Dylan, Like The Beams Of A Balance, Is Always Varying

I had an absolute blast writing this review.  The gig was such great fun (I think Bob was having more fun than everyone), and whilst 20% of the time I was laughing at some clunker of a wrong note or something, the other 80% of the time I was giggling with joy at the playfulness of it all.  Sincerely, every old rocker's gigs should be like this, hats resolutely off. to the man.

Archivists can note that I don't actually know who the promoter was; there wwre probably about 17 involved.  Hats off to the PR person for getting a brace of guest passes for little old Nutshaft, though, that was brilliant.

BOB DYLAN, NEW THEATRE, 4/11/22

The crowd pouring out of The New Theatre seemed to be split on whether this was a good or bad gig. Certainly it was gloriously odd. That Bob elected to play piano throughout was eyebrow-raising, but that he sat at a rickety old upright heroically out of tune with the backing quintet was a free temporary facelift. Even weirder, the nearest mic to the piano appeared to be 6-feet away, leading to a fuzzy, sub-aquatic mix straight from a David Lynch soundtrack (anyone who thought they’d been dreaming when they saw the gig announced might suspect they’d never woken up). And Bob did nothing to dispel the unreality, striking the ivories with authoritative spareness like Thelonious Monk via Les Dawson, and keeping the band on their collective toes with odd rhythms. Songs from the last album were played relatively straight – although they already sound like beautiful half-forgotten ghosts of drawing room ballads – but old tracks bore almost no resemblance to the original composition: they played “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” like they’ve never heard it before, and “Gotta Serve Somebody” like they’ve never heard any song ever, words crammed into an ill-fitting melody like a Nightshift writer trying to fit into their teenage jeans. These are not cock-ups, but deliberate playful decisions, risks that are entertaining regardless of whether they pay off.

 Received opinion is that Dylan’s voice is a batrachian croak for which the concept of individual notes is a faded memory. Certainly, for much of 1992’s Good As I Been To You he sounds as though he’s actually dying in the vocal booth (and then come back as a tipsy zombie for 2009’s inexplicable Christmas In The Heart), but after a decade of studying the urbane stylings of Sinatra, his voice has become a warm, avuncular buzz somewhere between Bing Crosby, Tom Waits, and Vincent Price. His singing tonight is sweet and melodic, and even if the mudpie mix means we catch maybe 10% of the words, his timing is impeccable, by turns dramatic and hilarious. Wayward phrasing is his super-power; maybe he was bitten by some radioactive rubato in Greenwich Village.

It’s a joy to see an elder statesman onstage who neither plays everything fixed-grin safe, nor cynically runs out the clock with half an eye on their bank balance. If this were a Dylan tribute, you’d bottle them offstage; if this were a new act, you’d be raiding their Bandcamp on the bus home. Fixing any of the oddities would have made this a better gig. But being a better gig would have made this a much worse gig.  

 

 

Piece of Bis

OK, I've decided that what I'll do is post my MusicOMH reviews one in arrears.  This means there will be an average of 4 weeks between posting on their site and here - but go and sign up for the site if you want them more quickly.  Here's a fun little album from some pop kids who probably now have their own kids.

BIS – SYSTEMS MUSIC FOR HOME DEFENCE (Last Night From Glasgow)

Pop music is synonymous with youth, of course, but nobody can stop time. The public is generally happy to see their favourite artists slip into middle age so long as they can still turn out a tune, happy to forego low hairlines and narrow waists, and everyone just pretends that jumping over the drum riser or busting out a slutdrop was never a big deal in the first place. But when an act celebrates their juvenility from the outset, aging becomes a harsher curse. Musical Youth might turn in a decent festival set, but there’ll still be a little cognitive dissonance you won’t get with UB40 and anyone who’s encountered The Nashville Teens on the nostalgia trail can only find their senescence risible. Sonic Youth were perhaps ironic enough to carry it off, but seeing their craggy, lined faces in their final years as a band still. And Neil Young is just taking the piss.

Bis have managed to walk that tightrope rather nicely. Yes, they may not all have been old enough to buy a pint when they first appeared on Top Of The Pops – the first unsigned act ever to do so, an achievement which puts them into both the record books and  the roster of classic pub quiz questions – but, despite the odd lyric about sweetshops or Teen-C power, their feeling of youthful effusiveness came from their fierce independence and love of euphoric pop music rather than any post-adolescent energy. And this has not changed on their sixth studio album, the same infectious bounce and sly wit is in evidence as it was back in 1996; they just go easier on the hairclips nowadays.

Some of the lyrics do reflect a more middle-aged mindset, where mortgages and school runs might take place of rollerblades and school discos. Headaches and Stress are not exactly titles one would have found on a 90s Bis album. Even when the themes are somewhat more universal, the band reveal that they’re in their forties: lead single Lucky Night is a grinning swipe at men who co-opt feminism as an item in their chat-up arsenal (“Patriarchy is a bad scene/ Baby, I’m the vaccine”), but it’s hard to imagine any bar-room lothario under 35 asking for someone’s email address.

The music still packs a sherbety punch, though, regardless of the topics covered, embellishing the fizzy, buzzing indie-pop of old with some sonic references which actually predate the band’s first recordings by 7 or 8 years. Stress is an indie anthem with Walken-tickling levels of cowbell, but also has a vintage rave breakdown, and some perky backing vocals from Manda Rin that sound pleasingly like Betty Boo. (I Got My) Independence – a track title to sum up the Bis ethos in every decade, perhaps – starts with some pounding Italo house piano, before morphing into a, Express Yourself-era Madonna tune via some crisp 909 snare. Lucky Night’s package holiday party sound is like something from the second-tier of Stock, Aitken & Waterman’s roster – think Sonia or The Reynolds Girls – and We Do Structures might have a name like an ancient po-faced Numan B-side, but has a winking hi-NRG rhythm with more in common with London Boys. There’s even a track entitled The Lookback, pledging that “we do the lookback to see where we’ve come from”, in case there was any doubt (and, for the record, the lush synth pads this time nod towards the Madonna of Vogue, with a hint of The Beloved’s melancholy 3AM wistfulness).

The sounds of 1989 are big business currently, and a band like the superb Confidence Man can take some vintage chart pop and some juicy Chicago house basslines to create a night at the Platonic NYC gay club of your dreams, but on Systems Music For Home Defence, Bis bring the same pleasures down to earth. Instead of big budget fantasies the album sound more like someone playing along to favourite pop tunes through fuzzy amps and singing with equal zest and wonky pitching into a marker pen microphone. And if that doesn’t sound like fun to you, you’re probably too old.

 

 

Cabaret Voltage

 I was very happy with this review, and pleased that the editor was prepared to print it.  Apologies for the over-zealous spacing, I can't fix this when pasting the text in, and don't fancy retyping the whole thing. 

JEFFREY LEWIS & THE VOLTAGE/ MAX BLANSJAAR/ THE DUMPLINGS, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 30/9/22

Jeffrey Lewis has a method of accompanying tunes

With a bunch of rhyming couplets and some Powerpoint cartoons,

And with these micro-TEDx talks he gives us the straight dope

On the birth of NY punk acts, and on Star Wars: A New Hope;

Also covered, just to show the breadth of scope that Jeff’s got

Are the second Evil Dead film and the great Fitzgerald, F. Scott.

These poems are instructive and they entertain just fine

Even though there are sometimes far more syllables than can comfortably fit into a single line.

His songs are also playful, and are certainly conducive,

All new wave lofi antifolk with rhymes like Dr Seuss’s.

Lewis’s guitar-playing is neither big nor fancy,

But listen closely and you’ll find it’s sweet, and quite Bert Jansch-y

(Although it must be said he is not wary of the joys

 Of extended abstract passages and grating feedback noise).

The lyrics touch on common themes with open honesty,

Like the pains of breaking up or taking too much LSD.

The backing band is hot, but know not to get in the way

Of the neat melodic songs nor all the witty things they say –

In this respect he’s mirrored by Max Blansjaar, his support,

A young local songwriter who has definitely sought

Some of the best musicians to be found in Oxford city

But they never overshadow any quirky little ditty.

(We also saw The Dumplings whom we’d hardly say were tight 

But those who don’t enjoy it must have hearts of anthracite.)

Some of the show is clownish, and some of it even loonier,

Like a song on getting ghosted borrowed from Ray Parker Jr.

But for all we’re painting Lewis like a wacky old gag-vendor,

The lyrics often turn out to be touching, sad, or tender,

And the jokes end up quite moving, must have been the way he told ‘em -

And walking home through Florence Park we swear we saw Will Oldham.

Sketchleys of Spain

Here's my latest review for MusicOMH, and the first to which I've given 5 stars - but, fair enough, it's a killer (though if I could get away with not giving marks out of 5, I'd be all the happier).  I think I might start delaying my MOMH posts, as it's behind a paywall; I don't think I can never share things with you, but perhaps I could wait a month, which would be the equivalent of waiting until a print mag was off the shelves, and therefore fair game to reproduce.  Course, the problem is I'll probably forget, but we shall see.

DRY CLEANING – STUMPWORK (4AD)

Mixing a Dry Cleaning gig must be a nightmare. The band creates such a dense sound, interlocking riffs twining thornily, that a declamatory vocal would be the instinctive choice, but Florence Shaw’s delivery is always muted, pastel-toned, and dispassionate, as if a dentist surgery’s automated receptionist had started offering existential commentary (Press 1 for appointments, press 2 for a wry encapsulation of the human condition). But simply burying the vocals in the mix, shoegaze style, won’t work because Shaw has a huge library of micro-inflections that give unexpected depth to the often disjointed lyrics: the line “If you’re rich you look good, that’s not news” on opener 'Anna Calls From The Arctic' is pitch perfect, and the tossed off plea “Can you not?” on 'Kwenchy Kups' is like a whole character study in three syllables. Luckily, that’s some venue engineer’s dilemma for another day, and on Stumpwork we can revel in every subtle vocal intonation, as they play against the knotty rhythms.

Although Shaw has stated that the lyrics on this album have moved away from the found texts of their debut New Long Leg, it definitely feels more collage than essay, lines rubbing unexpectedly against each other, the poetic cheek by jowl with the preposterous. But themes swim out over repeated listens even where individual songs remain oblique. A major concern on Stumpwork would appear to be finance and the impulsive consumer, with different tracks noting “I’m bored, but I get a kick out of buying things”, “That’s what money’s for, isn’t it? For spending”, and the hilarious “Nothing works, everything’s expensive, opaque, and privatised. My shoe-organising thing arrived, thank God”. Press 3 for sales and self-justification under late capitalism.

The album also features a roster of tiny instances of intimacy, such as “let me squeeze you and do your hair”, or “I’d love to hold you across the middle and be your shoulder bag”. The title track features a gloriously prosaic undercutting of the school of pop romance in which hearts flutter and nerves tingle:

I feel your approach/ All the hair on my arms raise up/ Because you are wearing a fleece/That has become electrified

Even on 'Gary Ashby', the only song that’s fully decodable, about the loss of the titular pet tortoise, the mundane and quotidian are deftly presented in a way that makes them feel surreal and otherworldly (Press 4 for Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett). And even this hides the menacing mysterious line “Dad’s got blood on his head”.  And if unexplained wounds don’t surprise you, sudden moments of potty-mouthed filth just might - Press fucking 5 for some shit or other – which sound doubly incongruous in Shaw’s tranquil unruffled tones. The debased handicraft of the album cover, spelling out the title in soap-adhered pubes, might have served as a warning that the odd bit of smut might pop up. Most inexplicable is the claim “I’ve see your arse but not your mouth, that’s normal now”, though perhaps Naked Attraction gets heavy rotation on the Dry Cleaning tour bus TV. 

Mesmerising as the words and delivery are, the album is also musically excellent. Like the debut, there are clear nods to classic alt rock, especially in the fleet-footed but anchoring basslines – Press 5 for Peter Hook and Kim Deal – but the sonic range is broader this time, from the warm jangle of' Gary Ashby' which nods towards The Blue Aeroplanes, to the sludgy unfunk groove of 'Liberty Log', replete with woozy tape wobbles. The last few tracks are the most exploratory, with dubbier textures and the intense hypnotic guitar sounds of post-rock (or even post-metal), but the biggest surprise is at the other end of the album, where 'Anna Calls From The Arctic' swoons in a humid, sun-sleepy synth and clarinet bliss-out, as if Penguin Cafe Orchestra were trying to imitate 808 State’s 'Pacific'. By the time the goth hypnotism of 'Icebergs' fades away, with a quietly dawdling sax that sounds like hip-hip banger 'The 900 Number' dropping off to sleep, you’ll be ready to flip this wonderfully enigmatic record over and return to track one.  Press 0 to hear these options again and again.

Vowel Obstruction

I discovered today that production company Celador is a play on "cellar door", claimed by certain people (eg Drew Barrymore) to be a highly euphonious phrase, and not a sort of flower or Spanish aperitif as I'd imagined.

CLT DRP/ CONGRATULATIONS, A New View, Jericho, 11/9/22

We joke that Congratulations might be a rock Cliff Richard tribute – and, be honest, a drop-tuned stoner burn through “Devil Woman” would be a joy – but the Brighton quartet are even more unexpected. Firstly, in their bright primary-coloured threads they look like Mystery Inc have fallen on hard times and started a Butlins showband, and secondly they sound like...everything. At once. Seriously, one track reminds us of Rage Against The Machine, The Cramps, and Bucks Fizz in the space of 4 minutes, and whilst not every song is as wilfully lopsided, there are plenty of tracks chucking spiky post-punk guitar solos at fat, fuzzy glam riffs, and then putting an abstract pop chant over the top, like eclectic oddballs Islet on a cocktail of Sunny Delight and mezcal. They even schmooze out a camp pseudo-Prince jam, where even the irony is in air quotes. Perhaps we imagined this whole beautiful mania. Confabulations?

Their hometown tour buddies CLT DRP are clearly having their own little version of Only Connect. We’ll leave you to work out what the name signifies (spoiler: sadly it’s not OCELOT DRAPE). The trio deal in aggressive electro rock, and whilst this might bring to mind images of Chicks On Speed or Peaches, they are both weightier, throwing out denture-rattling synth patterns and tympanum-skewering ring modulated guitar, and more controlled, with a glorious line in clinically battering drums and vocals that can do a lot more than just screechily hector (although they do also screechily hector pretty damn well). There are moments that recall Atari Teenage Riot, some passages that update the stalking noughties darkstep of Distance, and even one track with the funky flavour of early Beasties, albeit with rather more enlightened gender politics - COOL TO DO RAP? - but the real surprise is how much metal there is underpinning the imposing rhythms. But dissecting the sound is probably less important than revelling in the aural thrashing we’re getting from this digital cat o’ nine tails (or maybe CLEATED ROPE)

Honour Thy Myth Tapes As Hidden Intentions

Spent about 2 minutes wondering whether the "surname" here was Fanni Tutti, or just Tutti.  The rest of the review wrote itself, lovely record.

COSEY FANNI TUTTI – DELIA DERBYSHIRE: THE MYTHS & THE LEGENDARY TAPES – ORIGINAL SOUNDTACK RECORDINGS (Conspiracy International)

It’s pretty universally recognised that electronic composer Delia Derbyshire added the arrangement and production trickery that turned Ron Grainer’s Dr Who music into one of the BBC’s most iconic TV themes, and it’s comparatively common knowledge that she was involved in the psychedelic tape noise classic An Electric Storm by White Noise, but who knew that she had a preternatural intuition when it came to vinyl, being able to identify different passages or instruments just by looking at the grooves? It’s a moment that comes up early in Caroline Catz’s docudrama Delia Derbyshire: The Myths & Legendary Tapes, and this near magical ability creates an unexpected connection between the subject and industrial pioneer Cosey Fanni Tutti, who has ben known to delve into the arcane, who features heavily in the film, and whose soundtrack music is now released, a little belatedly. Much as the film is idiosyncratic, mixing biographical dramatisations with Fanni Tutti’s artistic responses and occasionally morphing into fantasy, the soundtrack is not simply a series of remixes, or an attempt to imitate Derbyshire’s techniques, but is inspired by the Derbyshire archive and her original studio notes. Fanni Tutti calls the outcome “an alliance of our sensibilities”, and trying to work out where the line between the two composers lies is futile - although there are samples of Derbyshire speaking on 'Snuff Chorus' and 'Tatum Ergo', her fruity giggling voice sounding oddly like Camilla Pilkington-Smyth’s vocal fragments which were scattered across early Art Of Noise records). We also hear muffled vocals on 'An Individualist'. Does this represent Derbyshire struggling to be heard in a male-dominated and deeply conservative Beeb? Or does it just sound cool?

There’s surprisingly little here that truly resembles the applied sound manipulation Derbyshire was asked to undertake for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The goofy tones of 'Four Bebe' sound like vintage commercial library music, of the sort collected by Barry 7 on his Connectors compilations, and 'Psychedelic Projections', the album’s only example of a real beat, has the tropical bounce of synthesised exotica that might have provided the bed for a long forgotten travel show. 'Most of Animals' is an intense steamy rasping drone, but it ends with the ersatz sounds of toucans, crickets, and elephants, like a more playful version of David Tudor’s synthesised 'Rainforest' pieces and one can imagine a snippy BBC producer’s note “lose it all except the last 10 seconds”. The title of 'Cosmic Static Noise Wasps' could easily be imagined as the sort of wild, abstract request made to the workshop by an adventurous producer (if not in Derbyshire’s era, this sort of thing must have been a daily occurrence for Paddy Kingsland soundtracking The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy).

The track does indeed capture the buzz of intergalactic bellicose vespids (probably) but it is also a deep and dense two minutes of sonic exploration. Much of this album is a beautiful showcase for creating enticing textures from minimal sources; check the spooky dynamo hum of 'Delia Tones' or the sturdy aural barrier of the aptly named 'Ceiling Of Sickening Sound'. The thoroughness of Fanni Tutti’s treatments is suggested by titles like 'Guitar (Twickenham Studio 3)', which sounds nothing like a guitar but quite a lot like a cross between a cello and a cyber-tuba, and 'Cornet Lament', which might have once been a brass instrument but now comes across like a medieval reed instrument lost in the underworld (should have called it 'Shawm Of The Dead').

Perhaps the album is a little too long and disconnected for a single listening experience, and some listeners might find that the character of the music changes from track to track - cheeky one moment, unnerving the next - but this is possibly evidence of the record’s soundtrack origins (not to mention consistent with Throbbing Gristle’s approach). Regardless, it’s a wonderful selection  to dip into. Pick up the disc, find a bit that looks tempting, and see where you end up – and if you can spot the space-wasps in advance, you might just be a sound-wrangling genius too.

Supernormal 2022 Part 3

 There are inevitably a handful of things that don’t quite land. Reciprocate’s plaintive US alt-rock style doesn’t excite, coming off like a wheedling petulant Pavement, and - it pains us to say - Nightshift, whose buzzy mantric tunes have potential, but whose performance seems tentative. Oh, and we’re also invited to climb over a stile, go into the wood, and look at a blue polystyrene cow (and then to go straight back, because there’s really not much to do once you get there). But to balance this there’s always something inexplicable and intriguing, like LDSN/Yakki Da!, who play melodica and make wonky loops from fragments of a story about going on holiday we can never quite decode, like a child’s summer holiday project being sucked into a black hole, or The Tuna Raffle (not a band or an artwork, but a raffle for a shitload of canned tuna; no, us neither). 

The final live set of the weekend is Birmingham electronica legend Surgeon, whose relentless clanging techno set is a joy, and also a masterclass in how to make something endlessly fascinating from minimal means. In a way, this is a great metaphor for the whole festival, which is a Sellotape and sawdust affair run on hope and good will rather than wodges of cash or corporate sponsorship partners, but which manages to surprise and delight with every iteration, constantly feeling new by never losing its core identity. Asking whether Supernormal is a good festival is like asking whether manna is good fast food, it’s so far ahead of the competition in Oxfordshire (and probably the universe) that the question is utterly meaningless. So here’s our final judgment: smashing.

SIDEBAR

“Mum, can we go see Taskmaster?”

“No need, we have Taskmaster at home.”

Molly is “Taskmaster at home”, running around the miniscule Colour Out Of Space stage, florid and flustered, attempting to achieve 30 one-minute tasks with no particular resources, before a klaxon announces that she’s (almost certainly) failed. It’s stupidly entertaining, and typical of a strain of clowning that runs through this year’s festival. An act like Secluded Bronte, including films criticising the cameras they’ve been shot with, is witty, but Taylor & Luck are flat-out hilarious, dreaming up a preposterous Abingdon ghost story with accompaniment that is half free improv, half Foley. There’s a lofi comic absurdity to so many of this weekend’s sets they could have been taken to Ipsden or Edinburgh with equal justification, from the brilliantly named Run The Bath, which is essentially “Emo Philips plays Ivor Cutler on V/Vm Test Records”, to Fluxus plumbers Usurper, the Mario/Chuckle Brothers mash-up we never knew we needed. The absolute monarchs, though, are The Slipshod Ramblers, a duo in what might be homemade albino Womble outfits playing bleak, Beckettian folk songs, and getting them exactly wrong: “Death, she knocks for us all” they intone, but probably only because we died laughing. 

Supernormal 2022 Part 2

Actually, the sidebar is in the next post (stupid tag limit).

Or perhaps there is no brand. The festival as a whole is more about being open-minded and open-eared than any specific group of styles and genres, meaning that not every act is challenging.  Société Étrange use bass, drums and electronics to create dubby burbling which is like To Rococo Rot with the krautrock froideur replaced by a cheery warmth: this is friendly music that would invite you in for tea and ensure you had the last piece of cake (Kick out the jam sponges! Release the battenburgs!). Also liable to become your sonic best friends are Dean Rodney Jr & The Cowboys, whose summery grooves and golden stetson could enliven any shindig, whilst Shovel Dance Collective are a brilliant British folk outfit who could inspire jigs and singalongs in any village hall, whilst reminding us just how many of our nation’s traditional songs are about celebrating the downtrodden and oppressed. Possibly most enjoyable of all are Dischi, an urban pop duo from Manchester who bring unbounded fun to their light bouncy backing tracks in a  style that might recall Althea & Donna, Daphne & Celeste, and Fun Boy Three all at once. But if that sounds too mainstream, the little Queef Qult stage reliably delivers a diet of queer cabaret and DJs playing absolute certified bangers all weekend, or you can make some masks with a proxy Lord Summerisle ready for a midnight screening of The Wicker Man. 

Perhaps as a result of the non-hierarchical nature of Supernormal, where performers become audience members, and punters become collaborators, the crowds seem to naturally intuit the right response to any set. So, Thomas Stone’s refined contrabassoon pieces are met by a quiet contemplative audience (excluding a dragonfly who is buzzing madly against the Barn’s window, and that somehow merges wonderfully with the automated rattling snare sounds); people laugh at Feghoot’s preposterous performance (one person tries to play keyboard, the other tries to fuck it up, genius simplicity); they dance to the wry literate indie funk of Comfort which merges Sultans of Ping FC with LCD Soundsystem; and go batshit bonkers to the industrial techno of Samuel Kerridge. Then they do all of these at once for Pink Siifu & The NEGRO ALIVE’! Experience (sic), because they’re a Jameson-guzzling collision between Funkadelic, Public Enemy, and Rage Against The Machine, with a little Snoop Dogg snakiness to the vocals to keep big grins present, on- and offstage.

Hot Crocks

Here's the review of the reliably amazing Supernormal.  If you read the version in the latest Nightshift, this is the director's cut, featuring an extra section at the end about some of the less musical elements, which I proposed as a sidebar, but which the editor just barred.  Not moaning, by the way, it's a challenge to get the mag all jigsawed together in time for printing deadlines.

Because of the tags limit, the putative sidebar is in the next post.

SUPERNORMAL, Braziers Park, 12-4/8/22

Because Supernormal is a cross between a village fete and a revolutionary happening, they have an old-fashioned crockery smashing stall – the only differences being that it’s miked and amplified at a ridiculous volume, and that the plates are daubed with negative concepts that we can symbolically destroy (“Tories”; “patriarchy”; err, “plates”). The very first one to be obliterated on Friday reads “judgment”, as if to make this review redundant from the outset. But in a way criticising Supernormal is pointless, because the line between viewer and performer is blurred at best: only half the people here are paying customers, and someone you’ll be chatting to might turn out to be the next act half an hour later. In a telling moment, somebody leaping onstage to boogie to Aya’s abstract dance set gets a cheer as big as the musician, and at what other festival can you create a graphic score and have it interpreted by a pianist? And the other reason criticising Supernormal is pointless is that nearly everything is excellent, whether it’s a gloriously varied three days of music, a horsebox filled with mystifying charity shop artworks, the bar prices, or the lovely stewards cooling sweltering crowds with plant misters.

It might have been three years since the last Supernormal, but the organisers’ desire for intensity has not waned, and any visitor must expect to have their ears - and possibly cerebellum – pounded regularly. Jooklo 5 Beans set the bar, creating a disorienting percussion-heavy avant-jazz onslaught with spiralling electric piano that nods towards 70s Miles, but Gutternsipe leap the bar with a maelstrom of drums, guitar and electronics which is somehow pummelling and intricate at the same time. Then Brighton duo Human Leather take the bar, break it over their knee and wade into us like Begbie on a bad day with their outstanding sludge-punk, guttural syllabic vocals making each song sound like the mating call of the Judoon. Which leaves NYC’s Imperial Triumphant to replace the bar with a solid platinum battleaxe and enact a ritual culling, their baroque widescreen black metal matched by their polished high priest masks; believe it or not, their name is an understatement; double believe it or not, Kenny G is on their new album, which is surely a first for a Supernormal act.

Speaking of heaviness, Lo Egin add sax and trombone to a metal template, finding a space between New Orleans funeral parades and doom trudges. It’s a brass metal fusion...or do we mean alloy? Skull Mask from Mexico also stretch traditions by drizzling rootsy guitar licks with eerie hurdy-gurdy noise, until it’s like listening to a mariachi musician via haunted ear canals.   

But there is also room on the bill for subtlety and delicacy. Violist Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh plays one of the few sets in Braziers House, summoning a web of harmonics and glissandi from which fragments of folk motifs can be picked, like the shanties of the damned. Alison Cotton’s closing set in the Barn on Friday also uses viola, but creates a more spectral sound to which haunting vocals are added, in a style reminiscent of some of Sheila Chandra’s drone-based work. Hannah Silva weaves a spell often with voice alone, looping imitations of infant burbling and producing live recreations of glitched recordings, like a post-modern Norman Collier, and an even deeper enchantment is cast by Noriko Okaku and Helen Papaioannou with “That Long Moonless Chase”, utilising the immersive potential of The Vortex stage to show beautiful animation interpreting a collage of two folktales from different continents which have been mangled by online translation services, plus a bit of skronking sax, just to stay on the Supernormal brand.

Chip Priests

I just got back from Supernormal festival, so you can look forward to a review in the forthcoming Nightshift (preview: it was ace).  Here's my latest for MusicOMH in the interim.  

HOT CHIP – FREAKOUT/RELEASE (Domino)

Boogie is long overdue a mainstream revival. The misleadingly monikered microgenre added a bit of gutsy R & B bounce to sleek disco rhythms as the 70s bled into the 80s, and then played them in such an intensely uptight, airtight fashion you’d think they were planning on sending twelve inch singles to the Mariana Trench. What admirer of early Foals’ buttoned-down pop wouldn’t get a finicky frisson from Earth, Wind & Fire’s cover of "Got To Get You Into My Life"? How many people nodding along to the airbrushed sounds of Everything Everything wouldn’t find something to like in the antiseptic rubber bounce of Heatwave or Pure Energy? Hot Chip might be leading the revival by building "Down", the opening track from their eighth album, around a loop from boogie obscurity "More Than Enough", by Universal Togetherness Band.

To keep the wryly knowing groove going, "Eleanor" comes on like an early 80s Kool & The Gang cut at an alternative universe school disco, whereas the title track is chunkier, opening with the repeated robo-mantra “Wild beast/ Freakout, release” - imagine the backing singers from "Electric Avenue" trying to remake Fatboy Slim’s "Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat" and you’re halfway there - and ending with a delicious Chicago house descending synth line; it even has a slight similarity in the vocal line to "We Are Family", just to retain the vintage mobile disco vibe. But this opening trio is a trick, wrongfooting you into an album, not of retro-bangers, but of restrained and introspective keyboard contemplations. Despite the Dionysian flavour of the title, Freakout/Release could more accurately be titled Comedown/Regret, wistfully noting the passing of the good times. The lyrics return to this post-party melancholia again and again, the mojo having fled suddenly, pop euphoria having been replaced by the quotidian: “Music used to be escape, now I can’t escape it” ("Freakout/Release"); “We raise our glasses in remembrance/ When only yesterday we took our chance” ("Not Alone"); “Ain’t it hard to be funky when you’re not feeling sexy?” ("Hard To Be Funky"). Hot Chip’s previous album was entitled Bath Of Ecstasy, but this one is more like a cold shower of middle-aged regret, with a good splurge of Radox Pomegranate, Hibiscus & Remorse exfoliating body scrub.

Not that the music is cold, there’s a swirled-brandy warmth to these songs which rescues them from self-pity. "Broken" has a stately resignation which is part Pet Shop Boys, part barely remembered Canadian synth-poppers Kon Kan, "Miss The Bliss" is Frazier Chorus chilling out post-club, and "Not Alone" has a soft fuzziness which is not far from current festival faves Glass Animals, but the clearest sonic touchstone is The Beloved (albeit without the loved-up, starry-eyed grins). The whole album is perfect earbud fodder, well balanced and rich, and with plenty of interesting elements to pick out on later listens - check the dirty, dirty bass break in the title track, or the freeze-dried Chic guitar of "Hard To Be Funky". Only "The Evil That Men Do" falls flat, trying to be a woozy shuffle but coming across as a messy, half-recalled Seal song (though maybe we’re still smarting from discovering it wasn’t an Iron Maiden cover). 

"Out Of My Depth", however, is an outstanding closer, an affirmatory torch song over epically phased keys which owes a little to 21st century Sparks, and even shares some DNA with the theatrical  valediction of Queen’s "The Show Must Go On". With a promise to “make time my only enemy”, perhaps this song makes peace with the ruefulness and contrition of the preceding eight tracks. This album is a pleasing, mature release...though a little more freakout wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The Lost Jules

I've spent a lot of July in the Oxford Bringe Preview Comedy Festival, and it's been great.  My favourite shows were Leo Reich, Glenn Moore, Andrew O'Neill, Jess Foreteskew, and Sophie Duker, though the quality was very high overall.  If you're going to the fringe, check one of these shows out.

JULIA-SOPHIE/ MARIA UZOR/ OCTAVAIA FREUD, Divine Schism, MAO, 1/7/22

Those of us who’ve been following Octavia Freud for a few years will have noticed that something has changed. It’s not the slinky, pulsating collision between banging electronica and post-punk introspection, and it sure as hell isn’t Martin Andrews’s hat which we’ve never seen him without, but it’s the foregrounding of humour in the performances. Tonight, Andrews doesn’t precisely tell jokes, but there’s a wry, sly absurdity, which fits into a particularly Northern comedy continuum. Opener “When I Was A Kid” tosses out laconic, waggish non-sequiturs over a cheeky beat like a Frank Sidebottom reworking of “Thou Shalt Always Kill”, and there are moments when a drawling Andrews embodies the spirits of Alan Vega and Ted Chippington at once, especially in set highlight “Tappin”, a coproduction with Adventures In Noise. Of course, it’s not all sardonic aphorisms and knowing winks, there’s “Hot Nights”, a neon disco sweatbounce which sounds like a back-alley twist on an 80s Diana Ross single.  With a knowing wink. 

Maria Uzor has visited Oxford a few times as part of the excellent duo Sink Ya Teeth, bringing a New York* new wave punk funk spirit. This solo set eschews the SYT minimalism and instead we are swept up by euphoric, insistent danc-pop. If the tempo has been upped a little, so has the reference period: gone are the sparse early 80s bass drums, and in their place are gnarlier loops and rhythms, nodding towards Detroit techno, early Aphex cymbal patterns, and even some big old Prodigy stadium breakbeats. However, there is a little clutch of children at this gig, who presumably aren’t au fait with dance music history, and they seem to be getting into it, running about and headbanging, so we conclude, “fuck cross-referencing, let’s dance”. 

Julia-Sophie, previously known as Juju, Jules and many other variants, says she is “getting close to accepting my name”. This seems fitting, as she also looks more relaxed onstage than we’ve ever seen her, and is making the best music of her life. This set is testament to what one can achieve with interesting synth parts, some good ideas, and a hell of a voice. The music is twitchily busy, yet friendly and hook-laden; dense but spacious; melancholy but uplifting. It’s like a Zen koan that you can nod along to. “Telephone”, the last song before an unexpected solo guitar encore, is simple but heart-wrenching, a teen movie credits theme being sucked slowly into the void, and sadly waving goodbye. But, just possibly, with another knowing wink.

*Actually Norwich

Canon & Fall

The Oxford Fringe Preview Comedy Festival starts on Friday, and runs throughout July.  I urge you to buy a ticket or two, some of the shows are going to be excellent.

THE AUTUMN SAINTS – WIND BURN & BROKEN OAK (Man In The Moon Records)

‘I Am The Gadfly’, the second track on The Autumn Saints' debut album, has a title that looks like it belongs to a 300-year-old folk tune, and a guitar part that bears a strong - though almost certainly coincidental - resemblance to lesser-known Fall song ‘Green Eyed Loco-Man’. It’s a strange contrast, but one which sums up the band’s unique sound, which might best be described as a good-natured tussle between windswept Americana and the mournfully literate end of early-80s indie and post-punk. This is embodied in frontperson Britt Strickland, whose doleful North Carolinian vocal sounds as though it should be hollering a lament from an Appalachian foothill, but whose reverby 8-string bass resembles Adam Clayton auditioning for Bauhaus. 

The twelve tracks of this recording offer some prime examples of their approach, from ‘Up In Rags’, which sounds like something from folk melancholia classic Fables Of The Reconstruction by fellow Southern gothic poets R.E.M. as played by Simple Minds at the world’s biggest stadium, to heavy-set paean to simple traditions ‘Greenhorn’ (though your cloth-eared and somewhat peckish reviewer heard it as “cream horn”).  There are also hints of 50s balladry on tracks like ‘She Wanders Out’ and ‘Too Late Tonight’ which give a dewy-eyed nod to the likes of Dion and Del Shannon, rock ‘n’ roll’s original sadbois. The only track that doesn’t quite gel is ‘The Lieutenant’, an awkward plod which doesn’t seem sure whether it wants to start a hoedown at a barn dance or sport a back-comb at The Batcave, but this is the exception on a very strong album, which doesn’t sound quite like anything previously released in the history of Oxford. Or possibly anywhere.

Split and Run?

Looks as though I neglected to upload this at the time.  Better late than etc.

MELT BANANA/ SHAKE CHAIN, Divine Schism, The Bully, 3/4/22

Depending on where they’re standing in the venue, the time it takes people to notice Kate Mahony varies. The rest of Shake Chain take to the stage and strike up a buzzing hypnotic rhythm, with no frills or fripperies, but enough focus to keep it interesting, but eventually you spot Mahony, scrunched in a coat, writhing agonisingly slowly through the crowd, some rough beast crawling towards The Bullingdon to be born. And, once they take the stage, looking studiedly bemused throughout the set, Mahony’s vocals are the unfiltered wailings of a neonate, primal howls that, if they are forming words, have sheared the edges off most of them in the journey from the hindbrain to the mic so you’d never know. There’s nothing weak and mewling about the performance, though, and Mahony as Id Vicious overlays the band’s raw and elemental rock mantras, so that it all sounds like The Nightingales haunted by a poltergeist. Amongst this glorious skree there’s a surprisingly groovy number, where a garage gogo beat accompanies the repeated cry “You’re running me over!”, like something from the soundtrack to Kill Bill. If Bill were already dead. And so were everyone else.

In contrast, Melt Banana’s show starts with the minimum of fanfare. The Tokyo duo simply take to the stage, quietly set up in front of a bank of amps the size of a Transit van, and then immediately and efficiently commence pummelling. The constituent parts are straightforward – intense beats triggered by a glowing handheld device that looks like a novelty TV remote, Ichiro Agata’s razorwire guitar parts, and Yasuko Onuki’s high-octane yelping – but over an hour they are mixed, merged and shuffled like the deck of steamboat cardsharp. In fact, despite the relentless hammering, the thing one takes away from this set is just how intricate and lithe the performance is, best evidenced in a quickfire parade of seven Napalm Death-length microsongs. Onuki’s vocals, although clearly influenced by hardcore, have an elasticity that places them nearer to funk or rap, and Agata’s guitar-playing, as well as being phenomenal, is not afraid to pull back from the cascades of noise for some classic rocking: we hear a riff AC/DC would be proud to own, and a chug with which Lemmy would gladly share a bottle. As the closer, ‘Infection Defective’, with its rolling Massive Attack bassline and icy crystal shards of guitar attest, Melt Banana shoot for your head, your heart, and your dancing feet at once. And all of them are killing blows.

The Touré Party

I started off thinking I wouldn't have enough to say about this album, and ended up really enjoying the review (though it is partly about how I don't quite have enough to say about it).  Good record, either way.

VIEUX FARKA TOURÉ – LES RACINES (World Circuit)

In the film Best In Show, Parker Posey’s highly strung lawyer character is desperately trying to replace a dog toy shaped like a bee. A hapless pet shop worker tries to suggest a fish, a parrot or a bear in a bee costume, and faces a full on adult tantrum for explaining that, although we know those toys are not bees, “the dog will respond to the stripes”. Often when faced with an album like this, a Western Anglophone might feel like that dog: without a knowledge of the language(s) used and only an imperfect grasp of the musical traditions within which the performers are working, all we have left are responses to the colours and textures. This is a little ironic, as Vieux Farka Touré – son of the late maestro Ali Farka Touré, who did more than anyone to bring the music of Mali to Europe – has named the album Les Racines, or “the roots”, coming closer to his father’s milieu than on previous solo albums, and has noted that, “In Mali many people are illiterate and music is the main way of transmitting information and knowledge. My father fought for peace and as artists we have an obligation to educate about the problems facing our country and to rally people and shepherd them towards reason.”   

But if we’re going to respond to context-hazy colours and textures, then these are some bloody good ones to start with. Interestingly, this is Vieux’s first album on World Circuit, the label that brought his father to the ears of the world, so perhaps it’s a return to roots familial as well as cultural. Roots can’t live without the soil, and Les Racines is certainly earthier than his last album, 2017’s Samba which was strong, but a bit too polished and four-square, with chunky rhythms seemingly aimed at a festival knees-up; you can certainly dance to some of Les Racines, but you’re at least as likely to sit in rapt concentration to the intricate licks and flourishes of these prime examples of songhai desert blues. Vieux has been called “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, but despite sharing with Jimi a naturalness in his phrasing, where solos and runs feel as instinctive as breathing, stylistically he owes more to BB King, alternating mellifluous thoughtfully placed notes with brief panting runs. You can hear this in 'Gabou Ni Tie', which also features a scrabbled chime tone that shares a sonic space to Roger McGuinn’s solo in 'Eight Miles High'.

Although Touré’s playing is gorgeous throughout, this album is an ensemble piece, with special mention for Madou Sidiki Diabaté’s kora which adds extra waterfalls of notes, and Madou Traore’s breathy flute, which adds swirling dimensions behind the call and response of 'Ngala Kaourene', like a more agile and focussed krautrock flute noodler; the album even features guest guitar spots for Amadou Bagayoko, of Amadou & Mariam fame. The stand-out example of ensemble playing may well be 'L'Âme', a tribute to Touré’s father, which begins with some crabbed, jerky guitar scribbles that could have come from an early noughties post-rock act, and proceeds to build the most delicate skein of notes, including a juicy organ. The players keep to the barest bones of the structure, and there’s rarely fewer than three instruments exploring lines at any one time, yet it’s not a cacophony or a shapeless jam, there’s focus and rigour in the playing that might remind some people of vintage Ornette Coleman passages.

There are some strong vocal tracks on the album, particularly the fluent yet grizzled 'Lahidou' which laments the existence of betrayal and false promise in the world, but it’s the instrumentals which really shine. The title track starts with a spaghetti western flourish before glittering cascades of notes begin to tumble, like the most refreshing spring shower in history. The chord progression is simple and melancholy, and could have come from an early R.E.M. track. The track is four minutes long, but frankly it could play all afternoon and you’d be left thinking it was too short. There will be parts of this album’s roots that those outside Mali can never fully comprehend, but regardless of your entry level, you’ll be certain that those roots are still strong and bearing exquisite fruit.

Decelerate & Lyle

This was an intriguing one.  I actually liked Slow Down, Molasses less than comes across in the review - they were fine, it all just felt third-hand - I decided to be generous; however, it was only when thinking about the gig that I realised just how much I'd enjoyed Savage Mansion.  Wish I'd bought a CD now...

SLOW DOWN MOLASSES/ SAVAGE MANSION/ DOGMILK, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 6/5/22

If you go back and watch the first series of Blackadder, it’s quite surprising how much that defines the show is absent: Baldrick is clever, the filming is lush and expensive, and there are extended riffs on Shakespeare instead of cunning plans. There’s a similar pilot-episode pleasure in seeing a decent band early on – whilst you know they’ll improve, witnessing ideas being tested and explored is a privilege. Dogmilk, featuring ex-members of Slate Hearts and Easter Island Statues, have only played a handful of shows, and are standing in tonight at late notice, and they try on a handful of styles during their short set: grunge via 90s teen soundtracks, garage rock, Cure-style lamenting, uptight punk funk, an even a one-minute country-skank through ‘You’ve Got A Friend In Me’. Most likely their eclectic sound will settle in the coming months, but wherever they land will be a pleasure if it involves a band this sharp and crisp.

If Dogmilk are crisp, Glasgow’s Savage Mansion are Findus Crispy Pancakes cooked in Crisp ‘n’ Dry by Quentin Crisp on St Crispin’s Day. This performance is gloriously tight, and the music infectious, the band generally following a pretty well-defined route, with solid, harmonically straightforward chugging supporting sprechgesang verses and punchily sung short choruses, putting them next door to the wonderful A House. Like The Nightingales, they know how to squeeze a good riff dry, and like Jonathan Richman, they know how to deliver elegant narrative lyrics without being self-consciously arty. You may find yourself thinking of Dylan, Jeffrey Lewis, and Luke Haines. You may find yourself imagining Wet Leg as arranged by Glenn Tilbrook. And you may ask yourself, how come I never heard of this band before?

Saskatchewan’s Slow Down, Molasses are one of a handful of acts to have released music through tonight’s promoter, Divine Schism. Theirs is a more raucous, thrashy and transatlantic sound than what we’ve heard so far tonight, like goth-psych rockers Darker My Love recreated in the minds of Gnasher and Gnipper. Black-clad, and not afraid of a burning avalanche of guitar noise, the band feel pretty exciting in this bright, cosy community centre – we spot an organisor glancing at a decibel count early on – and they bounce between grubby but honed Mission Of Burma rock and the less aggressive end of hardcore, falling somewhere between the rosters of Matador and Dischord. They know precisely how to make ears ring and heads nod, and if they don’t quite make hearts leap, they’re still welcome visitors 4,000 miles from home.

Maniac Çop

At the moment, all I can do is sing "Jubilee-ee-ee-ee" to this tune, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev1aBt-_Zs4.  I'm sure ERII is having the same experience.

POLIÇA – MADNESS (Memphis Industries) 

It’s a little strange that, in our era when most music is experienced online as individually selected tracks or via curated playlists, the album is still the default release model for the music industry. And, what’s more surprising is that so many albums still follow the sorts of tracklisting logic that was applied fifty or more years ago, despite the acknowledged fact that only the most die-hard physical-medium fetishists will always play all the music in the same order. Poliça’s Madness – the Minneapolis act’s sixth or seventh album, depending on which online tally you believe – could be used to teach students classic album structure methodology. 

Lesson one: start with a big tune. Madness opens with 'Alive'’s ominous three-note bassline. It may not be startlingly original but delivers a glorious bad-trip club vibe, and when Channy Leaneagh’s ominous vocals join the submerged drums the track blossoms into the malevolent cousin of a dance-pop banger. The chorus introduces a little more optimism, as the track slowly swells to a sort of paranoid euphoria; in fact, punch up the vocal volume and edit, and this could be one of those arty East European electro tracks that get highly praised in Eurovision (though never win).

Lesson two: follow up with something equally strong, but more ambiguous. 'Violence' somewhat resembles the regret-seeped torch songs of the trip-hop era, but the stately vocal sits upon a shifting backing which sounds like some cellos melting. The bass drum comes in with unexpected vigour, but it still sounds sub-aquatic, the rest of the soundfield being a furling forest of synth tones and Rolodex-flicking percussion. This ever-shifting sonic mutation, typifying the album, may reflect producer Ryan Olson’s use of the “anthropomorphic production tool” AllOvers(c), and it certainly reflects the cover artwork, a blur of body parts and fleshy abstraction that looks like an orgy hasn’t finished downloading.

Lesson three: change the tempo. Madness’s third track, 'Away', is a big-boned ballad which could have been a forgotten Girls Aloud single, except once again the backing is gloopily muffled, giving the emotive vocal a clear focus. It’s pretty great, and features enough smothered whines and burbles to be useful if you wanted to know what a noughties R’n’B lament might sound like from inside Darth Vader’s helmet.   

Lesson four: hide the less good material. Alas, the following three songs don’t live up to these openers. The title track boasts some nice glitchy synths sitting somewhere between Vangelis and Autechre, and the vocal is breathily intimate (a cross between Björk’s 'Headphones' and Frank Sinatra serenading the barflies on 'In The Wee Small Hours'), but beyond this neither the harmonic structure nor the melody are hugely interesting. If this were being performed on a piano in the corner of  a swanky bar, you’d barely notice – especially whilst trying to work out how a bottle of beer costs twelve quid. The track is rescued by the arrival of some mournfully scratchy folk violin, sounding like an arrangement of 'A Lark Ascending' at a banshee funeral. 'Blood' starts with some excellent robo-dub in a Basic Channel style, but this is quickly replaced by a lacklustre mid-tempo tune; if we were back at Eurovision, this is a plodding Luxembourg entry that can’t get beyond the semis. 'Fountain' is a little better, a slow resigned piano creating an undertow that deepens the effect of the reverby FX-laden vocal, under which bassist Chris Bierden adds subtle curlicues. Again, it’s the production rather than the composition that carries the track, but you might prick up your ears in the swanky bar, as you ruefully emptied your £8 ramekin of cashews. 

Lesson five: end on a big emotion. 'Sweet Memz' may have a horribly knowing title, but it’s delightful, frosty dream-pop vocals sharing space with keyboard tones that sound like bugles playing for the fallen dead in a thick mist, over a surprisingly bouncy drum pattern. It’s a strong ending to a perfectly paced album, but despite the elegant sequencing, there are definitely tracks you’ll come back to far more than others.

The New Orthographers

It took bloody ages to make sure all the Polish characters were correct.  I'm not used to spending that much effort researching for a review!

Matmos - Regards/ Ukłony Dla Bogusław Schaeffer (Thrill Jockey)

Baltimore duo Matmos have been creating music from unlikely sources for twenty-five years now. Their discography features tracks built from recordings as unlikely as a liposuction procedure, Bible pages turning, the neural activity of a crayfish, and Adrian Chiles being slapped on the britches with a Caramac...and although we made one of those up, the fact that it still sounds quite plausible tells you a lot. New album Regards is a little different, though, the Instytutu Adama Mickiewicza having invited Matmos to create recordings based on the works of Polish polymath, educator, and member of the radical Cracow Group, Bogusław Schaeffer - as Polish speakers will no doubt have deduced from the album’s subtitle. The track titles are likewise duolingual, with tracks such as 'Anti-Antiphon (Absolute Decomposition)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja Na Całego)' offering the same information in English and Polish; but some other titles are made from anagrams of Schaeffer’s name, resulting in a pair of completely different meanings. This subtle code-shifting sums up the nature of the album: it’s not a straightforward remix project, but neither does it treat the source material in so radical a fashion as Matmos’ most famous work (you’d be hard pressed to extrapolate the grisly recordings underpinning the jolly-face glitchtronica of their most celebrated album, A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure) and it also adds fresh elements from instrumentalists including Irish harpist Úna Monaghan and Max Eilbacher of Horse Lords. It is perhaps best to see Regards as a tribute to the exploratory work of Schaeffer  and other electronic music pioneers of the mid-twentieth century.

The mysterious nature of the album’s genesis, however, does mean that any creative descriptions of the sounds might inadvertently turn out to be accurate. 'On Few, Far Chaos Bugles/ Uff...Bosch Ara Wałęsę', for example, a little motif recalling the melancholic pitched honks of Galleons Of Stone by The Art Of Noise could have been sourced from a vintage synthesiser piece, a treated French horn, or a chair being dragged across the room, as evident in a hundred YouTube covers of Aphex Twin’s 'Alberto Balsalm'. 'Resemblage/ Parasamblaż', on the other hand, boasts fascinating sounds that bring to mind furious fly-swatting on the set of STOMP, and the bubbling test tubes heard in the Ealing classic The Man In The White Suit. It also features some manically sliced and layered recordings of small bells – carillon up the Khyber, anyone? – which are coupled with hammered dulcimer to create the gorgeous ghost of a folk melody, coming off like a highly abstract remix of Orbital’s techno-exotica classic 'The Box'. In fact, there are points at which Regards veers unusually close to conventional dance music, 'Cobra Wages Shuffle/ Off! Schable w Gurę!' toying with the sort of jolly mambo samples beloved of mid-nineties producers, and some warm dubby soundscapes elsewhere calling to mind The Orb circa career apex Orbus Tarrarum. 

True to past Matmos form, for every piece of approachably bouncy electronica, there is more austere and disorienting fare. 'Flashcube Fog Wares/ Głucha Affera Słów' nods towards tape effects and short splice techniques that simultaneously recall the compositions of Milton Babbitt and Pierre Schaeffer - no relation - ending with what sounds like a piccolo pulled through a Sapphire & Steel warphole, and the interplay between mournful harp and spectral voices gives 'If All Things Were Turned to Smoke/ Gdyby Wszystko Atało Się Dymem' a whiff of Stockhausen. Almost inevitably, there are times when the maximalist editing approach becomes wearing, and the soundfield on 'Tonight There Is Something Special About The Moon/ Jaki Księżyc Dziś Wieczór...' is just too cluttered, whilst the tuning-radios-whilst-the-bath-empties vibe of 'Anti-Antiphon (Absolute Decomposition)/ Anty-Antyfona (Dekonstrukcja Na Całego)' veers close to ambient cliché. Still Regards as a whole is a rewarding,  absorbing listen, and is liable to instigate an outbreak of searches for Schaeffer originals in obscure corners of the ‘net over the coming weeks.  

It's Gone Over Your Head

There's a paywall on MusicOMH now, which I'm not all that happy about (though I dare say they need to pay the bills somehow, probably this is the future of the web, you've had your free fun).  But, it does at least mean there's some point to my posting my reviews here.

SCALPING – VOID (Houndstooth)

In 1991, Godflesh released 'Slavestate', a single which added a sample of Humanoid’s cyborg techno hit 'Stakker Humanoid' to their austere churncore. Justin Broadrick later noted, “We got some shit from people, but we also accessed a whole new audience”. It seems almost inconceivable now that there was a time when fans of leftfield rock were still suspicious of any electronics more complex than a thudding drum machine, and when anyone wishing to broaden the palette would be met with cries of “sell out!” (although, conversely in the wake of Madchester so many drab indie chancers were grabbing desperately at 808s that flicking swiftly through Melody Maker could leave you with “there’s always been a dance element in our music” inkily imprinted onto every finger). On their debut album, Bristol’s Scalping are forging a deep new sound which is a direct development of Broadrick’s sonic hybrid, but whereas 30 years ago metal and techno were welded brutally together to construct a clunky battletank of a sound, now the splicing happens at DNA level, creating something lithe, fleet-footed and constantly mutating. If Godflesh was Mechagodzilla, stomping inexorably over anything in its path, Scalping are the T-1000 Terminator, melting and reforming before your eyes, before delivering an equally deadly blow.

'Blood Club' exemplifies this approach, consisting of a blasted heath of wintery sound like something from the Isolationism compilation - a cherished moment of madness in which Virgin Records decided that their cosy Ambient compilation series had been selling so well, they’d follow it up with two and a half hours of aural bleakness compiled by Kevin Martin – across which an insistent ostinato flits intermittently, as if Aphex Twin’s 'Didgeridoo'were rushing through a wasteland on a speeding train. 'Caller Unknown' similarly has an acidically squelchy line which fights for breath on a roiling sea of guitar scuff, and there’s a wonderful struggle on this album between pure, clear electronic sounds, which one can imagine being made on huge banks of shiny sequenced devices flickering with one hundred red LEDs, and dirty, polluted industrial/metal sounds, all amp-squeal and gritty hum – although actually this album was produced under lockdown without the members ever inhabiting the same room.   

There is variety on display here, though, despite the intensity. 'Silhouettes' is a claustrophobic underpass chase scene; 'Cloak & Dagger' is a brighter, more insistent groove that sounds like the theme tune to the Hades remake of The Krypton Factor; and 'Flashforward' captures some reverse reverbed vocals that might recall parts of the first Future Sound Of London album. Only 'Desire' doesn’t quite convince, bringing in some mournful post-rock guitar which it never quite knows what to do with. But a pair of vocal tracks provide the focal points in Void’s sinister simmer. 'Remain In Stasis', featuring Grove, is a sprightly piece of apocalyptic preaching that bears a small resemblance to the foursquare surveillance funk of Tackhead (only far heavier), but even better is 'Tether', featuring Oakland rapper DAEMON, a slow, steady chant calling to mind a terrible antimatter Faithless (and if you can’t get no sleep, it won’t be because of club euphoria, but because you’re worried DAEMON is lurking under your bed).

If there is a small criticism of Void, it’s that certain parts sound interchangeable, and one crunchy bass riff or eerie knives-sharpened-in-a-deep-sewer guitar sound could be sliced from one track and dropped into another without anyone really noticing, but equally, this proves how cohesive the album is. Scalping have produced 35 minutes of vehemence and vigour that has enough depth to repay repeat listens. If 'Slavestate' was an industrial-dance crossover, this is more like a metal-techno crucifixion.

Give Me Vonnegut Reason

The editor of the MusicOMH website changed my score out of 5 for this review.  They do that a lot.  I don't mind, it's their site, but more importantly, I don't like the idea of giving a score, and do it grudgingly.  So, you can guess whether this was marked half a star up, or half a star down, if you want to.  Kills some time, eh.  The grave is on the horizon.

SPIRTUALIZED – EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL (Bella Union)

If you want to describe Spiritualized’s new album in one word – perhaps you’re playing a parlour game at the birthday of a broadsheet music reviewer, or talking to a fourteen-year-old who skips the “boring intro” on a ninety-second TikTok video – that word would be “layered”. Every song on Everything Was Beautiful is beautifully put together, and there always seems to be another part to discover, another sound to pick out of the dense arrangements, another overdub to unearth somewhere in the depths of the mix. The record is a minor miracle of construction, and you get the impression that every sound was percolating in Jason “J Spaceman” Pierce’s head Brian Wilson-style long before it was captured on tape (especially once you discover that this album uses material from eleven different studios plus Pierce’s home recordings). However, this intense layering is also the album’s Achilles heel, and there are times when the music feels over-rich and stodgy, like a nightmare where you’re trying to run but are mired ankle-deep in suet and old Rolling Stones records.

The cover features pharmacological art by Mark Farrow harking back directly to Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space – and why not, it is one of the greatest sleeves of the 1990s after all – and in the opening moments you might fear that this album is simply a direct beat-for-beat retread of Spiritualized’s most famous record, like a Tubular Bells II for the melancholically medicated: the album begins with a direct analogue to Ladies & Gentlemen’s title track, with a sultry female whispering the album’s title, some quiet space bleeps and one of those stately, Pachelbel-flavoured circling chord sequences that come with a strong whiff of pained self-pity. Thankfully, this is just to ease us in gently and the track soon shows its own character, ratcheting into a thunking, reverby hymnal paean like an overweight Phil Spector backing track, behind which a lovely miasma of strings swirls and eddies. The lyrics adapt the hoary old Brill building “I’ll be whatever you want” formula, with lines like “If you want a radio, I would be a radio for you”, which get the point across (although you can’t take this stuff seriously once you’ve heard The Divine Comedy’s parody on 'If...').

A good few years ago, in his movie column, Nick Lowe - no, not that one - posited that Hollywood scientists were hard at work, trying to create a film constructed entirely of endings. As well as turning out to be incredibly prescient of our era of multi-movie adaptations of single books, and apparently infinitely expanding Marvel narratives which constantly climax yet never actually conclude, it’s a handy description of the average Spiritualized track. Most of the songs on this album seem to exist purely as delivery systems for extended outros, from the Lou Reed chug of 'Best Thing You Never Had', with a delightful beery trombone solo, to the bluesy trudge of 'Let It Bleed', to the drunken duck sax blurt freak-out that constitutes two-thirds of 'The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)', and which sounds gloriously like three Art Ensemble Of Chicago tracks playing at once.  'Mainline', the album’s high-point, just sounds like a long coda to a song that’s been edited out, an organic and euphoric built on some simple melodic material including the delicious Beach Boys purr of a bass harmonica. 

The album’s title might reference “everything was beautiful and nothing hurt”, a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s pacifist sci-fi novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Whilst Vonnegut’s hero was “unstuck in time”, Spiritualized are very much the opposite, each song taking a fragment of pop history – a dewy-eyed Patsy Cline melody, a Velvets lick, a ‘70s gospel horn refrain – and sticking to it, repeating and developing it until the tape runs out (or the drugs wear off). It’s as strong an approach as it ever was, and if nothing on Everything Was Beautiful feels truly essential to anyone with the Spiritualized back catalogue, it’s also a glowing example of their aesthetic. As the Arvo Pärt strings and mournful tolling bell at the end of 'I’m Coming Home Again' fade away, you’ll be happy to go back and start listening to all these endings once again.

Thribbed for her Pleasure

When people die we often say they had a good innings.  It's a cricket analogy.  But, by extension, when someone dies at 17, we don't say they had a lacklustre innings.  When a baby does we don't all shout "out for a duck!", do we?  Double standards.

KIRAN LEONARD/ DEAR LAIKA/ AIDEN CANADAY, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Centre, 6/3/22

Aiden Canaday, who is both opening act and part of the promotion team, explains the otherwise inscrutable ‘Colour of a Lion’ by noting that his songs are mostly about “people who I love who are dead”, making him the sentimental, symbolist  EJ Thribb. Delivered with a tentative, lightly quavering voice over guitar plucks, accordion wheezes or stabs at the venue’s janky old joanna, the songs might often seem undercooked, but deliver unexpected moments of beauty, and we’ll take that over practised consistency any day. All too swiftly, the set is over. So, farewell, then, Aiden. “I left out the chorus, because I don’t know how to play it,” that was your catchphrase.  

Two of Kiran Leonard’s Trespass On Foot band perform as Dear Laika before the main event. Their set enacts a battle between songwriting and production, light and melodic keyboard songs being subjected to the sorts of extreme delay, flutter, and distortion that make William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops sound like smooth lift Muzak. There’s a track that sounds like the wistful ghost of Laurie Anderson on a malfunctioning transistor radio, one that sounds like a cyborg choir singing John Tavener, and one that sounds like Aimee Mann produced by a puckish, shitfaced King Tubby. There are times when you wish that the treatments were less extreme, and times you fear the songs aren’t all strong enough to survive without them, but it’s hard not to love a piece that sounds like ‘Pyramid Song’ with random interventions by Vangelis (puckish and shit-faced, naturally).

The tones are more earthy for Leonard’s band, consisting of a trio of guitars, a cittern, and arco double bass. The opening is wonderful, a chamber Godspeed You Black Emperor! piece with frantically strummed chords coming in fizzing waves, like a spring tide filled with Alka-Seltzer. This is followed by almost whimsically abstract folk, in the vein of The Incredible String Band, before a third track comes in with a vocal line so strong and sinewy it could have been borrowed from sources as diverse as a sixteenth-century Norfolk crabber’s song to a lost Maxïmo Park single. The set is as eclectic as it is enthralling, with Leonard playing unusual but still folky guitar lines like a Vorticist Richard Thompson, and boasting a surprise bass solo that’s all gruff harmonics and seagull laments. By the time the night finishes with an epic, hypnotic track built on a simple bass motif that’s like a recreation of the Fire: Walk With Me pink room music recreated a at west country barndance, all you can do is close your eyes and sway like a loon.  So, farewell then, dignity...

Beauty & The Beats?

I don't like this album quite as much as the one in the last review.  And it is sometimes actively annoying.  but I do respect it despite this.  Or because.

WALT DISCO – UNLEARNING (Lucky Number)

Pop music has always been partly a visual medium. But whereas in the past fans of Soft Cell, one of Walt Disco’s shiny spiritual progenitors, would have had to rely on record sleeves, glossy magazine shots and the odd Top Of The Pops appearance to excite the eye, nowadays there are fans who consume all their music through YouTube and Vimeo, and to those people Walt Disco are, frankly, a gift. Pick a video at random, and the sextet are liable to be dolled up in some warpaint-smothered abstract glam, looking as though The Mighty Boosh’s Vince Noir had started managing a volleyball team. The sartorial influences are clear, from Bowie and Roxy Music (especially Eno, whose feather boa seems to have tickled vocalist James Potter in every shot), to New York Dolls and a whole roster of new romantics, and there’s a healthy post-gender sensibility at play: the new rule is, wear whatever you please...so long as it’s spectacular!

But for most of us, visuals will always take second place to the music no matter how much riotous fun they are, and it’s pleasing that, like the creators of the best queer pop throughout history, Walt Disco take the theatrical transgression beyond the dressing-up box and into the music. A proscenium archness is applied like thick greasepaint at every conceivable point. At its simplest, this means a camp thespian formalism to the performances. 'How Cool Are You?' opens with a sneering “la la la” refrain which could have backed the emcee from Cabaret, and the song is suitably world-weary and worldly -wise, rather cutely rhyming “leather clothes” with “clever pose”.  'Cut Your Hair' is a wonky new wave track from an alternative universe where gusty Duran Duran songs were backed by Oingo Boingo, and its performative bluster is essentially a weaponised version of parent-conusing in 'Oh! You Pretty Things', with the sparkle-barked throw-down “You say we're stupid, I say you're old/ Since when did you grow so stupidly cold?”.  The track has a scribbled little guitar solo, which is so drenched in post-production effects it owes more to Skrillex than Hendrix.

In this, it is typical of the whole album.  If Unlearning were a person there would be not one inch of natural flesh on display, everything is treated, tinted, tweaked and tucked.  'Selfish Lover' is a sheeny plastic banger blitzed by FX, a dizzying hi-NRG discollage of Sparks and Japan, whilst 'Be An Actor' has a mutant rubbery bass which could have come from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, with an ultra-Bowie vocal (presumably the actor in question is cracked).  Whilst this can make for an intense, and intensely contemporary, album some of the ersatz sonics can grate, and the vocals sometimes leap from the studied and theatrical and land in the pantomime where even Adam Ant might start to consider reining it in – if you want to know what a wounded elk sounds like singing in the shower after a bottle of mescal, check out the vocal on 'Timeline', which honks out a preposterous torch song which isn’t a thousand curtain calls away from something like 'Please Release Me'.

Even in this, the album is knowing, marking the half-way point with an instrumental entr’acte entitled 'The Costume Change', and thereafter the tone is more refined (though no less tragic, as the blasted torch song 'Those Kept Close' can testify, with its autotuned cries of despair echoing in the background). The last two tracks on the album are amongst the most effective. 'Macilent' is a masterclass in camp dominion, a Sisters Of Mercy/Depeche Mode industro-clang, listening to which it is impossible not to visualise oil barrels being beaten in an aircraft hangar, before 'If I Had A Perfect Life' descends into the seventh circle of distraction, with a V/Vm damned piano leading the band of into the wings as the cosmic houselights come back up.  For some the relentless artificiality of this album will make it hard going, and is likely that Walt Disco will make better records, but as a debut this is assured, individual, and liable to incite a thousand arguments about teenage clothing choices. Like all the best pop music.

Oto Trader

I very much like this album.  I'm not even sure why.  I feel as though it should be annoying.  But it's not.  It's great.

DESTROYER - LABYRINTHITIS (Bella Union)

If you were half-listening to Destroyer’s thirteenth album, you’d think it was decent. It‘s relatively tuneful, and nods towards some very trendy mid-eighties production techniques, somewhat in the style of Cut Copy, with some bonus disco rhythms and Art of Noise chunky beats keeping the party perky. Yeah, well done; great job; let’s move on. The more attention you pay, however, the more you discover everything about this album is somehow delightfully wrong. The full listening experience is perplexing, intriguing, sometimes perhaps infuriating, but rarely less than intoxicating. 

Musically, all the individual elements make sense, but tend to be placed together with artful abandon, joints and seams left on display. The opening few seconds of the album are an absolute rhythmic car crash, before 'It’s In Your Heart Now' coalesces into a goth amble, melancholic synth pads wreathing everything in a thick fog, before a quietly euphoric Manzanera guitar soars in at the three-minute mark. June is even more off-kilter. It starts like a pastiche of an Alexander O’Neal jam, Dan Bejar’s vocal peeping through lush plastic foliage of syn-toms, slinky guitar and twinkling keys, with fragments of egregious slap bass popping up unexpectedly and unpredictable synth noises and muted trumpet bimble about in the middle distance; but the strangest element is a low fruity beat poet voice which is dropped in near the end, apparently in mid-sentence, with the kind of self-assured ham-fisted edit that Fall albums had whenever the producer let Mark E Smith near the mixing desk. 

Considering this knowing sonic confection, the vocal delivery is suitably arch. There are moments of simple, melodic intimacy, but these are generally balanced by a snide camp acidity, as if Colin Vearncombe from Black had been taken over by Quentin Crisp. On occasion an elegantly blasted romanticism a la Hefner can be discerned, but a more frequent reference point would be the ironic carnival patter of Dave Couse from A House (but with extra irony). Strangest of all is the theatrically arcane intonation of lead single 'Tintoretto, It’s For You', which opens with the hammy exclamation “Do you remember the mythic beast?”, like we’re watching the Aphrodite’s Child panto: this is Bejar as trickster imp, who will ask you three riddles, and pick your pockets whilst you consider the answers.

It’s lyrically where this album is most original and idiosyncratic, though.  Sententious quips like “You’d pay good money for a million dollar view” could have come from the pen of Art Brut’s Eddie Argos, whereas poetic, painterly images such as “You lose your umbrella to the sideways rain” are more like extracts from The Blue Aeroplanes’ spidery notebooks. Elsewhere you’ll find gnostic nonsense, and the koans of potty-mouthed Zen masters: on how many albums cold you learn both that “Time and space combine and remain meaningless” and “Snow angles are just fucking idiots”? Typically the title track, where you might expect to find answers, is an instrumental, a lovely snaking synth bass overlaid with a collage of repitched vocal fragments and wordless child samples, sounding like both Boards of Canada and Jean-Michel Jarre’s best, though least known, album Zoolook.

The album ends beautifully. 'The States' is all misty-eyed keyboards and bouncy drums like The Beloved without the 3am ecstasy glow, or forgotten ‘80s act Kon Kan without the wacky-uncle wink, but the last two and a half minutes consist solely of echoing distorted notes stretching back into an extreme De Chirico perspective. Just when you think this is the end, 'The Last Song' arrives, a little ditty with the facepaint sincerity Lou Reed managed on Goodnight Ladies. It’s lovely and moving even as it apparently says nothing. The subject of the song moves to LA and we see them “fake say” hello and goodbye, but it’s hard to say whether the track is snide or affectionate. Maybe it’s both - after all, as June notes, “You have to look at it from all angles, says the Cubist judge”.

The title Labyrinthitis might bring to mind a vast maze, which is fitting because this album gets more mystifying the deeper in you venture. It’s actually a disease of the inner ear, which is even more apposite: this music gets into your head and makes you feel dizzy.

The Goller out of Bass

Why do so many people take their young kids to Costa in Tesco?  Do they think it's like a great day out?  Do they think it's designed for crawling and running up and down?  Unwarranted grouse, I admit, but it gets on my tits, I'm just trying to do the crossword quietly after my shopping.

This was a really good gig, though I confess I was done with it about 20 minutes before the 72 minutes were up.

RUTH GOLLER - OCM, Holywell Music Room, 15/2/22

Some musical combinations just feel right, no matter how many times they’re heard: power trio; string quartet; bebop five-piece; “three MCs and one DJ”, as the Beasties put it. But there’s plenty of scope for new or atypical ensembles, and tonight Ruth Goller from Melt Yourself Down and Acoustic Ladyland - though perhaps most celebrated round these parts as a member of the excellent Bug Prentice - presents her album Skylla using a bass guitar and three vocalists: this makes sense if you know that Skylla, or more commonly Scylla in English, was a multi-headed monster from Greek myth.  The folk-horror angle is amplified by the band’s decision to wear head-dresses that look like stylised animal skulls adorned with black feathers, as if they’re the Summerisle choral society.

The vocals are fascinatingly fragmented, each of the three singers often delivering single words, or even dissected phonemes or disconnected mouth effects, rather than fluid melodic lines. This creates a mysterious pointillist effect, a haze of individual vocal moments hanging in the air, or overlapping, more like a Cubist version of a single singer than any traditional chamber choir.  This method fleetingly brings to mind many varied reference points, from the Stockhausen of Hymnen, to early Laurie Anderson, to Funkstörung’s Björk remixes, to an undead Swingle Singers trudging into a dessicated wassail. Sometimes, however, the voices come together to deliver a melody in close harmony, and the effect is shocking, like a blurred and jumbled image snapping briefly into focus: the line “you left too soon, I lost my soul” feels especially chilling. The bass tends to keep in the background, generally adding little clusters of harmonics behind the skein of voices, but there are stretches of solo work, which can sound like a wall of NYC loft guitar, or snippets of cues from a 70s spy movie, or even a first wave grunge bassist trying to play like Ornette Coleman.

The monster Scylla is most famous when paired with Charybdis, a deadly whirlpool, and to be “between Scylla and Charybdis” means you’re treading a dangerous path. In a way Goller is doing just this, presenting what is effectively a solid 75-minute piece which often feels more like the floating space debris from an exploded song than a cohesive whole, but ultimately Goller and her supremely talented vocal trio navigate this tricky route, doubtless to continue their musical odyssey elsewhere.

Vowel Movement

Top tip: if you do the vacuuming, and your eyes start to water profusely, it means it's been too ong since you last did the vacuuming.

IOE AIE – SHELLS (DDC Music)

The band name looks like something your untrustworthy uncle would try to play in Scrabble – “But it’s the rutting call of the Kenyan ice otter!” – though it stands for It’s Only Ever Autumn In England. Climate scientists might refute this assertion, but it’s typical of the wry poetic chilliness of this new trio, featuring occasional Foals collaborator Kit Montieth. Their debut album Shells is an intoxicating collection of crepuscular techno tracks intertwined with sententiously intoned vocals, like an introspective, slightly paranoid Underworld.  Opener ‘Four Quarters’ sets the tone by coupling knotty, pun-laden lines with a misty version of a club banger, as if Faithless had been formed by Faber & Faber editors, with a hypnotic high-speed train rhythm only emphasising an air of hollow sadness (Trans-Europe Depressed, anyone?).

Elsewhere there is almost a whiff of oiled EBM leather to ‘Divide’, a soupy late Orb digidub haze to ‘The Pacific’, and a dizzying synth build worthy of Luke Slater to the second half of ‘Autumn In England’, but perhaps ‘18’ will cause the biggest waves, a wryly mournful coming-of-age magic realist narrative delivered over a relentlessly snaking ostinato, like a rave comedown version of writer Kirk Lake’s experiments in sonic storytelling.  The final track, ‘Cities & Memory’, proffers a funkier samba-like rhythm and global travelogue lyrics, but it’s not urbane windswept euphoria that will bring you back to this excellent album, but the melancholic mystery at its secret heart: dark autumn nights are eternal, and mellow fruitfulness is off the menu.

O Rother, Here Art Thou

I don't usually get smug about things I wrote, but I do feel that describing albums like Phaedra and Rubycon as sounding "like they were made by robots controlled by the weather" is pretty much on the money.  You can see this piece in its natual habitat at https://www.musicomh.com/reviews/albums/michael-rother-and-vittoria-maccabruni-as-long-as-the-light

MICHAEL ROTHER & VITTORIA MACCABRUNI – AS LONG AS THE LIGHT (Grönland Records)

Sometimes, listening back, one can be surprised at how human a lot of krautrock sounds, no matter how many times journalistic shorthand refers to the music as “motorik”. At one end of the genre are the communal freak-out bands, like Amon Düül, who are so earthy you can almost smell the unwashed hair and a pot of lentils bubbling away in the corner, but even the sleekest kosmische combos betray the emotional meat controlling the sounds: Neu! have the energy of an excited garage band no matter how streamlined the music gets, Jaki Liebezeit could play like a metronome but Can still sound like a band who want to get you drunk and take you out on the town, and even Kraftwerk have always been more man than machine. Arguably, the only act from the kraut pantheon who truly managed to erase their humanity were Tangerine Dream, whose mid-70s sequencer-driven albums sound like they were made by robots controlled by the weather (and even they discarded this and became a ponderous synth-rock band a few years later).

Which is interesting because this new album by Michael Rother (founder member of Neu! and Harmonia, and briefly a guitarist in Kraftwerk’s early days) and Vittoria Maccabruni is often chilly and dispassionate in the way that vintage krautrock rarely was, and amongst the electronica even Rother’s guitar parts seem designed to sound as clinical as possible. It’s also often rather lovely, once you let yourself be carried by the machine-honed linear rhythms and the simple melodies. “Edgy Smiles”, the lead single, sums up the approach, opening with pointillist little notes that are like Tibetan temple bells played by the cheeky Moog on trash classic “Popcorn”, which are soon underpinned by a brooding rhythm, and joined by a buzzing nasal guitar line that sounds like the work of a cyborg Santana or a mecha-Mike Oldfield. The composition is elementary and many of the sounds unashamedly dated, and it resembles nothing so much as the theme to a mid-80s prime time drama show theme without any of the, err, drama: imagine a version of Airwolf penned by Harold Pinter. What’s most noteworthy about the album is how many old-fashioned thin and tinny synth tones it uses, without ever being a nostalgic pastiche; if you want drums that kick or bass that shudders, best look elsewhere, but if you want skirls of cheap white noise like in an Amiga game set in the Arctic tundra, the opening of “exp1” is for you. 

Sometimes it feels as though this album is an attempt to engage with the music tech of the late 80s and early 90s, but with the pervasive influence of techno and other dancefloor-oriented genres completely shrugged off (although the toms at the start of “See Through” might remind some of The Drum Club’s chill-out classic “Follow The Sun”).  “Curfewd” has an enjoyable low-key menace, and could be the tension underscore to a stalking scene in some vintage piece of video store schlock, like Trancers or Maniac Cop, whereas “CodriveMe” has a rhythm built from quantised heartbeats and iron lung respirations, although again it doesn’t use this robo-flesh ambience to create any sort of Tetsuo body horror, and has an unthreatening pedestrian lope, which could soundtrack a benign Darth Vader taking his servo-suit for a walk down to the post office to mail his tax return. There’s also a little hint of spaghetti western to the shimmering heat-haze guitar in the track’s second half, and is the closest Rother gets to expressiveness in his playing...which is, frankly, not very, and even Father Dougal probably wouldn’t break out his “Easy now” placard in response.

The album’s only misstep is “You Look At Me”, which is like a drizzly minimal half-tempo take on a rave-pop anthem. The frost-rimed sound is pleasing, but Maccabruni’s vocals are neither glacial and impersonal enough to build an atmosphere nor engaging enough make the melody live. Far more successful are the reverbed vocal fragments of “Forget This”, which creates a stately sonic miasma like a foursquare Seefeel.

The album brings back that western movie feel for the final track, offering us a slow ride into the digital sunset in “Happy (Slow Burner)”. Whilst this album might be understated and deliberately lacking in emotion, it does indeed hold the power to make you happy.

 

 

You Gotta Get (Further) Up To Get (Further) Down!

This is not an astonishing review, but I wrote it when I had COVID - actually, I have a strong suspicion I contracted it at this gig - and wasn't feeling very good; that's my excuse and you can't prove otherwise.  Oh, unless you're one of those clever people who can poove COVID is made up, of course, naturally your arguments are incontrovertible.

DEEPER/ HURTLING/ MOOGIEMAN & THE MASOCHISTS, Divine Schism, Jericho, 9/12/21

One of the pleasures of this job is watching poor acts becoming good. But even more so is watching good acts become unexpectedly better. Down the road tonight, Young Knives are touring their fifth, and definitely best, album whereas we’re watching The Masochists. We thought they’d penned their career highlight in ‘Mr Curator’, a mandelbrot-mutating satirical rant about industry “creatives” which is like a Nathan Barley treatment written by Wyndham Lewis and Allen Ginsberg, but they followed it with the astonishing freeze-dried Frankie Knuckles funk of ‘Ghost Driver’. Both these are played tonight, yet are eclipsed by new tracks: ‘Psychotronic Dream’ is a Moorcock acid travelogue squeezed into a krautrock version of 60s garage, and elsewhere some unnervingly intoned monologues ride the minimal thrum of a pop band having a crack at Basic Channel. Frankly, we don't dare guess what they’ll do by December 2022.

We’ve not seen Hurtling before, so can’t comment on their development, but our expectations from the opening song were proven wrong, as a refined shoegazey elegance gave way to some more visceral power trio noise. We’re reminded of Belly – not that Hurtling sound like them, but both bands’ ostensibly elegant arty pop soon exhibits a love of old-fashioned rocking out. Not that this is a problem, mind, as they nod towards the less emotional end of grunge, a la Tad or Mudhoney, or perhaps Sonic Youth in their more straightforward mode.  Perhaps none of the songs will set up home in your head, but the sound is gloriously powerful (as you might imagine when one member plays in My Bloody Valentine’s touring outfit).

Chicago’s Deeper don’t give us time to make assumptions about their sound, they simply pick us up and hurl us into the middle of it. They trade in uptight elastic rock in the manner of Devo, but with all pristine edges frayed and surfaces smeared with oily finger-marks. Their concise rock bulletins have an insouciant urban swagger, like Wire multiplied by the Strokes, and occasionally they go for a more atmospheric yelp and become an amphetramine-addled Cure, but whatever variation they apply, the music remains infectiously taut, and the performance authoritative but joyfully relaxed (and Shiraz Bhatti’s drumming is relentlessly fantastic). Forget this job, watching bands like Deeper is a pleasure for anyone, full stop.