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Perhaps it is a sign that I’m getting old, but these days the world seems to be full of people who are younger, better-looking, and more talented than me. This is particularly true in the case of Nico Muhly, and not only does he get to hang out with her Bjorkness, but to cap it all he is also probably a better blogger than me too. I’m currently teaching my cat some (admittedly fairly advanced) principles of rocket science, and when she has stopped licking her arse and finishes building the damn thing, I’m strapping myself to it and firing myself into space. If anyone knows an easier way of ending it all, by all means tell me.
Muhly’s abundance of talent lights up the sky like fireworks from the start of his second album for the sparky Bedroom Community label. That opening “Mothertongue” suite fizzes into life with its display of classical and electronic elements swirling around a torrent of words – phone numbers, mnemonics, US states and their capitals. Everything is initially diffuse and overlapping haphazardly; gradually it begins to take a diffuse shape, and comes to resemble the results of Steve Reich collaborating with Gyorgy Ligeti on one of his gibberish opera pieces. Later Muhly weaves found sounds of jarringly mundane origin (someone showers and cooks breakfast) into this glorious tapestry.
How do you follow that opening? You would have to be pretty confident in your own ability to go for something which blends medieval English music with a poetic description of the Icelandic landscape, and to set this all amongst more verbal jabber, and some disconcertingly queasy brass; but that would be the “Wonders” suite. It gets even better with his outstanding and intense deconstruction of folk song: in the three-part “The Only Song”, labelmate Sam Amidon sings a haunting tale of a girl drowning her sibling. His ageless, unjudgmental banjo and voice are set amongst some less forgiving soundscapes: ominous electronic eruptions and icy winds which shatter and scatter the narrative. There is something almost hauntological about the sounds of ghostly breath and traces of childlike melody which flicker amongst the dark arrangement, as if the song was possessed by the spectre of its subject matter.
As accomplished as Muhly’s debut was, I wasn’t quite ready for him to unfurl the full length of his ambition in the way he does on Mothertongue. He reaches for the stars and damn near gets there; he certainly gets closer than I ever will given the current rate of progress with this rocket of mine.
Amuse yourself with “Mothertongue: I. Archive” while you camp out at Bedroom Community waiting for the release date of May 26th.
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 »
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 »
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 »
Ignore that tag that says “album review” (even more than you usually would). This is even less of an album review than all of the others which bask in the overinflated self-importantness of that title. Think of it more as a public service announcement, but by someone who couldn’t be bothered creating a new category for such posts. Read the rest of this entry »
Listening to this new album by Carla Bozulich’s new beat combo Evangelista reminds me of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams film from a few year’s back . Under the mental strain caused by two hours spent watching Sean Penn’s method boy gurning some unspeakable tragedy, everything has fractured; the narrative to what may well once have been a love story is now horribly deranged and disfigured. I’d imagine if I had the fortitude to listen to this a thousand times I could piece it back together again. Not sure I do though; this is tough going…yet, damn it, perversely enjoyable. Read the rest of this entry »
I for one can’t wait to see Toumani Diabaté opening Bjork’s rolling cultural revue at the cavernous (for me at least; I’m feeling agoraphobic at the thought of it) Hammersmith Apollo next week. I’m going to be jostling with the colourfully-dressed mobile-waving kids down the front to get a glimpse of this nimble-fingered wizard of the kora. If the end result of his appearance there is that a few extra people go home with a copy of Diabaté’s first-rate Mandé Variations, then that can only be good for humankind as a whole, I reckon. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m far from impressed with these current experimental London weather conditions. I mean, we even set aside a whole area of the UK for random non-seasonal post-Easter snow flurries and the like - it is called Scotland. When the clocks went forward last week (robbing me of an hour of my weekend, which I won’t forget; when it is least expecetd – some time around October probably – I’m nicking that back) I was on the verge of cracking out my shorts and my Soul Jazz Studio One compilations. I even checked my black book to see if I could round myself up some suitably-clad bitches, but the closest I came was the phone number of a vet in Highgate. Instead I find myself inside as the arctic winds whirl round outside, curtains drawn, black-mooded and bitchless, listening to the latest release on that most wintery of labels, Miasmah. Read the rest of this entry »
Good things come in threes, some say. Bad things come in threes, I also hear. Hence we can conclude that anything that comes on its own is neither good nor bad, and is merely average. So when football fans chant “there is only one Ali Karimi”, as I’m sure they do, they aren’t being especially complimentary to the free-scoring Iranian midfielder, and some would argue they probably should be taken outside and shot for their insolence. If they haven’t been already. Thankfully, this new release from Steven R Smith under his Ulaan Khol guise (sounds more like a Mongolian dictator to me) is the first part of a trilogy, which means it is possible to form an opinion on it. It must be either good or bad. QED.
Some years ago the Milkman was interviewing Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet for his ever-flourishing website, and he asked me for some useful questions. Which was a pretty stupid thing to do, as you can imagine, as the kinds of things which interested me weren’t exactly the kinds of things that he thought his legion of fact-hungry readers would be after. For example, one of my suggested questions was “Do you ever accidentally call someone by sitting on your phone during a meeting?”. We’ll probably never know, I’m afraid. Another question which I don’t think he put to the big-haired electronica doyen was “Considering the best thing you ever did was “Glasshead”, how come you don’t do any really long tracks any more?”. Read the rest of this entry »
Pseudonyms are the last hiding place of the devil, or Derren Brown as he likes to call himself these days. That is, of course, after he has exhausted his usual well-established list of hiding places - the blue dress, the jar of spicy pasta sauce, Mysterious Ways plc, and so on. Behind the name Isambard Khroustaliov lurks Sam Britton, one half of the inveterate sound-fiddlers Icarus, and on Nowhere he indulges in some devilishly good dialogue with bass clarinetist Lothar Ohlmeier. Read the rest of this entry »
The blackness scale. In order of increasing blackness:
1) Michael Jackson.
2) The night sky viewed from the edge of a mid-sized town in Hertfordshire.
3) The neighbour’s cat. It would have been higher but for the fact that it has white paws.
4) Coal.
5) James Brown (see also: the proudness scale).
6) James Brown’s hair.
7) A cormorant drowning in an oil slick. At night.
8) Jeremy Kyle’s soul.
9) The empty gaping void of all-consuming nothingness that will take the place of the Earth after the inevitable apocalypse has rinsed you and all you sinners out of the cosmos’s bowl.
10) Robedoor. Read the rest of this entry »
I was saddened to read the other day that Polaroids are becoming obsolete, with both the camera and the film being discontinued by the supplier. Not only will future generations not get to experience the joy I felt as a child when ghostly images began to emerge from the medium’s wet greyness, but they are destined to remain forever baffled by Outkast lyrics. Which will be a real setback, as it is highly likely that all the key moments of their young existence will be accompanied by a bald, portly man playing “Hey Ya” from behind a bank of unenthusiastically flashing lights. I hope that Bleeding Heart Narrative have snaffled as much of the remaining film as they could, given that they intend giving away a unique Polaroid with each copy of All That Was Missing We Never Had In The World. Otherwise it’ll be like the Hoover free flights fiasco all over again, but instead of a swarm of baying old people getting hysterically litigious over a trip to Malaga or somewhere equally shitty, there will be literally dozens of disaffected experimental music fans tutting really quite loudly. Read the rest of this entry »
(Note: this review ends with a poor quality and highly unoriginal pun. Readers of a sensitive disposition should avert their eyes now, go stare at some kittens or something). He is everywhere these days, James Blackshaw. I have even started seeing him at gigs, and when someone new by the name of Blackshaw started at work recently, I actually felt compelled to check that we hadn’t employed a guitarist to liven the place up a bit (well, my suggestion of a random employee sacrifice on the altar of the photocopier was vetoed, so I assumed they must have had a better idea). In the wake of last year’s excellent The Cloud of Unknowing album come these two unmissable new releases. Read the rest of this entry »
Maybe due to the fact that I spent my childhood living by the sea, when I travel to a landlocked country I become acutely aware of its inaccessibility. Even here in London town it doesn’t feel so bad; it wouldn’t take all that long to get to the Kent or Sussex coast, assuming the ex-Connex train lines weren’t having one of their periodic spazz-outs (note: never suggest to me that Southend-on-Sea is on the sea. It is not. That there water is the filthy great Thames estuary, and no number of piers and grotty arcades will convince me otherwise). That absence was felt on my recent trip to the Czech republic, particularly when trapped on one of their worse-than-Connex train services - the rail replacement bus between Stribro and Kozolupy which caused me no little consternation is likely to remain in place for at least a couple of years, so the weary locals told me. Still, at least I had the new ocean-themed album by Chris Abrahams and Mike Cooper to assuage my various complaints. Read the rest of this entry »
I made some sushi the other week. Well you could hardly expect to have been invited after the scene you made last time. I didn’t know what to say, where to look, or which cleaning product I should be using to get that out of the carpet. Anyway, I discovered that making sushi is a bit on the fiddly side. I remember that I had been working on one particular item for about fifteen minutes, when I stopped and looked at it, and realised all I had was wet cabbage. Given how long they spend on making their food, I’m surprised that the Japanese even have time to eat, never mind make ever-growing mountains of blistering psych-rock albums. Read the rest of this entry »
Scrabble doesn’t amuse me all that much for some reason; maybe because to be good at it you have to learn loads of stupid two-letter words with no vowels that look like typos. I do enjoy cryptic crosswords though. I don’t necessarily expect you all to share the joy I experienced when I worked out that “synthetic cream” was an anagram of “Manchester City” or, even better, that “Presbyterians” could be rearranged to give probably its exact opposite, “Britney Spears”. However, if I had the time I’d probably even consider setting a puzzle or two on this site. Consider yourselves lucky then, that this strict twenty four hours per day/seven days per week system that we seem to be dragooned into prevents such self-indulgence. This new album from AGF (7 points. Hang on, that’s not a word! Challenge!) probably caught my attention by challenging the rules of language that my brain holds dear, but it kept it by virtue of being their - or rather her - strongest suite to date. Read the rest of this entry »
Koploop. Got. Zeeg. Got. Woeling. Need. Grom. Got. Fabriek and Fabriek. Need. Bijeen. Need! Thole. Need! Feberdrom. Let me check….yep, got. Tapes of the Day. Still need that. Music for Intermittent Movies…is that the foil-lined one…I need that. Sometimes I feel collecting Machinefabriek releases is like trying to finish off a Panini stickerbook. You run the risk of ending up with half a dozen Alain Giresses and not even sniff of a Karl Heinz Rumenigge. The ones I have listed above are those that have been released - according to his official discography, although sometimes I wonder how even he keeps track - since my last Machinefabriek update last Autumn. Such a ridiculously prodigious output. Read the rest of this entry »
Not content to close the door after the horse has bolted, this site goes on to build a monument to the now-departed beast, equipping it with wings and apocryphal fire-breathing tendencies, pausing only briefly to bestow upon it a made-up history as a champion hurdler, and then charges a load of confused Irish tourists a tenner to tour the empty stables. I know this was released a wee while ago now, and all those who come here trying to sniff the future would be nonplussed by the fetid stench of weeks-old shellac, but I’ve only recently got around to unearthing this from amidst the steaming pile of fine 2008 releases.
Reviews on here of cracking Thrill Jockey releases are like buses it seems. You wait ages for one, and then a bunch of kids kids start laughing at your haircut and throwing chips at you. After the glorious soundscapes of Nemeth’s Film come another couple of changes of style, but anchored to that key core of Chicago musicians the label is more famous for. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
“Did you ever stop to notice all the blood we’ve shed before…did you ever stop to notice the crying Earth the weeping shores…AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” As ever, that tumbly-faced monster Michael Jackson was right. What a right old state this old world is in. I pick up the paper, and what do I see? Death. I turn on the news, and what do I see? Death. I step outside my door and start aimlessly stabbing passers-by, and what do I see? Yup, death, and lots of it. Is there anywhere on this planet untouched by the reaper’s sickening sickel swinging? Is there anywhere nice outside the confines of my head? Read the rest of this entry »
I once knew someone who was firmly of the belief that people shouldn’t be wearing earphones and listening to music when walking on the street. He used to get rather upset about it. “People need to be alert at all times!”, he would rant, “Not making full uses of their senses when in the urban environment is a dereliction of their duty as a human! I could sneak up on them without them being aware!”. My more laissez-faire approach to portable music devices confounded him, and he moved to Japan (I don’t think I caused this, but you never know). I’m pretty sure he is a ninja now, the super-aware super-stealthy bastard. Read the rest of this entry »
Of all the things that have dropped through my front door since I moved into this new flat, this is definitely one of my favourites. Let’s look at the competition: bills, curry house menus, the local “MAN GROWS GIANT TURNIP” rag, a firework, a cat tied to a firework, cat excrement, human excrement, and two or three human body parts which suggest that someone known to the previous occupant of this flat has been kidnapped and slowly tortured (note to self: next time I move house, I must get my mail redirected). Yep, this album of exquisite, atmospheric, heavily-processed guitar is better than all those. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the undoubted highlights of last month’s doom-laden ATP Nightmare Before Christmas was the performance of Dylan Carlson’s Earth. Having exhausted myself by running around Butlin’s like a five-year-old - ah, those water slides - I slumped against a wall towards the back, letting the vibrations from those colossal guitar chords buzz their way into my head. They were debuting new songs from their then forthcoming new album The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull, and it was immediately apparent that these were rich and languid epics increasingly-far removed from their metal past. Read the rest of this entry »
Despite being a fan of theirs for many a year, you may recall that Jackie-O Motherfucker, or in particular Jackie-O Motherfucker’s smoking-ban-flouting, support-band-disrespecting and all-round bit-of-an-arsehole-on-the-night Tom Greenwood, got up my nose a bit at a recent gig. So much so that I may have been blinded (as Dave pointed out in the comments) to the quality of the music they were producing. Not being keen to add another name to my lengthy list of grudges borne, I made the point of seeking out a copy of their first studio album in a couple of years, Valley of Fire, and to attempt some sort of objective review. Which was easier than I thought it would be, as he record is strong enough to blow away the stench of any lingering ill-will. Read the rest of this entry »
I must confess that I didn’t think I would enjoy this. As someone whose exposure to the Kompakt label doesn’t extend much further than last year’s raved-about-by-millions-most-probably-including-you album by The Field, I decided to base my misgivings on much more tenuous grounds. You see, I figured that I’m just a bit too bitter, too cynical, too irritable, to be amused by anything with the word “pop” in the title. Read the rest of this entry »
As this second release on the label comes out almost a full year since the first (the rather excellent Jasper TX album A Darkness), it is probably fair to say that Lidar Productions aren’t exactly out to flood the market with product. I’m sure they would say that they are concentrating on quality, not quantity, but so does every lazy fucker who can’t be bothered to put in a day of hard graft down the mill, me included. (”Quality, not quantity!”. “Umm, no, that is one grain of wheat. A good grain, granted, but I’d rather not starve, so I’ll have the loaf of bread”). However, records as delicious as the Jasper TX and this new self-titled Bersarin Quartett (sic, whatever that means) one don’t come around that often, so maybe, just maybe, they’ve got a point. Read the rest of this entry »
As you may know, I’m a big fan of Taylor Deupree’s 12k, that most fastidious of labels. Obsessed always with the qualities of sound itself, its environment is a hermetic one populated only by the most minimal yet most fascinating of electronics. The new release by UK-based artist Autistici keeps within their keenly-patrolled quality control thresholds. Read the rest of this entry »
Regular readers who have grown understandably tired of my overuse of poor sea and water-related metaphors will no doubt be delighted to hear of the delights Santa brought me this year. Not only am I now the owner of this new recording of the wonderfully-watery Sinking Of The Titanic, but also of Peter Ackroyd’s new book of meanderings on the subject of that most gloriously-filthy river - Thames: Sacred River. I’ve only just begun to dip my toes into the book’s black and fast-flowing depths. I’m pretty sure I will get sucked in soon, read half of the thing in one sitting, but then inexplicably forget to return to it i.e. like I do with all books. I can glance across at a pile of started-but-not-yet-finisheds which features – just above the Koran - Will Self’s Book Of Dave on top. I met him once, he scared me by barking like a dog, so he is lucky I bought the damned thing at all, never mind read it.
Just back from my festive galumph around the country, and I’ve already resumed position at my desk, staring at my computer like it is the most obscenely advanced piece of technology I’ve come across in my life. I feel like one of the villagers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years Of Solitude who has just been shown a magnet or a block of ice for the first time. What is this? It does what? Can I give you some of these gourds in exchange for it? Anyway, perhaps as a result of my pre-xmas list-building frenzy of over-consumption, on my travels I really didn’t listen to a great deal of music. Apart from this. Although its 43 tracks felt like more than enough. Read the rest of this entry »
Too many records, not enough ears; world too big, wallet too small; information sources too many, information receptors limited to a couple of failing eyes and an increasingly forgetty brain. My excuse as to why certain undoubtedly very good records failed to ascend to the rarified heights of the review pages over here is most likely something along those lines. Read the rest of this entry »
Chinese whispers: I’d heard about Sun City Girl and Sublime Frequencies head Alan Bishop crawling on hands and knees across the Sahara with a battered cassette in his mouth, tape spooling and spewing out behind him, tangling on rocks and being chewed on by lizards. And not just any part of the Sahara, but the Western Sahara, a place so fractious that its borders are designated in my atlas by angry zigzags, those denoting a local rivalry so intense that the people on opposing sides of the divide can only look at each other in mirrors with their backs to each other. Read the rest of this entry »
Favourite Kim Hiorthøy sleeve anyone? His work for Rune Grammofon is iconic, and has been a crucial factor in positioning the label as one of the most consistently fascinating and challenging labels of the last decade. If I had to, and some day I probably will - voter turnout in general elections is dropping so dramatically in the UK that some day soon it will become compulsory, and from there it is a slippery slope to mandatory voting in X Factor (for Rhydian, obviously), and from there but a short leap to having to make known your preferred sleeve by a certain young Norwegian designer - I would go for the twin suns of Alog’s Red Swing Shift. No I wouldn’t, I’m pencilling my X next to the chromatic snowflakes of Arve Henriksen’s Chiaroscuro. Or the blacker-than-blacker-than-black Deathprod box set. Tell you what, just take me and lock me up or shoot me or whatever you do to wimps like me these days, but I’m abstaining. Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Youngs is one of the most enigmatic and singular of artists. Earlier this year he played on a bill which included the Finnish freak-folk chanteuse Islaja and American minimal violinist Tony Conrad. Like sometime collaborator Jandek, Youngs plays live so rarely – I don’t think he had been on stage in many years – but here had the courage to sing unaccompanied in a church, and to do so with a passion that riveted all present to their pews. Such vision has led him to record some startling avant-electronic albums, such as The Naïve Shaman and River Through Howling Sky, and has now led him to record the most enigmatic and singular of folk-guitar albums. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you really want to know what I think of this? There are plenty of reviews of this out there, most of which are probably written by people who know much more about this junglestep/twoface/dubmonkey/whatever malarkey than I do, and all of which I tried to avoid reading, lest it spoilt my first listen. Read the rest of this entry »
How long would I need to listen to The Necks to get them to perch happily at the top of my Last FM most listened to artists chart? Let’s see. Up there currently we’ve got Tim Hecker with around 200 plays. So that shouldn’t be too hard, should it? Or it wouldn’t be if the Necks didn’t have a penchant for releasing one-track hour-long albums. I figure that at my average listening rate per day it would probably take me over a month. However it would be a month of the most sublime improvising piano/bass/drums trio on the planet, so it might be worth a go. Read the rest of this entry »
Newcomers to this place may, as well as wondering what the funny smell is and who that mad-haired chap in the corner is talking to, be thinking that this is some sort of 1970s-themed blog. There were all those krautrock references peppered throughout the White Rainbow review, there was the Miles Davis box set, umm, “review”, and now this, which couldn’t be more 1970s if it had the date “1974” in the title, which in fact it does. Read the rest of this entry »
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, in particular those kind people who send me, quite unbidden, all manner of shiny round things to use as coasters, I’m only reviewing things that have more than one disc and come housed in metal boxes. A much smaller and more minimalist case this one, both in terms of the packaging (I wouldn’t advise storing your sandwiches in this) and the music. Read the rest of this entry »
Ten uses for the Miles Davis Complete On The Corner box set: Read the rest of this entry »
To those of us who are too young to remember them, it kinda feels like the 70s didn’t actually happen, like they were something that Rick Wakeman invented while he was in the pub nursing a pint of John Smith’s and absent-mindedly writing rude words in the Sun’s two-speed crossword. But, apparently, top scientists have proved that they did in fact happen, probably by carbon dating Damo Suzuki or something, and, after the verdict in ELP v mapsadaisical (2005 SLT 499 per Lord Clarke: “I am bound…to find that the absence of the particulars in question from the very detailed Note, 6/9 of process, rendered it ineffective as preventing the adjudicator’s decision becoming final and binding in terms of Clause 66”. Ouch, that stung) I’m not allowed to question that fact in print any more. Read the rest of this entry »
Since I purchased it at the most enjoyable Touch 25 evening the other week, the only times this new CD from Sweden’s BJ Nilsen has left my CD player are when the machine has gone en derangement, and I’ve been forced to eject it to shout obscenities at its dumb, tongue-lolling, metal face. If the machine was any more reliable, I’d be tempted to solder it shut with this inside and listen to it on repeat forever, or at least until they introduce the by now seemingly-inevitable eco-tax on stupid shiny dial-faced boxes, and then I’m flinging the thing out of the window and into a bush and scarpering into the night. Read the rest of this entry »
This is one of those releases where I could just go on and on about the innovative, minimalist packaging. I’m not going to do that, for several reasons: 1) It is a Raster-Noton release, hence superb design is pretty much par for the course; 2) Colin will pop up in the comments reminding me that I promised to write something for hardformat about my favourite pieces of music design and I haven’t done it yet; and 3) It’ll give me more space to write about the music (yes, well spotted, I’ve managed to waste a paragraph anyway). Read the rest of this entry »
So the band are called WZT Hearts. But apparently, we are to pronounce that Wet Hearts. WZT. Wet. Wzt. Wet. Doubleyouzedtee. Wet. Wizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Weeeeeeeeeeeeet. Nope, I’m not having that. You don’t come round my gaff, steal my teabags, pinch my girflriend’s bum, put my CDs back in the rack in the wrong order, and then take liberties with my language like that, you hear?
Oh, but then again this is really good. It opens with one of the year’s best Fennesz-inspired (damn, I need a new Fennesz record, I’m grabbing anything that sounds remotely similar and clutching it to my busom like a kleptomaniac nanny) pieces in “Hassler”, an epic buzzy thing which is overtaken by waves of distortion until it is a ragged ship, until the drums of death strike up, until the machines fail with a shriek, and until it goes down with all hands drunk and oblivious.
The album never quite reaches those heights again, which is probably as much a function of Newtonian physics as anything – there is so much friction playing against momentum, dragging and scraping and grinding against the chainsaw guitars of “Lava Nile” and the vocal splinters of “Hearth Carver”. This kind of lunacy will inevitable elicit comparison to NYC rabblerousers Black Dice, but in truth WZT Hearts deserve their name to acquire a reputation of its own, other than for the aforementioned reasons of linguistic nonsensicality. I may forgive them that in time, but I’ll never forget.
Thread Rope Spells Making No Sense is available now from Carpark.
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Another month, another two Sunburned Hand Of The Man releases. Or at least collaborations. Finnish “psych-kraut” pioneers and kindred spirits Circle join hands with them for The Blaze Game, while Kieran Hebden opts to put the safety of a pane of glass between him and them as he takes to the Teo Macero seat on Fire Escape.
My initial impression was that Hebden would seek to curtail SHOTM’s wild excesses, channelling them in a beatward direction; I expected more tracks like “The Parakeet Beat” with its M’Boom style percussive stomp. However when I heard the rubbery funk of “Nice Butterfly Mask” being crudely curtailed by the sound of a man attacking an elephant with a garden strimmer I knew it wasn’t going to be that straightforward. Indeed, half of the album is given up for an “Aumgn” style meandering soundscape; fifteen minutes of childlike piano, grunting, tuneless whistling and rattling, banging and scraping entitled “The Wind Has Ears”(hmmm, it is probably a fair bit better than I’ve just made it sound). Available now from Boomkat.
The unimpeachable source that is Wikipedia makes this the sixth album Circle have been involved is in the last two years, and while their quality control has been on duty/off duty/on duty/off duty in fine French farmer style (Miljard and Tower are brilliant, Katapult and Panic…well, lets just say that they have their moments), the thought of this collaboration intrigued me greatly. Thankfully, it is the Can-worshipping Circle of Tower who have turned up to jam with SHOTM, lending their hallucinatory percussiveness to their American chums’ evil weirdness. After the spacious opener “Majava” the album catches alight with the incendiary build of “Heinahelvu” / “Vuoren Valloitus”, guitars piled up like bonfire wood. “Yksi Hirvi, Miljoona Metsastaaja” may be the best thing either band have been involved with, sparking enthusiastically from Neu! timber. Perhaps inevitably, I am compelled to say that The Blaze Game is grate. Buy it from Conspiracy Records.
Imagine building yourself a huge Danish sandwich, with layers all piled high, cheese on cheese on salami on tomato on cheese on lettuce on pickle on grated horse…etc etc etc…all on bread. Now imagine trying to pick that up, and eat it. Without dropping any of it in your lap, on your top, or on your laptop. And succeeding. You see, I’ve been biting into Parades for weeks, and I’m still no closer to the bread, so numerous are the fillings toppings. Let’s see, what have I found so far…luscious strings on rustic folk with home-cooked brass on extravagant choral salad on bite-size piano chunks all over fried electronics. Under the weight of all this, it surely has to collapse, sending children running away screaming through the streets as rocket leaves and pastrami shower down upon their heads…yet somehow it doesn’t; there must be some javelin-sized cocktail sticks running through it. And the more I eat, the more amazing combinations of flavours I find. And I keep eating, and I’m still barely making a dent. Ever been to a restaurant, and gorged yourself on a dish, only to be told that that was just the starter? I have (damn the Greeks and their endless mezze, like some sort of unannounced food decathlon. There’s that javelin again. Hang on, how do the Greeks keep getting in here? Vikings repel these invaders!), and it kind of feels like that. I’m watching Parades tick inexorably up my most played list, and I don’t feel I’m getting my head round it at all. The only section I have purchase on is that “Step Up! Saddle Up!” bit on “Caravan” which has melodic juice oozing down the sides of yet another Axelrod-like vocal section . Seriously, I’m back to playing the first track again, and it might as well be the first time I’ve heard it, not the 12th. I love albums like that. Dense isn’t the word. Dansk might be.
Listen to last track “Cutting Ice To Snow” over at Efterklang’s website. Buy it from Boomkat - I highly recommend it….I think…let me listen to it again…no, I’m full…or maybe just another bite…or two. They are playing this live soon. Won’t that just be the icing on the sandwich…
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After their terrific performance in London the other month, featuring some interesting inter-band chemistry, my anticipation levels for the new Six Organs of Admittance album went way, um, inter the red. In case you don’t remember, I harped on interminably about whether Ben Chasny was going to retrace his steps back to his Fahey-esque fingerpicking roots, or whether he would continue on down the confusingly-signposted route away, over the rocks and between the trees, particularly now that his fortunes had become somewhat interlinked with those of Magic Marker inker-in-chief Elisa Ambroglio. Are they to become the Sonny and Cher, the Kurt and Courtney, the Richard and Karen (oh, hang on, that isn’t right, is it? Bloody hell) for our hoodie-shooty-stabby generation?
While I’m still mid-puzzlement, Chasny sees his chance and leaves me standing, skipping straight down the side of the hill, using both well-picked folk and some surprisingly restrained noise for balance, and in doing so produces his best and most focussed album. While the opening track “Alone With The Alone” appears to have walked off the end of The Sun Awakens – drone fixated, with Tim Green of the The Fucking Champs scraping guitar excess into the gaps between Chasny’s fingers, but the next two tracks are suffused with melody and harmony. “The Strangled Road” features the first appearance by Elisa, on skull-kissing vocal duties, while “Jade Like Wine” is a demonstration of Chasny’s new-found ability to tune a guitar in something approaching a sensible fashion. “Coming To Get You” is lashed to a distant howl, with the exceptions of a couple of moments when Elisa’s cap is popped off and she is freed to daub her blurry slogans over the walls. After a suitably reverent Sun City Girls tribute comes the spiralling epic “Final Wing”, recorded under a flight path it seems, and then the title track, with Chasny stamping all over the pedals for the first and last time.
I’m looking at the pile of unwritten-about CDs piled up next to my electro-typo-connectivity device, and to be honest, they’ll have to wait. I’ve been playing this for a month now, but I’m going to play it some more. You may want to join me. Shelter From The Ash is released on 12th November.
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So you are a fledgling Icelandic label (come on, play along), three wonderful, progressive albums under your furry belt – one from the classical ingenue, one from the abrasive guitar-cruncher, and one from the knob-twiddling producer to the stars. So, what are you going to do next? Isn’t it obvious? You haven’t done a folk album yet, have you? Get yourself a banjo player and immerse him in the hot spring of talent bursting from your roster.
Sam Amidon’s All Is Well takes a trove of trad arrs, with contents reaching back to, and beyond, Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music, and rubs it till it gleams. Over Amidon’s pure, languid croon and fingerpicking, Nico Muhly adds some sensitive arrangements – the tracks are not quite wrenched from their place in history, but more given a couple of sedatives and wheeled - slowly enough so as not to wake them - into the present day. It appears that the bluegrass standard “Oh Death” still hasn’t learned that the grim reaper ain’t gonna stand for no cheap attempts at bribery (He’s death! What is he going to do with your money? Buy a nice semi in Croydon? Take it down Stringfellows and stuff it in some lapdancer’s knickers?). However he may be tempted to sit awhile and admire the cushion of violins that underwrite that ham-fisted bung; thank Muhly for buying some time with his pristine work “Little Johnny Brown” is the best thing on here, worked up into a incantatory stomp with some thick bass and sawed strings. However, without Dock Boggs’ ragged howl, “Sugar Baby” is somewhat emasculated; transformed into a pretty thing that could have sat next to the more reflective and wistful moments on the last Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy record (which was, of course, also produced by Valgeir Sigurdsson).
All Is Well is a fine addition to the Bedroom Community canon, and in a sense, it fits right into the Chinese whisper tradition of this canon of song, passed as they are from hand to hand, acquiring new character and characters as they go. But the talented Sam Amidon has taken them into a strange land that I’m not sure many of the ghosts who inhabit these words would understand, let alone choose to follow them into.
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I don’t want to bang in about it, as I’ve given it a fair few column inches (Column inches? Column inches? Who the hell do I think I am? Cl