“gross misconduct”, so I hear, and believe me I take that “gross” personally). If I listen to more noise then my workload will no doubt increase prodigiously, although it will no doubt be accompanied by me running around red-eyed and screaming, kicking over desks and stripping to, erm, my underpants. But as I said, I’ll be doing more, so hopefully they’ll turn a blind eye. To assist me with this new productivity upscaling technique I’ll turn to one of the doyens of the genre, Lasse Marhaug. A couple of new records here, one which features Marhaug and Paal Nilssen-Love – with a little Hild Sofie-Tafjord – and is released on Nilssen-Love’s label, and one which features Hild Sofie Tafjord but not Marhaug, although it is released on Marhaug’s label. You with me? OK, tie your tie round your head, shout unintelligibly about workflows and spreadsheets, and lets begin.