Are They Oon Dooctoor Whoo?

If you had an infinite number of monkeys, you wouldn't need an infinite amount of time.  Here's this month's Ocelot article:
  

I like Caffe Nero on Gloucester Green.  Whilst other chain coffee outlets cover their walls with sanitised snaps of coffee growers, or vacuous statements like “give yourself a break: yummy mocha”, Nero in Gloucester Green has, for some odd reason, some giant pictures of a man arguing with a traffic warden.  In the 1970s.  It’s only when the usual facile decor is replaced that you notice how ubiquitous it is.  It’s like the Bullingdon Arms; it used to have an infuriating stage backdrop that read “LIVE MUSIC” in vast, ugly letters.  To which you just wanted to shout, “I know!  And?”.   It looked as though it had been designed by a Stalinist propaganda minister after six minutes on Photoshop. 

Anyway, The Bully has had a significant refurb and, as well as boasting a crisp PA and a fetching space brothel design, the back room has replaced the vapid backdrop with a nice tasteful logo.  And if you’re planning on dropping in for a visit, you could do a lot worse than do so during a Haven Club promotion.  Every Monday you can expect this gaggle of Oxford gig veterans to provide a friendly night of approachable music.  The keynote is the blues, but there are also outlets for elegant pop, heavy rock, good time boogie and whatever the hell genre John Otway is.  We spend so much time sniffing out new bands, it’s easy to forget what a difference a switched-on, thoughtful promoter can make.  Why not nip over to www.havenclub.co.uk?

OOOD/ HARDCORESMEN OF THE TECHNOPALYPSE/ LEFTOUTERJOIN, It’s All About The Music, The Bully, 12/4/13

It’ll be hard for our more youthful readers to believe, but back in the 80s there was a huge debate about whether electronic performers should be classed as musicians.  It wasn’t just old bluesers who thought you shouldn’t be allowed to make a record until you’d played the same chord progression in a filthy cellar for 15 years straight that raised dissenting voices, the NME would be inundated with lilac-inked missives of florid disgust if an indie outfit went techno crazy and made a record with Flood or Andy Weatherall.  The dissenting movement has dwindled in size, and retreated from the barracks of Cool, but believe us, it still has some staunch followers.

LeftOuterJoin might be named after a nugget of SQL script, but keeps the Proper Music Police in check by playing all the drums for his hard trance live on electronic pads.  His set almost looks like a challenge: “Yes, it sounds like a drum machine, but it’s a real drummer, yet some of it’s still pre-recorded.  Have your rules collapsed yet?”  In fact, what he really looks like bobbling away behind his stand-up kit at great speed is a drug-addled member of International Rescue, but that’s by the by.   The music is decent, a sharper-edged version of the Platipus sound, although the rhythms inevitably become a little climax happy, and a lightly latin-inflected section is the standout.

Hardcoresmen Of The Technopalypse endears himself to us by wearing a hideous raver’s onesie and using the kit he clearly put in his loft after his last gig, a decade or so ago – funny to see someone juggling minidiscs and turning pots on fat black boxes after years of staring at Macbook backs.  In a reversal of the PMP’s dictums, the set would have been better if he’d done less onstage.  There were hints of sweet deep house songs on display, with rich vocals and thick 808 toms, but everything tended to get smoothed out with endless tweaks and squeaks.

Out Of Our Depth would confuse the PMP.  No real instruments get played, no sweats are broken, and yet their set shows the immeasurable value that years of experience can bring, and proves that traditional musical concepts are just as important to psytrance as anything.  Some witty Queen samples notwithstanding, the material of their set is similar to LeftOuterJoin’s, but every hi-hat is crisp and impeccably placed, and every newly introduced motif sounds exciting yet logical.  Quality and honed ability win the day, then, and nobody had to play the solo from “Sweet Home Alabama”.  Result! 

 

Buck An Ear

Jesus, I've been trying to think of a good title pun for this article ages, and this is the best I've come up with.  Nearly spent as long thinking that crap up as writing the review.  Pirates Of The Pedestrian nearly works, but only if I'm here to tell you to pronounce "Pedestrian" like "Caribbean".  And if you pronounce it "CaRIBBean", like them fellahs on the news, it won't work at all.  Bah.

THE CORSAIRS – WHAT’S MY AGE NOW?? (Foot Tapping Records)

Never judge a book by its cover, that’s the advice we’re given, but nobody ever applies it to record covers: if an album’s sleeve features four Hasselhoff rejects leaning awkwardly against a gleaming bonnet whilst a schoolgirl’s skirt falls off in the background, we can all be pretty certain it’ll be of negligible sonic value.  Faced with a huge list of potential reviews, we tell the editor to send us any that have turned up on an actual CD, because we’re old fashioned like that, and through the post comes some of the least enticing local band artwork we’ve ever seen.  It’s depressing when an album can remind you of the hideous Blink 182 not once but twice, but The Corsairs manage it, not only echoing the awful “What’s My Age Again?” in the title, but recalling the parent album Enema Of The State with the Naughty Nurse^TM on the cover art.  In fact, they don’t even managed to find their own Naughty Nurse^TM, but have clearly photoshopped in a stock image.  Add to this the fact that most of the endorsements in the CD booklet come from scooter fanatics, who are doubtless charming but not necessarily considered great rock music critics, and from The Oxford Mail, who are neither, and this looks to be one of the most depressing fifty minutes we’re likely to have this year.  And yet, like cover-judging motherlovers throughout history, we were pleasantly surprised.  We won’t claim this record is great, and nobody in wide creation would claim it was ground-breaking, but it does succeed at what it sets out to do...and if that’s to make a gaggle of lagered up Vespaphiles have a little frug, then fair enough.

The Corsairs are a not-quite-psycho-enough psychobilly trio, led by double bassist Mark Loveridge, and the record is split roughly equally between originals and crowd pleasing covers.   Of the latter, the best are a bennie-fuelled sprint through “Hangin’ On The Telephone”, which leaves the melody mangled and contorted in its lanky-legged race for the finish line, and a nice, sultry bluebeat take on “Tears Of A Clown”, swapping the original’s fairground richness for a taut, wiry sound.  Amongst those that fare less well are Prince Buster’s “Madness”, which seems pointless as the UK already boasts a pretty great cover version (have a guess who by), and “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, which strains at the limitations of the rockabilly form, and strains at the edge of Loveridge’s vocal abilities; U2 are a band we consider to be desperately overwrought, but at least they hit the heights of bluster they shoot at.

The originals don’t buck any formulaic trends, but show an ear for a big chubby chorus hook, and a likable ability with a cheerful tick-tock Bill Haley rhythm.   We were convinced “Border Radio” was a cover of an early 80s rock ‘n’ roll throwback band until we checked the credits, which is proof that The Corsairs know their stuff, even as it ties them in double retro knots that will ward away most of this site’s readers.  “First Time” is the only clunker, sounding like an after school club trying to make like The Rembrandts,  but the record’s title track is something of a winner, pumping a clicky Western swing rhythm up to amphetamine speed so it sounds like Pinocchio skipping round Gepetto’s workshop high on creosote fumes, before racing headlong into a brattish rockabilly chorus. 

This isn’t CD we’re likely to be spinning again, but in fairness, The Corsairs aren’t best judged at a cluttered desk on an overcast Monday afternoon.  In the right atmosphere, at the right volume, with a beer in each hand and a Naughty Nurse^TM buffing your Lambretta, it might just all make sense...or at least make you stagger about happily at that time of night when making sense doesn’t seem desperately important.