Negu Technic

 

NEGU GORRIAK – GURE JARRERA (Esan Ozenki ,1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SUNJIB6vU&t=1457s

If you only listen to one industrial hip-hop punk collage album in a language you can’t place this fortnight, make it this one.  
 
Or, I don’t know, a different one, I have no frame of reference.  But, regardless of a complete lack of context, this record is pretty much the distillation of energy in music, and as such is a wonderful ride. The opening is a one minute car crash of block-rocking beats, clunky samples and what might be a keening Armenian duduk.  There are a few of these little interludes in the album, and they’re surprisingly the most enjoyable parts.  Some of the edits are so cleaver-clumsy I often couldn’t tell whether I was listening to the album or whether a YouTube advert had cut in unceremoniously.
 
The proper songs (for a given value of “proper”) are huge chunky rockers with a post-electro beatbox framework, which fall somewhere between Big Audio Dynamite and Ministry with a manic punk gurn.  There are moments when I’m reminded of acts as disparate as early Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine, Aerosmith and EMF, but Negu Gorriak will never be mistaken for any of them, as they bundle frenetically into each track as if thjey have to get the record done before dinner burns.  Like many foundational punk and rap artists, it feels as though the itching desire to say something has over-ridden any concerns as musically bourgeois as second takes or edits.  Of course, I don’t know what it actually is they are saying, but we figure it’s mostly pointed, and someone or -thing is doubtless the target of the (admittedly blunt) sonic weaponry.  
 
There are times when the sloppiness is frustrating – bringing in the robo-vox from “O, Superman” for all of 3 seconds before abandoning it is particularly mystifying – and times when the songs are such dumbass rock generica it’s only the sonic rawness differentiating them from the soundtrack to any beery frat party, but the experience as a whole is galvanising, which is what so much popular music is ultimately all about.
 
Final track “Euskal Herri Nerea” is a surprisingly tight piece of rubber-bassed ska rock, as if to prove that they can do it by the book if they choose, they just have other things on their minds most of the time.  Well, fair enough, mark us down as convinced: Up the revolution!  Or down!  Or whatever it is we’re supposed to think!  

Walton, on the Nose

This is the second Album of the Fortnight bit of reviewing fun (see the last post for an explanation...although it's pretty obvious).  I chose this one, and it's fair to say that nobody liked it.  To be fair, I did pick it to test them, but I honestly think this is well worth your effort.  If you want to play along at home, the video cam be found at https://youtu.be/0zpyNKhiXWQ.

 

WILLIAM WALTON - FACADE: AN ENTERTAINMENT, Ludwig, under the leadership of Barbara Hannigan, Ojai Music Festival 2019

Walton's Facade is subtitled "An Entertainment".  I suspect some listeners would take issue with this.  Still, the mixture of Walton's distorted early twentieth century popular song (music hall, barrack room singalongs, polite village fete folk, etc) with Edith Sitwell's chewy tongue-twister poems has always been a winner for me,  I especially like the fact that the original performance had the orator hidden behind a curtain barking through a megaphone (lo-fi rolled up paper type), and that the instructions dictate that the words must not be sung: maybe it's always reminded me of MES.  

I think I partly like the because it reminds me of my days in secondary school - which was a state school, but 450 years old, and rather odd in some ways - where the dying embers of the British Empire were puffed by gruff, gone-to-seed sergeant majors, while being snidely eyed by louche ironic aesthetes, who nevertheless put up with the pretence so long as the sherry kept coming.

I like this performance, it has a brightness and tightness in the playing, and the barely possible lyrics are taken at such a canter all you can do is doff your cap.  Of course the yanks don't *quite* get it, and I think play it bold and camp without the melancholy that underpins cheap entertainment in the UK (I'm thinking Punch & Judy, panto or even mystery plays).

Barbara Hannigan keeps it all excellently under control though, and all in all I'd say that this is a highly recommended version of the piece - especially for a first listen.  I'm quite a fan of Hannigan, her vocals are fantastic, and she is also quite a stage presence.  Here she is performing some Ligeti, which must be preposterously difficult to do: https://youtu.be/_pYb8eQIYfU

The Attack on Congress

It's been a while since my last update, hasn't it?  Obvious reason: my publication has not been released for coming up to a year - no gigs to review, no venues to pay the advertising.

But, a little group of friends has just started an Album of the Fortnight project, where someone suggests an LP, and we all review it, so I thought I'd share my reviews, to stop this page being a complete desert.  The first is below, and we'll see how long the project lasts (this may end up being the only one, you know how big concepts often fall apart as soon as someone stops feeding the furnace).

Bear in mind these are brief, light-hearted thoughts for a private chat, not structured reviews for a critical publication, but I think this is kind of fun; I'll admit to being smugly proud of the last line.

If you want to hear the album, you may do so at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsJZpvEOleFoNj_6VKvlx8AezxZhLqAWR

UNIVERSAL CONGRESS OF - PROSPEROUS & QUALIFIED (SST)

Interesting to see track 3 is credited to a "J Ulmer" [the person who suggested this record in the group posted a picture of one of the vinyl labels].  I’m expecting that to be James Blood Ulmer, whose work veers between Ornette ecstasy and leaden muso blues clomping, and, pressing play on track one gives us a bit of both.  The slap bass is flat-footed and uninspiring, and could be chuntering away at the back of any number of functional bar room combos this minute (or, rather, this minute 2 years ago, when bar rooms were a thing), and the vocals are uninteresting, but the horns offer a stately circling motif at the start, big on the baritone, and some sprightly soloing later.  This could go either way.
 
Track two moves in the right direction, an itchy, wild-eyed punk funk with a walking bassline that couldn’t walk if its life depended on it, keeping up a paranoid jog for the duration.  This is the musical equivalent of the A Scanner Darkly character scrabbling around for imaginary insects.  What I like about it is the way it’s built on pretty generic material, but transforms into a psychotic sonic episode: loving the snare fills like cutlery avalanches, and the guitar like a kitchen knife stabbing randomly at a fantasised attacker.
 
“Hightime”, as well as being, frankly, a compound noun too far, is simply a jam.  There is a decent little horn part which pops up occasionally, but the pedal-seesawing guitar is a little charmless.  I do like the hollow production, especially the drum sound, which gives it a real loft jazz session air.
 
And, in these three tracks we have the whole LP encapsulated.  There are trudges through Sunday session blues workouts without much merit, there are longeurs where the improv drifts off the boil, but there are enough lightning spasms of near-free jazz spiralling or spare, other-worldly Eric Dolphy type heads to stop it getting entirely boring.
 
A pretty straight cover of “Mellow Down Easy”, with rusty razor harp blowing and beery backing vocals of the sort indulged in by late Fall, is surprisingly pleasing, if ultimately inessential.  No track is fully satisfying, they all have a jarring element: for example, the otherwise enticing merengue no wave spy noir freefall that is “Igor’s Blues” is marred by some charmless popping bass, and the boho travelogue of “Love Camp” really needs a swivel-pupilled Screamin’ Jay or a laconic Tom Waits on the vocals, not the hampered, self-conscious Philip Marlowe voiceover we get.
 
Whether these guys are prosperous, I couldn’t say, but they’re certainly qualified, with enough chops to make a vegan blanche, and they could really make an impact in an act with a strong creative hand at the tiller, whether that be straight gruff rocking or outré improvising, but as it is this LP is diverting and enjoyable without being particularly memorable or exciting.  Universal Congress?  Just an ornate way of saying fuck all.

Islet You Decide

BREAKING NEWS: The Florence Park darts final has been postponed!!!

ISLET, Divine Schism, Florence Park Community Ctr, 7/3/20

Along with Vic 20, Chip Taylor, Bellowhead, Jurassic 5 and Fixers (non-wankered version), Islet gave us one the truly classic Truck festival sets, a decade ago.  But, whilst that gig was a fractal disco performed by howling cultists, a psychedelic percussive clatter apparently intended to deter (or possibly invoke) demonic intervention, over the years they have slimmed in size, and become more refined.  The ritualistic impetus has survived though, as they enter the venue tonight from the back, prancing lightly and tolling sweetly sonorous bells, the effect of which is either fairy wonderland or Kesey mushroom fayre, depending on your outlook.  It’s certainly not the sort of thing one usually witnesses in an old-fashioned community centre, just next to the dartboard.  Euphonious though this is, we are glad when they take to the stage and prove they can be more than stoned and twee.  In fact, so sharp are they that they are able to salvage a potentially atmosphere-killing technical glitch with some smart improvised patter, and the rest of the performance is no less focussed. 

Islet clearly have a love for the brief pop song form, no matter how obliquely they approach it, but despite this they share a trait with many krautrock acts, being simultaneously warm and organic, and sleek and other-worldly.  They’re proud to tell us that they’re soon to be supporting Foals – announcement embargo be damned! - but they have more in common with an avuncular Glass Animals.  The clipped bass, which could have come from an unknown Northern soul album by The Free Design, and the loose grooves on the stand-up drumkit make some of the tunes sound like early Ninja Tunes tracks refashioned from moss and houmous, whereas ethereal moments have more in common with one of Aphex’s selected ambient works.  There’s even a strange piece with lovely, liturgical vocals and cheeky synth, as if the Catholic church had created a new ceremony based on The Pepper’s novelty hit “Pepperbox”. Indeed the entire show, whilst never being precious, has a wonderfully hieratic feel.  Perhaps everyone at the gig is married now.  Perhaps we’re all converts, and just don’t yet know what to.  Perhaps, at the very least, the next darts league fixture might feel that tiny bit more significant.

Crack, Class A

This was a wonderful event.  Divine Schism have been right at the top of their promoting game for about 18 months now, got to as many of their gigs as you can...they;re normally reasonably priced, too.

HYPERDAWN/ KID KIN/ THE BOBO, Divine Schism, The Library, 12/2/20

By 2030, middle-aged hipsters will complain about two things: the disappointing appearance of tattoos on sagging street food and craft brew bloated flesh, and why their beloved tapes now sound rubbish, the permanence of both having been ill-considered, in different ways.  Still, there’s an aesthetic in the sounds of tape degradation that one can appreciate, even as it spoils once cherished recordings.  For example, new Oxford artist The Bobo utilises layers of fuzzy, twisted samples of their own voice as virtual accompanists, in a fashion that recalls that odd pre-emptive ghost track that occurs on some worn cassettes.  These enticing vocal pile-ups are joined by effected synth stabs, strewn brightly like scrunched sweet wrappers.  Tonight’s performance is a little hesitant, and could do with a touch more variation, but is often excellent in obscuring epic pop behind a glitchy sonic miasma, much in the way that Jenny Hval might: one track sounds like the pale spectre of a Kosheen banger wandering lost in a barrage of field artillery, which is something we’re eager to revisit.

Kid Kin is back to solo performance after a brief hiatus, and, in swapping guitar for keyboards, they have made their music cleaner and crisper than ever, a spick-and-span contemporary version of the sort of tuneful clinical lushness you’d find as instrumental beds for non-trailer cinema ads and corporate videos circa 1992.  As such, this is glossy music for shiny CDs, not scuzzy tapes, from the tricksy Detroit drum programming to the grown-up, ironed-shirt keyboard curlicues (one selection of near-cheesy piano flourishes is high-end easy listening made ruggedly cool – Richard Clayderman, you da man!).  One track reminds us of Boards Of Canada, so perhaps the set would sound even better recorded to VHS and left in the attic for a decade or so.

Salford duo Hyperdawn smash the outmoded into the modern, their tables laden with tiny sleek keyboards and digital triggers, alongside two huge reel-to-reel tape players.  This wonderful set can be thunderously huge or timid and tiny, but from vast sad looped choirs that sound like 10CC’s “I’m Not In Love” sung by bone-tired analogue banshees, to creamy lopsided R’n’B croons, it never moves far from melancholic melody lines that are a delicate as the long tape loops wound around a handy mike stand.  “Plastic” introduces a home-made string instrument, and comes off like Tom Waits’ backing band having a crack at Cocteau Twins, and “The End Of The World” features frenetic mike rubbing that could be an attempt to isolate and capture a single strand of feedback for a sonic lepidopterist’s specimen drawer.  The response from the spellbound crowd is simply, wow!  Not to mention, flutter.

Universal Credit

It's so pleasing to post a review to a record that is truly excellent.  Seek this one out, if you don't know it.

This differs a tiny bit from the published version, which refers to "downhearted" puppets, because the editor thought that "clinically depressed" might not be appreciated by all readers.  Now, don't misunderstand me, I'm fine with that, I'm not a "political correctness gone made" person, and I think it's important that editors consider what would be right for their readership, and the sensitivity in considering this issue reflects well on them.  However, as I know I didn't intend any malice in the usage, and as I don't think referring to a mental health diagnosis should be any different from alluding to physical conditions creatively - we've all read reviews that talk about "dead leg rhythms" or "sausage-fingered" guitarists or drummers "who must be deaf" etc.  Perhaps those should be made a ting of the past too. Anyway, if you have any thoughts either way, I'd be fascinated to hear them.  

Or, just ignore that self-regarding waffle and buy the album.  Did I mention that it's excellent?

LUCY LEAVE – EVERYONE IS DOING SO WELL (Divine Schism)

“We’re different, you can tell by looking at thumbs!”.  It sounds like a slogan from a rejected SEGA ad campaign, but it’s the outro refrain of one of the many excellent tracks on Lucy leave’s second album (if refrain is the right word for what sounds like three clinically depressed Sesame Street characters intoning a disappointing mindfulness mantra out of time with each other).  In a way, “Thumbs” typifies the album, by taking a nice neat, compact pop tune – in this case a chunky bass-led Sebadoh saunter – and pushing it off balance.  Whether it’s a sudden scribble of Frith/Kaiser guitar notes, an awkward falsetto croon, overblown freak-out recorder flurries or an inscrutable lyric (“alluvial fiasco!”), each track seems to contain one element which at first appears designed to commit musical sabotage, but which turns out to make perfect sense after a few listens.

From the opener, “Talking Heads” – which doesn’t sound like Talking Heads at all, more like Aerial M playing Yo La Tengo -  to the closer “Grandma 2”, a self-effacing Blur song which ends by quoting a 20s novelty jazz tune, listening to Everyone Is Doing So Well is like tripping up and stumbling headlong through the town, never quite falling, never regaining equilibrium, confused yet strangely exultant.  As with previous Lucy Leave releases, there will be those who find this record unnecessarily oblique, too understatedly asymmetrical, and conclude that the band is scrappy and can’t play – news update: they can play like motherfuckers – but for those of us who would edit the fuzzball abandon of “Gymnastics Club” into the prom scene of every John Hughes movie, this album is mysterious, ludic and quite, quite wonderful.  We love it.  You can tell.  Look at our raised thumbs.