the wirewool

wirewool podcast 005

2010-01-24T12:26:00.002Z

wirewool podcast 005

To make up for the lack of posts this week. And now on Soundcloud. Enjoy, if possible.

wirewool podcast 004

2010-01-16T23:19:00.002Z

wirewool podcast 004

Threw this together last night, and it sounds it. Enjoy!

RIP Teddy Pendergrass

2010-01-14T19:59:00.002Z

Teddy Pendergrass - You Can't Hide From Yourself

Man, what an awful day. RIP Teddy.

Jay Reatard RIP

2010-01-14T17:55:00.001Z

Jay Reatard - Oh Its Such A Shame

It really is. RIP Jay.

Love is the

2010-01-13T19:29:00.005Z

Nina Kraviz - Pain In The Ass

A great deal of house music in 2009 was preoccupied with insisting that it was house music. Whether it was someone intoning 'House music' over a beat, or DJ Sprinkles commenting on what house is sold as, there was a lot of talking. Which I like. Theres this weird subgenre of house tracks that involve someone making no sense whatsoever on top of the track, the music sounds even more alien with a vocal that is not remotely musical. Nina Kraviz sounds really annoyed about something here, and the whole thing sounds so odd and trippy that I can't help but love it.

Liars - No Barrier Fun

So, Liars: first album was post-punk, 2nd was pagan shouting and organs, 3rd was all drums, 4th was the return to quasi-indie rock, and now 'Sisterworld' sounds kind of like a band who have been through all the aforementioned changes. I was a bit underwhelmed by 2007's 'Liars', but 'Sisterworld' is great stuff - less abraisive and narrow minded than their drum-obsessed period, but just as pummeling, and as tuneful as their fidgety debut. Its as good as you can hope for from an experimental-leaning guitar band, absolutely worth checking out.

Cab ride takes too long

2010-01-11T19:16:00.003Z

Tindersticks - Factory Girls

Tindersticks, like Lambchop, have settled into a nice groove of, um, nice grooves. When they first appeared in the mid-90s, they were the embodiment of morose beauty (i.e. they had a string section). As the number of bandmembers dwindled, they veered more towards the overt sensuality of soul, lyrically and musically. And they're generally better at it than, say, Belle & Sebastien. It's not an affect. 'Falling Down A Mountain', the new album, is a relaxed affair - they seem to keep their tenser, dissonant stuff for the Claire Denis soundtrack collaborations - and kinda perfect for late winter. Quite gorgeous.

Thriller - Swarm

I can't believe I didn't listen to this when it came out last year. I mean, it's totally up my street. This is dub techno, by way of UK bass obsessives, managing to make something new of a genre that I love to death, but have to admit is not consistently surprising. It's dark, off-kilter, dense.... love it. So much.

When I start to

2010-01-06T21:37:00.003Z

Ke$ha - Tik Tok (Untold Mix)
Uffie - MCs Can Kiss (Starkey Redid)
Miley Cyrus - Party In The USA (Chopped & Screwed)

SORRY FOLKS, LINKS GOT YANKED BY THE INTERNET POLICE

3 artists most people probably find immensely annoying made trendy. Ke$ha's 'Tik Tok' didn't make a huge impression on me when I first heard it, but Untold's remix makes it more palatable by smearing oversaturated keyboards over it, and a more dancefloor oriented tempo. Uffie, who laudably admits (well, not in so many words) that's she's a dreadful MC on 'MCs Can Kiss', gets a wonky do-over from Starkey, so that's more keyboard blares. Not an improvement per se - Feadz's original production is pretty good, but it does lessen Uffie's actual input, which is good.
Best of all is the Chopped & Screwed version of Miley Cyrus' 'Party In The USA' cause I just love anything chopped & screwed, and obviously it sounds much better this way.

New Year

2010-01-05T16:44:00.001Z

The Impressions - Make A Resolution

HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS

Normal service actually will resume tomorrow.

Say what

2009-12-16T18:48:00.004Z

Mika Vainio - Goths

Raster-Noton's 'Rhythm' series of Eps reaches it's zenith with a contribution from Mika Vainio, and his first all-techno release in some time. But, y'know, Vainio techno. Records he puts out under the name ∅ are techno that sounds like it's been fashioned from wool, sheet metal and the sounds a house makes in the dead of night, and Pansonic err more towards demolishing techno form with noise. So, this is rough and ready stuff, kind of what that Fuck Buttons album was supposed to sound like. I'm not sure this is danceable per se, but it's definitely more head-banging than hypnotic. Well played.

Gucci Mane - Lemonade

I haven't paid close attention to Gucci Mane's prolific run of mixtapes (apart from the 'Cold War' series), but if you missed his debut back in 2006, new album 'The State Vs Radric Davies' is as good a place to start as any. It's difficult to surmise - I'm still trying to get to grips with what the hell he's talking about much of the time - but it's an immediately striking listen, full of the kind of psychedelic keyboard club rap bizness favoured by Bangladesh and PRGZ. It doesn't really grate on the nerves the way I felt most crunk full-lengths did, and theres no lulls or any tracks I thought of as filler. I'll be working my way through all winter I guess, not a bad way to spend my time.

Ol Dirty Bastard - Just Say No

Not sure to what extent 'Message To the Other Side' is a new Ol Dirty Bastard album (as in, whether the majority of verses have been used before), but it's a pleasant surprise in terms of quality. I loved ODB with all my heart, so I'm happy to listen to anything he hollered into a microphone, but the production here is generally pretty strong, and.. Look, it's stuff by ODB you haven't heard, so hear it. 'Just Say No', in particular, is bananas in a way that totally reminiscent of 'Return to 36 Chambers'. I miss this dude.

and weaving

2009-12-15T18:23:00.002Z

Joe Godard - Apple Bobbing

It's tempting to paint Joe Godard's 'Harvest Festival' as the yin to Alexis Taylor's 'Rubbed Out' yang, the two sides to Hot Chips mix of mournful indie and inventive electronica. That kinda demeans the role of the rest of Hot Chip, but you can't deny that 'Harvest Festival' sounds like what Hot Chip might sound like with the emo removed. It's a playful record, very much of it's time, referencing brighter shades of dubstep and wonky, but with more of an eye on the Boomkat home listening market. I'd go so far as to say that although it doesn't have the highs of Hot Chip's 'Made In The Dark', I'm more likely to listen to this. It's, y'know, fun.

Ricardo Villalobos feat. Los Updates - Driving Nowhere

A year or so ago, every single move Villalobos did (or didn't make) was of massive importance. I don't read that many blogs, but I've heard nary a word about his last 2 Eps, collaborations with Los Updates (first seen on 'Sei Es Drum''s amazing 'Four Wheel Drive'). It might be that the last one had a long weird ramble all over the top of it about bankers and financial collapse, but ****** is more in the 'Four Wheel Drive' vein, the Los Updates vocals just another weird dissonant element in Villalobos' spare mix. The beats are as intricate as ever, and if you need to dance to it, the remixes stay faithful to the original whilst offering something a bit more palatable. It's a good 'un.

Blind people, really

2009-12-10T17:45:00.002Z

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The House

I've not seen 'The Road' yet, and I probably won't this side of Christmas, so I stopped waiting and listened to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' score. 'Atmospheric' scores can feel a bit redundant divorced of the images, but I thought Cave & Ellis' score for 'The Proposition' worked well in both settings. Before I get to it, let me just say I am pretty shocked that Godspeed did not get the commission for this. I mean, 'Dead Flag Blues' does the so-distraught-its-verging-on-self-parody thing almost as well as Cormac McCarthy (seriously: 'We're all stuck in the belly of this horrible machine. And the machine is bleeding to death.' Should have gone the whole hog and added 'Also, children crying. Buried alive. Rapists stealing money from blind people. Oh, it's awful so it is.') Anyways, 'The Road''s score is, as you would imagine, desolate, and not always in a pretty way. This is actually a good thing, theres not so many cues signifying the nobility of suffering, just emptiness, and in the case of 'The House', abject terror. Very good stuff.

Nite Funk - Am I Gonna Make It

When Nite Jewel and Dam-Funk get together, you know theres going to be keyboards (<- read that in the voice of Max off 'Heart To Heart'). I did mean to write something about Dam-Funk's stupendous 'Toeachizown', but there were other distractions. Long story short: it's pretty awesome. And, of course, Nite Jewel made one of the better albums from the chillwave/glo-fi/hypnagogic pop/whatever scene (or you could call it badly recorded electro pop I guess), 'Good Evening'. And given their common love of keyboards, bass, and melodies, a collaboration was a good idea. And it sounds exactly as you would expect: Dam-Funk brings the thudding beats, keyboards abound, and..well, it doesn't sound like Nite Jewel doing the lead vocal, but it doesn't sound like Dam-Funk either? I dunno. Either way, this song in five minutes tells you exactly why you should buy the Dam-Funk and Nite Jewel albums post-haste.

ATP Nightmare Before Xmas 09

2009-12-09T18:21:00.001Z

As the winter sets in and I get more and more exhausted from work and the mild twinges of SAD, my mind turns to thinking of excuses for why I'm not updating the blog as regularly. Cut a long story short: I am lazy. But I'll make more of an effort now.

So, over the weekend was ATP's Nightmare Before Christmas curated by My Bloody Valentine, which obviously I attended because MBV are the best band in the world. That said, it was one of the least eclectic line-ups for ATP thus far, kinda like when Slint curated and basically brought everyone who lived within a two-mile radius of them and Matmos. MBV's choices ran the gamut from bands they used to play with and bands who flatter them with imitation. And De La Soul and EPMD.

Rather than running through the lengthy list of bands I didn't see (mostly because I wasn't that bothered), here's my highlights:

1. Yo La Tengo & Sonic Youth
Two totally reliable bands that always sound good, and I suppose it's easy to take them for granted. The hits shone particularly brightly, YLT got me very excited with 'Stockholm Syndrome', and Sonic Youth's closing 'Death Valley 69' was all kinds of awesome.

2. The Dirty Three
It's always a pleasure to be in Warren Ellis' company, even when he is describing Minehead as 'the good part of the anus of England'.

3. Sun Ra Arkestra
Less challenging than you would imagine, but the first half of the set at least was pretty impressive celestial jazz that you could dance to. If you weren't such a MBV fan.

4. EPMD
Only half an hour long, which was a disappointment, but it at least meant songs were run through with breakneck speed and I was still left wanting. Sermon obviously has a sense of humour about all this: 'This one's for the ladies in the audience. All six of you…'

5. Lightning Bolt
Playing on a stage! LB were on top form, and I mean TOP form. I felt like I hadn't breathed for the preceeding hour when they finished. If the weekend was just them and MBV I'd be hard pushed to say I'd been ripped off. Just fucking incredible.

And, obviously, MBV themselves. The only thing to add to my estimation of their shows last year ('like having God shout at you') is that 'Sometimes' is now part of their set, which is just goooorgeous. And wobbling back to my chalet after 3 consecutive hurrican/jet engine/bowels of hell noise-filled nights of 'You Made Me Realise' is pretty good value for money.

And so, farewell to ATP. I am enforcing a strict 'no-festivals' policy next year in order to actually go on a holiday or something, so don't have too much fun without me.

We have the moon

2009-11-18T17:56:00.002Z

The Field - The More That I Do

I think I first listened to The Field's 'Yesterday & Today' on a long train journey, which seemed appropriate enough what with it's charging trance rhythms and what not. It also accompanies looking out the window at rushing scenery quite well, with it's little explosions of colour and sunny melodies. I found it an even easier listen than 'From Here We Go Sublime' (I might be alone on that one). This is the first time I've seen The Field in it's live band incarnation since 'Yesterday And Today' came out, and the streamlined, clean sounds of his live show have become a bit grittier, more band-oriented. There are highs and lows to this - a drummer adding fills to trance beats is always a crowd pleaser, but the build and drop of the best songs feels a bit less effective when it's not ruthlessly mechanical. Live bass sounds great though. I don't know if this is just The Field finding it's feet as a live entity or that Axel Willner is taking the project in another more rock-dynamic direction. Either way, it was a very good show, and a genuinely interesting way to render these songs live. They didn't play 'The More I Do' though, which is criminal. Sort it out, The Field.

Mmmm

2009-11-13T17:52:00.001Z

The last time I saw Vladislav Delay, it was at a festival in Shoreditch, quite late at night, in front of a large crowd in a small venue waiting for TV On The Radio. So, naturally, he leaned on hs more rhythmic sensibilities. As if this years 'Tuuma' wasn't hint enough, his performance at the Union Chapel last night is preoccupied with rhythm in an entirely different way; that is, pulling it apart. Fleeting moments of tapped out rhythms were subsumed by hum and echo, impossible to pinpoint where loops ended and begun again. Joined by brass man Lucio Capece, who seemed to filter out calm waves of sound from clarinet and saxophone (or maybe they were being fed through Vladislav Delay's machinery). Obviously, he's a amster of this kind of jarring dub, and live it worked it's magic a lot better than on the aforementioned 'Tuuma'. I dug it.

Supporting (but playing last) were Food. Food are a combination of the occasionally beautiful brass of Iain Bellamy and the kind of awe-inspiring percussion of Thomas Stronen. I mean, really, he was looping up chimes, patches of sampled sounds from earlier on in the gig, and of course on top of all that when he actually started hitting the drumkit, he was an absolute MONSTER. They were joined on guitar for their last piece by Mark Hardwicke, who wasn't really going for it as much as the Food boys hoped - I couldn't really hear much of contribution really - but Food themselves are some exciting improvisers. And now I have to buy all their records.

Nape of the neck

2009-11-11T17:49:00.002Z

Krallice - Intraum

In the grand scheme of things, I know about as much about black metal as I do about jazz, but I know I like Krallice. For me, they hit an ideal middle ground between the brutal thrash of my youth and the symphonic theatricality of the bands I'm not tr00 cvlt enough for. Krallice's 2nd album builds upon the first by being faster and more monolithic, this thing towers over you, whilst still finding time to sound absolutely squalid in places. Given Mick Barr is involved, the pace of the guiatar squall is so mesmerising that occasionally you have to step back from the trance and think 'He's still playing like that? How is that even possible?'. This is good stuff, people.

Entombed - Night Of the Vampire

Whilst we're on a bit of a metal tip, this song showed up on Fever ray's predictably excellent Halloween podcast for Resident Advisor. It made me listen to Entombed for most of Sunday. But I was mostly listening to this one over and over again.

Dalston

2009-11-06T17:47:00.000Z

Non-English people won't really get this, but living in Luton invokes a certain reaction in people. One time I met a friend in a pub in Luton and he said 'Oh hey, how come you're here?' and I said 'Well, I live here', and he said 'Oh, I'm sorry'. People from London especially condescend about Luton, which is pretty rich if you've ever been to Dalston. Given that it's home to 3 venues that host my kind of thing (Café Oto, the Vortex, Barden's Boudoir), I've had to hang around there many a time, and if ever a place was to make you feel proud of living in Luton, it's Dalston. Grim, grim, grim. That Jarvis Cocker line about Sheffield, 'a jumble sale left out in the rain', is even more appropriate here. Ugh.

Anyways, I was there on Wednesday for some high-quality musics at Café Oto, which I do have to say, is a lovely little space. I only caught 5 minutes of Konntinent, so I don't really want to comment on it, but what I heard sounded very pleasant. Next up was Simon Scott, and I think that maybe having him and Jasper TX on the same bill wasn't really a great idea, given that while Simon Scott's glitch and guitar drone was very good, Jasper TX's glitch and guitar drone was better. Not really fair. Jasper TX dragged chords over field recordings and static, building to peaks of noise. And then it was all over with rather too quickly. Headlining was Mira Calix, still Warp Records' most underrated. Her performance leaned more on her avant-compositional material than the beguiling electronica of her early albums, though there was a bit of that too. You can kind of divide her work so far into 'pre- really into strings' and 'post- really into strings', and the first half of her set was the familiar work she's done matching up string arrangements to insect sounds, which was really quite lovely, the mournful qualities of the violin coupled with the vibrancy of crickets whistling. The set then worked it's way into her odd electronica, and it's still a bit odd that for all the commissions for pieces that she receives, no-one's ever really asked her to expand on her brilliant way with a beat. It's what stood out last time I saw her too; for someone whose work is frequently beatless, she knows rhythm. I would LOVE to hear a Mira Calix hip-hop album. But strings and insects are good too. Good enough to spend time in Dalston for.

...and cut

2009-11-04T17:20:00.002Z

Fennesz - Perfume For Winter

Grouper - Rising Height

Natural Snow Buildings - The Crystal Bird

Back in St Giles-in-the-field last night, which you'll be surprised to learn is not in a field, don't know if I mentioned that before. It is a church and last night it was filled with the lovely noise of Natural Snow Buildings, Grouper and Fennesz.

Natural Snow Buildings are a guitar drone band. But a guitar drone band that have vampire comics included with their albums (This is a recession, musicians! I'm not buying any more cds unless they ALL come with supernatural-themed comics). Their short set saw them playing with feedback and little loops, culminating in a hushed sung song with the hum of noise in the background. Quite lovely.

You'd describe Grouper as 'quite lovely' if you weren't so unsure there was a very dark undercurrent to her music - whilst a lot of drone music gets described with peaceful aquatic metaphors, her music sounds like drowning. The only clarity is her own voice, moaning and looped and echoed til it becomes as difficult to parse as the music; varying layers of tape hiss and obscured melodies, and the monolithic hum of her guitar. It's as beguiling as melancholy gets.

I've been rather enjoying Fennesz's recent tendency towards aggression when playing live, and his performance was full of computer noise. The opening strums of his guitar emitted a terrifying noise, like notes being hacked apart and played through a transistor. Elsewhere there was moments where he threatened to break out an actual drumbeat, but true to form I wasn't able to tell if it was some intentionally dissonant clicking or not. At one particular good noise peak, the power cut and that was the end of the performance. Through a series of complicated facial gestures, we learned it wasn't his fault but he was sorry anyway. As always, I look forward to seeing him again.

GAS at The Barbican

2009-10-19T12:45:00.003Z

GAS - Konigforst #5

For a while it seemed like the first 3 GAS albums were the holy grails of ambient music. Then Kompakt started selling them as MP3s. Then came the boxset. And on Friday, Wolfgang Voigt played a live show as GAS in a cinema at The Barbican. None of the (relative) heightened awareness of GAS' influence on current music has made it any less elusive though. We know what it is - long drones, made of stretched orchestral sounds, the crackle of vinyl and the distant thud of trance - why does it sound as mercurial, as indefinable as this?
The GAS albums are massive deals to me. They can sound academic, and just like that, they can sound extraordinarily evocative, but evocative of things I can't really comprehend. The music is cold, but inexplicably natural. Cinematic, but abstract. The visuals behind Voigt followed the music - small traces of colour shrouded by dense thorns, trees obscuring the moon, constantly moving, never escaping the woods.
As the show came to an end, that thud of trance became deafening and the word 'GAS' burned itself onto the screen, like a horror film title sequence. It was finally here, and then it was gone. I use the word a lot, but, y'know, awesome.

When he's offered, just says yes

2009-10-14T17:03:00.000Z

Without getting too emo about it, 'Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space' is an album that evokes a lot of very specific memories, not all of them good either (hello, 'Broken Heart'). It came out in the summer of 1997, and I think at one point, I was listening to it every day. The scorched feedback and free jazz of 'The Individual' and 'No God, Only Religion' are probably responsible for me deciding to listen to jazz. I have cried a bunch of times at 'Broken Heart' and 'Home Of The Brave'. I still can't put my finger on why 'I Think I'm In Love' sounds like nothing else. Not matter how many memories the album brings back, it still remains itself. I've never thought, 'I can't listen to this cause it reminds me of..' because 'Ladies & Gentlemen…' is monolithic. A masterpiece. I thought so at the time, and it's even more apparent now.

So, this is probably the Don't Look Back show I've been looking forward to the most. Spiritualized performing 'Ladies & Gentlemen…' live in it's entirety. It was like someone emptying Christmas into my ears. Quite by accident, myself and fellow enthusiast Keira had managed to get front row seats (that doesn't really have anything to do with the review, just bragging really), and I'm really not sure what to say other than it was the album played live in as fantastic a manner as I could have imagined. There was absolutely no scaling down of the record in any way (save for Dr John's piano skills on 'Cop Shoot Cop') - string section, brass section, gospel choir, all present. I did begin to well up a bit during the title track's impossibly romantic waltz, and then 'Come Together' was so loud and forceful it was like God shouting at you (as well as this, there was some heavy strobe usage that made me feel as if someone had been rubbing my face for an hour). 'I Think I'm In Love' was back to it's gospel/krautrock/r'n'b/whatever structure after it morphed into a country hybrid on their previous live efforts. PERFECT. The mid section of 'Electricity', 'Home Of the Brave' and 'The Individual' was just incredible, super huge noise swathes from the brass section and spiralling feedback. 'Broken Heart' sounded as, uh, heartbreaking as it always does, 'No God Only Religion' was a stomping free jazz noisefest, 'Cool Waves' calmed me down a bit, and then 'Cop Shoot Cop' was a trance that became an absolute levelling of dynamic screaming drone. They encored with 'Out Of Sight' a song I'd previously liked, but this performance just floored me. Everything felt urgent.

In conclusion, I'm sorry you weren't there. It was as good as hearing the album for the first time.

The Wire... Into The Vortex

2009-10-12T20:21:00.001Z

MP3s and what not here.

In whats become a rather depressing sign of my age, I occasionally value warmth and rest over going to gigs, and as I stared out my kitchen window at the heavy rain on Friday night I decided, 'Fuck it'. So I did not attend the first night of The Wire's 'Into The Vortex' series of shows at, yes, The Vortex, a jazz venue (not a euphemism, it's a venue that generally hosts jazz shows) in the heart of London's bowels, Dalston. (I really do not like Dalston, it's like Alcatraz: near impossible to escape, and full of rapists. Probably.)

The second night was assembled under the loose banner of 'New States Of Song', which is a win-win label for a show - if the band do songs, they're doing something new with songs, if they don't, they're bringing something new to song structure. You could probably put Ryoji Ikeda on and make an argument for it. Sadly, they did not. But Alisdair Roberts was very good, if a little unexciting. He's a charming enough fellow, and he and his second guitarist certainly have a way with an Incredible String Band-esque tune. The programme's promise that he took the folk song to 'strange new places' was misleading, I think, but he was very enjoyable anyway. Despite the fact that the guy doing visuals on the screen behind him seemed to think he was scoring a Future Sound Of London performance - seriously, it looked like an 8-bit representation of epilepsy. Following that were The One Ensemble, whom I like quite a bit, and were a lot more raucous than the last time I saw them. Theres echoes of the Dirty Three and Califone in there, but theres a strong English folk influence in there, songs veering from serene to foot-stomping with alarming regularity. They seem more restless than they were last time I saw them, the songs all went in many different directions at once, the guitar is a bit more prominent and their drummer had a great anything-goes approach to percussion. I'll be looking out for the album. Next up were The Band Of Holy Joy, but I went home instead. So, uh, dunno.

Sunday's show went under the name 'New Realms Of the Uncanny', and I was in a far better mood, thanks mostly to sleep and the gags n'porn of the Tate Modern's Pop Life exhibit earlier in the day (it is actually a very funny exhibit, and weirdly tied to the 90s, really liked it). First up was Thomas Ankersmit, whom I'll confess I've never heard before. His set began with some Raster-Noton-y washes of static and noise, clicks and squall. Then he took out his saxophone and created a wondrously horrible drone with one note being blown over and over again. It was very impressive indeed. After that, The Caretaker didn't so much take to the stage as hide in the corner, hunched over something. A Caretaker live show is much the same as his records - jolly songs from the 40s that sometimes sound like they're being played in a haunted house, and sometimes smeared beyond abstraction to warm drones. It's all very ghostly and sad, the kind of emotional response provoked by Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops' - unclear memories, and a pervading sense of loss. Awww. Headlining were Broadcast, soundtracking a short film by their pal and sleeve designer Julian Fellows (aka The Focus Group, aka owner of Ghost Box records). For a start, the short film is excellent, full of unsettling images of trees in the rain and oscillating shapes. It looks like it might be used in some sort of mind control exercise. Broadcast's soundtrack was excellent too, bright keyboard loops and spluttering drum machine march coupled with Trish's reverb-heavy vocals and little sharp shocks of noise. Fantastic! So, alls well that ends well.

I had my camera, but taking pictures seemed pointless when Scott Mapsadaisical was standing right beside me, so you should check out his images over there. He probably makes more sense in his reviews too. But he's not all good - I heard he beats up children on the underground boxing circuit. True story.

You're going to

2009-10-06T18:54:00.001Z

Converge - Reap What You Sow

To be honest, I've had a bit of an ambivalent attitude towards Converge in the past. People whose opinions I very much respected had a lot of time for 'Jane Doe', but I was never really blown away. Plus, the lead singer kind of annoyed me when I saw them play - he was one of those instense and sincere types who got all arsey when the crowd weren't foaming at the mouth: 'I heard this was a punk rock town, and you guys aren't even dancing'. Hip-hop acts do this a lot as well, the whole 'blame the crowd' thing, and it always seems so premature. Give us a chance to get into it, man. Also, William Elliot Whitmore supported when I saw them in Leeds, and the singer guy made a big deal out of him, saying 'Next time you see a lame band you remember that he was more real and showed more heart than them, with a fucking banjo'. First of all, bud, don't denigrate the banjo. The banjo is a wicked instrument, just as capable of conveying realness and heart as anything else. Secondly, WEW wasn't all that good. Really. Next time you see WEW, you remember that Rachel Stevens was more real and showed more heart than him, with a team of engineers. Also, when they played ATP the singer thanked the crowd for 'art'. Me neither.

But I digress, and I'm sorry for the ranting, because actually I really like the new Converge album. I'm not sure if superfans rate it as highly as their best work, but it connected with me more immediately than anything else I've heard from them. The bulk of the album is fast, coruscating metal, howled vocals, melodies smashed to pieces. Then theres a ballad that, I swear, sounds kinda like Corrosion Of Conformity. And then a lengthy album closer. Bish bosh. It's tough to pinpoint exactly why it is that I like this album more than their others, but it certainly sounds more violent and angry than their previous efforts, so if before the singer's heart was in the right place but he was a bit too intense and sincere for me, here he sounds he's so apoplectic that his limbs are falling off. Absolutely worth a listen.

Dirty shine

2009-10-02T12:18:00.000Z

Circulatory System - Round Again

I'm trying to think of some way to reference the recent Beatles reissues whilst speaking about the new Circulatory System album, and actually the simplest way to put it is that 'Signal Morning' is deeply indebted to the more psychedelic end of The Beatles cannon. I should say that I'm not a massive Beatles fan, and that I'd probably rather listen to this. It's an interesting time for indie - you've got a lot of bands who write pop songs and then attempt to obscure that with obtuse arrangements or bad recording. The Elelphant 6 collective types are a bit more restrained; pop songs distorted just enough to be weird, but not to mask the melody. So, y'know, if you like psychedelia that actually doesn't sound like it was recorded on drugs, then this is for you. I like it more every time I hear it.

Part Chimp - Dirty Sun

Like so many unfairly overlooked UK bands, Part Chimp are reliable. They're never going to turn into Dirty Projectors, but they do what they do with brutal efficiency, which their fanbase loves and which journalists tend to have a hard time saying anything interesting about. Theres no left turns on 'Thriller', the new album, either, which means that you get another hour or so of sludge rock unfettered by wandering impulses. I mean, if you're a sane person, you probably dig The Melvins and Electric Wizard, and that means that you'll dig Part Chimp too. Trust me, they will not let you down.

Rachel Grimes - Every Morning

Listening to a Rachel Grimes solo album is a warmer experience than you might expect; shorn of all the chilling atmospherics on a Rachel's (her band with Jason Noble and a shifting lineup of members) album, you are left with Ms Grime's very pretty piano work. And pretty though the music is, it's not without substance. Like so much of her work with Rachel's, the music seems obsessed with struggle and resignation. It can be quite sad. But very beautiful.

Devil-made

2009-10-01T16:26:00.003Z

Mira Calix - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country

As usual, Mira Calix proves herself Warp's most underrated artist on the Warp20 compilation, covering Boards Of Canada's 'In A Beautiful Place Out In the Country'. Calix holds on to the unsettling melody of the original, but replaces the original's woozy keyboards and hip-hop drone for groaning violins and what sounds like the wind rushing through trees. It seems like a fairly obvious idea, but she really makes it work; it's as gorgeous and queasy as the original, the sound of fear slowly crawling over you as the sun goes down in the woods.

Hush Arbours - Devil Made You High

I was kinda shocked to hear a full band arrangement on Hush Arbours 'Yankee Reality' album, given his previous releases (mostly cdr and cassette stuff) were so delicate and singer-songwriterly. He's not really a Six Organs Of Admittance type, he's all about the songs, so it's quite nice to hear him go in a couple of different directions with the arrangements here. Sadly, I do literally mean 'a couple' of different arrangements, one is basically sounding like an M Ward record, and the other is album closer 'Devil Made You High' in which pedals are used. But it's a decent little album, I'm beginning to enjoy his voice more and more, and if he veered off the beaten track a bit more, all the better.

Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo at the Barbican 27/9/09

2009-09-28T16:27:00.002Z

Gbeti Madjiro - Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo

I'm normally a little uncomfortable with people at - ugh - world music shows dancing. This isn't to do with racial issues, or deep loathing of the middle classes or anything (though, lets be fair, they factor in there somewhere), it's more to do with the fact that people who dance at world music shows in seated venues generally seem to be people who don't dance anywhere else. Because they can't dance. I'm sorry, I know they're just doing what they feel, but what they feel is WRONG. I want to be permissive and think, hey whatever, they're just enjoying themselves, one love, but deep down inside theres a kernel of contempt burning away. Aside from anything else, its just inconsiderate to be standing up and clapping along like a care home worker when theres people seated behind you. Stop abusing your priveliges.

Sorry. Though it would be fun to imagine that anyone who goes to an Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo show is an aged hippie who really dig anything ethnic man, the fact of the matter is that most people who were there, like me (the reasonable one, you're supposed to be empathising with me here), heard Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo on Soundway's remarkable series of 70s African psych-funk and wanted to see them live. It only ocurred to me as I was sitting down that they had reformed within the last 2 years, so I was a bit worried about them not really living up to the kinetic energy of their 70s recordings. And to be fair, there was only one truly electrifying moment during the show - halfway through, things turned a bit dark with a song that was primarily driving rhythms and blasts of jagged guitar, as hypnotic and dynamic as the 'voodoo James Brown' tags would suggest. But if the rest of the set veered more towards sunny melody, it was no less enjoyable - they can definitely still knock out joyous funk jams with ease, and the needling guitar work kept everything from becoming to saccharine. It was very enjoyable, so much so that I can almost understand everyone's need to get up and dance. But not quite. Stay in your seats, fuckers.

Bro down

2009-09-25T12:27:00.005Z

Volcano Choir - Seeplymouth

The Volcano Choir album is basically a happy relief for anyone who loved Bon Iver's 'For Emma, Forever Ago'. It doesn't sound exactly the same, and it doesn't make any wild left turns either, it sounds like the further adventures of Bon Iver and his sidekicks A Collection Of A Colony of Bees. Let's move past their silly name and instead thank them for crafting a record as immersive and lovely as it's possible for this kind of thing to be. I normally hate this singer-songwriterly stuff, but Justin Vernon has this …. voice. He is to vocals what Paul Rudd is to secondary characters in films - I'm immediately down with it. The songs themselves push in a number of different ways - theres a Steve Reich-y one followed by a long post-rock one followed by the one with auto-tune etc - but it all feels very much part of a whole. A very good record indeed.

Tonetta777 - VIRAL$

Tonetta777 is a guy who has written a number of catchy songs (usually about sex) that he performs on YouTube (usually half naked) - I'd link to them, but YouTube has taken his account down. Apparently a guy in his pants singing about his nether regions is a bit too much for them, SQUARES. Anyways, I realise I don't often veer out in outsider art territory here, but I'm making an exception for Tonetta777. These songs are catchy as f**k. And dirty. The democratizing effect of the internet was supposed to throw tonnes of these kind of artists, but Tonetta777 is enough for now. With a bit of googling you can probably hear plenty more from him, and you definitely should.

Wilhite

2009-09-24T12:23:00.001Z

3 Chairs - Roots Of Detroit

3 Chairs is a supergroup of sorts (Kenny Dixon Jr., Rick Wilhite, Theo Parrish, and Marcellus Pittman) producing the kind of deep Detroit house that doesn't necessarily draw attention to it's star power. 'Roots Of Detroit' was released on 12" a while back, but a CD compilation of recent releases, 'Spectrum', is out now, and after the phenomenal DJ Sprinkles album from earlier this year, I'm totally up for spare (but gorgeous) deep house. Theres a lot of space between the grooves here, and it's entrancing if you dig this kind of thing. Which I do, obviously.

Atlas Sound - An Orchid

If I didn't know any better, I would assume that Deerhunter was a side-project for Bradford Cox, cause his Atlas Sound releases (not to mention an amazing performance with Broadcast at ATP the other year) thus far have been where the real magic lies. 'Logos' has been floating around the internets in one form or another for the past year or so, and its final version is probably as good as experimental-leaning indie gets this year - this is real record-collector stuff, obviously the product of someone trying to cram as much of what he loves about the bands he loves into an album as possible. The dreamy, slightly sinister vibe of Stereolab and Broadcast loom large, as do hundreds of other 90s indie records, and all the cultish vintage stuff you would expect. And never at the expense of tunes. And never lapsing into pilagiarism. Which is quite a feat. I like it a lot.

Topicality

2009-09-22T11:54:00.002Z

Califone - Polish Girls

Califone's newest 'All Of My Friends Are Funeral Singers' is a soundtrack, but it works just fine as a follow-up to their last record - theres not a whole lot of repeated themes or noodling on here. Well, no more than usual. Califone's modus operandi of rustic blues and folk married to art-rock and dub production is unchanged here, and just as welcome as ever. Along with the Volcano Choir album, this is as good an advertisement for living in the woods as you can get. I pretty much love everything these guys turn out, and this one is no exception.

Kurt Vile - Freak Train

The last Kurt Vile album I heard (which I think may have been a singles compilation) gave no indication as to just how awesome his debut for Matador, 'Childish Prodigy', is. I mean really, these are some fantastic songs. 'Freak Train' barrels along in a manner that the title would suggest, recalling about 10 different genres at once. Seriously folks, buy this album. This Vile chap should be a superstar.

The horror...the disco

2009-09-21T11:48:00.002Z

Bottin - Theme From St Mark 30124

More Italo-nostalgia here from Bottin. A mostly instrumental affair, 'Horror Disco' doesn't really live up to it's title, but does sound like the kind of queasy disco you might have heard in the background of a video nasty, or a porn film. I'm not judging. It's certainly more dancable than much of the Italians Do It Better stable, but sacrifices some of their detached cool. Though that might be right up your alley.

Demdike Stare - Regressor

The Demdike Stare album, 'Symbiosis' begins with 'Suspicious Drone', a gorgeous piece of suspended-air bass groan and it feels like they decided to drag that ominous air all over the rest of the album - the tempos rarely rise above 'creeping' and the whole thing sounds like a more malevolent take on Sabres Of Paradise's submerged dub. It's quite fantastic, actually.

Off the side

2009-09-17T16:16:00.005Z

Gemmy - Rainbow Rd

Mary-Anne Hobbes' last couple of compilations on Planet Mu have been excellent time capsules for small changes in the kind of music she plays - the vocal-heavy 'Warrior Dubs' was grime being subsumed by dubstep, 'Evangeline' saw dubstep further mutated by Detroit influences, and now 'Wild Angels' surveys the current strain of 80s technicolour funk running through UK electronic music. Like the no-fi crew absorbing the sounds of soft rock to create a longing nostalgia, much of this stuff is like 80s r n'b hits mangled by current technology. And though there's bright spots from Mike Slott and Hudson Mohawke, the prevailing mood is pretty dark; Mark Pritchard's '?' sets the scene with a bassy drone and keyboard melody, and the compilation ends with a funereal Basic Channel-esque piece by Appleblim. Though this is no substitute for actually listening to MAH's show (which, in my teens, I was MASSIVELY into, and should really listen to more these days), it's a far better curated compilation than most, flowing much like her show (though unmixed). Also, seriously, isn't Planet Mu the best label in the world at the moment? Their release schedule over the past 18 months has been bananas, and so much good stuff has come out of it. Hats off to you, Mike Paradinas. And a round of applause for Mary Anne Hobbes.

Evangelista - As I Lay There In Front Of Me Covered In Ice

'Apocalyptic' is a word that comes up a lot when describing Evangelista's records, which has much to do with the illusion of hope as dystopia. Carla Bozulich's songs (and voice) are wearied cracks of light in all encompassing darkness. Constellation labelmates Godspeed You Black Emperor have been down this same road, and epicly distraught as their music was, Evangelista aound more human, and therefore more wounded. This has a lot to do with the aforementioned voice of Carla Bozulich, theres nothing as full throated and terrifying on new album 'Prince Of truth' as the title track of previous album 'Hello Voyager', it's a more reconciled sadness. Given that their modus operandi is one third Ennio Morricone, one third Arvo Part and one third being tired from screaming, it fits. But like I said, Evangelista records are all about hope - theres strength and defiance running all the way through these songs. It's a great environment to spend a little time in.

Fisher-Price

2009-09-16T16:48:00.002Z

Sorry for nigh-on two weeks of absence. If it's an excuse, I've been spending a lot of time contemplating the horror of having just turned 30. Now that I'm middle aged, I'll probably be a bit more irritable. But anyways,

Times New Viking - No Time, No Hope

To be honest, I don't think the 'no-fi is a pose' argument is a new one. Guided By Voices could (and occasionally did) afford studio time. I'm willing to accept the degraded cassette sound as an aesthetic choice as long as it throws up albums as great as Times New Viking's newest, 'Born Again Revisited'. Would it sound better if it had been recorded in a studio? Uh, maybe. But it wasn't. The harsh fuzz tempers TNV's sweetness, makes all the instruments sound super noisy, and, y'know, chaos is rarely a bad thing in indie pop. 'Born Again Revisited' is probably their hookiest album thus far. It's not quite pop, but it's approaching it. In a tank.

Gary War - Sold Out

Gary War feel the same way about fidelity as Times New Viking, in that new album 'Horrible Parade' sounds like someone playing it to you over the phone. This isn't the Stiltbreeze school of hiss, though, the white noise doesn't make the album sound violent or noisy. This is the other kind of no-fi, the kind that emulates childhood experiments of recording keyboards on a Fisher-Price cassette recorder. These are proper songs btw, so it's closer to Ariel Pink than, say, Pocahaunted. Like Ariel Pink, the mystery isn't in the songs themselves, rather in their removal - that cassette hiss distance is beguiling, the songs perfectly formed underneath. After that 'songs taped from the radio 16 years ago' novelty wears off, it's still a great record - full of lovely keyboard swirls and reminiscent of indie when that didn't mean 'emo with a brass section'. Recommended.

Someone help me

2009-09-01T16:51:00.001Z

Lightning Bolt - SOS

'Colossus' was the first song from Lightning Bolt's new album, 'Earthly Delights', to be dispatched to the internets. Like most Lightning Bolt songs, it's surging, noisy and psychedelic - unlike pretty much all other Lightning Bolt songs, it doesn't move at breakneck speed. I did wonder if 'Earthly Delights' would feature LB settling into a more metal sound, in terms of speed, anyway. I'd be alright with that; Lightning Bolt have the riffs and sense of invention to make a slower album work - but 'Colossus' was a total red herring. This is apparent about 4 seconds into the album, when it feels like you're rolling down a hill inside Brian Chippendale's drumkit. And pretty much all the other songs sound like some sort of explosion marathon. 'Earthly Delights' distills what is so incredible about Lightning Bolt in a more concise fashion than ever before - whilst hardcore fans will tell you that you HAVE to see them live (and you do), this album sounds as close to the deranged ecstasy of them live as they've gotten on record. It may be impossible to sit down and listen to it. Obviously, I'm telling you now, you need to buy this album.

Anti-Pop Consortium - Volcano

Anti-Pop Consortium's new album feels more like the collection of songs that 'Arrhythmia' was rather than the winding narrative of 'Tragic Epilogue', not that a sharper focus is going to win them any new fans or anything. Most people come to APC through their previous home, Warp Records, (though I remember the NME gave 'Tragic Epilogue' a good review at the time) and I'm guessing for them (and me mostly) the rapping on APC is purely another rhythmic element. I don't ever really notice lyrics sticking out, rather words being bent to fit rhyme schemes, odd cadences etc. they're the hip-hop equivalent of guitar bands that people complain 'you couldn't play their songs acoustically, it's all effects pedals'. But some of those effects are mesmerising - it's important to note that APC never ever sound relaxed, and though it occasionally grates there's something to be said for their never letting a song settle. Of course that also means there's never really any choruses or hooks to get your teeth into, outside of repeated Reichian bleeps and such, but they do have Anti-Pop in their name, I suppose. The album's definitely worth checking out. Never uninteresting.

Many things

2009-08-27T15:50:00.000Z

Cex - 991

Taken By Trees - Watch The Waves

Little Dragon - Looking Glass

Ducktails - Roses

That message

2009-08-24T17:05:00.005Z

Cloubeck - Gossan

Reviewing a Richard Skelton-related record feels a bit redundant, given that you would be better off reading Mapsadaisical's thoughts on the matter. I might normally add the disclaimer 'Skelton-skeptics beware: Mapsadaisical's reviews read like marriage proposals', but I don't think theres any such thing as a Skelton-skeptic. As with his previous works, 'Wolfrahm' consists of a few pieces which could best be described as a fog of strings. Not for nothing is his artwork concerned with the natural world, his records sound like the last moments of light in a forest, right before you start thinking 'Um, it's a bit late to be in the forest'. Unsettling, rather than frightening. The pieces themselves move slowly, without any clear build-ups or breakdowns, just those strings. More alive and unpredictable than a drone, but still a drone I guess. Either way, like most of his stuff, it's very evocative and worth listening to, particularly on a country walk, if you do that sort of thing.

Sun Araw - Get Low

For some reason I had thought that Sun Araw was some sort of Fahey-esque finger-pickin' guitar dude, and was a bit uninterested. Which meant that 'Heavy Deeds', his new album, kinda blew me away. More than anyone in recent memory, Sun Araw deserves the term 'psychedelic' - this thing is dripping with colour and disorientation. There's guitars sure, but they're spiralling out of control from the moment the record starts, vocals lost in tape hiss, the whole thing throbbing with organ drone. I mean, it really is quite spectacular. Best listened to late at night, with a lava lamp or something. I muchly recommend.

Matter

2009-08-20T16:46:00.002Z

Mika Vainio - In A Frosted Lake

It’s a bit difficult to talk about what Mika Vainio records sound like without resorting to 'what ghosts hear if they were stuck in a radiator'-type tortured metaphor bizness. See, even as I'm railing against that type of writing, I had to slip it in there. Thing is, Vainio's records stopped being evocative of other noises a long time ago, without ever becoming more musical. A Mika Vainio record is now just judged as a Mika Vainio record, and of course you assume there'll be what sounds like sheet metal being scratched all over it. That's what he does. Unlike a lot of his computer noise peers, theres nothing dry and studied about Vainio - his stuff sounds exhiliarating, the logical minimalist endpoint of a horror soundtrack: scares only. Nothing here resembles a song, but theres narratives within the pieces, everything seems to hang together as it should. And whilst the 'Black Matter' of the album title suggests something messy, this is as spare and clean as you'll hear Vainio (which is saying something). Gripping.

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - For The Rest Of Your Life

I saw Mazzy Star once, in 1996. It was the year that Ireland's primitive version of Reading/Glastonbury, Feile, was held indoors. Less a festival then, more three days of bands that looked odd on the same bill; Mazzy Star, Frank Black were ostensibly supporting Alanis Morrisette. Anyways, Mazzy Star were at that time legendary for being oversensitive - they walked out of shows early if the crowd was too noisy etc. So the audience were pretty hushed as Hope Sandoval et al took to the stage. After a bit of tuning and guitar-tinkering, Hope wandered up to the mic and just as she was about to sing, someone a couple of rows behind me bellowed 'LETS FUCKING ROCK'. The band stared at him. The audience stared at him. Ms Sandoval stared at him. He let out a whimpering 'Yeah…' and she looked for a minute as if she were deciding whether or not to carry on. The band started plucking out the beginning of 'Into Dust' and Hope did indeed carry on. The audience breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Moral of the story: for better or worse, Hope Sandoval does not fucking rock.

I mention this only because there really is nothing much to say about a new Hope Sandoval-centric album, which is not to say that I don't like 'Through the Devil Softly', actually I think it's pretty great, but I have no idea what to say on the matter that hasn't been said about her before. Reviews of her records pretty much write themselves. So, just have a listen to that song, I guess. It's very good.

Nutrition!

2009-08-18T17:11:00.002Z

Vivian Girls - Walking Alone At Night

To be a roaring success, Vivian Girls would pretty much have to transcend their influences, be an incredible punk rock group and do the girl-group thing in a radically new fashion. Of course, they don't do any of that. Which means they come in for a lot of messageboard hate (not so much of the misogynist variety though, more LOLing at the very idea of them - how indie). They've received a lot of plaudits too, and have somehow been raised above numerous other groups doing this kind of thing. Neither reaction is really deserved - what Vivian Girls do, they do very well. I mean, theres a song on here that really reminds me of 'Nutrition' by The Dead Milkmen, so way to go with that one. That said, they never provoke a 'hey! That's REALLY good' type of response from me either. That might change in time - I liked the first album more with repeated listens - but my point is this; don't dismiss this on the basis that it's for 'hipsters' or whatever. It's pretty good.

Greymachine - Vultures Descend

Isis' Aaron Turner and Jesu/Justin Broadrick are ideal collaborators; they've both done a lot in terms of influencing modern metal production, they both make unashamedly epic music that's totally morose and ususally as obsessed with strange distortion effects as it is with riffs, and they've both made a lot of really fucking boring records. Not all of them, of course, but enough to make me a bit wary every time I listen to a new release by either. 'Disconnected', their first collab under the name Greymachine, is one of the good ones. It's very studio-bound - everything sounds processed within an inch of it's life, bass sounds like keyboards, guitars sound like TV static. The songs seem less like songs, more like riffs that everyone gets to play with their new effects pedals. Which actually sounds pretty rad, and the closer it gets to outright noise, the more it distinguishes itself from the pack. I doubt Nadja would ever throw the kind of squealing atmospherics on their sludge-metal that Broadrick does here. I'd recommend this. Please let the next one be good too, dudes.

A Place To Bury Strangers - In Your Heart

The Jesus & Mary Chain weren't the most original group in the world, but they had a good idea, and they ran with it. It's kind of amazing how many bands since have had, uh, moderately successful careers with that same idea. I hesitate to say 'rip-off', cause it's not like JAMC invented feedback or anything, but seriously, at least 40% of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's royalties should have been forwarded to the Reid brothers. A Place To Bury Strangers are even more overt in their JAMC fandom, so much so that most of their songs sound like they think music begins and ends with 'Upside Down'. So, if, like me, you adore 'Upside Down', theres much to love on APTBS' new album 'Exploding Head'. The hammering drum machines and in-the-red production keep everything sounding appealingly unpleasant, and unlike the aforementioned Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, they can write a decent tune (covert in sneered vocals and walls of scouring feedback, natch). I don't want it to sound like faint praise when I say the best thing about the album is that it never flags despite the limited sonic palate, this is a genuinely good record. Which will probably sound even better (or excrucating) live.

Without much hesitation, and after only one listen, I can safely say that 'Popular Songs' is the best thing that Yo La Tengo have done since 'And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out'. It might even be better than that. YLT have been abusing the CD-length privelige for over a decade now, but 'Popular Songs' seems to go by very quickly indeed, maybe it’s a pacing thing, maybe all the songs are great, probably both. Theres strings on this album, which is a rarity for YLT and they ease them into the songs like its not a big deal, even when they're gorgeous soul jams or weirded out drone pop, as on opener 'Here To Fall'. Especially of note is that the closer, 'And The Glitter Is Gone' is one of the finest 10min+ noise rock pieces I've heard in so long. I mean, YLT are never off-form, but this album is a heady nostalgia trip in that it makes me feel about them the way I did when 'I Can Hear The Heart…' came out, like this album is going to be endlessly fascinating. So, uh, yeah, hugely, majorly reccommended.

Six Organs Of Admittance - Bar-nasha

Ben Chasny's released a lot of stuff in his lifetime thus far, and it's nice to hear that there are still surprises in store, and by no means has he passed some sort of creative peak. 'Luminous Night' is obviously a Six Organs Of Admittance album, but theres some new things at play here, mainly that Chasny sings on a few songs. Normally, when a formally instrumental artist decides to sing, it's disastrous and taints however good the music might be (see the new Andrew Weatherall album, or don't). Mr Chasny has quite a nice voice though and knows exactly how to deploy it - the song is still king here. (He also has a faint English accent. Whether that's just his singing voice, or he's REALLY into Incredible String Band, I dunno.) The album's pretty evenly split between pretty pastoral folk business and searing drone, and the two never jar, amazingly. Absolutely worth checking out.

Wirewool Podcast 003

2009-08-09T12:10:00.001Z

wirewool podcast 003

Well, there's some trainwreck mixing here, and great tunes. Enjoy!

Still got you..

2009-08-04T17:15:00.002Z

Pissed Jeans - Human Upskirt

Matt Korvette has got a voice I could listen to forever. It's not a, y'know, good voice, but its kind of perfect. Given Pissed Jeans' lyrical content revolves around arrested adolescence, fear, guilt, embarassment and spite, I can't really think of anyone who sells it quite as well as Korvette. Everything he hollers sounds like a plea for his mommy. He sounds wretched. And whilst Korvette flails around screaming tales of pathetic masculinity, the band are making a racket that could probably be best described as squalid. You've got squall in there, and it also conjures up images of a living in a condemend building. That's where it sounds like it comes from, post-hardcore drunk on it's own self-disgust. It's glorious. 'King Of Jeans' is the new Pissed Jeans album, same as the last one. You need it. Highly reccomended.

Kid606 - Dancehall Of the Dead (Blnd Remix)

'Dancehall of the Dead' is a pretty fierce remix collection, mirroring Kid606's back-to-basics approach on it's parent album 'Shout At the Doner'. The furthest out-there the EP gets is Cardopusher's jittery 8-bit refix, and even that sounds like it would be good fun to hear in a club. Elsewhere, you get a lot of Amen breaks and rave stabs, gut wobbling bass, and repeated samples of Nick Cave bellowing 'Hands up who wants to die?'. Which is brilliant, obviously.

Field Day 09

2009-08-03T16:45:00.000Z

Field Day is now 3 years old. It's a one-day festival held in Victoria Park in London, and is organised by promoters Eat Your Own Ears, who put on very Guardian-friendly indie acts - if ever there were a festival made for sets by Squarepusher, Hot Chip and Bat For Lashes, it's this one.

(I know it seems like I've got some sort of vendetta against The Guardian music section - and, yes, I do. It's got some of the worst music journalism you're ever likely to read. And by drawing from the same pool of moderately successful indie artists, it kinda taints the ones I do like by association. Ugh.)

So, Field Day is split pretty evenly between acts I'm interested in seeing, and absolutely dreadful shit like Little Boots or Mystery Jets. Getting there, I realised there was even less there that I wanted to see than I thought, AND it was almost certainly going to rain. So, I was in a bit of a mood, but Aeroplane wiped that frown right off my face simply by playing 'Da Funk' and mixing it into their Friendly Fires remix, to which the crowd went banans, quite rightly. Theres something that makes Aeroplane tower above their contempories, and it's that their productions are so joyful - the same goes for their DJ set. It was a masterclass in generosity, every 2 minutes they dropped something that was greeted with cheers. I headed over to another tent to see The Thing next, probably the oddest addition to the bill, but there was a decent enough sized crowd there for them, and they proceeded to play a vicious set of brutal noise jazz, all riffs and frayed edges. It was so intense and evil, I was rapt from the first second. Stunning. Next was Juana Molina, battling with sound difficulties, but still managing to entrance a bursting tent (the rain had started). Nothing much to say about Ms Molina that I haven't said before, but she's one of my favourite live acts at the moment and even with problems on stage, she was awesome. After wombling about for a bit, and seeing a couple of songs by Wild Beasts (ok), I watched The Horrors do 'Sea Within A Sea' and made my way to the front of the main stage for…Fennesz. Yeah, Fennesz on the main outdoor stage, sandwiched between the Horrors and Santigold, in the rain. Weird. Also, by the by, have you ever noticed how Christian Fennesz struts? Really, it's like he's listening to 'Staying Alive' on a constant loop in his head. Check it out next time you see him, the man's got swagger. Anyway, his approach to the situation was playing as loud as possible, so after a quiet beginning, his set was a pretty aggressive noisefest. Which I rather enjoyed, though I can't really tell what the people at the back thought. I then went to see The Big Pink, who were pretty good, but repetitive, I can imagine their recorded output being much poorer for the lack of live noise and volume. Some songs reminded me, sadly, of overblown 90s macho shoegaze like Dark Star or Levitation. So, I'm undecided on them. Santigold was pretty bad to be honest, though that could have been the weak sound - more unforgivably, sound problems caused her set to run overtime, meaning Skream could only play for 25minutes before Mogwai. Speaking as someone who's seen Mogwai enough to prefer hearing a full Skream set, this was annoying, particularly as he seemed to be dropping all-new stuff (including a funky take of Tempa T's 'Next Hype'). Oh well. Then came Mogwai, and I left after 3 songs, because as much as I love Mogwai, I wanted to get home more. So, all in all, I enjoyed myself. At £30 a ticket, it was well worth it, even with the rain, and the event itself was a lot better organised than it was 2 years ago, facilities-wise. So, thumbs-up. But let Upset the Rhythm curate a stage next year, please.

Cathedral!

2009-07-27T15:57:00.009Z

Thorr's Hammer - Norge
Corrupted - Rata Triste

Some small consolation for being too broke to go to Supersonic this year was seeing two of the festival's biggest deals in the Scala last night - Capsule generally pull something unexpected out of the bag for Supersonic, and this year they brought the UK debut of revered Japanese doom lords Corrupted and the reformation of Thorr's Hammer. The Thorr's Hammer personnel were all smiles and jokes with the crowd which was odd, as I've only ever seen Greg Anderson and Steven O'Malley in their we-are-serious-doom guises before, here they were just guys in a band. And, given that vocalist Runhild's solo album from last year, 'Amplicon', was absolutely terrifying, here smiling her way through the set was oddly sweet. And it's not as if this was good-time metal, oh no. The linegae from this to Sunn O))) is quite clear, Thorr's Hammer are a bit faster but those bassy growling, hugely loud riffs are very much in place. And Runhild's voice is still completely mesmerising, she briefly sang in her 'normal' voice during the first song, but from that point on it was guttural growls - she didn't run the full gamut of vocal tricks that she did on her solo record, but that probably wouldn't have suited the music. And would have been too frightening. It was just crazy good, monolithicly heavy fist-pumping riff heavy DOOM. Corrupted took to the stage next and played for around an hour and a half - I'm not sure if it was 2 really long songs or 1 REALLY long song, but the quiet definitely dominated over the loud, and the audience remained respectfully quiet whilst they teased out melodies from chiming guitars and an ever-present bass hum. Dynamically, it totally reminded me of Bohren Und Der Club of Gore's slow build of dread, whilst the guitars sounded like The Cure at their bleakest. Crucially, when the songs broke into their noise catharsis, it was like a sea of distortion that didn't sacrifice any of the song. So good that Runhild crowdsurfed through it, beaming like a madwoman. Really really amazing. God bless Capsule for sorting this out.

Reves

2009-07-23T18:25:00.003Z

Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Agorapocalypse Now

Agrophobic Nosebleed move with all the grace and sublety of a washing machine with bricks in it - its been a winning formula thus far and new album, 'Agropocalypse', is as brutal as anything they've done and feels like, on first listen, their most cohesive album yet. Opener 'Agorapocalypse Now' references 9/11 in a manner that’s probably distasteful, not that I could make out most of the lyrics, swallowed as they are by pummeling thrash metal. This is an album that purists who thought that previous AN albums were a bit too cartoonish for their own good would probably dig, no 30-second blasts here, the songs are actually songs, and y'know it just sounds like some fucking good metal, bro. Its an album I imagine I'll be coming back to a lot this year.

Desire - Dans Mes Reves

'Desire' is another Johnny Jewel project - he's also been involved with Chromatics, Glass Candy, and everyone else on his Italians Do It Better label. And if you can't tell the difference between any of those bands, then the 'Desire' album isn't going to stand out either. The differences are subtle, and mostly vocal - they're not going for the theatrical detachment/art school posing of Ida's Glass Candy vocals, or Ruth's spooked doomed-diva persona on Chromatics tunes. Megan Louise is going for real, actual emoting here. Jewel dresses this up in some of his most straightforwardly pop productions yet - I mean, none of these things are going to trouble the charts or owt, its still all analog disco, but they're certainly more pop than anything else on the label. Anyways, this is a really good record, I highly recommend.

Dumb dumb dumb dumb

2009-07-21T17:57:00.002Z

Mount Eerie - Through The Trees

It's not a comparison I thought I'd ever be making but bits of the new Mount Eerie album really sound like Swans. They've always enjoyed a bit of clang and fuzzy distortion but never in quite so doomy a fashion. It doesn't quite recreate the dispiriting assault of early Swans as well as the new (awesome) Current 93 album, but, y'know, enough for it to be striking. What really stands out here, though, is this 12-minute painfully slow, disorienting mass. It really is quite incredible. You think you're listening to a normal droney post-rock thing, and then bits of it keep tripping you up. A beguiling dirge. The rest of the album is nearly as impressive, perfect for staring out the window at all the bloody rain.

Nadsroic - Room Mist

Nadsroic might sound like an odd name, but it's actually Ciorsdan backwards, which is just as odd. Ciorsdan sings and Hudson Mohawke provides the beats - the cynical among you might argue that the beats are roughly 98% of why the 'Room Mist EP' is great, but that's a bit unfair. Sure, the LuckyMe crew all worship at the altar of modern RnB, and Ciorsdan is no Cassie, but she's got what amounts to a lo-fi approximation of Rihanna's anti-emoting - 'You look so dumb' she murmurs, not soundly like she particularly gives a fuck. That changes over the course of the EP, but on 'Room Mist' she sounds perfectly disinterested, her voice another dissonant effect in HudMo's arsenal.

Wirewool Podcast 002

2009-07-19T15:07:00.002Z

wirewool podcast 002

Where the last one took two days and was bad, this one took 1.5 hours and is less bad. Enjoy.

Make it cry

2009-07-15T16:47:00.004Z

R Kelly - Banging The Headboard

I used to be fairly annoyed about people ironically celebrating R Kelly, mainly cause in doing so they ignore what a great artist he is. Hooks, production, technical ability… he's kinda in a field of his own. That’s not to say that all the stuff that non-RnB fans laugh at isn't funny, it really is. Kells is the kind of solipsist only great artists are - I'm pretty sure the only music he listens to is his own, and he seems to not really understand cause and effect:

Lawyer: Robert, someone's put the tape on the internet. Its you and that girl. You need to keep a low profile.
R Kelly: Understood.
(cut to shot of R Kelly pelvic thrusting in a studio, singing 'Baby, drink my lemonade' through a vocoder)
^Not a joke, he really did sing about making a girl drink his 'lemonade' around the time of the trial, not to mention 'Rain my love down on you'.

And, as anyone who's seen Trapped In The Closet knows, he plays up to that in a big way. His work rate slowed a little in the last year, but before his new album drops, he's put out his first mixtape, 'This Is My Demo' (as IF he's ever heard of Sway), and it's all swagger. Theres none of the contemplative slow jams you get on an R Kelly album, this is all perky RnB business, a lot like The-Dream, whose 'R Kelly's 12 Play' opens the mix tape. Yup, a song by a producer heavily influenced by R Kelly, about how great R Kelly's debut album is - that's the song he starts with. There is no room for humility here. Like I say, it's all fairly straightforward (but expertly executed) perky RnB (with lyrics that the 'LOL he's mad' crowd can really get behind - I think he threatens to make love to the Staue Of Liberty at one point), with no real detours into rap or anything else (a shame, I'd love to hear an 'I'm A Beast'-style diss track. Or a Wayne-esque autotune rock song) which makes me wonder whether the new album will compliment this in any way. A whole album of 'In The Kitchen'-style moodiness would be fantastic… But, whatever, R Kelly rarely lets me down. Its really shaping up to be a great Autumn for RnB, mainly because….

Maxwell - Helpyourself

…..I imagine I'll be listening to Maxwell's 'BlackSummersNight' a lot for next couple of months at least. I wasn't exactly waiting with baited breath for Maxwell's return, given that I'd not really rated his follow-ups to 'Urban Hang Suite', but this is just fantastic. Concise, at 37 minutes, Maxwell doesn't dazzle with crazy sonics or arrangements, these are simply some great songs and a sustained mood. That mood pulls the album back from being hard to listen to at times - the songs are either about heartbreak or pleas for help, never emoted in an obvious fashion. Maxwell's voice imparts all we need to know without being manipulative - subtle stuff, all the more affecting for it. Basically, I love this.

Back to the feature

2009-07-13T17:06:00.001Z

Wale - Sweatin Out Weaves

Wale's breakthrough mixtape, 'The Mixtape About Nothing', centred around Seinfeld references so it's a little disappointing that the follow up 'Back To The Feature' only references Back To The Future in it's cover art. As if Crispin Glover wouldn't be up for providing a hook or two. Maybe he's more of a Kanye collaborator. Anyways, I don't know if you read hip-hop message boards, but people hate Wale. In the same way that people hate Arcade Fire on indie message boards - he's the big hope, and to a lot of hardcore heads that in itself represents what's gone wrong with hip-hop (or indie in the Arcade Fire's case). I think it's partly that he's being touted as an exciting new talent by places like Pitchfork, but y'know, are Pitchfork supposed to not have opinions on hip-hop? I mean, by all means ignore them because of their indie slant or whatever, but that's not Wale's fault. What is Wale's fault is that 'Back To The Feature' is underwhelming. Don't get me wrong, it's solid enough, but you nod your head, dig a few songs and then don't really think about it again. With a mixtape, I guess its enough that a few songs stick. The beats (mostly by the usually great 9th Wonder) aren't really top-drawer, and I'm being polite here.
I don't think it's a bad mixtape at all, really, and I don't want to sound negative here, but I feel another hour in Wale's company hasn't really told me any more about him. But I feel just about compellled enough to check out the next one.

DJ Food - Covered In Darkness (Pts 1 & 2)

I'm not sure who DJ Food is on the 'One Man's Weird...' EP (in the past, it's been Strictly Kev, Coldcut, PC etc) but they obviously knew that now was the right time to do some DJ Shadow-esque psych-hop. By which I mean psych rock with breaks. Its a simple and often cheesy formula but sometimes it works and it certainly does here. Even better is the lack of vocals which used sink stuff like this - on 'Covered In Darkness' theres some doomy vocal samples, but thats OK. This kinda thing seems more cartoony now than it did when I was listening to MoWax records constantly, but I'm alright with that. I'd love to hear a whole album of it in fact. Fingers crossed.

Which roses exactly?

2009-07-07T17:03:00.001Z

Bibio - Jealous Of Roses

Before 'Ambivalence Avenue', Bibio's new album on Warp, I had only heard 'Hand-Cranked', and kinda liked it in the whole 'Boomkat-call-it-an-essential-purchase-and-I-guess-its-OK-but-I'm-glad-I-didn't-pay-for-it' kind of way. I haven't returned to it since I first heard it, put it that way. In comparison with 'Hand Cranked''s home listening atmospherics, 'Ambivalence Avenue' is quite the zeitgeisty record, full of wonky beats (in the sense that they sound a bit Flying Lotus-y, and that they're mostly off-kilter) and lo-fi songmanship. I'll lose half my audience here, but you know when you first heard 'Around The Block' by Badly Drawn Boy and the goofy arrangement just works perfectly, this album is kind of like that, but with impressive programming. I'll be listening to this one more than the last one.

Max Cooper - Symphonica

Max Cooper may well come to a few more peoples' attention thanks to a prominent inclusion on Hot Chip's (ace) Bugged Out mix, and the Symphonica Ep's as good a way as any to hold their attention. As the title implies, theres strings here, and Cooper's songs generally sound symphonic anyways (big build, everything seems to sound as if its soundtracking the rising sun). The B-sides veer into straighter techno territory, which is fine, as Cooper seems to have tunes for days.

Oi?

2009-07-02T17:59:00.001Z

Hollyweerd - Hollie Ollie (Focus)

Two things immediately strike you about Hollyweerd; 1) They're not really that weird, and 2) It must be really difficult for any production team that digs the Afro Futurist aesthetic to do anything that doesn't provoke the response 'Mmm, that sounds like Sa-Ra'. Shame, because as far as aesthetics go, Afro-Futurist is a pretty awesome one - Erykah Badu's album was the best of last year, Flying Lotus and the whole wonky lot are big into that whole thing, not to mention Moodymann, Dam-Funk etc etc. But I digress. Hollyweerd's 'Candy For Kleptos' mixtape is worth hearing, theres some really original beats on there and when they choose to rhyme over other productions it's stuff by Madlib and 'Spongebob' by Coki, which was unexpected. They also open with a sample from 'Eastbound & Down', so I think these dudes have the same taste as me. Lyrically, nothing really sticks out that much apart from the sex jams (I feel the same way about Sa-Ra though), but nothing sounds terrible. Basically, I dig it.

It's a feeling

2009-06-30T20:50:00.002Z

DJ Sprinkles - Sisters, I Don't Know What This World Is Coming To

DJ Sprinkles' 'Midtown 120 Blues' is a militant record, one that makes you feel a bit like an interloper. We'll get to the music in a second, but theres all sorts of discourse at play here, simply from a couple of monologues scattered throughout the record. The intro lambasts traditional notions what house music means 'usually some greeting card bullshit about universal love'; to Sprinkles (aka Terre Thaemlitz) it's the sound that was made as an escape from persecution. It’s the sound of fleeting release from homophobia and dread. Later on, he rejects Madonna's co-opting of hispanic/gay culture, declaring his club nights a 'Madonna-free zone'. This seems mainly down to Madonna using the lyrics 'It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl' in the lyrics to Vogue. Yes, it does matter, you stole the moves from hispanic drag queens, it very much matters if you're a boy or a girl, if you're black or white, if you're priveliged or not. This isn't a vocal heavy album - these moments are scattered across the album, not really interfering with the music (vocal house is another one of his bugbears). Though his anger feels very sincere, it's not an angry-sounding album. In fact it reminds me a lot of Marvin Gaye's 'Here, My Dear' in that it comes from an angry place but sounds lush, and melancholy. 'Grand Central pt 2' is as tearjerky as it gets, absolutely gorgeous clouds of ambience hanging over a pulse and a sample of someone describing something upsetting ('he was being knocked around'). This is deep house that earns the name effortlessly, I imagine it would work on a dancefloor perefctly, but its just as effective as home listening. Don't want to get too hyperbolic, but I found it one of the easiest albums to get wrapped up in this year, its an endlessly listenable piece of work and have to have to have to hear it.

Blah blah blah

2009-06-29T18:45:00.001Z

The Ex - Blah Blah

I suppose The Ex's '30' is more of a bookmark than anything else. It's not a greatest hits collection, they haven't had any, and theres no overarching theme other than 'heres a bunch of songs from the 30 years that we have been together'. What's really nice about it is that, for a band so restless in as regards their appetite for new sounds, it all sounds like The Ex. And theres a lot of stylistic promiscuity going on here - from blasts of punk, to considred rhythm-heavy post punk, to songs very much influenced by their sojourns in Africa and the Middle East, it all sounds like the work of the same band. Even more impressive they sound as impassioned on the newer songs as they did when they first began, everything sounds so vivid and volatile. It serves as a really good introduction to a band whose discography can be a bit intimidating, and hangs together better than so many compilations of this sort. I say it a lot, but The Ex deserve it - Awesome.

DJ Quik & Kurupt - Cream N Ya Panties

From the attention 'BlaQKout' has been receiving outside of the usual channels, it looks like it may be an unexpected summer hit, though about 3 songs into the album, when you're grinning and thinking 'This is fucking great' it seems like a forgone conclusion. No doubt about it, this is a summer album. Kurupt sounds at his very best here, and Quik manages to be weirder and more poppy than ever before. At the moment I can't really think of anything else I'd rather be listening to in the sunshine.

Michael Jackson RIP

2009-06-25T23:15:00.004Z

Well, fuck. Of all the things I thought Michael Jackson was, mortal was not one of them. RIP.

RIP STEVEN WELLS

2009-06-25T16:27:00.002Z

Back when I read the NME - and I was a 'wake up early on a Wednesday, rush down to the shop' type of guy - the first time I encountered the writing of Steven Wells, I hated him. This was, no doubt, the point. I thought his writing had as little to do with music as it did with, well, whatever else it was that he was TALKING ABOUT in CAPITAL LETTERS (he must have been very shouty in real life). And naturally, that hatred turned to amused bewilderment anytime he launched massive tirades against indie bands for being misogynist, or championed brat-pop like Daphne & Celeste or Shampoo. And then after a while, his stuff was what I was most interested in reading. I agreed with, like, 30% of what he was saying, but at least he was making an argument. I think it was Francois Truffaut who said a truly great film teaches us something about filmmaking and something about life - I think that’s how Wells viewed music; he essentially wanted music to tell him something about himself and the world it was created in, and constantly set stuff in opposition with each other. Normally, that resulted in some wild bullshit, intended purely to provoke the readership. He'd probably say that there was a level of irony involved, but you could tell he was just scrapping for a fight most of the time, god bless him. He talked absolute rubbish, but in his own voice. He was one of the funniest journalists I've ever read, and by all accounts, a super-sweet human being. And his final piece did make me a bit teary, pretty much summing why anyone would love or hate (or both) the man.

RIP Steven Wells.

Bday!

2009-06-24T17:51:00.001Z

Bill Wells & Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Tipsy Cat

Here at The Wirewool we are celebrating Ms Ahlen's birthday, and this is a song that she might well enjoy. Bill Well's second collaboration with Maher Shalal Hash Baz is a lovely, joyous little record. It sounds like a drunk jazz band covering 80s US sitcom themes. Warm, familiar, slightly off-kilter. Gorgeous. Happy birthday Ms Ahlen!

Hymns

2009-06-23T15:57:00.003Z

Es - Ennen Oli Huonommin

I saw Es in a church once, and I can't really imagine seeing him anywhere else now - sure, the otherworldliness of his music suits a big church, but it also feels oddly parochial. Away from the long drones, his shorter pieces recall the communal amateurism of a church folk group. Its quite sweet. The new album opens with a barrage of keyboards, and for the most part stays away from the elongated hum of previous records, favouring instead charming ramshackle weirdness the likes of which most weird-folk outfits just cannot achieve. Its one of those album that lives completely in its own world, not really referencing anything else.

Pelican - Geometry Of Murder

Some people whose opinions I trust have really dug the last couple of Pelican albums, but I felt kinda disappointed. I mean, it'd be difficult for any band to follow up something like 'March To The Sea', but Pelican's decision to go for a slower, prettier vibe on their subsequent releases resulted in at least one really boring gig that I wished I hadn't gone to and an album ('City Of Echoes') that I initially liked and now never ever bother with. Their new EP, 'Ephemeral' hasn't exactly brought the rock back all guns blazing, but for fans of their metal leanings this is definitely a step in the right direction, particularly their aggressive cover of Earth's 'Geometry Of Murder', a ghostly dread lament transformed here into a something growling and violent, constantly threatening to erupt, but it never does. Maybe bring out the distortion pedals on the next EP, pretty please?

The Shape Of Jazz...now

2009-06-22T16:15:00.001Z

I think the main reason I feel so inarticulate when talking about jazz is that I never really read any music journalism pertaining to jazz. It's always littered with terminology I don't understand, giving the impression that you really have to have actually played jazz to understand it. Which is nonsense of course, but it basically means I have nothing of interest to offer when writing about jazz other than 'woah this is wicked' (arguably I don't bring much more to the table when I'm writing about anything else either). I don't have much of an understanding of jazz history, so as an outsider I guess I like the stuff that seems to belong to a lineage that other non-jazz things show up in. I adore Miles Davis' electric period because it begat about a million things I love (and Miles generally does it better than anyone), and I love Ornette Coleman because he set a precedent for free playing that pretty much obliterates anything that followed. What the hell are Ornette and his band doing up there? I have no idea, but it moves in a fashion that seems to make sense despite being completely chaotic. Everything is synthesised. Everything is operating on it's own. Traces of melody last as long as it takes for you to recognise them. The bass lines are incredible but operate mostly as a unsteady base. The drums are SO heavy. And Ornette's on top, dominating and supporting all at once.

So, last night we went to see Ornette Coleman performing his landmark 'Shape Of Jazz To Come' album, or variations thereon. It still sounds as mind-bending today as it must have done then; confounding, exhiliarating, accessible, ferocious. Theres not a lot I can say about the album you wouldn't be better off reading somewhere else, but the performances were sterling and spirited. But no 'Lonely Woman', dammit. Bill Frisell joined on guitar halfway through which was great, Patti Smith did some beatnik vocals on one song, which was not so great. Support act The Master Musicians Of Joujouka joined them for the penultimate piece which was truly stunning - the Master Musicians' trad Morroccan drum and horn drone hanging malevolent over some fiery playing by Coleman's band. Really breathtaking. If you have the opportunity, go see Mr Coleman. There aren't many like him.

Swallow yr soul

2009-06-18T17:18:00.001Z

Wolf Eyes - Cellar

The trajectory for most Wolf Eyes fans is to amass a whole lot of stuff by them when you first get into them, and then slowly and inexplicably only buy the releases they put out on certain labels and then after one bad experience where you bought a CDr from them at merch which was really rubbish, you kinda stop buying their stuff completely. Maybe I'm only speaking for myself there. But that was a really rubbish CDr. You do wonder when you buy a new Wolf Eyes album whether its going to be a Wolf Eyes record you could conceivably headbang to, or a Wolf Eyes record that sounds like a fridge choking to death. Well, the new Wolf Eyes album 'Always Wrong' on Hospital Productions errs mainly on the former, but theres a sprinkling of the latter too, and it's my favourite release of theirs since 'Human Animal'. This might be down to it sounding like one of their Sub Pop albums - short songs, rockin', not a whole lot of drone - and the fact that they consolidate their strengths here to a pretty impressive degree. The noise is of the familiar pulse and distortion variety, but higher fidelity and some passages as hellish as anything they've ever concocted. I listened to it shortly after yet another listen to Mastodon's 'Crack the Skye', and it's kind of like a nihilistic flipside to that - just as exhilarating, but primal and ugly, where Mastodon are colourful and joyous. Either way, you can pump your fist to this. I need to see this stuff live.

Still here

2009-06-16T18:00:00.002Z

The main reason for the scarcity of posts here since mid-may is that for a solid 3-week period there I was listening only to Miles Davis and Curtis Mayfield. It usually strikes me as odd when someone says 'I only listen to this', but there you go - Miles Davis, in particular, is a bottomless well of awesome. Also, relistening to every Curtis Mayfield album last week was bliss. I almost didn't miss listening to new music at all. But now theres about 40 albums that need to be heard now now now, and the blog' suffering for it, cause I can't write long posts about Miles Davis (I don't really know enough about jazz - it’s a purely visceral reaction), let alone post mp3s.

Which is another thing - Blogger, in their infinite wisdom, have taken to removing entire posts containing MP3s that Web Sherriff or whoever has complained about, and much of the time I don't have a backup for these posts. Generally, larger-label stuff seems to disappear the most which means I can't offer up any MP3s from two of the year's more incredible releases - The-Dream's 'Love Vs Money' & Electrik Red's 'How To Be A Lady Vol.1' - without blogger pulling the posts down. And really, you need to hear these records. Inexplicably, neither is available in the UK at the moment, so you'll have to do some importing, or, y'know, get them some other way, but seriously these are SUMMER ALBUMS that need to be heard whilst theres still some sun out. The-Dream's 'Love Vs Money' picks up the RnB-space-pop vibe of last year's 'Love/Hate' and, inconceivably, makes something even more opulent - this album sounds so expensive, so lush, and yet so dancefloor oriented. A similar vibe to Justin Timberlake's 'Futuresex/Lovesounds' but even more varied, weirder, more pop…. It really is fantastic.

The-Dream handle production duties on Electrik Red's 'How To Be A Lady Vol.1' and it might be even better. Girl groups are pretty much an obsession for me, and Electrik Red pretty much slay anyone in their wake. This is no-bullsh*t empowerment music, robust, huge-sounding, aggressive - an album in which one of choruses runs 'Y'all don't fuck us, WE FUCK YOU'. The girls look INCREDIBLE, sound INCREDIBLE and The-Dream have fashioned an album that bangs futuristic like nothing else. I cannot stop listening to this record.

Anyways, folks, I'm going to get back into a gruelling schedule of new-music listening and the updates should follow accordingly.

Comin' in on time

2009-06-08T16:25:00.002Z

Pyramid - Babyteeth

Grunge began to become a 'thing' when I was 12 years old, so concurrent to rave and happy hardcore, it became the basis for all other music that I got into for a few years. So I have love for grunge, even if right now it's literally the most unhip thing in the world - the angst, the not-quite classic rock, not quite metal guitars, the maleness. I'm not gonna do the 'but hey a good song is a good song' thing though, cause Pyramid's 'Babyteeth' is great and it's because it's such a grunge throwback. The singer sounds like singing is causing some mild level of pain, the lyrics are kinda awful, the riffs are one step away from blues bar stuff - and it is tremendous. The opening riff is quite arresting, as is the ghostly first verse. Initially, I thought I'd like this more if the chorus wasn't there, but now I dig that just as much. I'm at a loss as to why I like this so much, given that modern rock is something I view with extreme distrust, but there you go. It's great, and nobody will be impressed that you like it.

Hecker - Asa 3

Hecker's new album 'Acid In The Style Of David Tudor' (the title is a joke that only Wire readers will get) is as close as you can get to the experience (or, more accurately, 'assault') of his live sets over the past few years. If anything, it abstracts his sounds even further than before - whilst something like his classic 'Sun Pandaemonium' album is tortuous, it's still a remarkably well-established soundworld. 'AITSODT', though, is like one of his earlier records smashed into jagged shards of noise and then fired at your eyes. So, yeah, obviously I like it. The 'acid' in the title does make sense; the abraisive squelch of the 303 is definitely noticable amidst what sounds like a meteor shower IN YOUR HEAD, but if you can dance to this, you're probably a serial killer.

World

2009-06-01T15:40:00.002Z

I have a problem with describing audiences, or rather, I have a problem with people who write about music for broadsheets. Cause every time I try to write about the makeup of an audience I begin to sound like I'm somehow above them, like they're all one type of person and I have them pegged and I belong to no specific audience because my tastes are too varied and these guys have probably never listened to all the cool stuff I have, wankers. And I essentially sound like one of those awful journalists at the Guardian. Which depresses me.

Anyways, this comes from my not really knowing about the makeup of the audience for the Omar Souleyman/Group Doueh show last weekend. It was certainly more popular than most recent Upset the Rhythm (the promoters) shows I've been to, so I don't know if there was such a thing as a 'world music'-enthusiast element to the audience. Or maybe people have been waiting to see these guys for a while. Whatever, I certainly wasn't prepared for just how warmly the bands would be welcomed - most people didn't even need to be coerced into dancing (though, naturally, I was too self-conscious for that). Group Doueh were up first, and essentially you're seeing Group Doueh for their guitarist Bamaar Souleh. No offence to the rest of the band, but seriously, this guy is a BEAST on the guitar. Easily amongst the best playing I've ever seen, he effortlessly rode whatever rhythm was going on with blissed out hypnotic playing - no riffs, just super-psychedelic jamming. The songs felt really open ended, so he could bend our minds for about 10 minutes over casio beats and it would feel like he could conceivably do this for hours, which would be pretty awesome. Actually, in a perfect world, he and Ricardo Villalobos could do a 3-hour version of Manuel Gottsching's 'E2-E4', and it would be the best thing ever. Their set was over with much too quickly - though not before Bamaar did some Hendrixy showboating, which we all enjoyed. Then came Omar Souleyman, and the ebst way I can describe what it sounded like is, you know when you see a film that has a scene set in an Arab country and there might be some pop music playing in someone's car and it sounds like typically middle eastern music with a euro-techno backing track? That. And that is by no means a diss. One guy played trancey saz, the other programmed booming blasts of 4/4 drumbeats from a keyboard, and over the top Souleyman himself intoned what sounded like very serious verses punctuated by mexican waves, smiles, and shouting 'Ayyyyy' like some sort of techno Fonzie. Behind him stood a somewhat uncomfortable man who we were told was on 'poetry' duties. He basically stood somewhat uncomfortably for the duration of the show (well, I left a bit early, so I'm not sure of that). There was also some cutely awkward but impressive dancing from some enthused Sublime Frequencies guys who took to the stage. It was pretty exciting all told. We loved it.

Incidentally, Mapsadaisical has photos, and better writing skills.

With focus

2009-05-22T16:28:00.000Z

STP - The Lower Upside Down (Surgeon Mix)
Surgeon - Body Request

Whilst last year's 'Shedding The Past' looks set to be a favourite for many years to come, Shed has now brought out a couple of 12"s of remixes by kindred spirits - Martyn does his gorgeous dubstep-by-way-of-Berlin thing, and Surgeon… Well, expecting Surgeon to do anything other than deliver something that is brutally fierce repetitive techno is foolish. Surgeon can only be more or less thunderous, and here he's less thunderous than usual, but this would still flatten anything else on a dancefloor. I'm quite taken with it. Also worth checking out is Surgeon's new EP 'Hello Oslo', which is more in line with what you might expect from him. Basically, I fully endorse buying anything that has Surgeon's name on it, folks.

Moody - Desire
Womack & Womack - Baby I'm Scared Of You (Mark E Edit)

What with the LuckyMe folks up in Glasgow, Flying Lotus, and that whole Purple Wow contingent, producers are getting more and more into producing weirdo RnB. Bright, off-kilter, approaching pop - it's quite the kneejerk reaction to the doomy blokeiness of dubstep, and straight-up machismo of grime. Moodymann's modus operandi is a little different - he filters RnB through deep house, making it slower and more hypnotic, but no less weird-sounding. After the awesome 'Det Riot 67' EP, 'Anotha Black Sunday' (credited to Moody) lurks elegantly at the lower end of BPMs, sounding both sleazy and aloof. Tangentially related are Mark E's stunning disco edits; aside from the technical expertise at play here, it's kind of wonderful how these songs metamorphose into almost druggy, molasses-slow deep funk. Do they play this stuff at strip clubs?

For Kate I wait

2009-05-21T16:34:00.002Z

The lack of updates round here has mostly been due to my running around at ATP for the past 2 weekends. Sorry about that. In as regards the second ATP Weekend (Curated by The Breeders), a review of the time I had would be kinda pointless seeing as I was working, and it would be a long tirade about how sore my feet were. I'm reliably informed by friends that it was great though. Fiona's photos from the event are up now at Pitchfork, ooh get her.

Ariel Pink - Can't Hear My Eyes

So, last night I ventured off to the wonderful Luminaire to see Ariel Pink. I walked in about halfway through The Holloys' set which sounded like a bar band doing post punk. I don't want to dismiss them before hearing their records or anything, but I wasn't overly impressed. Up next was a collaborative set from Prurient and Cold Cave. This was pretty awesome for a few reasons: it sounded a lot like Wolf Eyes with disco beats, the first few songs all sounded like Q-Lazzarus' 'Goodbye Horses' - which I think is a good thing, I liked the guitarist's hair, and Prurient did a doomy screaming thing at the end. They're doing these collab shows a few times around the UK this month, I'd recommend checking it out.

And then Ariel Pink and his band started setting up. The fact that he had a band playing with him intrigued me - I kind of thought the lo-fi, one dude playing all the instruments vibe was an important part of what Ariel Pink does. That being much the same as the kind of thing that Boards Of Canada or the Ghost Box label do - attempting to recreate the way we hear music as children. You can do this by pastiche of the kind of music that you hear as a child (with Ghost Box and BOC it's BBC Radiophonic Workshop interludes and public information films, with Ariel Pink it's early 80s FM pop), but Ariel Pink's lo-fi bent adds a kind of half-remembered haziness to the whole affair, more distant, a bit alien. The way pop music sounded as a child. I mean, when I hear 'Drive' by The Cars, I remember how I heard it for the first time, full of melancholy and emotions I didn't quite grasp. If I heard it now for the first time, I'd think it was a good tune but it would never be able to affect me quite as much. So I wondered if hearing Ariel Pink's songs rendered as 'studio versions' by a full band would reveal them as unextraordinary, good tunes and nothing more.

And that is kind of what happens. His strongest songs have an ineffable quality that just can't be taken away, but some of the songs did sound a bit ordinary without the odd, mysterious hiss and arrangement of the album versions. But like I said, at worst these are good tunes, which is so much more than a lot of other bands can say. Ariel pink himself is an interesting performer, like all superstars of the 80s, he's a lot smaller than you would think, and while he seems comfortable on stage theres an odd twitchiness to him, like he's really pleased that people want to see him but he's not that sure what to do as a frontman. The band were pretty loose, which served the songs well, and I really enjoyed the whole thing. I'd totally recommend seeing him in this incarnation, but I still think the magic's in the records. Which you can buy at the merch stand.

ATP Vs The Fans (again)

2009-05-12T14:32:00.002Z

Despite the fact that NONE of my suggestions ended up on the final bill, I was still very excited about ATP Vs The Fans, it having one of the strongest lineups ATP has had in quite some time. Sadly, one of the big draws for me was Grouper whom I missed as I arrived a little too late, and was reliably informed that she was great, dammit. First up was Casiotone For The Painfully Alone about whom I can say very little. It was inoffensive. They have a good drummer. No other impression was made really, other than that it was OK. M83 sounded like they were doing well up on the main stage but the sound was a bit lacking, so I headed upstairs to see Andrew WK's solo show. Which was really something else - it basically consisted of Andrew being psychopathically positive, repeatedly telling everyone that we were all gonna party and have a good time, and before you knew it, we were. Partying for Andrew WK is mainly headbanging whilst playing on a keyboard to a backing track, and it was all very endearingly exuberant. The final 20 minutes took a turn for the nightmarishly surreal when he introduced Bad Brilliance, a man who rapped in the voice of Mickey Mouse and had a balloon for a head, and Aleister X, who looked like he had stepped off the set for The Goonies and declared the stage to be the 'indie Auswich'. Yeah. Then David Tibet came on for 'Party Hard' and howled for 5 minutes. Impressive stuff. Devo couldn't really hope to out-weird that, but they pleasantly surprised me by being very good and not at all embarrassing (as these reunion shows can sometimes be) - everything sounded full and crunchy, which is quite the achievement on such a large stage, and they have SO MANY classic tunes, they won me over pretty immediately. AntiPop Consortium next upstairs, and they were pretty phenomenal as usual - they seemed to get a good reception from the normally hip-hop phobic crowd (possibly because they eschew the constant crowd interaction of yr larger hip-hop acts), and twisted rhymes around fragments of noise, and booming weirdo electronica. Special. This was followed by the massive heaviness of Electric Wizard who almost buckled under the weight of their own sludgy, lumbering riffs. Seriously, it was fucking awesome. Then a couple of hours marvelling at Edan's 10-records-a-minute DJing. Bed.
Saturday was begun with a bracing walk on the beach. Not musical, but I would reccommend it. Sadly, I missed Nico Mulhy, which meant the first band of the day was Lords, who were a tad boring. Then Qui, who are tremendous, doing a angular take on classic metal and odd time signatures. With David Yow on vocals. Which is a fine modus operandi. Young Marble Giants were lovely, but obviously out of practice, there was a lot of fiddling about on stage, but those songs are just incredible. After that was Harvey Milk who I can't believe I've never seen before, despite owning abunch of their records. Someone asked me what they were like beforehand, and I couldn't really do them justice - 'Metally, I guess. But definitely southern US, y'know? They sound Texan. Theres a bit of boogie in there, a bit of ZZ Top. But metal.' Whatever, they were great. Then came Errors downstairs who seem to be very popular indeed and did a good job of bridging the divide between post-rock and disco, which I'm sure you were all waiting for. I liked it. Following that was Marnie Stern's Andrew WK-rivalling super-positivity and shredding masterclass. She yelps and amazes on the guitar. Her bass player seemed to transfix most of the front row. Every song made me feel joy at being alive. Marnie Stern is brilliant. Then I trundled upstairs for the big two: The Jesus Lizard and Sleep. The Jesus Lizard haven't really been broken up that long, but by God they've been missed, and their set was pretty much flawless. It sounded like they've never been away, not a beat was missed. For all their reputation as abraisive, offensive, outre outsiders, people forget that they have TUNES. Lots of them. And Yow spent much of his time delivering vocals whilst crowdsurfing. I love The Jesus Lizard so much. Sleep are one of the few bands who could follow that, and any expectations I may have had about seeing them were not so much exceeded as flattened in a mass wall of tangibly thick sound. I love the records, but it feels like this was the volume you're supposed to hear them at, the familiar riff of 'Dopesmoker' starting up and the snarled 'BLESSED IS THE WEEDIAN! NAZARETH!'.... shook me to my core, it did.
Sunday began with another bracing walk around the nearby cliffs. Which tired me out a bit. So I had a sit-down at the spoken word section curated by Lydia Lunch who kept looking at me when she was doing her reading, which was unnerving. That woman would eat me alive. The first band I watched was Grails, whose Morricone-esque soundtrack rock felt absolutely perfect. Everything they played was hazy, but succint, nothing ever really outstayed its welcome, which is a good thing in instrumental guitar music. It made me want to see a much longer set by them. On the main stage were Future Of the Left, playing the most cruelly underrated music ever made (the fact that they are not HUGE really saddens me), punctuated by near-professional levels of audience(and fellow band)-baiting. Material from the new album ('You cunts had better buy it, or I'm going to end up back in a call centre' warned Falkous) sounded fantastic live, and they didn't let me down at all. And I hold them to a very high standard. I caught a bit of the end of !!!, which was a biiiit underwhelming, and I seem to be one of the few people I know who like them. Maybe it's cause I didn't see them doing anything from the first album, but that's just me being picky. Spiritualized then, who were very enjoyable without being the experience I hoped for, again I'm not massively into their last few records. But lying down and listening to the quiet moments was rather lovely. School Of Seven Bells were good, if a little bland in places, but their psych elements sound a lot better live than on record. I didn't see the end, but if I missed a big wig-out, I'd be disappointed. The Mae Shi were...um, rubbish. I finished the weekend by watching The Jesus Lizard again, cause why the hell wouldn't you.
In summary: great.
Thankyous to Fiona, whose photos will be up very soon, and chalet-mates Keira, Andy & Philipa whom I now want to live with all the time.

Incidentally, I will be working at next week's Breeders-curated Weekend, so do come say hello to me at the merch table.

Up with people

2009-05-08T12:40:00.002Z

Chain Gang - Interview With The Chain Gang

Ian Svenonious and Calvin Johnson can annoy people. I can sympathise. Their detached, aloof air of trendy cool can be a bit grating if you're not under the impression that they are great talents of our age. And on the other hand, they've both had hands in a lot of really great, underappreciated records. Their collaborative effort, The Chain Gang, is likely to follow that route - theres nothing particularly crossovery going on here, but to fans of the two dudes in question this is a total delight. Erring on the side of Dub Narcotic's robust amateur funk with some 60s sloganeering, 'Down With Liberty, Up With Chains' is actually one of the best records of the year after a couple of listens. Everything bounds along with sneery abandon, girl-group harmonies here and there and a general feeling that them bashing this out in as long as it takes to listen is a good thing. Definitely worth checking out.

British Sea Power - Tiger King

British Sea Power have always been pegged by critics as outsiders (more to do with their stage aesthetic than their actual songs), but more importantly as great songwriters. This is a problem for a band whom nobody dislikes, but you try naming me 3 British Sea Power singles that get play at your local indie disco. 'Man Of Aran' is a vocal-less soundtrack album, and my favourite BSP album since their debut, mainly because it's apparent all the way through that they are great songwriters. Perhaps not having to have a chorus loosens them up. I dunno. It's also really refreshing to hear a guitar band do a soundtrack that doesn't simply involve them scraping the strings and calling it eerie. This is bombastic stuff, exactly the kind of thing to play to someone who's burnt-out on instrumental guitar bizness. I have no idea how most of this fits into the film from which it came, but I hope they do many more soundtracks.

Brock!

2009-05-07T12:32:00.004Z

Wooden Shjips - Down By The Sea

Wooden Shjips' newest 'Dos' (is it an EP? It costs as much as an album) represents absolutely no progression from their debut album, or indeed from their early singles. They only really do one thing - the hazy psych organ drone chug fuzz thing (which sounds needlessly complicated, basically entire songs that sound like the organ breakdown in 'Light My Fire') - and they do it well enough. To a degree though that if you're not really in the mood for that thing theres not much else going on in a Wooden Shjips record that will win you over. I dig 'Dos' though, it's humid and atmospheric. You can almost feel the beard.

Magik Markers - The Lighter Side Of.....Hippies

Magik Markers' second 'normal' (i.e. not a CDR of one of their jam sessions or brain-melting live shows) album sees them continue to experiment with writing actual songs. They go off in a few more directions than on 'Boss' - Pete Nolan's percussion is more varied here, and while 'Boss' was, by design or not, a 'rock' record, more of their wayward tendancies are apparent here. Which is a really good thing, I might add. But I love the Magik Markers. '…Hippies' has a vocal line that recalls the breathtaking stream of conscious assault of Elisa's onstage persona, over the kind of dirgey squall that we all love. Right?

JG Thirlwell - Node Wrestling

JG Thirwell's score for The Venture Brothers is pretty much perfect - it makes no effort to be trendy, edgy or dissonant, it's just a straight-up Bernard Herrmann-y brassy thrill. All massive drums and blaring orchestral stabs, and suspense bits that sound better than anything that’s been in a Bond film for, like, the last 20 years. Really. And, despite the nods to classic film soundtrackers, this could only really be JG Thirwell's work - nobody else can throw breaks into the mix without it sounding like some godawful Moby remix, but Thirwell makes it sound natural. He is a kind of a genius.

His dudeness

2009-05-05T17:49:00.004Z

Devin The Dude - To The X-Treme

Live hip-hop. The fact that most european reviews of a live hip-hop show begin by talking about the concept of live hip-hop should give you an idea of how used to it we are. Theres a multitude of reasons for this, I guess, though I'm not sure of what they are. Every so often though it does annoy me that I have a biennial opportunity to see The Arcade Fire, but Slim Thug? Nope. Your only hope for live hip-hop these days are the festival-friendly guys (De La Soul etc), the stadium guys (Eminem, 50 Cent, Kanye, Lil Wayne) and the indie darlings (Kool Keith, anyone who has ever recorded on Anticon or Def Jux). Kind of a diverse bunch I guess, but for anyone who pours through mixtapes, it's a poor show. Even UK hip-hop is fraught with difficulties, what with grime shows being notoriously difficult to book, and the rest being a couple of decent veterans and whatever awful rubbish Ninja Tune is putting out. I'm being a bit dramatic.

Anyways, the relative dearth of beloved US rappers performing over here made Devin The Dude's appearance in London last night all the more special. In The Luminaire, a venue more used to Upset The Rhythm's noise shows, no less. It wasn't sparsely attended, but definitely not sold out which sucks for the promoters who should be thanked a thousand times for actually sorting this out, but the crowd that did come out were definitely up for Devin. Unfortunately they had to go through Sway first, whom nobody really seemed to want to see. Now, I like Sway, but he did kinda shoot himself in the foot by doing the whole 'As a crowd, you're a bit shit' thing, doing a pretty disjointed 25 minute set that consisted of his most commercial material - maybe not the best fit for Devin The Dude's audience. Any ambivalence about the mood for the evening completely evaporated when Devin walked on and went into 'To The Xtreme' - London adores Devin. He's as effortlessly charming a performer on stage as he is on record; laconic, constantly giggling to himself, all smiles, which makes even his questionable content seem good-natured (which can be a stretch). Concentrating mostly on his back catalgue - I think he only played one song from this year's 'Landing Gear' - it was kinda awesome to be surrounded by people singing along with every word, dancing, generally chuffed to be there - completely unlike most London shows. If this show had been put on in the Old Blue Last, there would have been a lot more head-nodding and a lot less people losing their shit, put it that way.

He didn't play 'She Want That Money' unfortunately, which is one of those songs that has just burrowed it's way into my head and will probably never leave, but that's by the by. We still got a set from Devin The Dude, and that's more than we're used to.

Ether (not the song)

2009-04-22T16:53:00.001Z

Ah, the Ether Festival. Home of the kind of electronica that gets featured in The Guardian Music Guide (I don't think Squarepusher plays every year, but it feels like it), I normally look at the lineup, think 'mmm' and promptly forget about it. To be fair, a series of gigs at the Royal Festival Hall does need to be a bit populist, but theres been some unremittingly dull lineups in previous years. However this year I bought tickets for two of the shows - Mouse On Mars and a Touch Records night (featuring Fennesz, Rosy Parlane and Carl Michael Von Hausswolf). Mouse On Mars shows are few and far between these days, so that was kind of a no-brainer - and I haven't actually seen Fennesz live in a couple of years.

So, Mouse On Mars - a one-off live soundtrack to Werner Herzog's 'Fata Morgana' by Mouse On Mars. I was plied with emails before the show from the Southbank website informing ticketholders that the film itself would not be screened at the performance (no permission from Herzog?), but they went ahead and showed it anyway. The last time I saw MOM was a poppy set at Sonar 2004, but I was very excited about them winging it through a soundtrack to Herzog's obtuse film that mostly consists of landscape footage. They referenced the film quite a bit - Andi stared at the screen whilst busting out some Morriccone-esque harmonica, and they sometimes incorporated the film's sparse dialogue. The opening shot of a plane landing was accompanied by MOM riffing on the sound of jet engines and screeching rubber, heavily treating it and looping it (and the footage). Gorgeous as the soundscape-y bits were (and they really were gorgeous), the highlights were when they slipped into their trademark rubbery funk, all whipcrack snare breaks, dubby guitar and bizarre noises - nobody does it quite like them. The far-too-quick 75 minutes finished with some French horn playing along with what sounded like drones being flushed down a plughole. Mouse On Mars are totally awesome.
Last night was the Touch Records night - They also had a talk about music consumption the day beforehand, which might have been a laugh if you'd gone and tried to co-erce cranky Jon Wozencroft into slagging off The Wire like he did at their anniversary show - and due to catching up with my friend Mike, we missed Carl Michael Von Hausswolf, (incidentally, has he actually released anything on Touch?) who played first. I saw him supporting Autechre a few years ago and he basically conducting a long drone that sounded like a plane taking off, perhaps he did that again. It was impressive. I sat down for the last part of Rosy Parlane's set, which sounded very lovely indeed. Crackly, Philip Jeck-esque melodies floated around in the same airspace as increasingly louder groans and throbs of noise until they subsumed the prettier elements completely and I realised I was listening to something I should have my earplugs in for. Then it ended. Fennesz took to the stage, playing mostly material from his last album, 'Black Sea', accompanied by visuals (by Jon Wozencroft I think) that alternated between complimenting the music (endless footage of driving in the rain at night) and rubbishly off-putting (boring camcorder footage of moss). Fennesz seemed more restless than the last time I saw him, running through songs and moods quite quickly, no sound staying around for longer than was necessary. He was also using the guitar as a noise-maker rather than a melodic base for the most part, pulling jagged chords out and letting them decay rather than smearing them into a feedbacky hum like before. It was certainly more engaging than the last time I saw him, and a friend remarked afterwards his favourite bits were him finding his feet at the beginning of the performance, sorting out the levels and making mistakes. So, I enjoyed new, noisier Fennesz. Looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next time.

From the ground

2009-04-16T17:39:00.005Z

Bill Callahan - Jim Cain

Many artists come to a point where they want to create something with less rough edges than is usual. I'd hesitate to call it maturity - that kinda devalues their work beforehand - but it does feel like getting older informs Bill Callahan's last 2 records. They're lush (it sounds like more time & money has been spent on them) and they sound…sweet. Content. Something you can't say about 'Knock Knock'. I'm quite taken with his new tempo - he's always had an alluring voice, whether filtered through spare folk or country, and the whole higher-fidelity treatment on his last couple of records are very easy to listen to. So, I guess it's easy listening - and I mean that in the best way. 'Jim Cain' is the opener from new album 'Sometimes I Wish That We Were An Eagle', and if you don't like it then you have a cold cold heart, my friend. Strings, beautiful chiming guitar, Callahan intoning over it all…..gorgeous. It's like a ray of warm sunshine. Really.

Hildur Gudnadottir - Into Warmer Air

To be honest, if I tell you that Hildur Gudnadottir is an Icelandic cellist, and has an album out on Touch, chances are you can write your own review without hearing it. Yes, it's full of icily beautiful compositions, warm and organic, with traces of digital smear. Yes, it sounds like a Touch record - so much so that you could probably label it a Rosy Parlane album and only a few would notice. None of this makes it any less beautiful though. Worth hearing, believe me.

Proto

2009-04-15T17:25:00.001Z

Young Marble Giants - N.I.T.A

It's always nice to be reminded of Young Marble Giants - 'N.I.T.A' shows up on the unmixed compilation accompanying Henrik Schwarz & Ame's really brilliant new mix, 'The Grandfather Paradox', which features a lot of proto-techno and minimal-leaning pop in a seamless groove. It really is something. 'N.I.T.A' doesn't show up in the mix for some reason, but it easily could, such is it's cool minimal thud. Gorgeous.

Loud-E - Prox

I listen to a lot of disco edits. Like, a lot. To be honest, I'm not sure how much of the tracks on Loud-E's 'Loudified' album are elaborate edits or whatever, but one thing's for sure: it bangs. Seriously, this is such a lovely respite from whatever disco-derived electrononsense it is that you're listening to in indie discos these days. You kids.

Opposites

2009-04-14T17:32:00.004Z

Slim Thug - I Run

I can imagine Slim Thug watching a YouTube of A Flock Of Eagles' 'I Ran (So Far Away)', and wincing, but digging the chorus. Who wouldn't? Thank f-ck he didn't actually sample it. 'I Run' comes from 'Boss Of All Bosses', the new Slim Thug album, which sadly isn't coming out to huge fanfare because, again sadly, people didn't really take to 'Already Platinum' back in 2005. What 'Boss Of All Bosses' lacks in attention-grabbing Neptunes beats, it more than makes up for with Slim Thug's ever more commanding voice - he sounds pretty fired up here, and is kind of a respite from the wealth of laconic/deeply threatening vocal styles out there. Dude just sounds like an authority whenever he opens his mouth. Compelling.

Ryuici Sakamoto - Still Life

Ryuichi Sakamoto's new album 'Out Of Noise', for the moment only available in Japan, is an early contender for album of the year. Very much in line with his recent Carsten Nicolai collaborations, it's ornate piano and computer whirr is so much more direct than you would imagine. There's still a great deal of cool restraint here, but stuff like this is rarely as affecting as it sounds here. Super-highly reccommended.

My word!

2009-04-10T14:38:00.000Z

Venetian Snares - Labia

Vsnares continues his 'bang one out every 8 months' release schedule with 'Filth', which is, y'know, another Venetian Snares album. Whilst the last album, 'Detrimentalist' was comparitively restrained but still a welcome return to drilling breaks madness after his classical excursions, 'Filth' sounds like vintage Snares. That is, absolutely insane. The song titles are all sex-related, though apart from one or two samples I couldn't really tell that there was an overarching concept. Bear in mind that this is a man who once mad a record with his girlfriend composed entirely of samples of their coupling - he's no prude. Essentially this is another enjoyably unpleasant post-everything rave attack, long may he, er, attack.

Ai Aso - Lavender

Like a lot of you, I imagine, I'm not really up-to-date on the Japanese nu-folk scene. That I'm aware of Ai Aso at all is down to Boris - she did a split 7" with that band's guitarist, and I was subsequently impressed by her 'Chamomile Pool' album. It's kind of a cliché to divide Japanese female vocalists into: Nutters or Delicate like a butterfly, but Ai Aso definitely falls into the latter category. The songs on her new EP were recorded live, and being in that audience must have been excruciating - even breathing too loud would drown out Aso's barely-there songs. They don't really sound that folky anymore, just ambient and rambling. But gorgeous. I would recommend listening to it at 3am after a long long night.

Yeah, and?

2009-04-09T17:21:00.004Z

The Strange Boys - Heard You Wanna Beat Me Up

I know nothing of The Strange Boys other than that they're on In The Red and their album is the kinda thing you should listen to if you dig The Black Lips, cause it's better. Theres a similar leaning towards a kind of raucous garage-country, but The Strange Boys have tunes for days. The album's full of great guitar pop like this.

Ryoji Ikeda - Back In Black

From the 'Recovery' project, where the idea was, ostensibly, for experimental artists to cover guilty pleasures, or songs that you may not expect. I'm not sure how 'Back In Black' could be a guilty pleasure since it's one of the greatest songs ever written, but whatever. Ryoji Ikeda shows off his playful side here by playing the riff with buzzing static alone. Impressive, probably not the kind of thing you should play in a club though. As I found out.

County

2009-04-06T15:42:00.001Z

Nels Cline - Thurston County

Nels Cline, like, say, Venetian Snares, is a consistently impressive artist, whose most accessible works are generally pastiches. Cline has a body of work that ranges from free noise to soft rock, but his most approachable pieces have been when he 'does' a particular genre. 'Coward', his new album, is full of special moments and sounds remarkably diverse given that most of the time it's just him and an electric guitar, and the immediate standout is a knowing Sonic Youth-y song, 'Thurston County'. If you can reimagine Sonic Youth doing the soundtrack for a western that is. Which is obviously a grand idea, executed by Cline as well as could be expected by SY themselves. And though this is a highlight, do listen to 'Coward' for the more idiosyncratically Nels Cline material, it's well worth it.

Ekkehard Ehlers & Paul Wirkus - Guma

For a relatively obscure artist, I have trouble remembering how exactly it is that I first heard Ekkehard Ehlers. It may have been the Fennesz connection (he remixed a track from Ehlers' collaboration with Stepahn Mathieu, 'Heroin'), but I think it was before that. I think my fondness for Ehlers began on an incredibly sad afternoon a few years ago when I first heard 'Plays John Cassavetes B' mangling a few seconds from The Beatles' 'Good Night' into a stately symphony of hope. It's a difficult act to follow, that song, though the cello works on 'Politik Keinen Braucht' come close, and 'Endless House' is ineffably special, but my adoration for the process that led him to creating something like 'Plays John Cassavetes B' (approaching music more like a sociologist than a musician, recontextualising genre etc) has kept me excited for everything he puts out. 'A Life Without Fear', his exploration of the blues from a few years back gets better with each listen, and now comes 'Ballads', a collaboration with Paul Wirkus. Not being a Wire journalist, I couldn't begin to imagine what relationship the music herein actually has to the ballad form (or even if there is a ballad form, I should really read more), suffice to say that it feels as related to romance and storytelling as 'A Life Without Fear' was to death. It's there, but like most modern art, you have to join the dots yourself. On a purely aesthetic level though, it's very satisfying. The pieces here recall the drawn out electronic drone of 'Plays', with a more organic footing - Ehlers seems to be really enamoured with growling reverb at the moment. As am I.

Animal Collective live

2009-03-25T16:32:00.001Z

First of all, sorry for the week and a half of no posts. I have been ill, which isn't much of an excuse, but it's the one I'm using. Anyways, first gig in what seems like quite a while for me was Animal Collective last night. I didn't really write anything about 'Merriweather Post Pavillion' when I heard it, cause I was a bit sick of reading about it everywhere else and felt like I had nothing to add (Saying that, the rick-rolling of people on messageboards looking for the leak on Christmas Day was pretty funny). I'm not absolutely incredulous that Animal Collective are as popular as they are, they're a pretty good band, more that they are kind of this decade's version of Pavement - the underground band that's not really underground at all. What is it about AC that people respond to, but don't pick up on in Sunburned Hand of The Man or Black Dice? Is it their hippy tendencies? Ms Ahlen, not exactly a music nerd, said she thought they were kind of a 60's band in spirit, which I don't really get, but whatevs. Good for Animal Collective. They're everything to everyone.

I've seen AC live a few times, but 2 stick out - at ATP last year I caught the end of their set which was a brain-frazzling mass of high frequencies and shuddering bass. It sounded interesting, not revelatory, but certainly enough to make me intrigued about how the next album would sound (well, that and really enjoying Panda Bear's 'Person Pitch'). And I saw them once around the time that 'Feels' came out and it was without doubt, one of the worst performances I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot of insipid AC-copyists - if you live in London and go to small shows, you probably have too) - which almost put me off ever hearing them again. So, last night began very well with a Kompakt-esque mix-cd playing before they came on, but then the first 2 songs (one of which was 'My Girls' my current favourite on the new album) were really weedy. I won't dwell on that too much though, cause they really picked up as they went on, and the trippier and more tranced out it got, the better it was. The set seemed to build and lose momentum almost every 5 minutes to begin with, but when they build upon the tempo of the previous song they make more sense ( I think I wanted the show to be sequenced like the techno mix beforehand). Of course the crowd went nuts for it, which I still find odd and nice, and ultimately it's weirdly pleasant to go to a big show by a relatively strange band. But I'll probably give it another while before I see them again.

Today

2009-03-13T15:42:00.003Z

dj/rupture & Andy Moor - One Hundred Month Bloom

dj/rupture's collaboration with Ex guitarist Andy Moor makes a lot of sense following his 'Uproot' mix - 'Uproot' felt inclusive, an effortless summation of the way bass and pace unites different strains of music. 'Patches' is a starker affair, and refreshingly for a collaboration album, feels combative. Rupture and Moor aren't tripping each other up maliciously or anything, but they certainly don't make life easy for each other - Moor's guitar sometimes fades into the background only to pull the rug from under rupture's electronics when it disappears completely. There's never a simple complimenting of each others styles going on - Moor lays down some simple guitar lines on 'Hundred Month Bloom' only for rupture to jarringly loop the intro to Smashing Pumpkins' 'Today', leaving him to figure out how to wrap around it. If 'Uproot' was uncovering just how fundamentally connected we are, 'Patches' is illustrating how difficult making the connections can be. And it works beautifully - guitars riding roughshod over the picked apart debris of Timbaland and Juelz Santana sound fantastic, rupture gets the chance to make more austere noise and Moor's work is as engaging as it is in the Ex (pretty engaging).

Wavves - So Bored

One guy don' things for himself is Wavves, whom the world of blog has gone gaga for apparently (I don't really read blogs, I just believe what Pitchfork tells me about them). Anyways, Wavves has played a couple of times in London in the last few weeks and I have failed to attend any of his shows which I'm not too happy about, but listening to his records is probably as close to a shambolic live experience as anything. He belongs to a less deliberate school of 'tape hiss is an instrument too' thought - unlike, say, Times New Viking his songs aren't impenetrable on first listen, it's closer to Guided By Voices than anything else I guess. 'So Bored' is the song that worms its way into your head on first listen and it still won't leave, many weeks later. Sorry if you wake up humming this in the middle of the night, but for me at the moment it's battling with Shontelle's 'Tshirt' for supremacy in my head and Wavves MUST WIN.

Animal Hospital - Safe Place

Animal Hospital's album 'Memory' is difficult to pin down - you could call it 'home listening' I guess, but that doesn't take into account the pounding death metal march buried in 'Belly', or the more straightforward approach of some bits on the album. Theres drones and prettiness aplenty, but it's an album that benefits from a lack of singularity of purpose. It's all different, but it all sounds like one guy did it. Result!

Universal mind thing

2009-03-12T15:40:00.004Z

Nite Jewel - Suburbia

Though Italo-disco gives many people a warm feeling inside, I wouldn't normally categorise the Italians Do It Better label as 'warm' - the disaffectedness of the vocals is kinda part of what the Chromatics and Glass candy et al do. So the Nite Jewel album is something of a pleasant surprise, closer in feeling to a lost folk album than anything else. A folk album by someone who only uses analog synths, but low-key and singer-songwriterly all the same. Bits of it reminded me of Sally Shapiro's album in that it really tries for emotional peaks and it feels entirely free from irony, which is always nice.

Moderat - Slow Match

Moderat is one half of Modeselektor and Apparat, which is an enticing prospect. The weird poppy sensibilities and technical know-how of Modeselektor coupled with the weird poppy sensibilities and technical know-how of Apparat? How could it fail? And, as you would expect, this is a weird pop album with impressive textures and sounds. It's all going splendidly until a sag sets in about halfway through that the album never really recovers from, but the first 5 tracks are as good as any electro-pop you're likely to hear this year.

She ain't

2009-03-11T17:37:00.003Z

Raheem DeVaughn - She's Not You (Chopped & Screwed by OG Ron C)

'Even if you didn't cop the CD, got it from the internet or whatever, I still got love for ya' intones OG Ron C towards the end of Fuck Action 54, which is comforting, as it's getting more and more difficult to find F-Action CDs at prices without prohibitive shipping costs. Wasn't F Action supposed to have finished a few months back? I thought there was some 5-CD blow-out. Anyways, theres nothing quite like luxuriating in the warped, syrupy swim of chopped & screwed RnB, and F-Action 54 is no different, wringing magic out of some unexpected sources - Ne-Yo's sprightly 'Miss Independent' sounds bizarre when slowed down, but the chops punctuate it's wooziness and make a psychedelic blur of the vocals (especially the 'manicure to set the pedicure off' bit) and Beyonce's duet with R Kelly on the 'If I Were A Boy' remix sounds like classic rock sung by tortured sopranos. Elsewhere the lesser known tracks (like this Raheem DeVaughn one) shine for me, probably cause I'm not that familiar with their regular tempos. Does the radio sound like this in Atlanta/Houston? It's a pretty good argument for relocation.

Boston Spaceships - Canned Food Demons

Robert Pollard is back (not that he'd ever really gone away) with an album under the name Boston Spaceships. In light of Wavves and Times New Viking, Bob Pollard albums now sound pretty polished, but if he isn't the noisiest kid on the block, he's got tunes for days and he's gonna keep on bashing them out in his basement til...well, who cares, as long we can keep on listening.

Get what

2009-03-09T15:01:00.000Z

Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics - Cha Cha

By now, everyone's familiar and in love with Mulatu Astatke's music, which is good, and his hook-up with The Heliocentrics was a bit of a worry for me - I'm all for cross-pollination, but those mid 90s 'c-grade producers remix Fela Kuti' type compilations are absolute dreck, and I was hoping this wouldn't be another boring CD that you might pick up in Urban Outfitters/Phonica/overpriced record shop for cunts. But it isn't. This is probably due to Malcolm Catto of The Heliocentrics having the good sense to know where to simply compliment Mulatu's sound and when it's a good idea to thump the drums hard. Catto's pretty legendary on the crate-digging scene (apparently), and I do remember really liking the album he put out on Mo'Wax, where he drummed really loudly over electronics - like a more poppy version of those Steve Reid/Four Tet records. The Heliocentricsn are a straight funk band with emphasis on rhythm which is a good fit for Mulatu's winding, celebratory melodies. Not a disaster at all. In fact, rather good.

The Alps - Breaking Clouds

The Alps are pretty unashamedly stuck in the past - that past being Germany in the 70s. The do the motorik thing and the Cluster-esque slow explosion of keyboards thing very well indeed, so well it seems that the two EPs they've just released of offcuts from the sessions for their last album 'III' are as good as the album itself. This isn't updated, modern krautrock, it's as shaggy as the originals, so no Fujiya & Miyagi-style pop, it's just straight driving down a long motorway into the blinding sun style hypnosis.

He's dead

2009-03-06T14:58:00.002Z

Mika Vainio & Lucio Capice - Sigilo

I have not been the Editions Mego completist I thought I would be. There seems to be quite a few titles missing from my collection, and a release like the collaboration between Mika Vainio and Lucio Capece makes me wish I was more vigilant about collecting the frequently impressive computer noise they regularly put out. I haven't heard enough of Mr Capece to know who's doing what here, but fans of Mika Vainio in his 'surveying the industrial wasteland' mode will find lots to love here. It's a warmer sounding affair than much of Vainio's recent work, but still capable of frightening you when you put it on late at night. Like I foolishly did.

Miss Kittin & The Hacker - The Womb

I remember buying Miss Kittin & The Hacker's first album when it came out, 8 years ago (8 years!) and being instantly smitten with it's seedy, nihilist electropop. It only really took about 6 months for everyone else on the elctroclash scene to run that idea into the ground, and even 8 years on, it feels like bringing a follow-up out now is not the trendy thing to do. And Miss Kittin & The Hacker are undeniably trendy. It feels like the cannabalisation of the 80s has gone on far longer than the 80s itself, so who gives a fuck about another deadpan vocalled Soft Cell ripoff? Well, me, but I empathise with anyone feeling a bit burned out on this stuff. What becomes immediately apparent when listening to this is that no-one does quite like these guys when they're on form, and 'Two' delivers enough of their schtick to remind you why you enjoyed the first album coupled with this album having a tone that at times is completely at odds with the morbid glamour of the first one. There's a cheery cover of 'Suspicious Minds' here that would have been unthinkable before, but it sounds at home with the more considered set of songs here - more dancefloor oriented than before, maybe a bit less afraid to lose face. I could be talking bollocks of course, but either way, it's a really good electropop album.

If you love me, why did you turn me in to the police?

2009-03-05T14:41:00.003Z

Prefuse 73 - DEC Machine Funk All ERAs

'Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian' is a worryingly Mars Volta-esque title, and the prog as fuck aesthetic continues on the album's cover, but there's nothing remotely indulgent about the album itself, unless you hate ideas. Like previous records, Prefuse 73 tries out about 100 different things, each for about half a minute and then moves on to the next thing. It feels a bit more 'classic' hip-hop leaning than the last couple of records (in that some of the beats feel like nods to Premier and J Dilla). I have no idea how he maintains the work ethic he does, this album alone would keep a lot of lesser producers in beats for years, but in Prefuse's hands it's a bewildering onslaught of thoughts. Really good for long journeys, I find.

Marvin Gaye - You Can Leave, But It's Going To Cost You

I'll admit to you now the horrible truth that until a couple of weeks ago, I had never heard 'Here My Dear' by Marvin Gaye - I think I remember reading a review by some halfwit who claimed that it was a contractual obligation album and sounded it - and never really made the effort to hear it. Which was a huge mistake, cause this album is fucking immense. More of a piece than any of his other albums, this is like one endlessly intoxicated evening in Gaye's company, all his charm and flaws in plain view. Seriously, if like me, you've never investigated it, go out now and buy it. NOW.

Which Barbara is that?

2009-02-25T17:22:00.001Z

The Fun Years - I Am Speaking Through Barbara

Kompakt's newest entry in their Pop Ambient series features tunes from artists who you would definitely think are Kompakt listeners, but not necessarily artists who would show up on a Kompakt compilation - namely Sylvain Chevau and The Fun Years. Mr Voigt is evidently concentrating on the 'ambient' a little harder than the 'pop'. No bad thing, especially when The Fun Years contribute songs as lovely as this. I think I like the idea of The Fun Years almost as much as the music they make; a bunch of young indie-ish dudes who form a band where William Basinski seems to be the major influence (which was more apparent on the 'Baby Its Cold Inside' album from last year). I'm picking this tune at random though, as usual with this series Pop Ambient 09 is wall-to-wall loveliness and well worth picking up.

The Lonely Island - Ras Trent

'Incredibad' by The Lonely Island is a success simply by being a comedy album that you might want to listen to more than twice, which is mainly to do with the sonic pastiches being sharper than the actual humour, plus an avoidance of the usual 'white people talking like black people is automatically funny' wrongheadedness of rap parodies. That said, maybe the most conventional comedy moment is also one of it's highlights: 'Ras Trent' features Andy Samberg playing a middle class kid playing a rasta ('Read a book on Hailie Selassie and told my bumbaclaat parents I was switching religions'). Though my enjoyment is due mainly to the way the song opens, with Samberg's horribly funny 'Badadingdingdingding woah-oh-oh'. Comedy, eh?

Battles - Atlas (DJ Koze Remix)

DJ Koze's great really, he's more than capable of turning out quality tasteful dance music, but has a taste for the weird. This is more than apparent on his remix collection 'Reincarnations' - letting a lovely soul loop take the forground on a Matthew Dear track, the sense that tongues are firmly in cheeks on the ridiculously smooth 'Minimal' and recasting Battles' 'Atlas' as weirdo minimal techno. It's such a diverse display of styles that it kinda bowls you over initially, but this is a collection I'll be spending a lot of time with for the next while. Seriously reccommended.

Super!

2009-02-18T17:39:00.001Z

Boredoms - Ant 10 (Remix By DJ Lindstrom)

I liked what I heard by Lindstrom at first, the first collection of 12"s, the collaborations with Prins Thomas - it was all in that first flush of interest in the disco/house/techno crossover that 'Flucht and Kreucht' inspired. I'll stress 'liked' there because I LOVED 'Where You Go I Go Too', Lindstrom's first 'artist' album. I loved it's scope, it's gorgeous sound, I loved the way he looked on the front cover (referencing Spike Milligan?)…loved it. So here we have Lindstrom, a guy who is consistently rising in my estimation, remixing Boredoms, whom I couldn't hold in higher esteem if I tried. Despite Eye & co being the sort of act for whom dropping jaws is a fairly regular occurrence, Boredoms going disco isn't too much of a surprise - Eye's had a coulpe of house 12"s out under the name Lift Boys, and there was a distinctly disco-ey section to their drum assault last time I saw them (a few years ago). But nothing can really prepare you for this. Eye's 'Remixxxes By Eye' comp from a couple of years ago would kinda point you in the direction of how 'Ant 10 (DJ Lindstrum Mix' might sound, but this is different - a kind of magical amalgamation of both acts' sense of looseness and super-discipline (drums - in perfect syncopation, everything else - wild abandon). It would be sonically beguiling enough without the rising stabs towards the end of the song, but oh my those stabs - it takes it into the most joyful meeting point between Boredoms sun-worshipping climax ecstasy and Lindstrom's dancefloor euphoria, and makes my heart feel as though it may burst in my chest. It's absolutely essential.

Not us

2009-02-16T17:49:00.001Z

Svarte Greiner - Tunnel Of Love

Music is one of the mediums where you sometimes can judge a book by its cover, and never were it more so than with Svarte Greiner's 'Kappe'. The cover is a photograph of an ornate object, possibly fabric in blue half light, barely visible, almost consumed by darkness - not much of a shock then to discover the music is as haunting and atmospheric as that would suggest. This is drone with an ear to field music, much of it sounds like a haunted wasteland - not musical, and certainly not natural. It's compelling in the way that the best of Tomandandy's soundtrack work is - basically capturing the sound of isolation, between mournful and frightening.

Electrik Red - We Fuck You

Electrik Red demand your attention by virtue of the fact that they are produced by The-Dream (NEW ALBUM SOON!), and his super-refined pop applied to a girl group is, in theory, maybe the best thing ever. In practice, it isn't, but that's not to say there isn't a lot to enjoy about Electrik Red's output thus far (album's due in March, I believe). Contrary to the setup of most girl groups, every one of the 4 girls in the group get songs where they're the Nicole and the other three are the Pussycat Dolls, so they're not a particularly idiosyncratic sound, but I like this (mostly cause there's no weak voices in the band). They also share a pretty wicked sense of humour with their producer (the guy who released the weirdest track on his album as the first single) - a girl group calling a song 'We F You' is a stroke of genius, particularly when it transpires this is assertion of female dominance. Girls Aloud must be shitting themselves.

Gobbledigook

2009-02-11T15:09:00.006Z

Bangladesh & Muffy - Gone Hate

Over the last month I don't think 2 days have passed without me jamming 'Dope Boi' and beaming like a loon - it's so awesome. I have a feeling my fondness for tentative major label stars is inverse to their chances of actually becoming major label stars (look at Cassie. Poor, neglected Cassie), so I really hope for the best for Muffy. She shows up a few times on Bangladesh's 'Passport Muzik' mixtape, and thoroughly enlivens affairs with some filthy phone messages and guest vocals. Bangladesh is someone whom, on the basis of the mixtape, I'd really like to hear an artist album from, falling between The-Dream's future soul and Swizz Beats' vicious neon pop thrills. Think about it. Not to mention Muffy probably showing up on a few tracks. Make it happen!

Wicked Witch - X Rated

Whilst unearthing psychedelic rock from the 60s and 70s is always a going concern (recently it's all been African funk with fuzz guitars, which is often the best thing ever), I haven't really heard much psychedelic 80s funk. Rectifying that is the collection 'Chaos 78-86' by Wicked Witch. I hate to do the 'X sounds like Y on A' thing, but if you can imagine Cameo having a whitey rendering them incapable of playing their keyboard properly, you're kinda getting there. This is primitive sounding stuff, drum machines and keyboards are deployed with glee and zero technical know how, while the rest of the band play a brand of funk characterized by how paranoid it sounds - 'Chaos' is apretty apt title for the collection, as everything sounds as if it may be on the brink of collapse at certain points. It gets lascivious at times (as on 'X-Rated'), but always weird. Good stuff.

Numbered

2009-02-09T15:02:00.003Z

Underworld - 020202 Version 2

Despite their last album being something of a disappointment, I'm still keen to hear what Underworld get up to, and as far as I can tell, they're putting out stuff semi-regularly themselves. I'm not sure when '020202' is from exactly, some point in 2008 I think, but like the best of Underworld's stuff, it doesn't really need to sit on the cutting edge to be successful (serious, 'Pearls Girl' or 'Cups' came out a month ago they'd still sound remarkable) - it sounds like the straightforward building momentum of 'Moaner', with less vocal input from Karl. Whilst Underworld have the dubious honour of being one of the few dance acts to be considered more 'album artists' than their peers, I'd be happy if they moved back into the realm of the regular 12" missive - we might get more bangers like this.

Aardvarck - Bloom 1

This skanks away like nobody's business. I'm normally a bit put off by vocal reggae signifiers in dubstep, but this veers closer to actually dub really. Slow and kinda hypnotic with plenty of bass - it's not rocket science but it fucking works.

Alva Noto/Ryuichi Sakamoto - The Broken Line 1

Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto) and Ryuichi Sakamoto's previous collaborations have drawn from a relatively limited, if deep, pallette - piano and static. They are joined here by other players and instead of drawing them into their usual sound, Nicolai and Sakamoto switch their game up for an album that won't surprise anyone familiar with either of their work, but after 'Insen', 'Vrioon' and 'Revep' sounds like a very varied record indeed. Whilst previously, everything was minor-key and Nicolai's textures alternated between warm electrical hum and cold pulsing/hiss, the simple act of some pieces being much louder than others is striking. This album sounds both more and less composed, if that's at all possible, looser in tone (by-product of more hands in the mix I guess), but the pieces sounding less like they belong to a whole work. Anyways, these guys are always worth hearing and this is one of their most enjoyable outings so far.

Just let it shine through

2009-02-02T15:14:00.002Z

Alva Noto - Xerrox Monophaser 2

It's heavy hit after heavy hit for Raster-Noton at the moment - within the next 3 days I'll also be singing the praises of Noto/Sakamoto's 'UTP' and the new ATOM TM - and label head Alva Noto's 'Xerrox Vol.2' has already wowed me repeatedly after only 2 listens. The concept here is use of samples, theres some big avant-heads' sounds being used here apparently, not that you would notice. The 'Monophaser' tracks break with tradition the most, in that they incorporate strings. Really cinematic strings at that - I may be alone in this, but they remind me of Kooner & Thatcher's gloriously synthetic strings on The Aloof's 'Sinking' album (which to me totally sounded like nightime 80s London; cool, slightly gaudy - a good sound to evoke) - grounded by a completely unsentimental (and unmusical) drone. Believe me, I could chat nonsense about this record all day. But you're probably better off just listening to it.

Hot Chip feat Robert Wyatt - We're Looking For A Lot Of Love

The lovely Hot Chip boys collaborate with living legend Robert Wyatt on their new EP, which is unexpected but also makes a lot of sense - they both operate just outside of the field they're normally associated with (electro-pop and folk, respectively), and have a fondness for writing pop songs tinged with experimentalism (that might not seem as true for HC as RW, but listen to their records and tell me they aren't paying KEEN attention to everything that's going on in electronic music at the moment). It's always nice to hear Robert Wyatt singing …well, anything, and on here he makes more sense of HC's 'We're Looking For A Lot Of Love' than they did on their album. If the other songs don't better the originals they are at least far more interesting and welcome reinventions than 80% of the remixes I've heard recently.

Paperroute Gangsterz - Soul Glo

Paper Route Gansterz are the latest crop of artists for hip-hop fans to get upset about Diplo championing. While the Diplo/Benzi 'Fear And Loathing In Hunts Vegas' mixtape is a good showcase for these guys, it sometimes favours lame remixes over the wonderful originals; case in point, 'Soul Glo'. The moment I read the name, I thought 'Have they sampled the ad from Coming To America?' and yes, they have. Not to get all Russell Howard on you, but that's enough for me. The sample itself sounds great, bombastic and silly, just on the right side of ridiculous…you can tell the comparison I'm about to make. Yes, a bit like the PRGz themselves. There's just a joyous sunny sense of positivity all over this track, enough to make you forget that it's January and my feet have nearly frozen off. Anyways, the Paper Route Recordz crew are worth looking into (particularly the G-Side album, more on which later.

RIP John Martyn

2009-01-29T18:01:00.001Z

John Martyn - May You Never

Electrostasy

2009-01-29T15:28:00.005Z

Pixel - +40° 42 24.12 -73° 59 51.82

Pixel's new album 'The Drive' on (who else) Raster-Noton takes one idea and runs with it: the idea being that the hum of guitar feedback and barely-there click tracks are good bedfellows. Which they are, but then it's no surprise that I'd be a fan of combining click tracks with, er, anything. The guitar feedback here is of the 'leaning against an amp' kind, more a warm hum than spiralling noise, and the clicky rhythms shuffle underneath. Considering the two elements at play here, this makes for a pretty good ambient record. Check it out.

Sunken Foal - Foathing

Planet Mu heroically fly in the face of the credit crunch by continuing to sign acts that have little to no chance of making them money. Case in point - Sunken Foal, who applies electronic craftmanship to folky songs - and we all know that Four Tet fans only buy 12 records a year (jokes). Theres no pressure here for the songs to be anything other than sketches and excuses to use particular sounds, and if you're willing to spend time with it, it reveals itself to be very pretty indeed.

Tim Hecker - Currents of Electrostasy

Naturally, Tim Hecker always gets the thumbs up from me - wrenching mealncholy melody from loops of crashing noise is the sort of thing that impresses me. The new album is a logical continuation of 'Harmony In Ultraviolet' (and shares a predeliction for slightly silly song names) in that it sounds much the same, but Tim Hecker's full lengths feel like things you shouldn't really bother with listening to individual tracks from; it's all of a piece. So, er, don't bother downloading the song up there, just go out and buy it.

The Hypothetical Prophets - Person To Person

This track is taken from the 'So Young So Cold' compilation, which collates early French electronic pop. Of course, early electronic pop often means 'dudes who heard Devo and tried to figure out how to use a keyboard', and that only adds to the awesomeness on display here. The Hypothetical Prophets song is only one of a series of really great, forward thinking and totally pop songs on he comp and it's absolutely worth your time seeking out.

Flowers die

2009-01-28T15:23:00.004Z

Khanate - Wings From Spine

So, 2-odd years after they broke up, the final Khanate album ('Clean Hands Go Foul') arrives. Stephen O'Malley (guitar sounds like metal structures creaking and snapping around you), James Plotkin (the constant hum of unease), Alan Dubin (vocals like a man communicating to you directly from some kind of personal hell) and Tim Wyskida (whose drums punctuate a horrible wasteland of clang and drone like collapsing buildings) here make a case for Khanate's breakup being the greatest loss to doom possible. Its the most restrained of their records, in that it never offers any kind of release at all, not even in the chaotic downward spiral sense. Its wound so tight you feel loathe to breathe until its all over. A pretty incredible record from a pretty incredible band. RIP.

Lukid - Slow Hand Slap

Lukid's album 'FOMA' collects a bunch of tunes that would likely stand out on a producerly hip-hop album as 'the weird sparse ones'. The ghost of J Dilla looms large over this (as on most rhythmic music made by youngsters these days), there's no haste in busying up a sample where it might loop ambiently otherwise. On first listen it seems alarmingly spare (and derivative perhaps), but sucks you into it's hypnotic headspace soon enough.

Of Montreal - First Time High (Of Chicago Acoustic Version)

For those who found Of Montreal's 'Skeletal Lamping' a bit much, the 'Jon Brion Remix' EP is a quick reminder that they're a super pop band when all is said and done. Jon Brion's obviously a fan, as his contributions seem very Of Montreal-like - and stripping 'First Time High' to an acoustic sketch is a very good idea. I tip my hat to you, Jon.

Why does it have to be

2009-01-27T15:19:00.002Z

Heltah Skeltah - So Damn Tuff

Its important to remember that some people still do it like Heltah Skeltah. This is no-nonsense thugged out hip-hop bizness, with about 30 punchlines per song. Is that your kind of thing? It fucking better be.

Asobi Seksu - In The Sky

No great changes in Asobi Seksu's world on their 3rd LP, though it is a little less noisy than it's predecessors, which might sound alarming, but a streamlined Seksu is less saccharine than you might imagine. Still super-shoegazey, mind.

Intrusion feat Paul St Hilaire - Angel (Version)

If you want to hear Intrusion's 'Seduction Of Silence' album, you'll probably have to download it, as its a limited edition of 300. Obviously, an album as indebted to Rhythm&Sound/Basic Channel as this (right down to getting Hilaire in on vocals) is going to be gorgeous, and it is. In the context of an album, the songs sound a bit more hooky than I remember them being as 12"s, but it ebbs and flows as well as anything else of this type. I like it.

Acid beach

2009-01-26T16:33:00.004Z

Pain Jerk - Acid Bath, Drip Bones
Emeralds - Damaged Kids

Kids in England use the 'long' to mean boring and difficult, so when I say that Saturday was long, I'm being purposefully ambiguous. Got up early to check out the Rothko exhibition at the Tate Modern, but it was very busy, and I like to look at Rothko paintings in silence with very few others around (I'm corny like that. Or misanthropic. One of those two). In the afternoon, myself and James reconvened after nigh-on two years to do a Biscuits podcast, which was as shambolic as it ever was (though very enjoyable), and in the evening I suffered disappointment after disappointment at the hands of London Public Transport. This meant I missed Birds Of delay opening for Pain Jerk and Emeralds, dammit. So Pain Jerk started about 2 minutes after I got in the door, there was a jolt of huge industrial noise that launched into full-on harsh physical noise for a good 45 minutes, which is quite the tonic after a long day. Pain Jerk's put out like a million cassettes, but all you need to know is that he is Japanese. Yadda yadda Merzbow yadda yadda crazy noise…you can write your own review (sarcasm aside, the set actually really did sound a lot like mid-period Merzbow). The only concessions to form were his looping of the noise faster and faster towards the end - like if Fatboy Slim was into the sound of airplanes crashing in wind tunnels. I dug it. Headlining were Emeralds, whom I really didn't know that much about, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they're some dudes who really, really like Manuel Gottsching. This was astonishingly well-crafted balearic wasted acid bizness, down to the echo-heavy guitar solos and slowly winding acid synths. Gorgeous, and a bizarrely appropriate compliment to Pain Jerk. Check them out if you have the opportunity.

Antiwhimsy

2009-01-22T19:35:00.001Z

Fever Ray - Seven

Surrealism is a difficult thing to do successfully in music - whimsy generally makes me throw up a bit in my mouth - but The Knife have a habit of making the mundane surreal in a way that is alienating and eerie rather than inclusive and warm. This tradition continues on the Fever Ray debut (which you'll know by now is Karin of The Knife's solo project), a startlingly immense work, easily the equal of 'Silent Shout'. I'm sure I won't be the last to do this, but tonally the album reminded me of the devastating preteen vampire fable 'Let The Right One In' - maybe it's a Scandinavian thing, but there's a sense of unease about being young that's jarring - theres no rose-tinted glasses here: when Karin references childhood throughout the album, she makes it sound like an austere, weird time; relationships and banal conversations rendered very strange indeed. Like The Knife's output, these are pop songs with no room for joy - imagine an entire album that manages to sustain the mood of Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' - at best dispassionately odd, though for the most part achingly sad. It's the first brilliant album of the year.

Telefon Tel Aviv - Your Every Idol

On new album 'Immolate Yourself', Telefon Tel Aviv finds himself having made the kind of electro-shoegaze (I know, I know, it sounds awful) that makes most of his peers look very rubbish indeed. I had imagined that as his first album on Ellen Allien's excellent Bpitch Control label, this might be more beat-focused, but if anything this is even more 4AD than his previous work. The album I quietly compared it to in my head whilst listening was Scarlett Johannsson's 'Anywhere I Lay My Head', which I love, and which this slays. The songs are kept pretty simple, as are the beats, but they're drowned in gorgeous waves of reverb and keyboard noise. It really is quite wonderful, and I never thought I'd be saying that about an electro-shoegaze record again.

RTday

2009-01-14T18:18:00.003Z

RTX - You Should Shut Up

Royal Trux were an incredible band, no arguments. Obviously in thrall to classic rock, their approach was muddied by a passion for free jazz and odd production techniques - 'Accelerator' genuinely does sound like a kind of acid-damaged ACDC, and every bit as awesome as that implies. Since they split up, Neil has gone on to make a number of fine records under various names and some really good production work, whilst Jennifer has made a few records under the name RTX, the latest one 'JJ Got Live RTX' being my favourite. Jennifer's voice on it's own can signify 80s blues-rock/hair metal easily, and the music here bypasses lo-fi charm altogether into hard rock abandon, without any of the ponderous self-indulgence that occasionally derails this sort of thing. I would definitely be playing this if there were a kegger goin on at my house, bro.

Six Organs Of Admittance - You Can Always See The Sun

The past year or so has been relatively quiet for Six Organs Of Admittance, 2 years ago it felt like there was a new CDr every month in addition to Ben Chasny appear on tons of other people's records. Since his last Drag City release, he's been on tour with Magik Markers alternating between free noise scree and grounding Elisa's noise scree with winding guitar lines. Whether this has had any marked effect on his own material remains to be seen as his new album, 'RTZ', is a collection of older pieces, culled from cassettes and compilations - a godsend for those of us who are SOOA completists. 'RTZ' is a 2CD affair, and most of the tracks edge towards the 20-minute mark, so you know you're in for some hypnotic raga-esque guitar work here, and, rather surprisingly, it zips by. Every song feels like an exorcism of that particular mood or style, nothing ever gets boring or unnecessarily repetitive, it's just droning gorgeousness from start to finish, from the rootsy guitar stuff to the psych noise jams. Pretty much essential if you like this sort of thing.

In which we engage the other :)

2009-01-13T14:02:00.001Z

Groupe El Azhar - Touedar Aakli

My understanding of Rai is....uh, I know very little about Rai, other than that I find it fascinating in the way that I find reggaeton fascinating. As someone who's grown up with the Western versions of these musics, it's kind of amazing to hear a parallell universe answer to the music you listen to (different language, different touchstones, etc). And until now, I'd always had Rai in my head as the French/Algerian version of the hiphop/dancehall divide. Naturally, I'm not very well educated about these things, but Sublime Frequencies' 'Algerian Proto-Rai Underground' offers a gorgeous glimpse of the roots of Rai, which to my ears is very much removed from Rai you might hear nowadays (Jace Rupture very kindly provided me with a 'Best-Of 2008' style Rai comp, which I've only skimmed at present, otherwise I might be able to talk a bit more coherently about the evolution of the sound, as Jace does here). These songs are beautiful, raw and tense and you pretty much HAVE to hear them. Get on it.

Der Teenage Panzerkorps - Unfavourable Meanings

German vocals in guitar music generally remind me of The Fall - dunno why this is particularly, it could have something to do the fact that German, to me, works both with and against the music. It's such a striking language, it can't become just part of the background, in the same way that Mark E Smith's vocals dominate his songs. And hasn't he sung in German a few times? Anyways, Teenage Panzerkorps remind me of The Fall, but it could be the presence of a German…well, less a singer, more a narrator. If I say the magic word 'Siltbreeze', you'll probably already have an idea of how this sounds (like a cassette recording), and this one of the more 'pop' things they've released in some time. There are big tunes here, and sound they would be devastating live: the rhythm section is super heavy, and there's all sorts of weird melodic stuff going on with the guitars. The album, 'Games For Slaves', is currently vinyl-only, which makes me want a turntable real real bad.

Workin'

2009-01-12T20:15:00.003Z

Apologies for the delay in returning. I am lazy.

It Hugs Back - Work Day

Upon seeing It Hugs Back a couple of years ago, Ms Ahlen remarked that they all look like 'polite young men', which, for guitar bands, is usually a marker of whether you're going to like them or not. It Hugs Back sound like polite young men too, but not in a gauche or faux-naïve way - they also avoid the quiet indie trap of sounding entirely too self-pitying. Which is remarkable. This is gentle indie, and feels peerless in that its hooky but not showy - it seems that IHB have found their groove really quickly. The album is very much worth hearing.

The Dream - Rockin That Thang

The Dream has a new album on the way apparently, which I'm very excited about, particularly given the quality of the stuff that’s already found its way onto the internets. Could it be as majestic as 'Love/Hate'? On the evidence of this: Yes.

Zomby - The Lie

Zomby has a pretty relentless workrate - theres been quite a few big releases from him this winter, and 'The Lie' is another in the seemingly endless amount of bangers in his bag of tricks. I have little else to say other than it's great, but you probably already knew that.

Hudson Mohawke - Polkadot Blues

Hudson Mohawke's album cannot come quickly enough for me. Slowly but surely, I've become a bit obsessive about tracking his stuff down over the past few months. This whole 'J Dilla remixed by Autechre' scene that’s sprung up (mainly on the 'just arrived' pages of Boomkat) - recent Dabrye mixes, Flying Lotus etc - is as elastic a beast when referring to hip-hop and electronic as 'balearic' is to rock music, and Hudson Mohawke just motors along sounding like all the touchstones of modern RnB, crate-digging hip-hop and glitch electronica. A wonder to behold!

Don't cut it down

2008-12-27T14:38:00.004Z

Pink Reason - Frolicked Walk Through Autumnal Bliss

Pink Reason and Hue Blanc's Joyless Ones (whom I've not heard anything else by, if you can hook me up with MP3s, please do) cover each others tunes on a new 12", so Pink Reason have more of a song song to get their teeth around than usual (usual: near totally confusing distortion) and it's really good stuff, as is everything else on the EP. Available from Florida's Dying, well worth it.

Taz Buckfaster - Murda Skank

It can be easy to get consumed in the more minimal sounds of dubstep, and then every now and then you hear something that reminds you that half the reason you started listening to this stuff was basslines that may flatten your head. Listeners, meet 'Murda Skank'.

Low Motion Disco - Love Love Love (Aeroplane Remix)

If theres a disco success story of the year, it's Aeroplane, Belgium's balearic alchemists. Over the course of the year they've knocked out awesome remix after awesome remix (culminating with the mix of Grace Jones' 'Williams Blood') and a few awesome tunes of their own. They literally have not put out a dud track in all of 2008, and most have been tune of the year contenders. Anyways, their mix of kindred spirits Low Motion Disco's 'Love Love Love' makes the piano stabs so dynamic and uplifting its kind of a crime not to listen to this really loud and pretend you're in Studio 54 or something.

What's in your trunk?

2008-12-26T14:11:00.002Z

Hello all, hope you had a nice time over the last few days, whatever it was that you were doing.

Muffy - Dope Boi

Self-consciously weird RnB is a bit of a minefield - I wasn't too impressed with Janelle Monae's stuff, and the wayward stuff on the Solange album was much weaker than the more straightforward pop stuff - but with Muffy, you can remove the 'self-consciously'. Producer Bangladesh compliments her desire to stray from the tracks with a tune that is just different - structurally and sonically. Muffy herself sounds completely at home in the alien surroundings. I'm really looking forward to hearing more.

Peedi Crakk - Get On Da Ground (Remix)

'Take Me Home', Peedi's first, er, crack at major label success obviously didn't work out, which is a crying shame, as he is still as engaging a voice as you'll hear these days. The mixtape 'Welcome To Crakk's House' is all I've heard from him all year, and to be fair, it's patchy, but when he's on, he's ON. I really want to hear him on some pop banger though RIGHT NOW.

Botched

2008-12-23T14:34:00.002Z

T++ - Allied

T++ (aka Torsten Prufrock, one of the Monolake boys)'s releases have been infrequent compared to most producers, but his Eps thus far have been perfectly formed. Perfectly. If, like me, you've longed for some middle point between the starry-eyed wonder and The Orb and the brutal efficiency of Surgeon, then you'll probably quite like them. I can't recall anything this year that has made me nod and think 'OH YES I AM DOWN WITH THIS ALRIGHT' with a big broad smile across my face. He has an EP on Appleblim's thus-far flawless label Apple Pips out now that I haven't heard yet, but going on past form (the above mp3 is from a few months ago), I can safely say it's totally awesome. I desperately want to see T++ live, or Djing. Immediately. There's something about these glassy, bright sounds, coupled with the dub echoes and the general space-age vibe, not to mention the HAMMERING TECHNO element that makes T++'s stuff the kind of thing I recommend to pretty much everyone. Completely brilliant.

Nadja - Time Is Our Disease

Nadja have been 2008's MVPs as far as doom-shoegaze goes, and there has been at least 4 releases this year from Aidan and Leah that have made me think they're the best band in the world (not least covering a song from the Kids In The Hall 'Brain Candy' Soundtrack - the 'Long Dark Twenties' 7", totally worth seeking out). In fact, the only thing that ties todays two mp3s together is I can't decide whether to vote for T++ or Nadja to play at ATP Vs The Fans next May (to be fair, I may be on my own from the looks of the list so far). Anyways, this comes from a tour CD with Satori and Atavist, and is typically immersive crashing drone riff magnificence and, indeed, typically brilliant. Apparently this is a UK tour CD, which I am deeply upset I missed out on. Like, I'm in a serious mood now. Fuck off.

Santa whut?

2008-12-19T17:39:00.002Z

Eazy E - Merry Muthafuckin' Christmas

Yeah, I know I've posted this before, but as far as irreverent Xmas anthems go, this is tops, so if you've never heard it before, listen now. You know why? Cause there's more joy and manic glee in Eazy E's voice than there is in any other Christmas song. I DARE you to find a song where the singer sounds as pleased as Eazy does on this. Truly magnificent.

Final - Fearless Systems

Though I realise it sounds like the worst kind of 'I prefer the early stuff'-style indie snobbery, I prefer Justin Broadrick's Final project to Jesu. For me, Jesu's had increasingly diminishing returns, whilst Final's albums have been a steely-eyed refinement of small details, and get better and better. So I'm the sort of guy who prefers guitar noise to songs. No surprise there. But the new Final album, 'Dead Air', really is worth your time if you've been at all wowed by the bleak terrain of black metal, or Fennesz's tangled drones this year. And 'Fearless Systems' sounds like the theme from 'Assault On Precint 13' being played on a transistor radio in a wind tunnel. As we have already established, that is the kind of thing I like.

Pom Pom - 08

I know very little about Pom Pom, and it would appear they/he/she want to keep it that way - they're relatively secretive, just you try googling 'Pom pom', none of the tracks have any names etc. But the album '01' is worth tracking down, as it's a pretty cohesive selection of tracks from their recent 12"s, not all necessarily minimal techno bangers, and shockingly enough for a techno album released this year, there doesn't seem to be an overt Basic Channel influence. It's rather like a less showy version of the Minilogue album, which probably doesn't help much in describing the sound, but there you go. I'm liking it a lot.

Holding on

2008-12-17T15:33:00.002Z

Nite Jewel - Chimera

Its always a treat finding a self-released CDr by someone who is operating outside of what you might expect from a self-released CDr (that being demos, noise albums or some combination of the two). The first thing you think when you hear Nite Jewel's 'My CD' is 'I bet someone's handed this in to Italians Do It Better', and it appears someone did. Like that label, Nite Jewel obviously takes inspiration from excesses of Italo Disco - cheap, wildly ambitious, danceable, 80s. But while Glass Candy do the aloof party-girl routine, Nite Jewel mostly sounds like she's mired in an almighty cocaine comedown at points - and there's a tonne of echo on here that makes things sound totally disorienting. Very much looking forward to the spruced up version of the CDr she's releasing soon on Human Ear Records (or Gloriette if you have a turntable), check it out.

Clinic - Tomorrow (DFA Remix)

Some people ADORE Clinic. I'm of the opinion that I don't really need to listen to anything post-'Walking With Thee', though I never dislike what I've heard from them in the past few years. This DFA remix pretty much abandons any thoughts of remaining true to the 'sound' of Clinic (odd, given how many sonic and inspirational touchstones they share), and repurpose the song for actual dancing. Now that I think about it, this is the first DFA remix I've heard in months. What have they been up to this year that took up all their time? When's the Black Leotard Front album coming out? So many questions.

Beds are burning

2008-12-16T15:31:00.002Z

Pinch - Midnight Oil

To be totally honest, I haven't listened to 'Underwater Dancehall' that much. It's not that it's a subpar record or anything, but there was nothing quite as immediate as 'Midnight Oil' on there. Pinch left it to the last minute to drop something devastating this year, and devastating 'Midnight Oil' most definitely is. In a year full of dubstep mutants, this is pure: lurching skank and enough low-end to trip you backwards and swallow you whole. I seriously cannot stop listening to this at the moment.

NHK - Persedes

With Raster-Noton edging ever closer to actual tunes these days, NHK is a glorious raised hand in your face. We're back to the sounds of office machinery malfunctioning - I know that’s such a juvenile simile to bring out in a review of a RN release, but it really does - with none of the sleekness of recent emanations from the RN camp. NHK's mini-album 'Unnanium' is number-crunching glitch rhythm studies shot through a real taste for noise, and not necessarily tastefully deployed either. Chaos is always hovering at the fringes here, and it's an exhilarating compliment to both the best noise and minimal techno of the year.

Too much goodnight

2008-12-15T15:24:00.002Z

Prurient - Cocaine Death

I've heard 'Cocaine Death' being described as a black metal album, which pretty much sums up how confused I am as to what consitutes black metal, cause to me, 'Cocaine Death' sounds like a noise record with vocals, which themselves aren't exactly a rarity on noise records. Essentially, I wouldn't come to this album expecting somethig that sounds like, I dunno, Nachtmystium. But anyways, Prurient has released a whole bunch of stuff this year, and though 'Cocaine Death' isn't better than the other stuff he's done this year ('Arrowhead' in particular is enthralling), it's the one I've come back to. Maybe it's the relative brevity of the tracks, the vocals that are as crazed and distorted as the music itself or the dogged determination to cause bleeding eardrums. You could compare this to one of Wolf Eyes' Sub Pop releases, but while their albums sound like stoner metal being electrocuted, Prurient records sound like Wolf Eyes records being electrocuted. Masses of crashing static and plodding drums like a death march. Tis the season.

Moritz Von Oswald - Watamu Beach Rework

It's been a rough year for Moritz Von Oswald (for those of you unaware, he is currently recovering from a stroke), but his activities have been relatively high-profile - partly due to increased availability of his work, live/DJ sets and partly due to the sound he pioneered with Rhythm & Sound/Basic Channel becoming more prevalent than ever, what with dubstep artists tipping their hat to the moody dub techno he so excels at, and the Deepchord crew slavishly recreating it. Whilst the 'Recomposed' collaboration with Carl Craig took steps towards an even more minimal and subdued sound (well, he was working with some super-serious classical music), his remix work in 08 reminds you exactly why no-one does quite like him. 'Watamu Beach' is like being at the mercy of a calm sea itself, the track bobs and sways with gorgeous ripples of echoed melody passing by. It's easy to make his work sound like it's more ambient than techno, and though this would go down very well in any chillout room you care to mention, when played loud it bangs. So, as the season draws to a close, The Wirewool raises a glass to Mr Von Oswald. Get well soon, sir.