Being Pleasured Aurally

Here's my review for the latest Nightshift, the first to be available as a hard copy for over a year!  It's sincerely exciting and a little moving to have the scabrous Demo Dumper in print again, if for no other reason than so the unbelievers can burn it.

In other news, I will now be doing some reviews for a website.  My reviewing chum Sam Shepherd volunteered me, and I had to do a micro-application form in which I detailed my three favourite albums of the past 12 months.  There wasn't much science in it, but I thought they were fun little summaries, so as a bonus treat, here they are:

Oneohtrix Point Never – Magic Oneohtrix Point Never (Warp)

Vaporwave can be fun, but most of its creators seem to be trying to recapture the innocence of youth, and might be equally happy shutting down Ableton and joining the “who remembers Pyramints?” messageboards.  Whilst Daniel Lopatin’s mature masterpiece nods (sleepily) towards all the hypnagogic tropes – tape deck hum, VHS flicker, corporate ident synth – there’s a depth to the songwriting, which matches ornate pop with emotional  directness, half ELO and half double glazing ad jingles.  The radio dial-twirling concept might be played out as a way of structuring an album, but this parade of gaseous mini-epics is more like someone flipping through the Rolodex of your half-remembered dreams.  With some really nice DX7 noises over the top.

 

Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg (4AD)

Since punk, boredom has often been weaponised, so that a yawn is just a slower paced sneer.  What’s refreshing about Florence Shaw is her unconfrontationally bored delivery, somewhere between indolent and exhausted, too laconic to stretch as far as melodies, a suburban precinct sprechgesang celebrating the surreality of the mundane.  The mordantly funny non sequiturs in the lyric sheets read like Sleaford Mods if they responded to the modern world with wry defeatism rather than twitchy disgust.  It’s musically no slouch either, sparse hypnotic classic indie motifs riding elastic Steve Hanley/Peter Hook basslines off into the distance.

 

The Bug – Fire (Ninja Tune)

Sometimes, though, as well as the literate ennui you just want some righteous ire, and this album is nothing but sonic anger, sometimes smouldering and malevolent, sometimes spittle-lipped and raging.  There are some pandemic-flavoured statements, and a few allusions to global politics, but really it’s no more a meaningful dystopian satire than most black metal is a coherent deconstruction of Christian morality, it’s simply a celebration of fury.  Just check the track titles.  “Vexed”.  “War”.  “Hammer”.  “Fuck Off”.  Especially “Fuck Off”.  And while the rich roster of doom prophet vocalists rail, the tracks rumble and rasp, dense, deep and insistent, like geological klaxons.

ENJOYABLE LISTENS/ MOOGIEMAN/ THE MAY, All Will Be Well, Port Mahon, 28/8/21

 We talk about musicians “playing” a gig, but it’s quite rare that this implies a childlike experimental glee.  Crouched over an array of electronics that he admits he only partly understands, The May takes us down ludic alleyways of electronica, sometimes erudite in the vein of Orbital’s philosophy ‘n’ bass classic “Are We Here?”, sometimes much dumbasser with 90s beats and buzzing synthlines (one COVID-safe raver inadvertently giving us Altern8 flashbacks).  There’s a witty wastrel edge to The May, recalling obscure Planet Mu signing Tim Exile’s “nuisance gabbaret lounge”, and the whole thing is as much fun to watch as it apparently is to create.  All The May’s bleepy gear even comes in a little wagon, like he’s Linus from Peanuts off to Megadog.

 Seeing event host Moogieman solo is rare nowadays, although that was how we first encountered him.  Where he once wielded an acoustic and sang cheeky Radio 4 songs, he now has sparsely programmed electronics and intones sententiously.  A huge improvement, in short.  At times there’s a cosmic, consciousness-expanding feel to the words at odds with the deadpan delivery and minimal sonics – think Wilhelm Reich recited by Laurie Anderson – and one piece is what we imagine a Scientology induction is like, but the beating pop heart of metaphysical rant “Mr Curator” still shines through, the indie fanfare of the band version turned into a sleek melding of The Blue Aeroplanes and Suicide.

 Enjoyable Listens is Luke Duffett, his phone, and several hogsheads of cabaret showmanship.  He gyrates and sways like an Animatronic Bryan Ferry, and croons his poetic balladry in the style of Lloyd Cole or Tony Hadley (and even, at times, early Vic Reeves).  His songs are ostensibly simple fare to tug the hearts - and loins - of an audience raised on estate agent pop and John Hughes movies, but there’s an addictive passion to the performance, which takes place in the crowd as often as onstage, that reminds us of Jack Goldstein.  We even end up singing along to a Bonnie Tyler cover, which is only a step away from pier-end schlock, but that step has been so elegantly taken you could easily  miss how masterful Duffett’s performance is.  That’s the total eclipse of the art.