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.