Fragmentating Rhythm

 Reviewed a mystery record. Really liked a mystery record. Everything's coming up Jazzhouse.

BEATS & PIECES BIG BAND – BIG IDEAS (Efpi Records) 

Three times in this zine I’ve reviewed, not my favourite album, but a record I’d recently bought and never heard before. I’m not sure why, but it’s either that I’m wary of the process of public self-curation and the ossification of critical canons, or it’s that choosing a record to review is much more hassle than actually reviewing it. But at least previously I’ve had some sort of leg-up. I reviewed an album I’d bought from a band I’d seen live, I reviewed an album by a band of whom I was aware, and even at my biggest reach I reviewed an album by someone I’d never heard of, but it was a tribute to Charlie Parker and I definitely know who he was. 

But this time I’m reviewing an album by Beats & Pieces Big Band, about whom I know nothing, on a label that is a new name to me, that I bought from the charity shop recently. I can’t empirically prove it, but I inferred it had been donated by the same person who’d donated CDs by Django Bates and Dave Douglas that I’d already stuck in the basket, so I took it.  What’s a quid, eh? 

In this case, it’s an excellent price, this is a very strong album. Big bands can be wonderful, but one thing they’re not traditionally associated with is variation. They can be huge, classy cruise liners, cutting elegantly through a calm sea of legato melody, they can be smokily sophisticated, puffing up scented billows of muted trumpet atop which singers in evening dress may float serenely, and they can be clanking jazz factories, steam pouring from every corner, baritone saxes skronking at right angles like loose pistons...but once they set up a sound, they usually stay there. Beats & Pieces go on unusual dynamic journeys, and we get this in the very first bars, ‘Bake’ opening with a brassy blast which immediately drops to a simple 4/4 drum pattern, which is soon joined by some crackly digital thunder – if it was just a loose lead on the bass it sounds great, so they were right to leave it in – and then suddenly we’re in a wah-wah a Rhodes playground which is pure 70s cop show (OK, OK, or 70s porn). This is followed by ‘Yafw (Part III)’ which is an odd name for a second track, but even more odd is the machine-tooled systems music piano part, which sounds like ‘Take 5’ recomposed by robot Steve Reich. The third track is ‘Three’ (makes more sense) which pulls the rug from beneath us entirely, a rambunctious opening dropping to a slow bass wander, with tiny insectile trumpet parts, before slowly building to a riotous conclusion. 

I won’t bore you with an equivalent play-by-play of every track, but there are certainly lots of different pieces stitched together by this band – and there a few beats too, ‘Elf’ leaning towards a New Orleans funk strut, and ‘Anymore’ alternating between thoughtful, limpid piano and a chunky groove which is approximately doom trip-hop. Perhaps the biggest surprise is ‘Broken’, the eighth and last track on the CD which begins with slow glacial tones like one of ECM’s most ambient releases (though less reverby, natch). Unexpectedly a vocal enters, though she doesn’t sit atop the band like Ella or Frank would, she’s hidden in the middle of the mix, her tone unassuming and reticent, like a ghost asking for directions. The end of the track drifts quietly away, dissipating like mist. What a lovely, rich album. And funnily enough I popped into a charity shop just yesterday, and found another Beast & Pieces Big Band CD, which I snapped up for 99p. It was released in 2015, so come back in a few months, you never know... 

The Foggy Foggy Duplicate

Another post already? Yep, and we're looking at 2011 this time. The year march onwards at a speed of 12:1.

ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER – REPLICA (Software) 

The irony of boundaries is that they look more logical the further away from them you are.  

Imagine someone being gutted at not being allowed to buy a single beer one day before their 18th birthday who would have shrugged 12 months before. By the same logic a hair metal band would be perfectly happy about what constitutes grindcore, whereas a Carcass acolyte might well laugh at you for suggesting that they should be filed under this heading, sniffily asking whether you’ve even heard of goregrind. Seems like the only thing more contentious than trying to define the stylistic edges of a genre is trying to pinpoint where it began. 

However, if you wanted to find one of the main tributaries that fed into what became known as vaporwave - God, how I hate leaving out that U, but I guess if there were ever a movement where tiny branding decisions were significant, vaporwave is it – watch a brief 2009 video by sunsetcorp, a YouTube account with a whole 8 videos to its name, entitled ‘Nobody Here’. It’s a tiny, misty loop of Chris De Burgh’s ‘Lady In Red’ accompanied by a video of a cheap feedback effect from the VHS era. It’s a beautiful piece of work, somehow heartbreaking because the source material is so hackneyed...but having said this, a fresh listen reveals that musically ‘Lady In Red’ is actually pretty great, though De Burgh’s vocal is pompous and preening, and the lyrics are trite (plus if he “hardly knows” the woman why is he surprised he’s “never seen” her looking so nice and so many people asking her to dance? Unless he’s a stalker. Which frankly I wouldn’t put past De Burgh (Legal note: I would put it past De Burgh)). It turns out that this video was the work of Daniel Lopatin, AKA Oneohtrix Point Never – I won’t tell you the derivation of this stupid name because it just makes it even stupider – and he released the audio with a generic matrix title on his 2010 album Chuck Person’s Eccojams Volume 1. This album effectively marked the dawn of vaporwave, though a thousand people will argue that I’ve got this wrong. From my own point of view, vaporwave is intriguing as it’s the first time a retro, nostalgia-driven cultural form was too recent for me: yes, I recognised what they were talking about, but I never experienced it. I didn’t use CD-ROMs at school, I’ve never played Ecco The Dolphin. I understood the glances backwards, but I didn’t feel them (the –algia suffix in “nostalgia” denotes pain, but my memories of the mid-90s Gap website, or whatever, are fully anaesthetised). 

Anyway, although the Chuck Person release got lots of trendy column inches (digital or otherwise) it was the following year’s Replica that made more of an impact (everything’s relative, mind, Lopatin is hardly Bono). It is primarily built on small, looped synth or piano elements, some of which are so short I’m certain they are supposed to evoke skipping CDs, enshrouded in slightly degraded tape sounds (though it’s all for textural effect, if you want to hear some true crumbling tape noise check out The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski from earlier in the millennium). Listening again now, I’m surprised at how lovely this album is, and it achieves something far beyond a knowing wink towards the reference points. 

Highpoints include the opener ‘Andro’ which features a tumble of percussion above a wistful fuzzy synth which sounds like the quiet intro to a happy hardcore banger, and as such is a little reminiscent of V/Vm’s Death of Rave project from a few years earlier; the minuscule fragments of Romantic piano that make up ‘Power of Persuasion’, which are overlaid by an epically melancholy Blade Runner synth; the big low vox-humana keys and loud crunchy eruptions of ‘Remember’, which sound like someone striking giant matches in a robot monastery; the title track’s little aspirated vocal sounds, which could equally be Ladysmith Black Mambazo or Rolf Harris; the little repeated moment in ‘Up’ which sounds like a snatch from a corporate ident, making us feel as though we’re digitally flying repeatedly between two vast chrome letters in a hangar made of clouds. If there’s a low point it’s the beat-em-up FX as semi-rhythmic percussion on ‘Child Soldier’, which become a tad annoying.  

The album ends with ‘Explain’, a pleasing group of FM-synthesis angels crooning. Eno’s first ambient album was subtitled Music for Airports, but this actually sounds like being stuck next to a tiny looping digital billboard in a busy duty-free perfume concession. Except, you know, really lovely. How Lopatin managed to take such annoyingly naff material and make it sing is the alchemical mystery at the heart of this record. This may be all tarnished rubbish, but I’ve never seen it shine so bright. 

It was amazing. 

 

 

 

 

 

Twinkle Pickers

Now that Nightshift has finished, I'm not really reviewing new records or gigs. I'm sure that something will arise to replace it, or I'll find another outlet, but in the interim all I'm writing is the retrospective's for LFTWY.  So here's one of them.

FUZZY LIGHTS – TWIN FEATHERS (Little Red Rabbit Records) 

I’m mystified when acts stick to a single format for releasing their material, and especially so when that format is vinyl. I like vinyl well enough, but what I like less is spending £25 on a big awkward record at a gig, manhandling the delicate thing back home on the bus, and then only ever playing it in a single room in the house. I’d say, balancing portability, durability, quality, and price, CD is the best format. Why wouldn’t a musician wish to cater for all preferences on the merch table in these straitened times? It’s crazy how often I’ve witnessed potential customers turning away when they discover that big platters are the only thing on offer – the concept that nobody plays CDs now is a big fat myth. 

I mention this because, in April, I saw Cambridgeshire’s Fuzzy lights play a great gig in Oxford, a huge, beautiful burst of “What if ‘Sister Ray’ were an English folk song?” fiddle-spiced intensity (if you’d like to read more about this gig, check out the write-up at https://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2026/may.pdf). I was doubly delighted to find that the table in the corner was groaning with CDs, dating back some years, and when there’s good merch, I purch. One of the two CDs I bought happened to come out in 2010, so it's time for one of my trademark first-listen reviews (you can rest assured nobody else in this publication is going to start doing something so stupid). 

Obscura: 2-note glock, 2-note guitar at a higher tempo, lambent strings, musical saw. This is very different to what I witnessed at the gig, it’s refined music, and almost sounds as though it could be part of the soundtrack to an episode of Poirot (one where the mystery he cannot solve is the human condition). 

Fallen Trees: This has a fuller sound, the strong violin lines and underlying chords have anslightly klezmeric, East European air. The vocals are soft but commanding, and could be a lost innocent child, or an ageless sorcerer. A long cymbal-thrashing crescendo has more of the DNA of the show I attended. 

Through Water: The guitar part is reminiscent of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, and this time we have a male voice. It sounds like a Mark Lanegan song lost in a snow blizzard. It’s quite lovely. 

The Museum Song: The last track felt chilly, this one is more like the heat haze from summer tarmac. The violin and guitar are as great as previous tracks, but I’m noticing the bassist now for the first time, who has some nicely intertwining little lines. The drums are malleted and unobtrusive. This may be about a museum but as there are no vocals, it’s hard to be certain. Ooh, gorgeous little pizzicato overdub at the end. 

Lucida: Harmonium, and quite gorgeous silky violin lines that sound as though they’re about to go into ‘The Lark Ascending’.  I had no idea that Rachel Watkins could also play this sort of sophisticated chamber folk as well as the raucous wails I witnessed live. 

Rituals: With it’s strummed acoustic and hushed male voice this is perhaps a tad too polite. Frankly something weighty and more ritualistic wouldn’t go amiss. The saw makes a welcome return though, and once the trombone comes in it picks up. This possibly didn’t need to be the longest track on the album at 8.13.  

Shipwrecks: Less the sound of vessels scuppered on vicious rocks, more a chill wind blowing between the spars of a long-destroyed vessel on a bleak shoreline. Although I typed that before the last two minutes absolutely exploded into post-rock noise,so what do I know? 

Slowing Time: Like a dewy-eyed folk version of Slint. 

The Sea And The Weather: A yielding, fuzzy ditty to end. I might have expected the crescendo of two tracks ago to conclude the album, but perhaps that’s too obvious. 

Well, that was a lovely listen. I guess not as viscerally exciting as the concert, and I suspect the more recent albums, and maybe the record sticks to a narrow furrow, but there ae many worse ways to spend an hour of bank holiday Sunday than this. Though you can doubtless enjoy this album whenever you like. And, hell, I’ll even let you off if you have it on tape. 

  

Nighty Night

Here it is, my last ever review for Nightshift. Just last night I was in a sold-out Bully to celebrate Ronan's achievements with the mag, and his impact on the local music scene. I don't know where I'll find an editor who is so open and supportive and who likes my sense of humour, writing style and opinions that sometimes push against his own. Actually, I do: nowhere. Sad days.

I may have been a tad generous with this review, but what the hell, last ever, let's all be chums.

LUNAR KITES – THE DOOMSTAR CHRONICLES (Self-release) 

 “This is my last ever Nightshift review, I hope it’s not meandering strums from some bloke lamenting how his girlfriend has sodded off, or a sloppy indie band drawling about fights at the chip shop when you know they rarely leave the public school common room.” 

“No. It’s about space wizards.” 

“Result!” 

Yes, as befits a record called The DoomStar Chronicles, this is overblown, preposterous space rock. The opener ‘Interstellar Shout’ is so silly and puffed up it could be waving its arms outside a car dealership, but it’s also red giant-sized fun, from the morse code intro to the impeccably pitched inhuman calm of the AI-hostess spoken section, to the chest-beating chorus banging on about “destiny and fate”.   

Lunar Kites are not subtle, existing somewhere between the wonkier end of Eurovision and Ozric Tentacles in panto, but one can be monstrously unsubtle and still be a great listen, that’s the beauty of pop music. ‘Avoid All Droids’ is possible the pick of the bunch, a Hawkwind hoedown with a brilliantly deranged cyborg repeating the title, but there’s plenty to pick out elsewhere, like the 80s ambient intro to ‘The Final Voyage Of The P7E’, the spacious Dave Gilmour guitar on ‘Rivers’, or the bassline to ‘Pink Lounge’, which sounds like Primus-funk in a syrup jacuzzi. Maybe the foursquare Floyd of ‘Heavy Air’ is inessential, but over all The DoomStar Chronicles is the perfect grooving soundtrack for an intergalactic road trip. Two thumbs (and an few alien pseudopods) up! 

Dropper's Delight

A fun one. Russ reviewed my choice of Scott Walker's The Drift, which he didn't enjoy but did respect.  I reviewed his choice of The Pipetes, and I...well, read on...

THE PIPETTES – WE ARE THE PIPETTES, Memphis Industries 

Russell and I have decided to review each other’s alums this issue. Please do not search for a reason. We are merely seeking to stave off the ennui of existence. That means I’m reviewing an album I’ve never heard, though the act name rang a bell. It’s a good name, isn’t it? Conjuring 60s girl groups and Spector-stable teenpop, but also sounding like a band made up of science teachers (reminds me that I’ve always thought that a great name for a band of off-duty middle managers is The Lanyards). The sound matches the name, being plasticky B-52s neo-trash garage with a girly punk edge - think “Shampoo are in the sixth form now”. The opening pairing of ‘We Are The Pipettes’ and ‘Pull Shapes’ is winning and frothy, and ‘Why Did You Stay?’ adds a little more substance, with grown-up strings, some vintage Cliff guitar and a few ‘Leader of the Pack’ backing vocals. ‘Dirty Mind’ is a little generic, though, and most notable for threatening to go into Maxine Nightingale’s ‘Right Back Where We Started From’. 

‘Judy’ is a highlight, a mid-80s Shakin’ Stevens song with some Grange Hill lyrics. It’s not a huge step away from Pulp, with the lyrics retelling a kitchen-sink microdrama. However there are a couple of tracks like ‘A Winter’s Sky’ on the album that are kind of forgettable; the trouble with pasticheing these 60s girl groups is that they usually had absolutely smoking vocals, whereas The Pipettes, for all their charm, are more Bananarama than The Supremes when it comes to vocal chops. And this means the tunes have to be top notch to stand out, whereas ‘Tell Me What You Want’s is merely fine, sounding like a late-80s Phil Collins number (it’s those strings) I’d much rather have the ‘Hey, Mickey’ steal that is ‘Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me’ any day. 

I’m listening on YouTube, which is not normal for me as a hard-media evangelist – Jesus, the adverts – but it does mean that I can tell that ‘Because It’s Not Love (But It’s Still A Feeling)’ was a single, as there’s a video to watch. The tune is a nice soda-pop hop, with handclaps and everything, and the visuals are bright and cheerful, even if they look like an unadventurous Eurovision staging from 2014 (I think it’s the strange box the girls keep getting in). Suitably for a single it has the richest vocals so far on the album, with some pleasing harmonies. 

‘Sex’ is less fun that the name threatens, but ‘One Night Stand’ is more bouncily enjoyable, and at 1.40 is a perfect length for music of this sort (insert joke about average length of sexual encounters here). Ooh, ‘ABC’ is another single. But it misses a trick by animating the band members rather than capturing their natural charm - seriously this looks like the credits of some knock-off Channel 5 version of Eurotrash which doesn’t have any rude bits. The song is decent and sprightly, despite having an awkward line in the chorus that is at least a syllable too long, but calling your throwback teen-pop song ‘ABC’ is tempting fate considering that’s one of the true greats: might as well call it ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ or ‘Beethoven’s 9th'. Oh, wait, is it the end of the LP already? ‘I Love You’ is rather sweet, and then we’re done. Well, that was most enjoyable. Perhaps there were about three tracks that felt inessential, but it’s hardly the first album I can say that about, and considering only one track here breaks the three-minute mark, these missteps don’t last long. Nice one, Russ, thanks for the recommendation, good unpretentious pop music. I’m off to buy a pencil case I so I can write the band’s name on it in biro. 

Zu Format

Another from LFTWY, we're up to 2009 here.  The 2010 issue is out now, if you have a couple of quid doing nothing.

ZU – CARBONIFEROUS (Ipecac) 

16 or 17 years ago my friend James announced he’d booked Italian heavy prog-noise act Zu to play in Oxford. It was a last minute arrangement, he’d missed the deadlines for mention in publications, but he threw up a poster or two in the venue. It was a Sunday night. About 12 people attended. James lost loads of money (somehow, the fact that he’d bought the three of them towels for their rider tickled me more than is reasonable). Still, despite that unfortunate red entry in his ledger, the other 11 punters and I had a wonderful time with their baritone sax-led chunk punk action (it was a baritone, but I seem to recall that they, or possibly James, called their style “death bassoon”). 

This 2009 album is as good a way of experiencing their sound as any, and a fascinating sound it is, lead-heavy but fleet-footed simultaneously, squealing sax flayed above fat rock rhythms spattered with digital detritus. They can thump, they can churn, and they can, on occasion, even boogie, dropping discoid hi-hat rhythms into the midst of the bludgeon (and listen to the bass in ‘Beata Viscera’, it’s positively funk-adjacent). ‘Cthonian’ is typical, sounding like a rusty android stretching in the morning whilst a pile driver smashes concrete just outside the window. But, then, maybe ‘Carbon’ is also typical, foregrounding the snorting sax to create a hyperactive grot-jazz hoedown in hell. It’s a surprisingly varied album, with a track like ‘Axion’ being both a head-down speed-industrial pummelling and a pensive film noir cue. 

‘Soulympics’ may have an unforgivably naff title, but the glossolalia void growls are gripping, and the pylon-thrum bass sounds equal parts Fugazi and (very early) Therapy? There are even some nearly melodic vocals over the top. ‘Mimosa Hostilis’ sounds like a forklift with diarrhoea. ‘Orc’ sounds like a canine mage casting a spell on some crabs in a rubber glade. I can’t judge sounds any more. The record has destroyed my ears. Play it again. Turn it up. Pass me the towels.  

Rodent All Terrain Armoured Transport?

 The 2008 issue of LFTWY might be my favourite, it has a couple of very interesting pieces, plus this...

RATATAT – LP3 (XL Recordings) 

I’m sure we all have mystery records on our shelves, for which we can find no provenance. Did I buy this? Did someone give it to me? Did I bag it in a forgotten tombola? I own no fewer than 4 CDs by Ratatat, despite having no idea whom they might be nor any recollection of procuring them. At best guess, they were promos sent out for review (though not to me, of that I’m certain). They’re pretty decent, mind, which is why they’re still on the shelf today. This album – I'm guessing their third, but I’ve been caught by that particular Wilbury trick before, so I’m staying non-committal – fits in a post-trip-hop world, having down-tempo groovy sections, glossy bouncy pop sections, and the odd ersatz rock move. It’s not very serious, but neither is it actually funny; it’s referential, but not really satirical or critical; it’s like library music for reluctant readers. 

There isn’t really much depth to this album, but the surfaces are most attractive. ‘Shiller’, the opening number, sounds like someone trying to play the X-Files theme on some toys (imagine if someone had described a Plaid track to someone who just woke up from a 40-year coma, this is probably what they’d come up with), but then some cheeky chorus guitar comes in, and it sounds like a section from the very end of Tubular Bells. Similar studio-bound unrocking guitar sounds crop up regularly across the album, nasally insistent, and sometimes with purring flange effects, and it all gives an unusually handmade edge to what is ostensibly a machine-made record. Random aside: the name ‘Shiller’ makes us imagine Sean Connery appearing on Blind Date. 

Some tracks feel like market-trader knockoffs of contemporaneous dance acts, with ‘Falcon Jab’ giving us restrained Nile Rodgers guitar and sort of Frampton-talky-guitar-thing sounds over a chunky beat recalling Daft Punk, whilst ‘Flynn’ is a slinky confection, halfway between vintage soundtrack cues by Roger Roger and winking dancefloor pop by Röyksopp. ‘Dura’, with its harpsichord and ambling beat seems like a clear nod to Dre’s Eminem productions. 

There are occasional tunes with rhythms featuring clipped percussion and arpeggiating bleeps, placing them somewhere between an Eski-era grime beat and the Donkey Kong 64 soundtrack - check out ‘Mirando’ and ‘Bird Priest’ for examples. Other tracks lean on less electronic references, such as ‘Mi Viejo’ with its tabla, acoustic guitar and Herbie Flowers-ish bass, or the Western chase theme played by a baseball organ which is ‘Gypsy Threat’, whereas ‘Imperials’ is more atypical, coming across like an RnB jam in a bamboo junkyard, and ‘Mumtaz Khan’ sounds like Mothra doing Boyz II Men, before a that guitar comes in again, and threatens to go into the ‘Hotel California’ solo (I promise I’m not making this up).  

This is probably not the favourite 2008 album of anyone in the whole world, including Ratatat, but it’s a breezy, colourful bit of fun. I just listened to it twice in a row, and enjoyed it even more the second time. If that trend continues it will be the greatest 42 minutes in the history of humanity by next weekend...