Since the demise of Busted, McFly’s continued existence has been under increasing scrutiny. It is with this in mind that the lads have sagely decided to expand their musical range and thus new album Wonderland sees a marked change in direction encompassing a staggering glut of influences from 60s uptown soul to psychedelia-tinged rockabilly. Closing track Memory Lane even includes a jazzy improv saxophone solo by McFly’s token “punk” member Danny. Sure it does. In OPPOSITE WORLD. No, this is PAP of the highest order. Utterly lacking in anything even approaching a soul it’s impossible to believe that any human has had a hand in its creation. Filled with putrid nonsense so saccharine and anodyne your 12-year old sister would shy from it, McFly indulge in a level of recycling that would make Aberdeenshire council proud. I tried hard to find something nice to say, honest I did, but this is a record bereft of any redeeming features and I guarantee its corporate-phallus sucking creators are sitting in Hell laughing their dollar-stuffed faces off.
Archive for the 'Noise' Category
Strapped for funds? Not talented enough to write your own music? Why not cash in on the success of others with a tribute album? It is, dear readers, the sure-fire marketable gimmick. To be sold alongside the single-use cameras, lifestyle magazines and Dan Brown novels at airport duty-free. Relying mostly on its sales pitch, they rarely require any actual talent on behalf of the creators. There are exceptions, however. Eureka moments when opposite poles of musics rich diversity are combined breathing new life into familiar songs. Here we examine the many tributes to one of this generations most profitable brands: Radiohead.
Quick disclaimer: Excluded from assessment are compilation tributes like the Plastic Mutations electronic tribute, the Anyone Can Play Radiohead comp or the recent Exit Music: Songs for Radio Heads as these are really just a bunch of covers by different artists packaged together (although Mark Ronsons Just on the latter almost justifies their inclusion). Neither will we be considering remix/versus albums like Panzah Zandahzs Me & This Army or the Greenhouse Effect versus Radiohead. They are both crap anyway so we neednt mourn their exclusion too much. Clearly, youre noone in Indie if you havent butchered one or two head classics and more pop artists than you can count on the NASA mainframe have sought saleable credibility with the alternative crowd with the obligatory cover. But were looking for artists that have taken it that bit further devoting an entire album to appropriating everyones favourite gloom-mongers.
NB: Worth mentioning here is the only (yes only) one-off Radiohead cover version worth your time: John Mayers acoustic reworking of Kid A turns an already paranoid beast into a stripped-down schizophrenic.
Otherwise its abundant, if not always rich, pickings.
Christopher ORiley - True Love Waits and Hold Me To This
Generally regarded as the king of the Radiohead tribute, OReily realised early that being a pianist these days is about as lucrative as selling Jonathan King Pez-heads (with detachable jock-strap). Theres only one of you in the orchestra and nobody goes to recitals anymore. Piano-playing, no matter how accomplished, does not put bread on the keyboard, and thus the savvy ivory-tinkler must saddle a more lucrative bandwagon. Cynicism aside, however, OReily clearly has genuine love for his source material. Brad Mehldau has arguably done Piano-head better with his Exit Music (For a Film) but failed to go for the whole hog concept album in the way OReily has; twice. Of course, many of these tunes being first composed on Yorkes own grand, they are reducible back to this singular instrumentation relatively painlessly (think of the beautiful Like Spinning Plates version from I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings). Reilys interpretations are not mere Satie-esque wallpaper, however. He demonstrates his knowledge of the band with faithful but not simple carbon copies of a well-selected bunch.
Richard Dodd, The Section, Enigmatic: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead:
By far the most overt capitalisation comes from this orchestral Radiohead-by-numbers production. Play it backwards and you can hear Drink Coke and Just Do It whispered in demonic tones. Like Metallicas infamous orchestral switch the totality of what is achieved is a part-for-part duplication on strings. Thus, the very life of the original records spirit is wholly drained of the merest morsel of humanity like a Kodak image of Boticellis Venus. In faithfully replicating the originals note-for-note, they mathematically gloss over that which made the songs so affecting in the first place. Enigmatic, in other words, omits the enigma. The translators (because that is the sum total of what their contribution amounts to) just flat-out miss the point. Ask them to clone a sheep and they would, no doubt, make one that was inedible and bald. Useless. There is a great classical-crossover album to be made out of Radioheads musically astute back catalogue. This, sadly, is not it.
Various Artists - Strung Out on OK Computer: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead
Once again, the orchestral mimic is in full-effect here with another phonographic transcription of some perfectly decent Rock. Using a formula about as original as Newtons 3rd Law of Motion (is there any even middling successful stadium rock band that hasnt been subjected to the string quartet treatment), this still tops Enigmatic if only for its attention to the little details and more coherent whole. Turning its bows and horsehair to any rock band with a following greater than the Andorran elephant polo team, the String Quartet tributes have been pouring in like stone soup. Nevertheless, fans seem to lap it up. More devoted than most, fanatic heads crave anything connected with their idols like pregnant ladies and are usually about as rational and discerning as if they were in the 3rd trimester. Truth be told, you probably know if you are going to like this or not already. Its tasteful, but then so is Martha Stewart. The Guardian Guide no doubt loved it and you cant get a more damming indictment than that.
Corporate Love Breakdown - A Bluegrass Tribute to Radiohead:
Tributes live or die by the concept. At first glance, Bluegrass and Prog Rock seem as incompatible a couple as George Bush and Naomi Klein. Wouldve thunk it then, that this actually works. The arrangements are simple but affectionate. Unconcerned with perfect translations, the originals are re-imagined as classic blues records of a time that probably only exists in your grandfathers cloudy memory. Corporate Love Breakdown succeeds because it isolates a specific element of Radioheads music - the harrowing, gloaming-wandering melody; neurotic post-silicon age menace - and re-imagines it, often on little more than a mandolin and acoustic geetar, yosemite.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, given its walking bass, Myxomatosis is a highlight - a good example of the tribute working well by virtue of the fact that both it and the original share a common heritage - but generally the tracks are carefully constructed and original. You and Whose Army? is also imaginatively re-examined as a Dirty Three-esque lament. The cotton-pick of the bunch, then. There’s enough electricity in this, if not to light up a whole city at least a sizeable ant hamlet whose government recently passed a series of stringent energy cut-backs.
Easy Star All-Stars - Radiodread:
The All-Stars reached international status with their mildly amusing Dub Side of the Moon, a reggae-fied simulacrum of Pink Floyds 1973 classic. Given that OK Computer is another Prog-Rock behemoth, youd forgive the All-Stars for thinking they could repeat the success again. Like all good tribute albums, this smacks so strongly of a 2am closing time Hey, Ive an idea! moment you can practically see the hazy lightbulb forming over their dreadlocked noggins. In reality, some tracks work, some dont. Paranoid Android and Kharma Police are probably immune to re-imagination anyway (ORiley sagely avoids the former) being so infused with their creators. But whether its because the originals are still quite fresh in our minds or that the music just doesnt fit with the reggae beat the album comes across as a valiant but misguided attempt. Some stellar guest appearances from luminaries such as Horace Andy and Toots & the Maytals lively up proceedings for a speel and drag it into the worth checking out category. As does the hilarious Jamaicanised Fitter Happier replacing the dystopian Speak & Spell of the original for a Lilt-advert style parable. Theres another dub/reggae Radiohead mutant out there (Im Not the Only Record For You) but its an elusive beast so I cant vouch for its quality, bad or good. Seemingly onto something fairly popular, the Stars will, no doubt, try and blow out this soap bubble for as long as the balance sheet lets them but eventually it has to burst. Too often, they find themselves having scraped through the barrel to be now scratching their nails along the barren undergrowth.
DJ Gyngyvytus - Skeet Spirit: A Crunk Tribute to Radiohead
2 + 2 = 5? Crunk = Crazy + Drunk. Radiohead have always thrived on equations and the ingredients in any experiment have to be well-measured if you dont want the whole concoction to boil over. The Crunk version of Radiohead eschews chemical formulations, for full-on funky-assed fun Of all the tributes on show this is the one with the least pretensions to be anything other than a damn good party and thats not something you can say about a Radiohead record very often. In fact, booty-shaking Radiohead are a surprisingly amusing lot. Criticising this on a musical level would be an exercise in futility. Like criticising Timothy Leary for failing to provide adequate drug advice to youngsters: Why bother when youll only be faced with a third-eyed, grinning smile as wide as the punch bowl simultaneously extended. At its low its a trivial slice of turntablism that youll listen to once and probably never again. At its peak it causes everyone to cut rug more franticly than Santa’s upholstery elves on Christmas Eve.
Muse - Showbiz
They may have since transcended the initial accusations that greeted their introduction to the music world but theres no denying Matt Bellamy and co. had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Complete Works of Yorke and were determined to put it to use. Not so much a doff of the cap, Showbiz was a bent-double donation of the cap and all future cap-doffing services. But to quote another great master, a good artist borrows, a great artist steals. A great artist also turns an already genre-defying masterpiece into a brooding, elegiac monster of a record. Half the tracks easily equal any from their inspiration making it one of the most mind-bendingly brilliant debuts of the 90s.
The Neo-Beat Generation - Early Demos:
Lacking any individual song-writing skills, the Eric K-featuring Neo-Beat Generation (thats right, kiddos, I was in a band) produced some of the most disturbing Radiohead doppelgangers this side of Madame Tussauds. Much of our previously discussed titles have been born out of the spark of an idea. A moment of, alcohol-inspired foolishness that actually made it past the brainstorming session. None embody this spirit of thoughtlessness than these works bracketed intriguingly as Early Demos Neither have they equalled the sheer audacity of the flamenco re-styling of Paranoid Android (for five guitars) or the post-grunge screamo Pyramid Song. Unfortunately (read: thankfully), none of these new-and-improved recordings survive after the master copies were burned in the great Quality fire of 2001 but their legacy lives on in bad cover versions the world over. An insult to music.
And the winner is
Its invariably hard for any die-hard fan to stomach the (mis-)appropriation of their beloved but sometimes you have to let your elitist scruples go and embrace change. ORileys efforts are as painless an execution as one could hope for but my tribute rosary goes to Corporate Love Breakdown for re-awakening my love of the originals and giving me some relief for the come-down when I tire again.
Regular readers (humour me and pretend you exist, please) will recall that, having been availed of my usual listening device by some wealth-redistributing ideologue (read: thieving toothless bastard), I have been forced to engage somewhat more than I generally like to with what others have described to me variously as us here in the real world and outside your precious ivory tower you pretentious, anti-social freak. Gratefully, I can recount that it was not an altogether unpleasant experience which has got me a-thinking about the listening experience and just how we reviewers go about talking about it. We all listen to whatever gloop gets plopped on our laptops and wax lyrical about the noises within but are we ever talking about the same record? I dont mean some sort of conspiratorial organisation distributing fake Radiohead cds (although remember all those authentic tracks that flooded the web pre-Kid As much-anticipated release). I mean that each one of us brings so much of our own personal experiences and attitudes when we crank the record up, that, in a sense, were actually reviewing a different product. And the most easily overlooked aspect of this is whats going on outside while were listening and what were actually doing at the time. I cant speak for my colleagues, but I dont sit down in an echo chamber with a pair of headphones and listen attentively to a new record from track 1. More often than not, Im just wandering about doing my business (Oh, grow up. Not that kind of business) with the music soundtracking. I listen to a couple of tracks on the way to work. A couple more while I have my lunch. Give the whole thing a spin on the bus home. The unforgiving Aberdonian climate doesnt usually admit of frequent fresh-air venturing but as were currently enjoying what is generously referred to as the Summer season, these listening experiences have, more often than not, involved a background scenery of the elemenal variety rather than umbarella-clad spurts between various man-made fabrications and this has got to have a different effect on my experience of the music. Listening to Sisters of Mercy is a very different ride when youre constantly assailed by little babies with ice-cream cones and sandbuckets.
Everyone knows that theres a particular kind of record that does well this time of year: the Soundtrack-to-your-Summer record. It encapsulates the warm, fuzzy feeling we all have in these skin-cancer-spreading months: Beach-towel-clad, worry-free bundles of pop portraying the kind of over-excitable individuals that only really exist in Sunny D commercials with lyrics limited to the monosyllabic la-la, na-na variety rather than despairing odes to the inherent alienation of the human condition. We also know that this kind of music sucks harder than a 5-year old on a squishy binge so we all have to dig that bit deeper to unearth the hibernating sun-avoiders making the musical gems that make up the Overlooked Collections in these days. This, then, is your Summer guide Indiecult-style.
Feu Therese - Feu Therese
I brace the elements, hands covering my light-deprived eyes, high-UV shades protecting my dilating pupils, accompanied first by the genre-dodging Feu Therese and their self-titled debut. Heres a theory about why record sales for innovative, experimental, genre-defying music such as this enjoys the commercial prospects of an Andrew Lloyd Webber/Osama Bin Laden charity record for the BNP: In todays oft-maligned MTV-generation, you cant keep the kids attention for more longer than it takes to say Buy this record before theyre diverted by some other shiny trinket. It all depends on those 30 seconds chosen by the Sample Guy at Amazon (surely the most powerful man in music). And if you had to choose 30 seconds to sum up the output of Feu Therese what would you choose? Parts of this record sound like a free-wheeling fairground carousel careering down an Amsterdam red light strip and others like the plodding menace of some evil marching band. Tu nAvais Quune Oreille is Joy Divisions Atmosphere sung in slo-motion by a drowning Chris Rea. In French. But in a world where you are eclectic if you own a Chili Peppers record, anyone can do weird. The trick is making the music you want and others want to listen to it again despite this. A trick Feu Therese seem to have nailed.
Sucioperro - Random Acts of Intimacy
As I round the corner Im greeted by my buddy Duncan and his overbearing optimism in the face of such dangerous global-warming effects as we are currently experiencing. Hes keen-to-bursting to tell me a joke: How many emo kids does it take to change a lightbulb? I reply that I dont know and try to focus on whether my shoelaces are tied to indicate indifference towards an answer. None. He wails, almost in tears with anticipation of the ensuing hilarity, They just sit there in the dark crying. At which point he collapses into some awful epileptic spasm and struggles to stay on his feet. Noticing, like the empathetic soul that I am, his disappointment that I am not also convulsing on the floor, I try to assure him I did find the joke amusing, but my sickness for any conversation involving the recollection of emo is the kind of thing I am in need of a prescription for.
Thank Rao, then, for Ayr’s Sucioperro: very much the emo-antidote. Erstwhile collaborators and tour-buddies of Biffy Clyro, Hell Is For Heroes, Aereogramme and other post-grunge Scots, they harness the menacing spirit of Kurt Cobain if hed been brought up listening to King Crimson rather than Half Japanese. Although they lack the intricate prog-cleverness of da Biffy, they do possess their ability to seamlessly segue bone-crushing, lyrically-ferocious, RATM speaker-destroyers (The Crushing of the Little People) and sweetly emotive lullabies; often within the same song (Random Acts of Intimacy). Post-hardcore, emocore, metalcore: theres so many cores around these days I could start an orchard. But however you try to pigeonhole these boys, make sure you keep a tag on their wings to track their next directions.
The Caretaker - The Caretaker - Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia:
Now, feeling as out of my depth as a Nigerian Olympic swimmer, I come to one of the most staggeringly powerful pieces of music Ive heard for some time. All that Ive said about environment affecting experience seems redundant as listening to the Caretakers music appears to render invisible to me everything but the music itself. Surely the most effective conversation-stopping record since Come On Die Young. As the almost unbelievably self-aware and omniscient human being that I am, I recognise that I am somewhat prone to hyperbole from time to time so Ill try and reign myself in but Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia will be the single most compelling and demanding record you will hear in 2006. If you feel like youve been trapped in a sensory-deprivation chamber with a blue whale after listening to this then I empathise. Trying to relate the noise harnessed within is probably an impossible task but its my job so Ill do my best. As I round the corner for home onto the desolate side-street where my flat resides, I am accompanied by a cavernous wailing from within some deep barrier reef, slowly swelling like the tides above, creating an ominous sense that the whole creaking structure is about to collapse in on itself. As recognisable man-made music is gradually leaked into the cave, its the ghostly presence of some ballroom dance-band swinging into action, slowed by its submersion as it sinks into the deep ocean ready to be added to the sedimentary non-Rock formed on the seabed. Its a wonder how the Caretaker is able to hold your attention for the entire length of the record when change is so gradual and reluctant.
Fat Worm Of Error - Pregnant Babies Pregnant With Pregnant Babies
I turn the keys and begin to climb the steps of our terraced abode. You can probably gauge whether or not to keep reading this review now when I tell you that here we have another release from the Load Records stable. Whats more this is probably the weirdest thing the aforementioned none-more-weird label have put out. What that doesnt tell you is anything about what kind of music this is but it will weed out those of us unsympathetic to the fine line between mind-bending innovation and a bunch of art-school drop-outs clattering about in their mums kitchen. Pregnant Babies falls into the former. Just. If it counts for anything, Fat Worm will provoke a reaction. This album will split a room like marmite sandwiches at a Jaffa Cakes: Cake or Biscuit? conference, and in a world where most of the music-makers out there couldnt provoke a reaction between sulphuric acid and a voodoo doll of Ben Eltons face (its not hard, believe me) we should be thankful. Its a familiar oeuvre of cut-and-paste field recordings, the aforementioned utensil-bashing, squeel-little-piggy vocals, the new-weirds oh-so-post-modern in-jokes and archly affected antics. Accompanied energetically by the unintelligible sqwaking of a frenzied (possibly sectionable) siren, Fat Worm do set themselves apart by infusing their music with a humourous and richly-developed multiverse that you have to really give yourself to if you want to get any enjoyment. Suspend your cynical disbelief for a second and pretend this is the first time youve heard a Load band creating a racket like this and become absorbed in Fat Worms disturbed and disturbing parallel world. Once you do this (admittedly an easier prospect if witnessing one of their manic, bizarrely-costumed live performances) then the freaky fun takes over. Try and analyse it; try and evaluate it; put it in a social context of post-pop faux-art and, sure, it looks like Cirque de Soleil rejects masquerading as knowing savants, but pretend its the first time you ever heard anyone do this and its a hella-fun show. Theres a line (albeit a somewhat squiggly-drawn one) running through American Rock of weirdo noise-niks reaching back into Beefheartian territory through the Residents and their modern disciples. Most of it is, as its moping detractors are so eager to point out, silly nonsense. But as this record is finally brought to a halt spasming (like myself as I finally make it home) on the floor like a swarm of electrocuted wasps I spy my university lecturer out the window gloomily exiting the department office and I realise you take this kind of joyousness where you can get it.
Thats your lot. Now stop browsing the web and enjoy the sun while its here, dammit.
Silence is suspicious. So wrote Michel Foucault and so thought I as I was faced with the terror of completing my journey to work sans-iPod following its removal from my person by a drooling troglodyte with the kind of face Im used to seeing on the side of a milk carton or a late-night Panorama special. Subsequently, I was unable to immerse myself in the comforting soundtrack of death-jazz speedcore and became intensely jealous of others (seemingly the entire Aberdonian populace) blissfully unaware of my trauma, lost in the grasp of their own shuffled playlists. Whats so compelling about what theyre listening to that they dont feel the need to engage with the rest of us anyway? What have they got in there thats so great? Well, for one thing, something to talk about should they wish to submit a review to their local music mag. So Ive no new discoveries to share with you, no overlooked finds, no hidden gems from the dark recesses of Fopps second-hand section. Or do I?
Friends, readers, Country fans (actually, you lot can go get some taste first and a decent deodorant), lend me your ears for mine have just been opened to the magical sounds of Stagecoachs Route 59 and I must share with you this experience. Stagecoach have been plugging away at this particular audio-schematic for longer than my pet elephant Babar can remember and those years of experience reach their zenith in the re-release of this comprehensive compilation.
Track 1, Foresterhill Road, begins, unassumingly enough, with the comforting buzz of a bus engine and intermittent bursts and squeals of grinding pistons. The mechanical rustle of what could be some homemade percussion instrument (none of the instruments are listed in the sleeve-notes - a barren strip of paper adorned only by a list of track-titles and the date of purchase) accompanies the unintelligible chatter of childrens voices as the track plays out within 180 seconds.
Rosemount Place takes up where track 1 leaves off, the droning engine-noises gradually giving way to a vast range of found sounds and musique concrete. Recorded on location, the sounds of the local Grampian wildlife (a mishmash of harping seagulls and the yowling grunt of an indigenous creature known as the ned) are captured imaginatively and field recordings are employed and re-employed throughout the audio-journey.
Three tracks (or stops) in and Im beginning to wonder exactly where this whole thing is going, a question duly answered by, Gilcomston Steps which, at over 11 minutes, forms the real meat of the album. The caw-cawing of gulls and neds comes to a halt and is replaced by the exhaust roar of back-firing engines and sub-woofers blaring out a muffled, jungle beat. This combined with a couple of (uncredited) male vocals muttering about local council inadequacies create the curious impression that Radio 4 has set up broadcasting nextdoor to a pirate garage radio station.
The best thing about the whole trip is each time Ive given it a spin (and it does bear repeated listening if you can bear the pungent smell of the packaging) Ive heard something different. Not only do different sounds and noises come to the fore each time but the record is staffed by a constantly revolving cast of musicians all orchestrated by the appropriately-named Conductor. Throughout the album,
The Conductor utters a repeating verse of Where to? in a semi-spoken drawl half way between Tom Waits and James Yorkston, creating an incessantly questioning, searching ambience. The barely discernable answers take the form of a string of names taken from the titles of other tracks on the album.
Briefly interrupting these droning grumbles, a listless female vocal can be heard on Rosemount Viaduct la-la-ing the kind of pop tune that makes me want to cut off my balls just to save future generations from also having to endure it. Its not an unpleasant addition, however. Its the sheer range of these contrasting styles that encapsulates the befuddling ambition of Stagecoach in putting together this collection. Indeed, initially the record is somewhat of an over-indulgence in its attempts to cram so many usually incompatible genres onto one disc. Attempting to fully describe the range of influences covered herein is as overwhelming as arriving at Pompeii with a bucket and spade. Suffice to say its an experience likely to encourage repeated listening for the attentive listener.
The album clocks in at under 30 minutes in all but is put on a Buddha Machine-like continuous loop from 7:04 to 11:30 daily. To sweeten the deal, the whole caboodle is released free of lawyer-bothering copyright restrictions and is available for a measly 8-0 of your silver pennies. To tell those of you who havent yet realised that there isnt going to be an album recommendation at the end of this, I see it as an obligation - nay a duty - to share with you this most wondrous and beguiling of compilations. Go out, my friends open your ears to Stagecoach.
Tracklisting:
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Foresterhill Road 2:59
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Rosemount Place, 0:30
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Skene Square 1:04
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Gilcomston Steps 11:26
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St Andrews Street 2:55
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Blackfriars Street 2:43
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Rosemount Viaduct 3:00
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Union Terrace 1:41
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Bridge Street 2:32
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Victoria Road 1:50
Of late, IndieCult has become somewhat disillusioned by The Rock (thats the musical institution, not the cabbage-faced wrestler-cum-actor). Pile after steaming pile of cd-rs from PR companies peddling their latest “The New Libertines” or worse (and far more frequent than one might imagine) “The New Oasis”. And lets not even get started on that genre we call Post-Rock which has become as bloated and stagnant as John Prescott after a night sampling the vindaloos down Kensington High Street. Instead we’ve been forced to find musical satiety from other sources, thrown out into the scary worlds of the experimental sound-artiste, “World Music” and (whisper it) Free-Jazz. But having spent the last months torn between listening to the processed sound of plastic surgical instruments and beetle activity under a tree in New York (seriously!) there was always the feeling something was missing. This music, conceptually interesting as it may be, was missing the thing that Rock music once, in more innocent times, incited in us. We’ve all known it: the feeling of rebellion, subversion, raw power the feeling that you are young and could change the world if only you turn the amps up loud enough and scream with as much passion as you can muster. But these were distant memories, like some idyllic childhood spent running through fields of daffodils with daisy chains in our hair, now lost to old age and the RIAA. And then, all of a sudden, as we lay face-in-pillow wondering what the point of it all was, the glow of the moonlight peeking through the curtains dropped to a darker hue and an ominous click sounded out from the stereo shuffle-function. A monstrous wrench of guitar squall threatened to blow the Bang & Olufsens clean off the shelf: “I’m an independent motherFUCKER!!” screamed some possessed harpy as we scrabbled to regain balance. And here it was. All the fury of alienated youth that was missing from the prepared-pianos and shortwave radio frequency-manipulations, was now threatening to tear our ears off and force-feed them down the throats of the naysayers. So yes, Be Your Own Pet have something of a spark about them. Never mind the musical lack of sophistication or the 5th-form poetry and listen to the way Jemina Pearl spews out these lyrics like shed been raised on a diet of red meat and smarties (just the blue ones). At our certain age, we may still have too much cynicism and lethargy to fully embrace a noise we’ve all heard before but to any teenager out there whose pissed off at the hand they and others have been dealt by this cruel world these guys are salvation.
Rating: 8/10
The Gentleman Losers - The Gentleman Losers
I might as well get to the meat of what you, the reader, want to know. Screw objectivity, this is the best thing I’ve heard all 2006. Hear this: I condone this album. A couple of Australians have crafted here a record of inconceivable emotive power that will add quality to your life or I promise to eat the corks off my outback hat (apologies for inappropriate cultural referance - race relations ed). Enter voice of grumpy old man: “Modern music has too many notes.” For once, our elders have a point: Take one idea - a simple motif, bare guitar line - and let it speak for itself. Most of those extraneous notes (or in Keane’s case all) could quite easily be thrown into the deep caverns of audio-Hell (which is where, incidentally, the aforementioned indie-weepers reside most of the Summer) with a vast improvement in output. Each track on the Gentleman Loser’s self-titled debut demonstrates an accute awareness of the decievingly tardis-like possibility of this premise. Here, the most humble of restrained melodies imparts more information in the 97 seconds of opener An Empire of Coins than any bloated 20-minute, prog-rock “epic” (I’m looking at you Wakeman!). Put bluntly, if this record asked me to jump off a cliff you would find me approaching the ground below seconds later weeping tears of joy that these musical poets had deigned fit to address me. The ‘Losers say, through their music, more about our human condition than an entire library of psycho-analysis and philosophy.
Anoice - Remmings
Another example of a group of artists for whom their various instruments are not mere physical objects existing in the world but the additional limbs of some further evolution of homo-sapien whose sole function is the communication and articulation of the deepest abyss of human nature. Unfortunately the ears of most incarnations of our current species do not seem advanced enough to detect such subtle frequencies (well, if sales figures are any indication) but when the Earth is destroyed in 2012 by the Lizard King’s thirst for petroleum-based satiety and a new species is born from the nuclear aftermath, Anoice will be rightly given their due status as Lords of All Beauty and Soul. Rarely has the sound of horsehair on steel sounded so natural and prescient.
Minamo - Shining
Granted this was released 2005 but art is timeless, right? And anyway, you’ll forgive my lax attitude towards chronology once you’ve sampled the aural delights herein. My defence is that Shining only arrived in K-land, during the merry month of May so it’s going in. We are all slowly decaying - it’s a fact of the corporeal world we inhabit and no amount of botox injections and cucumber face masks is going to stop this. But that doesn’t mean we should all give up and a few spins round Shinings brittle electronica gives new hope of development within degredation. Minamo don’t fight evolution but live within it and absorb it into art. If all this sounds pretentious it’s not the fault of the music which seems resolutely unassuming in creating their harrowing audio mise en scene. Each track-title provides a fairly adequate sense of the music within - crumbling, serene, stay still - but music such as this is barely articulable in words. The only resort for the journalist is to say “Here, play this. It’s good.”
Hisato Higuchi - She
If Hisato Higuchi told me my mother was conceived by dogs after they were released from coolies quarantine but did it playing acoustic over the fragile clicks and whirrs of She I probably wouldn’t put up much of a defence. 18-second opener Breath is a suitable introduction into the EP consisting of a single tone and inhalation. Girl Sister sets the mood for what follows (harrowingly bare melodies over scratchy, electronic manipulations). By the time he gets to stand-out Ghost Ghosts one wonders if his instruments haven’t in fact been lost to the Land of Nod and what we’re actually hearing is the faint whisper and scamperings of some furry little creature nextdoor. And that’s the rub: music like this is like watching a doormouse steal your edam: even if it’s not exactly what you asked for it’s so inobtrusive and the looks so meek and innocent as it peers up at you that it’s difficult to get worked up about, and double-hard to be objectively critical about. What sets Higuchi apart from being just another acoustic balladeer with a copy of ProTools, however, is when things take a turn for the experimental towards the end of the record. Here, sounds become noticeably harsher but always displaying a real attentiveness to dynamics finding gradual resolution in the lonely string-plucking of earlier.
7 Year Rabbit Cycle - Ache Horn
The more observant among you may have noticed a distinctly melancholic tinge to this month’s selections. This is due to your correspondant with the Music World being subjected to that most unnecessary interruption of student life that is the Summer Exam session and, as such, being in need first of something incidental to soundtrack his intense (ha!) work ethic and laterly to provide sounds of solace post-mortem. Deerhoof have put out more releases than Charles Clarke’s Home Office over the last few years (check their website now for a free EP download “for fun”) so this is another side-project to redress this collection’s ambient balance. Now, Deerhoof and their related projects don’t so much split opinion as take a giant rainbow-coloured candy cane to Opinion’s face and leave two raving street-preachers debating the merits of marmite-based snacks. With this in mind, if you have experienced the ‘Hoofs yelping-squeals-over-attentively-challenged-percussion style and been thankful for the invention of the off button then this isn’t the record that’s going to change your mind. Even more primal and stripped down than previous outings, 7 Year Rabbit Cycle continue to explore just how creepy nursery rhymes can be when set to Rob Fisk’s pots-and-pans crashing with Kelly Goode’s Goldilocks-on-[insert own illegal stimulant here to avoid journalistic cliche]. Their third studio release, Ache Horn is a more contemplative, less excitable (by Fisk and his cohorts usual standards, that is) excursion down the noise-rock path and all the more intriguing an addition for it.
3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners - Pegasus Bridge
Every couple of weeks some hack proclaim’s punk is dead. Well it may have been backed into a corner - the Big 3 of the music industry continuing to be, err… unsympathetic to punk’s independent ethic - but it’s still snarling back with teeth bared last year through the punctuation-evading and commendably googleable (given you likewise avoid the spacebar - otherwise the Other Side of w3 may be revealed to you) 3hostwomexicansandatinofspanners. From the kick-off Pegasus Bridge packs more venomous spite a hundred Jello Biafra’s stuck in a lift on the way to a job interview with The Man. With Mclusky recently confined to posterity and Emo threatening to take over the planet by swaddling it in a big, Dashboard Confessional-shaped comfort blanket, records like this appear like the logos of messiahs. So to the OC with the naysayers, the day punk rock dies is the day you’ll find me shooting pucks at beelzebub (because hell has frozen over - come on, keep up at the back!). All the corporate leviathan’s efforts serve to do is incite bands like this to fight back angrier than ever. So, in the traditional spirit of journalistic laziness under the pretense that they put it better than I can I’ll leave the rest of this review to the boys themselves: “What is music for? It’s not about selling fucking records, or promoting your image, or getting into magazines, or getting famous, or being cool, or hard, or getting girls, or getting fucked in some bog with some cunt…
It’s for making a statement, and confronting core beliefs and standards, and creating an emotion, a feeling, without exclusion, and fucking off corporate wank.”
True that, and here’s to the overlooked gems that June will bring.
Last year Kaizer Chief Ricky Wilson claimed he’d suck off a tramp for success - which, oddly enough, is the sound I hear when listening to his records. Point is, for most bands Rock is just a good way of making a few bucks (they did call their album ‘Employment’ after all). You could go and work for the Halifax but it’s a lot more fun snorting coke of models backstage at the NME awards. But enough about my weekend, it’s refreshing to come across a band so apparently committed to alienating whatever audience they might have amassed at every turn thereby sacrificing any chance of commerical success. “Was I naive to think they’d stay?” asks ‘Mt Heart Attack’ with a heavy dose of cynicism. New York’s Liars are, in other words, a PR nightmare: about as predictable as Mexican jumping beans but equally colourful and mesmerising. The band decamped to the former East Germany to record these propulsive, tribal mantras and the stunning acoustics afforded by their labyrinthian studio has proven worth the move. Echoing the pioneering work of This Heat but equally the fascinating neo-psychedelica movement currently emanating from Scandanavia their third record encompasses a brutal, unforgiving cacophany. Polarising critical opinion like a marmite buffet at the Kyoto summit, Liars third lp will do little to heal this rift but ‘Drum…’ is a revelatory kick to the teeth of those pundits who lambasted their refusal to cow-tow to the great industry tenet of ’sounding like your last record’. Cyclical, raga-esque vocals and gentle acoustics intersperse more forceful, percussive tracks forging an compelling, if slightly disturbing new path through the swampy mire. Like watching a David Lynch movie, it makes you feel a bit uneasy but you can’t help but look. For all its pretentiousness, this is music that grabs you by the cerebral cortex and kicks you deep in the gut. It’s raw, emotive and genuinely affecting. Amid tense, crawling scree and wailing, eerie falsetto, ‘Drum…’ makes for an overwhelming crucible at first, but those who choose to invest a bit of time in Liars will be counting the epiphanies till doomsday.
Rating: 8/10
31st December 1999, and the world is in a state of extreme apprehension. Witness the bearded harbinger as he stands atop his wormwood-infested soapbox announcing the coming apocalypse; furrow your brow at the broadsheets warning of global consumer credit reset and the collapse of Western capitalism as we know it; peer anxiously from your window-seat at the people-ants busying about on the ground, steering clear of immanent plummet-dom and puffing up a dozen flights of stairs rather than trust their fate to the god of silicon. But the second millennium came and went, our microwaves didn’t turn our chicken kormas into anti-matter and ATMs didn’t start spitting blood. Truth be told, six years on and we’re still in a state of relief about it all (by virtue of K’s Law: the more absurd the fear the more hysteric the reaction. See also: bird flu). As with anything that seeps deeply into the public consciousness, it cannot help spilling over into the art world and consequently we’ve seen an exponential explosion in music reflecting a morbid fascination with the destructive potential of our dependence on technology. The first release on newly-created label Brother Rat Recordings, and the first full-length release from apoplectic noise-monger, Brother Rat, Fear of a Rat Planet, lets loose the full-frontal cacophony of post-y2k heebie-jeebies. A squirming mass of trojans, worms and viruses scrabble to be heard above the glitch-drenched din, worrying at the cerebral cortex like hungry honeybees tugging at a frail and wilting flower. It’s an unsettling and suspense-driven listen and speaks (presumably in binary so I doubt if anyone’s listening) directly to the auto-tuned, airbrushed cynicism of pop culture. Pretentious journo-musings aside however, Brother Rat hold their own against the legion of similar-minded noise-warriors, and this record will suitably pass the time between the next release from their uber-prolific peers: Wolf Eyes, Merzbow, Prurient et al. Seriously though, how many more people are going to pun Public Enemy (surely the undoubted kings of the pun in contemporary music). I hereby proclaim the PE-pun fund closed for business. The two may appear unlikely bedfellows but squint your eyes and you can just make out the imposing figure of Chuck D standing at the gates of the terrordome, dual-barettas in hand, making a LOT OF NOISE.
Rating: 7/10
According to my calculations, the quality of releases from a particular genre is inversely proportional to the number of bands practising it. It happened to Prog, it’s happening to the instrumental Post-Rock of the Godspeed You!/Mogwai ilk and now it looks like Math Rock may also be suffering from over-saturation, every kid with a guitar and a knowledge of compound meter eager to jump on the last train to Jazzville via a Phd in music theory from the Hella Laboratory of Rock . Fortunately, there are a few not content to simply bow down at the alter of Don Caballero and spark the movement with invention and progression. Ahleuchatistas (say that three times as fast as you can!) take the free-form pointillism of Volta Do Mar to its furthest extreme, jagged angular guitars careering into the rhythmic geometrical blast-beats of caffeinated drummer Sean Dail. It’s Dail’s precise, economical kitwork that epitomises the Ahleuchatistas ethic: have something to say and say it succinctly and with passion. This is unsurprising considering where they take their name - a moniker as tongue-twisting as their music – which combines “Zapatistas” (radical Mexican revolutionary movement – politics ed) with the name of a Charlie Parker improvisational piece. It serves as an adequate explication of the fusion at work here: song-titles like Remember Rumsfeld at Abu Ghraib ally the group with the ‘disenfranchised’ of society whilst doffing a knowing cap to Charles Mingus’ Remember Rockefeller at Attica. Challenging, cerebral music like this has a tendency to get a bit academic, melding seemingly endless guitar noodles with intricate lock-step passages in 5/8 time hardly likely to stock the shelves of Woolworths, but What You Will explodes from the start with a boundless, deceptive chaos that captivates more often than it confuses.
Rating: 8.5/10
Remember when you were in music class at school and the teacher handed you a wooden block that was to serve as your sole contribution to the orchestra? Remember when the Polish kid was told he got to be the “clapper”? Remember when reviewers wrote about the music instead of relating nostalgic goo? No, neither do I. But I do get the impression that Clogs were at the back of that music class, spoons in hand, noise-making to their hearts content. The instrumentation has been augmented for the bands fourth outing: bassoon, melodica, viola, mandola and ukulele make up a masterfully complimentary audio mise en scene and it’s an altogether more studied affair than previous records. Slow-building motifs continually evolve into deeply evocative, beautiful melodies. But there’s a playfulness here too: the band switching seemlessly from the riotous crescendo of “The Song of the Cricket” to a swaggering jazzy skit without it sounding misplaced. Invariably, the trained musicianship of the collective’s players keeps their many influences (Avant Classical, Baroque, European Folk , Post-Rock) from conflating, creating an assured whole. So back to that sunny day in primary 6 and our little Clogs are bashing away, oblivious to the classical-crossover inroads they would later be making into the Indie scene. Beeming like they’ve been let loose in a candy store, they pick up their “Well Done” dino-stickers and run into the playground. End of term report: it’s A*s all round, children. Just don’t tell your parents you’ve given up on schooling and are going to play in a rock band.
Rating: 8/10
