Do you know what I'm not doing tonight? Going to The Wheatsheaf. Great place, of course, but if I did it three nights in a row it wouldn't do me the world of good, I suspect. You can't live on a diet of Oxford Gold and tinitus, can you?
V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)
People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.
There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.
But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.
Showing posts with label Keyboard Choir The. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Keyboard Choir The. Show all posts
Sunday, 29 May 2011
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Inside Truck
And here's Sunday from Truck. Nothing more to add, I feel wierd today & I'm going to lie down.
Truck, Hill Farm, Steventon, 2010 Sunday
The Holy Orders are almost beyond criticism, because they came all the way from Leeds and they’re playing at 10.30 in the morning in a Barn that has a forceful smell of bovine faeces that even the Bisto kids couldn’t convincingly pretend to like, when they’d probably like to be lolling on the grass like most of the Truckers. Luckily they aren’t half bad, melding Mudhoney’s rock slur with something altogether less acceptable that’s more like Wyld Stallyns. It’s all rough hewn and unrefined, but undoubtedly enjoyable, especially “Paper, Scissors, Stone”, which is a budget At The Drive-In blast.
Some people have complained that there aren’t enough slots for local musicians at Truck, which is odd, because it’s never claimed to be primarily a local festival. It’s like criticising Kind Hearts & Coronets for not having enough car chases. As it is we enjoy stumbling across the odd smattering of Oxfordshire acts, and Sunday continues with a hat trick of strong scenesters. Minor Coles impress with some spicy indie, and are followed by an excellent offering from Phantom Theory, who play a drum and guitar set that hasn’t got an ounce of fat on it, and who marry spotless arrangements with full tilt rocking to cut directly to even the most leaden Sunday morning brains, and who live in a world made entirely of RIFF. Like Truck alumni Winnebago Deal shaved and spruced for a job interview, Phantom Theory have clearly spent long hard hours honing their music, but waste no time in cracking it out onstage. Mosh and go.
But even they are eclipsed in the Beathive where The Keyboard Choir are making music hand built by robots. It’s a simple proposition: a bunch of synths, music that is pitched roughly between Klaus Schulze and Luke Slater, and a fifth column of dancers dressed in woefully poor android costumes. Not only is it musically one of the best things we see all weekend, but Seb Reynolds alternately doing a gangly newborn foal dance and trying to fix broken machinery is officially funnier than anything in the cabaret tent, ever.
After a quick trip to the Butt’s ale stall (great beer, no queues, Truck 7 prices – why go anywhere else?), we drop in on The Horizontal Instrument. There’s a fair amount of electronic music on today, and some people would say that it isn’t proper music. Well this is. And it’s properly awful. What we see is like Motley Crue with all the fun excised and surgically replaced by disco. Yes, that unpleasant. We only lasted two songs, so maybe it got better; maybe the end credits of Eldorado were a psychedelic funk explosion, but you can forgive us for never having found out. Sucked like an Electrolux.
We cock half an ear to Dead Jerichos as we pass, who seem to be today’s Shaodow, retaining local fans and winning over newcomers in equal measure, but the temperature in the Market Stage is about 4000 degrees, so we walk on by to the Beat Hive again. There’s also some “proper music paranoia” about Miaoux Miaoux. There he is plucking a guitar, playing Korg and programming in drum machine beats live. It’s decent electro, but it would be better if we didn’t have to watch each track being painstakingly put together. All very commendable, but it’s a bit like watching a glass blowing demonstration when all you want is a pint.
Sometimes we wonder at the logic of which acts play the main stage, as it’s so much bigger than any of the others, but with a band like Flowers Of Hell there must never have been any question. Their music is vast in scale, torrents of miserablist strings tumbling over humming guitars to form a whirlpool where Mogwai meets Morricone. They even do a Plastic People Of The Universe cover, which has got to be worth points. Every little helps.
At points all of Islet play drums, and yet theirs is not an aggressive sound – it’s more Stomp than Shit & Shine, and the music is built more on a cheeky bounce than a pummelling thud. With slinky basslines and plenty of barely controlled yelping the set comes off like Stump quirking out at Notting Hill Carnival, and is almost obscenely enjoyable. Highlights are a ritualistic dub number, in which the band chants and clatters over chubby Jah Wobble bass, and the almost poppy moments when they become a special needs Foals. Plenty of acts try to marry experimental showboating with a cohesive rock sound, but most fail; this is the real thing.
In the wake of Fuck Buttons there’s a new breed of leftfield musicians who aren’t afraid of offering tribute to simple, hedonistic musical pleasures. Take Masks, who may have the Vivian Girls t-shirt and Explosions In The Sky guitar hazes, but who also aren’t wary of throwing a huge 808 bass drum pulse behind one of their spidery numbers. In truth, the show is slightly hesitant, and the two guitar lineup can’t quite make enough noise to complement the backing tracks: they play a piece that’s supposed to sound like Godspeed, but it’s more like an old walk-on tape for Saxon. Near the end of the set things come together, and suddenly they make a sombre yet insistent post-goth groove that could soundtrack some hip torture dungeon. This isn’t just music, this is S & M music.
Dog Is Dead exist at the other end of the spectrum, completely unashamed about their away day pop with its sunny sax breaks and bleached funk guitars that put them equidistant between Pigbag and Vampire Weekend. We hate to admit it, but we rather like this uptight, grinning mess of Haircut 100 and Steely Dan, and find ourselves singing the line, “this is a zoo, could you not feed the animals?” all afternoon. Pop music: it’s not just there for the nasty things in life.
Truck, Hill Farm, Steventon, 2010 Sunday
The Holy Orders are almost beyond criticism, because they came all the way from Leeds and they’re playing at 10.30 in the morning in a Barn that has a forceful smell of bovine faeces that even the Bisto kids couldn’t convincingly pretend to like, when they’d probably like to be lolling on the grass like most of the Truckers. Luckily they aren’t half bad, melding Mudhoney’s rock slur with something altogether less acceptable that’s more like Wyld Stallyns. It’s all rough hewn and unrefined, but undoubtedly enjoyable, especially “Paper, Scissors, Stone”, which is a budget At The Drive-In blast.
Some people have complained that there aren’t enough slots for local musicians at Truck, which is odd, because it’s never claimed to be primarily a local festival. It’s like criticising Kind Hearts & Coronets for not having enough car chases. As it is we enjoy stumbling across the odd smattering of Oxfordshire acts, and Sunday continues with a hat trick of strong scenesters. Minor Coles impress with some spicy indie, and are followed by an excellent offering from Phantom Theory, who play a drum and guitar set that hasn’t got an ounce of fat on it, and who marry spotless arrangements with full tilt rocking to cut directly to even the most leaden Sunday morning brains, and who live in a world made entirely of RIFF. Like Truck alumni Winnebago Deal shaved and spruced for a job interview, Phantom Theory have clearly spent long hard hours honing their music, but waste no time in cracking it out onstage. Mosh and go.
But even they are eclipsed in the Beathive where The Keyboard Choir are making music hand built by robots. It’s a simple proposition: a bunch of synths, music that is pitched roughly between Klaus Schulze and Luke Slater, and a fifth column of dancers dressed in woefully poor android costumes. Not only is it musically one of the best things we see all weekend, but Seb Reynolds alternately doing a gangly newborn foal dance and trying to fix broken machinery is officially funnier than anything in the cabaret tent, ever.
After a quick trip to the Butt’s ale stall (great beer, no queues, Truck 7 prices – why go anywhere else?), we drop in on The Horizontal Instrument. There’s a fair amount of electronic music on today, and some people would say that it isn’t proper music. Well this is. And it’s properly awful. What we see is like Motley Crue with all the fun excised and surgically replaced by disco. Yes, that unpleasant. We only lasted two songs, so maybe it got better; maybe the end credits of Eldorado were a psychedelic funk explosion, but you can forgive us for never having found out. Sucked like an Electrolux.
We cock half an ear to Dead Jerichos as we pass, who seem to be today’s Shaodow, retaining local fans and winning over newcomers in equal measure, but the temperature in the Market Stage is about 4000 degrees, so we walk on by to the Beat Hive again. There’s also some “proper music paranoia” about Miaoux Miaoux. There he is plucking a guitar, playing Korg and programming in drum machine beats live. It’s decent electro, but it would be better if we didn’t have to watch each track being painstakingly put together. All very commendable, but it’s a bit like watching a glass blowing demonstration when all you want is a pint.
Sometimes we wonder at the logic of which acts play the main stage, as it’s so much bigger than any of the others, but with a band like Flowers Of Hell there must never have been any question. Their music is vast in scale, torrents of miserablist strings tumbling over humming guitars to form a whirlpool where Mogwai meets Morricone. They even do a Plastic People Of The Universe cover, which has got to be worth points. Every little helps.
At points all of Islet play drums, and yet theirs is not an aggressive sound – it’s more Stomp than Shit & Shine, and the music is built more on a cheeky bounce than a pummelling thud. With slinky basslines and plenty of barely controlled yelping the set comes off like Stump quirking out at Notting Hill Carnival, and is almost obscenely enjoyable. Highlights are a ritualistic dub number, in which the band chants and clatters over chubby Jah Wobble bass, and the almost poppy moments when they become a special needs Foals. Plenty of acts try to marry experimental showboating with a cohesive rock sound, but most fail; this is the real thing.
In the wake of Fuck Buttons there’s a new breed of leftfield musicians who aren’t afraid of offering tribute to simple, hedonistic musical pleasures. Take Masks, who may have the Vivian Girls t-shirt and Explosions In The Sky guitar hazes, but who also aren’t wary of throwing a huge 808 bass drum pulse behind one of their spidery numbers. In truth, the show is slightly hesitant, and the two guitar lineup can’t quite make enough noise to complement the backing tracks: they play a piece that’s supposed to sound like Godspeed, but it’s more like an old walk-on tape for Saxon. Near the end of the set things come together, and suddenly they make a sombre yet insistent post-goth groove that could soundtrack some hip torture dungeon. This isn’t just music, this is S & M music.
Dog Is Dead exist at the other end of the spectrum, completely unashamed about their away day pop with its sunny sax breaks and bleached funk guitars that put them equidistant between Pigbag and Vampire Weekend. We hate to admit it, but we rather like this uptight, grinning mess of Haircut 100 and Steely Dan, and find ourselves singing the line, “this is a zoo, could you not feed the animals?” all afternoon. Pop music: it’s not just there for the nasty things in life.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Hound Of The Underground
I reckon this review is somewhat hard on Dog Show, they were a good fun band.Pehaps their relentless merry-go-round of bleeps doesn't sit well with an old freidn in town and copious amounts of red wine. It's a pretty god read, however, I'm quite proud of this one.
DOG SHOW/THE KEYBOARD CHOIR/PAGAN WANDERER LU, Big Hair, Cellar, 2/5/09
Pagan Wanderer Lu’s songs are tiny crystallised nuggets of excellence, hand turned clusters of bleepy melody and literate lyrics so exquisite they should be sold from some impossibly cool boutique. Every tidy tune is catchy but creakily skewed, as if Stephen Merritt had been bashing fragments of song together after some violent pop holocaust. Pity that the live show isn’t too captivating, really. The vocals are a tad lifeless, and the guitar sounds clumsy and nasal amongst the quaint electronic backing, so we have to pay close attention to get the most out of the compositions. They are well worth it, though, especially the last number, a wonky Mario World bounce featuring the award winning line, “Christians like you are why God made lions”. Why aren’t there more lyricists like this around?
After the Oxford Radcliffe Hopsitals Trust, The Keyboard Choir must be this city’s primary employer. There are loads of them, and we’re not sure they’re all the same ones as last time, but they come together to buzz, fuzz, flutter and chuckle with a panoply of synths. We heartily applaud the undertaking involved in getting this huge band onstage to make keyboard noises that everyone probably assumes are all on tape anyway. The music takes in everything that’s great about electronic sound, from Messaien’s ondes martenot to microhouse, via Delia Derbyshire and Tangerine Dream, and the only part we take issue with are the rather shopworn, cliched spoken samples. They end with what sounds like something from The Orb’s forgotten Pomme Fritz LP versioned by Klaus Schulze and Sven Vath. Endearingly illogical.
What with their live drums, endlessly arpeggiating keyboards and slightly crappy flashing sculpture, Dog Show are pretty much what a band from “The Future” would look like on some low budget British sci fi show from the mid ‘70s (they wanted Roger Moore but ended up with Simon MacCorkindale; Nigel Havers puts in a good cameo, but Michael Elphick is woefully miscast). The set varies between pumping electro euphoria and a slightly annoying fairground jauntiness, until we don’t know whether stick on an Altern8 facemask or join the candy floss queue. In many ways this is like music for excitable children, on a constant sugary high and with a relentless, if somewhat gauche, melodic logic that just keeps going and going and bloody well going. Watching Dog Show is like endlessly riding the waltzer; refreshing and liberating, but you know that sooner or later you’re going to start feeling sick.
DOG SHOW/THE KEYBOARD CHOIR/PAGAN WANDERER LU, Big Hair, Cellar, 2/5/09
Pagan Wanderer Lu’s songs are tiny crystallised nuggets of excellence, hand turned clusters of bleepy melody and literate lyrics so exquisite they should be sold from some impossibly cool boutique. Every tidy tune is catchy but creakily skewed, as if Stephen Merritt had been bashing fragments of song together after some violent pop holocaust. Pity that the live show isn’t too captivating, really. The vocals are a tad lifeless, and the guitar sounds clumsy and nasal amongst the quaint electronic backing, so we have to pay close attention to get the most out of the compositions. They are well worth it, though, especially the last number, a wonky Mario World bounce featuring the award winning line, “Christians like you are why God made lions”. Why aren’t there more lyricists like this around?
After the Oxford Radcliffe Hopsitals Trust, The Keyboard Choir must be this city’s primary employer. There are loads of them, and we’re not sure they’re all the same ones as last time, but they come together to buzz, fuzz, flutter and chuckle with a panoply of synths. We heartily applaud the undertaking involved in getting this huge band onstage to make keyboard noises that everyone probably assumes are all on tape anyway. The music takes in everything that’s great about electronic sound, from Messaien’s ondes martenot to microhouse, via Delia Derbyshire and Tangerine Dream, and the only part we take issue with are the rather shopworn, cliched spoken samples. They end with what sounds like something from The Orb’s forgotten Pomme Fritz LP versioned by Klaus Schulze and Sven Vath. Endearingly illogical.
What with their live drums, endlessly arpeggiating keyboards and slightly crappy flashing sculpture, Dog Show are pretty much what a band from “The Future” would look like on some low budget British sci fi show from the mid ‘70s (they wanted Roger Moore but ended up with Simon MacCorkindale; Nigel Havers puts in a good cameo, but Michael Elphick is woefully miscast). The set varies between pumping electro euphoria and a slightly annoying fairground jauntiness, until we don’t know whether stick on an Altern8 facemask or join the candy floss queue. In many ways this is like music for excitable children, on a constant sugary high and with a relentless, if somewhat gauche, melodic logic that just keeps going and going and bloody well going. Watching Dog Show is like endlessly riding the waltzer; refreshing and liberating, but you know that sooner or later you’re going to start feeling sick.
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