Versailles Chorus Versailles

And here's the final instalment in my latest batch of LFTWY reviews. Warning: contains Eurovision.

SÉBASTIEN TELLIER – POLITICS (Record Makers) 

There have been plenty of great art statements in 21st-century Eurovision. From Verka Serduchka’s reductive grinning singalong which dared you to take something about as complex as ‘The Birdy Song’ seriously in 2007, to Käärijä’s somewhat petrifying Poddington Peas bovver-boy stomp in 2023 (which Bambie Thug presumably saw and thought “you call that unnerving industrial electro, do you? Wait till my song next year...which is also sometimes a jazz ballad”). There’s even the stone cold genius of Rambo Amadeus in 2012, who brought the most low-key funky groove ever to the big stage in Baku, but turned off most people by stumbling about like a greasy bewildered wino, and got a special rule instigated after the random draw put him first in the first semifinal, thereby confusing vast swathes of the viewing audience from the outset, so from now on the producer crafts the running order. Oh, and of course there’s Konstrakta’s ‘In Corpore Sano’ from 2022, which is pretty much the greatest song of the millennium with a stage show giving Matthew Barney and Peter Greenaway. 

But amongst this feted/hated group of tricksters there is one excellent piece of pop art playfulness which didn’t really ignite the voters or the pundits, for some reason. In 2008 Sébastien Tellier rode onto the stage very slowly in a little golf buggy to deliver a strange breathy, wide-eyed little tune, half-scruffy, half-dapper, like a melange of Dennis Wilson and Jarvis Cocker. A third of the way through he sucked helium from a beach ball and made his voice go all squeaky. His backing singers were women with beards stuck on (Conchita Wurst precog!). It must be one of the Frenchest things ever seen, despite being the only time a French Eurovision entry has been in English. 

A few years before that, his second album Politics came out, though it wasn’t a big hit, reaching number 123 in his home charts, and achieving bugger all anywhere else. But it’s really quite good fun, and here are some highlights. 

• The fact that the opening track is called ‘Bye Bye’ and is like a 70s Paul Simon song gone awry, with nice warm brass that just splurgily collapses halfway through like someone took the Spanx off
• The fact that ‘Wonderafrica’ does indeed sound like a funkier cousin of the precipitation-blessing 80s classic 
• The fact that ‘Broadway’ is not brassy and stagey as the name suggests, but is soft and burnished and honeyed in a hammock of strings 
• The fact that ‘Ritournelle’ has Tony Allen on drums dropping a light, flighty groove for nearly 8 minutes which sounds like the funky drummer went on a Ryvita diet, and has no vocals but some almost Bruce Hornsby piano chords 
• The fact that ‘Benny’, immediately afterwards, has the silliest, hammiest vocals possible to make up for it - you have to love the way he delivers “human rih-soar-zees" 
• The fact that ‘Mauer’ has a stoned maggot of a synth wending all the way through 
• The fact that ‘Ketchup Vs. Genocide’ is called ‘Ketchup Vs. Genocide’ 
• The fact that the album finishes with ‘Zombi’, which sounds like music from a game in Fun House or something and is quite preposterous 

 

 

Logo Technics

 Another from LFTWY, and my first article about an Oxford act. Trademark were so good live.

TRADEMARK – FEAR: DISCONNECTION (self-release) 

The first review I ever wrote for publication was in November 2002, for BBC Oxford’s website, having started to get involved with Oxford’s music scene a little earlier, so with this issue we enter the era where I can talk about local records I bought direct from the creators. I promise I’ll steer an evasionary course away from old war stories and anecdotes about people you’ve never met, though. 

Trademark were a live favourite of mine, a trio of lab-coated geeks when who wrote wonderful techno-pop tunes, played them live brilliantly, threw in incongruous one-off covers, sometimes had a giant perspex plug, and were not unknown for tripping over their own gear onstage. This is their 2003 release, although some of the songs got a lick of paint and turned up again on their debut proper, Want More, released a year or two later by Truck Records. The base sauce for their concoctions was simple, consisting of crunchy, intricate rhythms in the style of contemporaneous Warp acts such as Black Dog, big bold 1982 synth lines, and surprisingly emotional, if far from histrionic, vocal melodies. Oli Horton’s voice was never perfect, and he tended to get a bit pitchy, but as with Marc Almond this often worked in the songs’ favour. Sometimes when he sang in a lower register, as with ‘All Too Late’, a clomping Depeche-a-Sketch joint on this album, the notes are more reliably hit, though perhaps a tiny fraction of the character is lost by this. 

It’s still a great tune, though, and this CD if full of them. Interestingly, on revisiting this album, the lighter tracks sound the best: whilst they were never an industrial or EBM band, some songs are bigger than others, whether that’s from a fatter bass drum kick or a more impassioned vocal (‘My Life In Stereo’ has a blasted cabaret feeling which made it perfect for opening gigs). The pick of the chunkier tunes is ‘Sawtooth Lust’, which is something like an abrasive mechanoid take on Bowie’s ‘Breaking Glass’, and is interesting for the joint vocal by usually mute member Paul Soulsby. The lyrics on this one feel forced and awkward, though the line “I saw an eyesore” is amusing, something a goth Giles Brandreth might come out with. 

Of the less aggressive songs, ‘Helpless’ is the softest, in sound and outlook, a song of attraction 100% free of priapic desire, simply about how a certain lass can make the singer go a bit wibbly, featuring the ultimate nice-boy lyric “Don’t let me fail her as a friend”. It sounds wonderful, with a Broadway ballad melody delivered in a delicate falsetto, and a warm bassline that’s purest Pet Shop Boys. ‘Sine Love’ is also lilting and beautiful, using the sine wave as a metaphor for purity in love (no big prize for guessing how the lead synths sound on this and ‘Sawtooth Lust’). The hissing digital percussion sounds like Aphex Twin whispering in your ear. But even this work of beauty is beaten by ‘Stay Professional’, an understated British romantic tragedy with SNES harp and staccato synth stabs. It has the natural-artificial simplicity of a zen garden, and sounds like an Erasure song melancholically gazing at a moonlit lake. 

Self-released albums like this are fascinating. It’s a proper statement rather than a cheap demo, but it’s still half-lost to posterity: the Trademark Wikipedia page acknowledges it, but intriguingly replicates the typo that appears on the printed disc which isn’t on any of the packaging. I have no idea how many copies were sold, and whether they were retained by the purchasers, so my CD may be one of only a handful in the wild (though I have just discovered they made an album in 1999, which ran to 25 copies). Although anyone intrigued by this review should definitely seek out Want More instead, Fear: Disconnection has a nascent charm, and if nothing else it shows how much graft goes into honing a band before its professional debut release – but maybe that statement barely even means anything in 2025. 

 

No Nose Is Good Nose?

I saw Lunchtime For The Wild Youth editor Russell Barker last night at a gig, and fine company he was. He also passed me the last 3 issues, so here's my thought on an album from 2002, with '03 and '04 to follow soon.

SPARKS – LIL' BEETHOVEN (BMG) 

Two things sprang to mind as I turned over this record sleeve, prior to spinning it for the first time after purchase. 

Firstly, that’s a weird place to put the apostrophe. It’s an abbreviation of “little” so “li’l” would make more sense, and there’s precedent, such as the US comic strip Li’l Abner. Lewis Carroll would probably favour “li’l’”, judging from the way he wrote words like “sha’n’t”, and in a pure sense that fits the best, but I’ve never seen it in the wild. Later, in the mumble rap era the apostrophe was tossed out altogether as too old-fashioned, and we got Lil Wayne and Lil Yachty (and how overjoyed was I when an American rapper finally came up with the name Lil Savage). 

Secondly, I was reminded of an article in a long-ago Fall fanzine, which drew parallels between the gruppe and Hancock’s Half Hour episodes: just as we could imagine Tony moping in shows called ‘Fit And Working Again’ or ‘Bournemouth Runner’, we could imagine MES ranting about blood donors in songs named ‘The East Cheam Centenary’ or ‘Lord Byron Lived Here’...and that’s before we get into CB radio. Similarly, the names of tracks on this album just perfectly sum up comical fragments of life, like sketches where you don’t actually need to write the dialogue: ‘What Are All These Band So Angry About?’, ‘I Married Myself’, and ‘Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls’ are just too immaculate. 

If the songs barely need more than a title to conjure images, it’s lucky, because in lots of cases that’s about the sum of the lyrics. ‘How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?’ is just an old gag split into bits and repeated – a Brit would have to imagine someone singing “My dog’s got no nose” over and over – whilst ‘Your Call’s Very Important To Us, Please Hold’ describes the experience of listing to the robotic corporate phone voice at great repetetive length, like a Warhol diary extract.  

Musically this record was odd at the time, but makes perfect sense now. Sparks’ previous records had been wry glam rock enigmas or sunshine-smiling digital pop bangers (which were still wry), but this album has hardly any drums, as alluded to by opener ‘The Rhythm Thief’, and the music is mostly little cellular ersatz orchestral motifs shuffled and stacked. Sparks seem to have got into the likes of Glass and Adams, whilst their twentieth-century composition influence bag held fragments from Stravinsky and Bernstein (whilst their dog’s got Nono’s (I apologise unreservedly for that joke (I don’t really))). This is not the sophisticated chamber tunage of Van Dyke Parks, but neither is it the joky half-formed zombie-pop of Denim – perhaps the best contemporaneous analogue is The Magnetic Fields.  

‘My Baby’s Taking Me Home’ is possibly the album’s high point, pretty much just the title repeated forever.  It’s small and huge at the same time, like a stadium anthem written by Morph. The album ends with ‘Suburban Homeboys’ a single which must not have inspired much faith of a hit from any stakeholder, full of witty sketches of the titular middle-class scallywags and cheeky parping synth tuba playing pseudo-techno riffs – shouting schlager, schlager, schlager! It sort of sounds like a Broadway book number crossed with a US college song, which no actual homeboy would ever be seen dead nodding along to (“My posse repping this track? Nah, my dogs got no-nos!"). “Props to our peeps and please keep your receipts” might be one of the best couplets in the last 40 years of pop...and doesn’t it sound a tiny little bit like a modern-day Tony Hancock? 

Fraud Focus

 Perhaps not an outstanding review, in journalistic terms, but the gigs was very good. Confession: until the days after the gig I thought the middle band were called Archers.

FRAUDS/ ACHERS/ SINEWS, Divine Schism, Library, 5/9/25 

Their name suggests something taut and wiry, but Sinews’ sound is chunky, stodgy and misshapen, in the best way. Their opening numbers tonight unspool thick ropes of sludgy bass with clotted guitar that could probably mend all east Oxford’s potholes. This would be sufficiently pleasing for a Friday night, but the set extends grunge tentacles in various directions as it develops. A trio of previously unplayed songs adds some light and shade, one niggling us with a nagging high guitar line which shadows the vocal melody, adding a pedigree Mclusky sneer to their armory. 

London’s Achers are, to be honest, far more sinewy in nature, with a clean, almost emo edge to their post-punk songs. Their best tracks are built on – or is that, teeter above? - a lazily spinning bass and drums vortex, swirling, hypnotic and clattering like a bunch of mandalas in a cement mixer. Their post-hardcore/alt-punk sound is less angular than Drive Like Jehu, and more jittery than Slint, and it’s enjoyable, though some more character and a hook or two wouldn’t have gone amiss by the end. 

The instinct to compare guitar and drums duo Frauds with John is strong, but with their noisy intensity and mordant wit they’re really Big John, Big Bad John. They bombard us with serrated riffs and choppy cantering drums, but for every passionate maelstrom there’s a moment of reflection or a light-heartedly accented fill (and if the music can be witty, the band are outright hilarious between numbers, suggesting we embrace each silent interlude of tuning as “a chance to better yourselves”, like passive-aggressive life coaches). The vocals are surprisingly agile, gliding smoothly over the uneven broken ground of the rhythms, and they even drop in one or two semi-raps which sound like they’re left over from a nu metal song. Never mind sinews, this duo is a full heart, a big brain, and a well-booted foot to the backside. More please. 

Supernormal 2025 part 2

Nadeem Din-Gabisi, dressed in a lion mask like Tiger Mendoza’s cousin, may be Saturday’s highlight. This low-slung Brit-hop set (key reference: Roots Manuva) is glorious, and the lyrics eruditely explore everything that is good and bad about this country - the track title ‘Pub Lunch’ sums that up, and it sounds something like one of the lighter productions on Skull Disco. He samples the Parry’s ‘Jersualem’ and even quotes Morrissey - if he wanted an example of something from Britain that’s both great and an absolute embarrassment, he hit the bullseye. 

The Supernormal cabaret makes a welcome return, and this year we get lip-synching divas, absurd comedic turns, and some surprisingly earnest and lovely Moroccan song, but MC Ginny Lemon is still the highlight, managing to make slurring a tune with a fish on your head seem like the funniest and most subversive act ever. 

Kalkin are a highly original drums and fiddle duo. Their first number has snatches of jigs but tears along relentlessly, as if the film Speed had been set in a folk club. There is also a whiff of Velvet Underground in a churning mid-paced track, but they peak with a wistful Gavin Bryars-type exploration accompanying a 6-note piano loop, which finds new angles on every repetition, some murky and dark, some bright and soaring. Meat Strap on Friday cover equally broad terrain, sometimes fragmented funk we christen Wacko Pastorius, sometimes like a sashimi chef slicing up Slint with James Blood Ulmer seasoning. They also have inscrutable dedications, including “for the man who invented athlete’s foot”. They add a double bass player, then a flautist - we leave wondering whether they'll continue to expand exponentially and burst the Red Kite tent. Zoh Amba is even more unpredictable, a few opening minutes of solo sax skronk acting as a Wire-reader's Trojan horse to sneak some acoustic songs somewhere between Michaelle Shocked and Neil Young ont the main stage. 

Rainham Sheds invert the Lixenberg Performer-Audience Gambit. Their set starts with a hand-stitched alt groove which is partly like 90s Fall, but mostly like a bladdered and belligerent Bis, whilst vocalist Kate Mahony rolls through the crowd towards the stage with a chair she is part wearing, part fighting. When she gets to a mic, she screeches and wails like an ill-tempered baby, before letting the audience take over the honours. This is pop music as late-night pub car park argy-bargy, terribly messy but open to all. 

Coffin Mulch on Sunday play death metal, and they like playing death metal, and we like hearing them play death metal, because they play death metal really well. Sometimes, you don’t need to do anything new, you just need to do it monstrously loudly. Contrast this with the slightly more stately Meatdripper, a stoner/doom quartet who can hit quite a surprising groove: have you ever had the urge to shimmy your hips whilst the loud overtones trouble your bowels? In true Supernormal fashion, as we enjoy this onslaught a man in a Greggs onesie outside the tent is helping someone dressed as a tea table rearrange pink wafers. Probably they were dislodged running away from furniture scourge Kate Mahony. 

We’re expecting Big Farmer, a band featuring members of Supernormal’s build crew, to be a good honest garage racket, but although they have a hardcore heart, there’s a lot of wit and space on display. The nearly spoken vocals lean slightly towards Idles, but they’re less gruff, and the second number’s delivery sounds weirdly like Eddie Argos, if Art Brut took more cues from Fugazi.  

Brìghde Chaimbeul plays the Scottish smallpipes, and although all compositions are sourced from Skye, she makes intriguing arrangement decisions. One piece is so slow it is probably counted in beats-per-month, whilst another swirls round and round a couple of motifs like bellows-blown techno. Is that a smoke machine wreathing her head or mists magically transported from a Munro? We don’t know enough to say where the trad tunes end and Chaimbeul’s inventions begin, but we know this is exceptionally beautiful - and being blasé about boundaries is where we came in, right? 

If we’re being true to ourselves, Supernormal is our favourite festival. Looking out for others, we strongly advise you all attend next year. Make it happen! Hell, it even only rained for about 20 minutes... 

Scud Missive

I have now reviewed Supernormal so many times I think I might take a rest next year and let someone else have a crack...course, I'll still attend, it's the best festival ever.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 1-3/8/25 

“Come onstage with me if you want to get out of the rain”. When did you ever hear a festival act propose that? But, it's Sunday lunchtime and Loré Lixenberg is opening her performance space to the damp people of Braziers Park, which just about sums up Supernormal, a festival where the line between artist and audience is often blurred, broken, or moshed into oblivion. We should mention that Lixenberg is a highly trained operatic mezzo-soprano and her invitation arose whilst she was interviewing a random member of the public in a sprechgesang style (discovery: the phrase “that’s so bloody typical” is astonishing when delivered like Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder). The interviewee is called Scud, and is an actual legend, talking with wit and passion about the value of public libraries, going full Phil Minton in an impromptu bout of vocal improv, and telling stories of inventing parkour (disputed) and discovering punk as a nipper. Punk acts feature elsewhere this weekend, but the whole event embodies punk’s central tenets “Make it happen!”, “Look out for each other”, and “Be true to yourself”, and is as incredible as ever. 

Our Friday starts with Distraxi, who sounds pleasingly like someone howling with rage whilst faxing a kazoo, before we visit The Vortex for the first time. This wonky shed space hosts plenty of multimedia business over the weekend, but the simple show by The Panama Papers is one of the best. The music is mostly lugubrious sax and electronics, with some low intoned vocals somewhere between Swans and Crash Test Dummies, but the magic is in the slideshow projected behind them, in which the Dept of Improvised Investigations hilariously claims that noise and improv are a front or tax dodge – can selling 20 home-made tapes be a viable business model?  

Rory Salter suggests it can, perhaps, because the Barn stage is so packed we can’t see what on earth he’s doing, but we love the drifting tones that sound by turns like Snap, Crackle & Pop doing plumbing in Twin Peaks, a Woookiee crèche, and To Rococo Rot making balloon animals.  

Folk is a large part of Supernormal, tapping into the spirit of homegrown rebellion that’s existed for centuries. The Charmers are a coven folk quintet with a “Song for the dykes...a spell for the banished”. Milkweed perform a cosmic folk horspiel based on an Ulster Cycle tale which we admittedly can’t follow, but the fuzzy rustic lope is a delight. They introduce a pair of vocalists for one passage, who turn out to be Bridget & Kitty, from the Round Table folk club in London. They perform unaccompanied duets in Braziers House on Saturday which are unfussy and beautifully controlled and crystalline, a world away from that theatrical barleymow “folk-singer accent” we’ve all heard. That an apparently unrelated song is dedicated to Palestine without any stretch shows the communicative power of these old compositions.  

If folk music is earthy, immediate, and deeply bloodthirsty, Gorgon Vomit are a folk band, being an excellently intense old-school metal pummel party, with guitars whinnying like rabid Kazakh horses. They have a Jamaican vocalist, and track names like ‘Babylon Detonator’, but this actually makes very little difference – possibly because metal is universal and inclusive of everyone, and possibly because you can never hear the lyrics, anyway.  Headbanging with dreads makes you look like a metal Medusa, though, so props for that.  

Quieter pleasures are on offer, though, like Judith Hamann whose wordless vocals and cello are ECM ambience meets Arvo Pärt meets a gate swinging in the wind. Slow bowing like a calm but wintry sea alternates with quick light taps on the neck, hypnotically.  

A Widget is something small, oddly shaped, but useful, which fits this band, featuring a guitarist from Big Joanie, and our own Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani on drums. They make a strangely lopsided funk pop, somewhere between ESG and Hall & Oates, with one tune even sounding like a cheeky Chic. The vocals are blokey and spoken, but with a wry warmth taking us to the sunny side of The Streets. They’re a pier-end, market-stall British version of a knowing post-post-punk groove band - Elsie Tanner Soundsystem, anyone? 

There's another local win on Sunday, when Oxford’s improv hero Pat Thomas duets with drummer Dan Johnson, eschewing keys in favour of...maybe a tablet? All we can see is Pat sitting studiously in a beret like a French professor at a ludicrously vast table. Regardless of how the noises are generated, they sound fantastic, electronic chitters intertwining with skittering drums. Later in the set the beats get chunkier and we are strafed with blurts and clatters – this is probably what it’s like to play Donkey Kong from inside one of the barrels. 

En Creux is the solo work of Lucia H Chung, a London-based Taiwanese artist, with no-input mixer. Listen for a few seconds and it’s just static and crackle; listen for two minutes and spotty rhythms emerge; after 10 we hear classic electro grooves crossed with manic squeaks, like Egyptian Lover rogering a bouncy castle. Remember Eddie Large’s routine about celebs starting their cars? Imagine that covered by Autechre.

Abstraction is physical not aural at the BRUK UP dance workshop. It’s fascinating to learn about the avant-dancehall moves – think a middle ground between breakdance, the Thriller video, and trying to cross a ropebridge whilst wankered – but it seems Nightshift doesn’t have as many shoulder muscles as the instructor... 

Given its ostensibly inclusive can-do nature, it’s a surprise you don’t see more physically disabled punk performers, as this music comes from spirit and rage, not the corporeal (with the occasional exception of blood alcohol content). Sublux are a churning hardcore band fronted by two wheelchair users, one of whom has a proper incandescent shriek, and the other of whom has a little machine that makes bleepy noises almost without cessation, whether a song is playing or not. Feral. 

Soundart Radio’s shack allows anyone to sign up and broadcast sounds online, and through small speakers near the main gate. Counter-intuitively, the shows that work the best are those that veer away from Supernormal styles: local noise artist Plague Arish layers up some excellent tape hisses and hums, with thudding submerged rhythms that sound like a helicopter trying to take off in a blancmange, but draws a sparse audience, whereas a handstand competition and Vengaboys tunes get the crowds going. Context is everything, we guess. 

Paper Money

I wasn't best happy with this review. It's all fine, but I'm not sure I captured the last band very well, and teetered too much between liking and disliking the opener. Still, it's Supernormal this weekend, and I have a review pass, so expect a very long review before too long!

DAILY TOLL/ MYSTERY BISCUIT/ FIVER, OMS, Library, 11/7/25 

It’s like a game you might play after Christmas dinner, describe Fiver without using the word “Nirvana”. The solution, saying “”Mudhoney, might be considered gamesmanship and cause Granny to stomp off to the sherry decanter in a huff, but it’s actually a smart move, because Fiver’s take on US grunge has a rootsier, warmer heart that aligns them with the second in command in Seattle’s 90s army. There are even a couple of needling atonal moments which recall Dinosaur Jr, though in fairness, there are also times when Fiver remind us what side of the Atlantic they’re from, delivering bouncy rock somewhere between Wildhearts with a healthier lifestyle and Therapy? without the library cards. Inverting the adage, Fiver tonight suggest that the destination is more important than the journey, and to get to pleasingly chunky climaxes and rousing choruses we have to start each song with slightly clunky, chugging rhythms.  

Mind you there’s chugging and there’s chugging. Forget sub-Oasis pedestrian rockers, think of the steady heartbeat of John Lee Hooker, the relentless greasy grooves of ZZ Top, and the sleek kraut repetition of Can. Mystery Biscuit chug like a sleek silver machine rather than a rumbling old banger, painting bright Edgar Froese synth lines over modern psych tunes. They are experts at knowing when to build, and whenever it feels as though the rhythms couldn’t get more intense Marc Burgess switches from keys to second guitar and the music soars even higher. Perhaps the best track tonight is a slower burn, featuring a long recording of poet e e cummings, which is great with a capital G (somewhat ironically). 

Australia’s Daily Toll seem like the sort of band who’d appreciate a gag about the orthographical preferences of Modernist writers, they have a bookish indie air which makes one think of hand-illustrated C90s of Peel sessions and annotated paperbacks. Although their opening number swims into view from a miasma of bowed bass, their vintage introspective indie isn’t aggressively lofi, but neither is it prettily twee and toothless. Perhaps the best reference point is Yo La Tengo at their subtlest, with a touch of Mazzy Star around the glistening guitar, in handmade Sebadoh wrapping. Despite harking back to a very specific era, there’s plenty of variation, from a surprisingly insistent Jah Wobble bassline in one number to a bit of Dry Cleaning recitation in another, and even a studiously rocking cousin of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’. Their name evokes enrvating chores, but this inventive band is quietly invigorating.