Outstanding In Afield

Here's my second review for this month's Nightshift. The editor reviewed the In A Different Place all-dayer, but as he was one of the organisers and had shifts on the door and so on, I wrote some copy. You'll find the text below interpolated into the review at feb.pdf.

IN A DIFFERENT PLACE, 1512/24 

Whilst one might expect the front bar to host acoustic acts, there’s a surprising array of styles and genres on display throughout the afternoon. However, opening act Aphra Taylor is a textbook example of a guitar-wielding singer-songwriter. This is definitely not to say that her set is generic, though, her voice full of smoke and sweetness, and her delivery enlivened by tiny trills and ornaments that make the performance unique. 

The merch table is surprisingly sparsely utilised during the day, but Sinews are selling a  “horseface T-shirt". Considering their set is like having your face trampled by rabid stampeding stallions, this seems fitting. Their post-hardcore flagellation draws obvious comparisons to Fugazi or Drive Like Jehu, but there’s a sensitive heart beating somewhere within the maelstrom. 

Baby Maker’s songs are like the flayed and brittle skeletons of new wave pop, with bouncy tunes reduced to chugging drum machines, cheeky guitar twangs, and wry vocals, offering hints of Arab Strap’s laconic lofi story-telling. The set is sometimes more intriguing than successful, but the character shines through. 

The most intense set of the day is possibly delivered by Pet Twin, whose music has morphed over the last year from sparse confessional pop to huge theatrical workouts, which seem to be cathartic rituals for Gallagher as much they are spectacles for the audience. A typical track merges thick treacly bass, heart-wrenching vocals, and euphoric keys, so that you’re not sure whether to dance, weep, or collapse in the corner. One or two tracks have slightly messy endings, but really who cares about the landing once you’ve soared in flight? And, just at the point we think things couldn’t get any better, The Bobo comes onstage for the subaquatic ghost rave that is ‘No To Dread’. 

Like Baby Maker, Lord Bug’s songs are sparse and idiosyncratic, more like half-remembered dreams than pop tunes, and like Aphra Taylor, Libby Peet’s vocals lift them to spellbinding new places, her voice warm and jazzy yet introspective and mysterious, and her delivery full of wonderful slurs and rubati, so that she comes off like a strange melding of Amy Winehouse and Lou Barlow. For an act with a track called ‘Dog’s Dinner’ this is a beautiful and balanced set. 

The sound levels for GIGSY are perhaps a little low, but Khloë’s explosive stage energy would be enough for a gig to sound epic if the PA were rolled up newspaper attached to a dictaphone. Her music is a crunchy electronica take on dark-minded 80s synth – EDM meets EBM? - but the melodically aggressive vocal lines are built from club pop fun and burning rage, in equal measure  

Two of the themes running through today’s event are vocalists with wired stage presence, and music with a stoned psych groove. Both of these come together for local favourites Flights Of Helios, whose set is an eclectic melange of post-punk wiriness and expansive folky textures. Chris Beard is an imposing frontman, swaying at the front of the stage, screaming, crooning, cajoling and entreating by turns like a cross between a fundamentalist preacher, a Dickensian villain, and a praying mantis. There are touches of adventurous acts such as Spiritualized or Ultrasound in their set, but as a nod to Christmas, they turn ‘Good King Wenceslas’ into a psych-punk mantra, perfect for anyone whose Christmas dinner is composed solely of brandy butter and brown acid. 

The Subtheory bring back the classic trip hop sound, with low-slung beats, slinky bass,  and hazy late-night vocals (plus, unexpectedly, some excellent restrained guitar solos). Whilst it might be fair to accuse them of cosy 90s revivalism, they do it so incredibly well, and this set has the greatest spaciousness and poise of any on the bill. Cate Debu’s vocals are cool and clear, sitting unhurried at the centre of the chunky grooves, and with James from Pet Twin joining in the singers supply a softly spoken personality to the songs, so that they’re as much Portisheart and they are Portishead (sorry). 

As with Mandrake Handshake at last year’s festival, In A Different Place is headlined by a band who have moved from Oxford to London and found great success. Pecq might play their biggest gigs as part of touring bands for Barry Can’t Swim and Arlo Parks, but they more than own the stage as a trio, coming on to near darkness and launching into some understated tech-pop tunes that might convince you that “crepuscular bangers” is a genre. They take us on a slick, sleek ride through well tooled dreamy electro, but actually it i  the subtlest moments that they truly bewitch, and a hushed bleepy cover of ‘Wichita Linesman’ morphs into one of their own songs in a bubbling pool of squelchy synthtones. 

To Say Nothing Of The Newt

One of two reviews in the latest Nightshift. This one is a pretty typical record of a not hugely exciting release.

MONTMORENCY – LIVE AT NEWT STUDIOS (self-release) 

Young children always like to be told stories they already know, and certain roots music fans are the same, ever eager to hear jazz standards or trad classics one more time. Sometimes familiarity allows an artist space to dig into a song (there’s a reason Ella Fitzgerald’s greatest recordings are all American songbook chestnuts, rather than new compositions), and sometimes it can be used as a springboard for new and radical ideas (Albert Ayler’s honking attack on Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’ sounds as though it's from a different universe to Ella’s). Montmorency – who get points for being named after the dog in Three Men In A Boat – have addressed four folk club warhorses on this EP, originally recorded in 2022. Do they bring anything new to the barn dance party? 

Most noteworthy are the vocals, with a simple unadorned tone at odds with the Mummerset aural cosplay of most folk singers, and the lightly quavering conversational tenor of ‘John Paul Jones’ almost reminds us of the literate angst of Hefner’s Darren Hayman. The other standout element is the lead guitar, which has a refined twang on ‘Shady Grove’ recalling the understated urbanity of The Shadows or even Bert Weedon, whereas the solo on ‘Sugar in the Hold’ comes with a whiff of Dave Gilmour. These moments of character catch the interest, but the upbeat countryish hoedown ‘The Fox’ falls woefully flat, and despite being a tale of carnivorous nature at its bloodiest has all the vim and vigour of a PTA meeting. There’s stuff to like about Montmorency, but these recordings are unlikely to become anyone’s go-to versions. 

Piney Gear

Happy new year!  Unless you read this within 8 hours of my posting it...or unless you read it months after I posted it...or unless you read it twelve months after I poster it, in which case, it works again.  So, whilst I'm here, happy Easter and happy Passover and happy flying ant day.

MU-ZIQ - ...IN PINE EFFECT (Hi-Rise) 

I went to school with Squarepusher. He was a year above me. I once told him that bass solos were pointless. That is my IDM anecdote. 

My IDM discussion point, the one that leaves me shunned in parties, is how nobody can decide where to file μ-Ziq. Some record shops treat that Greek character as an M, because that’s pretty much what it is; some read it as representing the syllable “mu”, as I have above; some don’t look carefully and file under U; some just ignore the weird squiggle altogether and stick it under Z (nip into Oxford’s HMV for evidence of this, clearly the worst of all approaches). I maintain that this is because the name is unique, and I for one cannot think of another act where a character from another alphabet has to be named, rather than sounded, to pronounce the act credit.  Oh sure, loads of acts have done it with numerals – 2 Live Crew, 4Play – but not letters. And before you ask, grabbing a Cyrillic or something and sticking it in your band logo might look cute, but it’s not the same thing (System 7 once released a record where the name was made up from the digits 1-7 at different angles, which was clever...and a damned sight more interesting than the drab hippy trance on the disc).  

Whether this typographical oddity is why Mike Paradinas’s output is not quite as celebrated as those of his chums Richard James, Luke Vibert and Tom Jenkinson, I couldn’t say. Maybe it’s because he tends to stick to a narrow and tested palette of sounds (and, yes, ‘Within A Sound’ on this album has those trademark crunchy drums that sound like someone putting the boot into a box of Frosties in an aircraft hangar). And even within his oeuvre, this album gets less love than I think it deserves: the opening duo of Tango N’ Vectif and Bluff Limbo get props – perhaps because they were on Rephlex – and 1997’s Lunatic Harness was the one to get the lavish rerelease treatment, but for my money, ...In Pine Effect is the pinnacle. Maybe I just like that ellipsis at the start – how do you file that, eh? 

The album as a whole is neat smash-up between clanky, intense techno and easy listening, with ‘Phiesope’ sounding like some laid-back KPM library music that might have popped up on behind a montage on Holiday 83, with strummed guitar and xylophone...or cheap synthesised equivalents, anyway, because this album does seem to revel in the otherwordly qualities objectively naff sounds can have, in common with a lot of Paradinas’s work – check out the “hip-hop producer does hotel lounge music” vibe of the Jake Slazenger records. Perhaps the wonkiest example is ‘Roy Castle’, which adds ersatz horns to a perky beat, though they’re less in the style of the eponymous jazzer-turned-presenter than Herb Alpert’s cheese-grin efforts. In related news my brain has suddenly started singing the words “Tijuana Brass” to the tune of ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ as made famous by Cliff – send help. 

On top of that we have tracks like ‘Dauphine’, which starts out with brooding menace but turns into the sort of squelchy synth boogaloo that might have accompanied Morph’s antics, and the title track which is just a big dumb fragment of some fake boogie-woogie repeated for a while (and ‘Green Crumble’, even more so). But it’s not all rollicking fun. ‘Mr Angry’ delivers on its nominal promise by being a greasy chunk of Aphexual tweaked percussion over which someone howls with rage. A lot. Whereas ‘The Wailing Song’ sounds like someone tried to condense Górecki’s 3rd symphony to a few minutes using a budget keyboard. ‘Problematic’ doesn’t seem too unusual, until an ear-scratching lead synth line gets all atonal round the edges. 

I have also just this minute found out that the CD version actually had fewer tracks that the vinyl version. That just didn’t happen in 1995. Now I’m annoyed that I have been missing out on 8% of the album. Might put ‘Mr Angry’ on again... 

Sole Music

The Lunchtime For The Wild Youth reviews tend to come in batches, as the editor sends me occasional packages of recent issues. In this one, covering 1994 releases, I look at two discs of abstract ambience, which as you might imagine none of the other writers do. Someone does review Disco Inferno, though, god to know someone else in the world likes them.

V/A - ISOLATIONISM (Virgin) 

The potted pop histories tend to leap from grunge to Britpop, but there was another significantly influential genre nestled between the two in the guise of ambient (jungle was also big business, but wasn’t an album genre at this time, and only became one when it morphed into drum ‘n’ bass). In the wake of The Orb’s success, lush and primarily beatless music sold a fair few copies and filled a fair few columns. This allowed Virgin to scour their back catalogue and throw together a bunch of double CDs, offering a new generation some mostly excellent music from names like Sylvian, Eno, Fripp, and Froese. The compilations were decent, even if the covers were hideous. 

Volume 4, however, was unusual because not only was it mostly comprised of new material, but it was a collation of colder, bleaker sounds under the title Isolationism (what would more likely be called dark ambient nowadays, and post-industrial beforehand). The set was pulled together by Kevin Martin, who is best known as The Bug today, but then was thought of (if at all) as half of Techno Animal with Justin Broadrick. He sets out a mini-manifesto in the sleevenotes – peak mid-90s arty digital design making them bloody hard to actually read – to drag ambient away from the joss-sticks-and-joints crowd and back to the experimental mindset of New York minimalism and Krautrock, painting Future Sound Of London as the anodyne ambient enemy (which seems harsh, as a record like that year’s Lifeforms is pretty inventive and not afraid to be unnerving and creepy at times, and there are tons of better candidates for scapegoat...perhaps there was some bad blood from Broadrick’s sampling of pre-FSOL acid classic ‘Stakker Humanoid’ in his Godflesh guise). To be honest, there’s not really a meaningful ethos or ideology behind the record, but it is a fantastic two-and-a-half-hour journey, and I bet it shocked a few 90s neo-hippies who bought it expecting more friendly tones from the likes of Laraaji and The Grid. Interestingly, although this was last comp to go under the Ambient name, future releases kept the AMBT catalogue number, though these stray ever further from the ambient concept (not that they’re not generally good, and I recommend seeking out the early post-rock selection Monsters, Robots & Bugmen, both the Macro Dub Infection sets which are also Martin’s curatorial work, and David Toop’s selections of favourite singers, guitarists, and electro producers).  

Here are a few Isolationism highlights: 

ICE – The Dredger Techno Animal also show up on the album with some chain-rattling eeriness, but this alternate project from the same duo is better, boasting a thick hawser dub bassline overlaid with metallic sax scrapes.   

:zoviet*france: - Daisy Gun I’ve included this partly for the nice papery delay on offer, but mostly just because I like the way the punctuation marks look. 

Labradford - Air Lubricated Free Axis Trainer Again, this warm tunnel of organ with buzzing spring sounds is good, but mostly I just like the name. 

Paul Schütze - Hallucinations (In Memory Of Renaldo Arenas) Considering the ostensible froideur of the compilation, this is quite a funky groove, with a submerged ostinato and relentlessly rolling percussion. 

Scorn – Silver Rain Fell (Deep Water Mix) Sounds like a hip hop behemoth clumping along in the next valley. 

Disco Inferno – Lost In Fog An odd addition as their music is very poppy underneath all the MIDI monkeying (their second album, DI Go Pop from this year is worth tracking down). 

Total – Six In that strange zone where noise is so abrasive it becomes soothing. 

Nijiumu – Once Again I Cast Myself Into The Flames Of Atonement Keiji Haino, by any other name. As ritualistic as the name suggests, but quite restful. I’ve only just realised that the name implies the guy keeps fucking up and having to make up for it. 

Aphex Twin – Aphex Airlines Probably the main selling point for the compilation. This is from the absolute pinnacle of Richard D James’s output, where great albums like Selected Ambient Works II, Surfing On Sine Waves and I Care Because You Do just seemed to spill out. He even tossed great tracks onto compilations without fanfare, such as ‘My Teapot’ on Warp’s second Artificial Intelligence album, and its sister track ‘Phlid’ on a Select magazine covermount (I had no idea what the track name meant at the time, and I now wish I didn’t). This track is like a tired ogre with indigestion, and perhaps not up with the best work, but all Aphex is worth hearing. 

AMM – Vandoeuvre  A very different approach from the free improv stalwarts, which is not harsh or unsettling, and in fact comes across quite cosy and cuddly. 

O’Rang - Little Sister Tex Mex in dub?  Something like that. 

Final – Hide The volume leaps up about 30 seconds in: is this art, or a mastering cock-up? 

Lull – Thoughts It’s a touch obvious, but effectively cold and windswept. It’s the work of Mick Harris, erstwhile Napalm Death drummer, I bet you weren’t expecting that. 

 

Mad Capulet Markets

 Christmas, innit? So, yeah, happy Christmas, or whatever.

ELVIS COSTELLO & THE BRODSKY QUARET – THE JULIET LETTERS (Warner Bros) 

I used to buy cassettes from Boots. That seems like an absurd false memory now, as if I’d bought spanners from Holland & Barrett or Anusol from Timpson’s, but Chelmsford Boots had a decent little music section, and when my parents were buying grown-up stuff like shampoo and aspirin (I'm pretty sure not Anusol, and I'm not going to check), I’d browse through the records. They often seemed to have some very good tapes on special offer at the counter, and I recall every one of these that I bought was a cracker: Lou Reed’s Transformer, Coldcut’s What’s What Noise? (my introduction to Mark E Smith, believe it or not), Baby Ford’s Fordtrax, and this one. I was 17 for most of 1993, so I suspect I might have been in Boots on my own by this time, but I don’t recall; I’m certain it’s the last thing I bought from there, though weirdly I remember buying marked-down copy of the triple-tape Secret Broadcasts set by Glenn Miller from Oxford’s Boots when I came up to study a couple of years later, and I find it pretty amazing they were still doing music in 1995, it can’t have lasted much longer. 

The album is a series of epistolary songs for solo voice and string quartet, apparently inspired by people who wrote to Juliet Capulet – presumably C/O That Big Crypt, Verona - with their troubles. Only one of the 20 tracks addresses this theme specifically though, the others zipping over all sorts of ground, which has allowed Costello to give reign to some highly inventive lyric-writing. Some of the words are very funny, and this small chamber set-up means every one is easily audible, which I think Elvis relished – listen to the swift judgment of Damnation’s Cellar (which looks like an Entombed song title, but is about bringing people back with a time machine), and the Gershwin-level tricksiness of ‘This Offer Is Unrepeatable’, a satire on hard-sell Christianity in the form of junk mail: “Girls will be swooning because you’re exciting them/ Not only fall at your feet but be biting them...The wine that they offer will go to your head/ You’ll start seeing double in fishes and bread”. There are also some heart-wrenchingly emotional songs on display, which teeter on mawkishness but manage to survive, and ‘The Birds Will Still Be Singing’ can still bring a lump to the throat. 

The whole endeavour, of course, is pure South Bank show shit, the sort of Arts Council bait perfect for a middle-aged artist with an eye on a Sunday supplement spread, but what’s noteworthy about this album is how often it rises above middle-brow novelty. The music is strong with a broad sonic palette, from drawing-room elegance to arthouse intricacy, with plenty of aggressive percussive playing and excellent use of sudden dissonance to balance some incredibly catchy tunes. Costello is in fine voice too, his scuffed intense vibrato sounding oddly like Horace Andy at times, and his pitching and sense of drama are immaculate - but if you were worried that he’d gone opera and lost his punky rots, check the mad-eyed screech of ‘Swine’’s final word, “penknife” (this “letter” appears to have been carved into flesh). Amongst all this there’s space for a very straightforward soulful pop song, ‘Jacksons, Monk And Rowe’, a slightly inscrutable tale of a large close-knit family which doesn’t seem to be a letter at all, and this Pop Private Eye has concluded that it was written before the Brodksy project began and swiftly adapted. 

Many people at the time were disappointed at how far this was from Elvis’s new-wave roots, though that’s odd because we’d already had the country-beard vibes of King Of America and the lush, McCartney-bothering Spike and Mighty Like A Rose. Still, those who missed the full-throttle brain-pop of the late 70s only had to wait one more year for a return, with what might be the best Costello album, Brutal Youth...but that’s a tale for another day (or next issue, who knows). 

Now I'm A Receiver

I just saw a little clip on YouTube entitled 'David Jason explains where the famous Only Fools And Horses lines came from'. The answer is that John Sullivan wrote them. So I've saved you two minutes if you ever feel tempted to click that link.

HUDSON SCOTT/ APRIL MAGAZINE/ CITIES & MEMORY/ BAT BLOOD PUDDING/ ANDREW HYKEL MEARS, Divine Schism, Fusion Arts, 8/11/24 

Bat Blood Pudding sounds like an unlikely recipe, and the music that Tom Dowse of the excellent Dry Cleaning makes under the name is equally oddly constructed. Half of his set is very good, based on murky prerecorded sounds from a vintage 4-track sprinkled with samples and some surprisingly sweet hushed vocals, the charming dusty grooves coming on like Boards Of Canada remixing Loop Guru. But he also picks out some Bert Jansch/Nick Drake parts on an acoustic, which would be great if they weren’t preposterously over-amplified, tinny and plain ugly. We respect artists with a strong sonic signature exploring a new approach, but sometimes conventional technique exists for a reason. 

Cities & Memory are far lighter on the ear, Stuart Fowkes’s compositions based on global field recordings being big on soft textures, synth pads and mellifluous sequenced melodies, recalling early 90s ambient acts like Global Communication or Pete Namlook; this chimes with the mutating computer-generated projections of bright green never-ending tunnels preceding the set, which resemble a Future Sound Of London video (or a Chernobyl endoscopy). Don’t let these 30-year-old references fool you into expecting something moribund, though, this music is intelligent and engrossing, with fascinating insights into the source material. 

San Franciscan duo April Magazine are more organic, just sparse bass, guitar and vocals, with a warm cloak of low feedback (though this last part may not be intentional, judging by their faces). It’s gorgeously woozy stuff, sounding by turns like Yo La Tengo at their most introspective, the Velvets at their most subtle, and Spacemen 3 at their most stoned (which is saying something). Occasionally they lose focus and stumble, as if someone had tied together the laces of the shoes they’re gazing at, but overall it’s a warm hug of a set. 

As tonight is a launch for Ambient Receiver, a periodical edited by Andrew Hykel Mears, who opens the night with some poetry, it’s no surprise to find his old Youthmovies bandmate Hudson Scott on the bill. Previous recordings dipped from the well of urbane late-80s pop that nourished the erstwhile Blessing Force movement, and were impeccably made but too freeze-dried and knowing to excite. Tonight, he plays trumpet and synths through layers of treatments and effects. There’s a wistful Miles feel to the spacious music – imagine In A Silent Way losing its way and ending up in a deserted misty valley – or perhaps it’s a glitchy, introspective version of Mark Isham’s widescreen soundscapes, with some of Rhys Chatham’s experimental melding of horn and electronics. A quite lovely set: ambience received, gratefully. 

 

Mac Lack

Here's an interesting one: I am pretty sure most of the crowd thought this a much better gig than I did. A lot of friends and peers were there, and whilst they've all been too polite to bring it up, I am certain they raised their individual eyebrows whilst reading. In fairness the gig wasn't bad, or even disappointing, it was just frustrating: I recall a story about Derek Bailey accidentally whacking his guitar against the wall behind the stage making a right old racket, and instead of worrying he looked interested, then did it again a few times - that's what this gig needed, less apology and flustered worry when things went  wrong, and more leaning into the experience. Also, who gives a fuck if your synth is out of tune when you're arsing about, just carry on, because stopping to retune is really uninteresting.

LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER/ MEANS OF PRODUCTION, Heavy Pop, The Jericho, 11/10/24 

When Means Of Production first unveiled their stark industrial mantras in Oxford seven years ago, they immediately became one of the city’s best live acts. A swerve towards acid house a couple of years ago only pushed them up the rankings, and any chance to witness their cold mélange of found texts, mundane yet inexplicably unnerving projections, and ruthlessly honed electronics should be grabbed. Perhaps the first track or two don’t quite gel tonight, but doubts evaporate by the time they get to ‘Resuscitation Status’, a squelching cousin of Bam Bam’s ‘Where Is Your Child?’ which creates mortality-paranoia just by listing fragments of a hospital discharge letter: it’s the sound of time’s wingèd chariot drawing near with Hardfloor blasting from its tape deck. 

Two things are impossible to miss about Look Mum No Computer. One is Sam Battle’s charming exuberance – he's a wide-eyed, motormouth suburban urchin like you’d ordered Damon Albarn off Wish – and the other is his stage set-up, dominated by a vast modular synth which barely fits on the Jericho’s stage, and looks like Optimus Prime sneezed LEDs onto a Welsh dresser. His first piece is a swirling buzzing blizzard which sounds like two Tangerine Dream albums playing at once whilst being pulled into a black hole, and his next is a digipunk banger with howled vocals. This is excellent. But the rest of the set feels like scientific research into the best way to kill momentum. Songs stop with an apology halfway through because something doesn’t sound right. He repeatedly asks for cover suggestions from the audience, that he ultimately can’t play (a lengthy attempt at ‘Tainted Love’ is eventually abandoned in favour of a brief burst of Adamski’s ‘Killer’). It’s interesting to watch someone work in real time with complex equipment, but it’s much more satisfying when something cohesive is created - and this rare cohesion sounds fantastic, with banging rhythms and some Sakamoto-influenced lead lines. We respect the risk-taking – if your improvising doesn’t come with the fear of disaster, you’re not improvising at all – but Battle could lean into the unexpected more instead of grinding to an awkward halt. Back in the 80s people got called “synth wizards”. On this flustered evidence, Look Mum No Computer would be Mickey Mouse in Fantasia. Actually, Dukas’s ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ would sound awesome on this rig...unless it ended up as Adamski’s ‘Killer’.