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