Tag: 2020

what January 2020 sounded like

 

Despite the portentous title, this is a round up of things I was sent by nice PR people that sounded interesting, since I said at some point a while ago that I’d do this regularly (and why not?) so here they are, in alphabetical order, because that’s simplest.

Artist: Collectress
Title: Different Geographies
Label: Peeler Records
Release Date: 6 March

I mentioned it here, but have to say more about it now that I know it a little better. If their previous album Mondegreen sounded like music from a benignly haunted doll’s house, Different Geographies has the same gently spooky charm, but takes (even by their standards) strange departures,  like on Mauswork, where their oddly Victorian string arrangements blend with electronic elements, or the beautifully wistful single In The Streets, In The Fields, a truly timeless melange of strings and modern sounding percussive elements and howling noises; which sounds much prettier than that description would suggest. Even within the album – and its individual pieces – it’s unpredictable and hard to define, with songs like the busy Landscape taking unexpected twists and turns during its five and a half minutes.
As with all of Collectress’s work, the music on Different Geographies is strongly visual and does strange things to time; a magical, otherworldly record full of delicate moods and strange musical non-sequiturs.

Artist: Little Albert
Title: Swamp King
Label: Aural Music
Release Date: 27 March

I’m always a bit dubious of the blues as a style, rather than as the product of a specific, African-American culture from a specific time period, but since it definitely is one (and really, if one can accept Eric Clapton as a blues musician then anything goes), I can say that this is a very cool sounding record, notwithstanding that it was made by a young white Italian guy (Alberto Piccolo) best known for his work in doom metal band Messa. Doom is of course the closest metal comes to the blues, and there’s a monolithic, Black Sabbath quality to some of the songs here, notably the cover of Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs. In fact, it’s a pretty good album if you like gritty, bass heavy blues of the late-60s type; it sounds great, and the most worrisome factor, Alberto’s vocals, are actually really good; his voice isn’t as powerful as his guitar playing, but emerging from the darkness with a hint of reverb it’s more than acceptable. With all the caveats that come with a heavy blues album from 2020, Swamp King is kind of awesome.

Artist: Nuclear Winter
Title: Night Shift
Label: self-release
Release Date: 7th February

Very polished, melodic death metal (at times almost like death-power metal) from Zimbabwe, this is essentially not my cup of tea at all. I’m always curious to hear music from places not normally associated with that kind of music and sometimes (there’s a great Saigon Rock and Soul album that I think I’ve mentioned before, also that Mongol Metal split from 2015 and last year’s compilation Brutal Africa of death metal from Botswana) it really shows artists approaching familiar musical ideas from a really different perspective. Here it doesn’t; with no disrespect to Gary Stautmeister – who wrote, played and sang everything here aside from some guest vocals – this is an album of classy modern death metal which could have just as easily come from Sweden, France or wherever. The plus points are that he writes cool riffs (Blueshift) and solos, can do both raw and melodic vocals well, as well as writing proper songs. The minuses – well, none if you love this kind of music. I can absolutely imagine Nuclear Winter signed to a label like Relapse or Nuclear Blast; he’s very good at what he does and if you like those Scarve/Sybreed type of bands, give it a go.

Artist: Pia Fraus
Title: Empty Parks
Label: Seksound/Vinyl Junkie
Release Date: 20 January

Something like an Estonian Slowdive-meets-Drop Nineteens, Pia Fraus have been around for ages (22 years!) and this is their millionth (I think sixth) album. It has a great title and is incredibly nice. As shoegazey/dreampop type albums go it’s pretty upbeat, wistfully happy, rather than wistfully sad and mostly relatively up-tempo with at times (like Love Sports) a Stereolab kind of texture.
The female (Eve) and male (Rein) vocals go very nicely together (hence the Slowdive/Drop Nineteens comparisons, they are rarely – exception; Slow Boat Fades Out – quite as ethereal as My Bloody Valentine) and although it’s hard to choose highlights from an album where all eleven songs are quite similar, it stayed nice all the way through without getting boring* and never became twee, so that’s an achievement in itself. I don’t know enough of the band’s other work to say how good the album is by their standards, but if you like the atmosphere of those Sarah Records, Field Mice kind of bands, but not their ramshackle amateurishness, this is highly recommended.

*if you’re in the mood for pop-shoegaze. If you’re not I imagine it would be extraordinarily dull

Artist: Revenant Marquis
Title: Youth In Ribbons
Label: Inferna Profundus
Release Date: 20 January

British black metal of the ultra-mysterious one-nameless-entity type, I really liked the imagery and atmosphere surrounding the album before I even heard it and the music didn’t disappoint. It’s the (I think) fourth RM album, but I’ve only heard bits and pieces before so I guess I’ll have to get the others now. Murky, very rough (it sounds loud even when played quietly), atmospheric and extremely black, it reminds me of early Xasthur and the chaotic obscure nastiness of Manierisme, though it’s never quite that eccentric. The key to its non-crapiness is that, just about gleaming through the surface noise and thunderous rumbling are strange queasy melodies, often simple but very effective and, crucially for this kind of music, every aspect (music/lyrics – insofar as one can make them out/themes/imagery) works together to make something bigger than the sum of those parts. And though the album rarely really gets better than the superb opening duo of Menstruation (a kind of ceremonial intro) and Ephebiphobia (actual black metal), it maintains that quality throughout. Hating teenagers and school (specifically Tasker Milward School; a moody highlight is The Blood Of Lady Tasker) is, oddly, a theme that runs through the album, though I guess that’s no less than the title promises. Loved it.

Artist: Sunny Jain
Title: Wild Wild East
Label: Smithsonian Folkways
Release Date: 21 February

After a Zappa-ish opening fanfare, Indian-American percussionist Sunny Jain and his excellent band bring together a vibrant and sometimes slightly indigestible mix of Morricone-esque rock and jazz with south Asian elements. It’s very good; at times it reminded me a bit of one of the all-time great soundtracks, Rahul Dev Burman’s Yaadon Ki Baaraat, but also the superb Kaada/Patton album Bacteria Cult. At times the album takes on a droning quality which gives it a very positive, summery feel, but at times, most noticeably on Osian, that becomes a loud, busy, blaring quality and a few more of the beautiful, quiet moments would have made it an easier record to love. That said, I haven’t heard anything else quite like it and it’ll definitely be on my playlist for a while.

 

New Year, New Decade, New…

 

it’s the Year of the Rat – here’s a mystifying detail from Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1510) with a friendly looking rodent

A new decade, and the year is flying past already. I intended to write something full of enthusiasm and positivity at the beginning of January, but at that point I was still clumping about in a walking boot and using crutches so it had to wait. I didn’t do my usual ‘records of the year’ for last year either (well I did, but not for this website), and the moment for that has definitely passed. For what it’s worth, my favourite album of the decade 2010-2019 was quite possibly Das Seelenbrechen by Ihsahn. But anyway, it’s Lunar New Year and I’m back in normal shoes, so Happy New Year!

I didn’t make any resolutions as such this year, my general aims though are to read more, write more and resist any of the normalisation of right wing extremism that seems to be carrying seamlessly over from last year. This week the BBC has a show where Ed Balls hangs around with various actual and quasi Nazis (maybe in the name of balance they should send Michael Portillo to hang around with some communists? On a train, if that’s what it takes*), while Channel 4 seems to think what Britain needs is more TV shows about Nigel Farage, presumably trying to get the most out of him while he still has any kind of relevance as a public figure.

* at this point, Around The World With Alan Partridge In A Bullnose On The Left barely feels like parody

So anyway, I am as always working on long, convoluted articles on various topics that aren’t yet finished, so this will be more in the nature of some brief notes and so forth.

In the holidays I re-read (the first time since childhood) the first three books in Joan Aiken’s Wolves Chronicles, set in an alternative early 19th century Britain where the Stuart monarchy was never deposed and “Jamie III”, sits on the throne. As the series starts, the country has been overrun by hungry wolves fleeing the Russian winter that have arrived through the recently completed channel tunnel (younger readers may need to be reminded that it was in reality completed in 1994). I mention the books (which are much as I remember them; entertaining, well-written and a bit silly) mainly for this passage near the beginning of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which, like the young heroine, I have remembered all my life (so far) – although I didn’t know where it was from and vaguely thought it must be Leon Garfield or even CS Lewis. The book is also, it turns out, the place I remember possets (Victorian hot curdled drinks) from. I’ve still never had one – they sound revolting – but reading about them made them seem desirable again.

There was something magical about this ride which Sylvia was to remember for the rest of her life – the dark, snow-scented air blowing constantly past them, the boundless wold and forest stretching away in all directions before and behind, the tramp and jingle of the horses, the snugness and security of the carriage, and above all Bonnie’s happy welcoming presence beside her
Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, 962, p.44-5

In the sadly non-alternative present, Britain has a ridiculous prime minister every bit as pantomime-villain-like as Aiken’s villains are (she goes in for the kind of Dickensian villain names that seem to preclude the character from being good: “Miss Slighcarp” being the classic example) and the government is issuing with a typical and, presumably deliberate sense of bitter irony, this coin to commemorate the victory of insularity, xenophobia and – most importantly – protecting the financial interests of a small coterie of people at the centre of power:

indeed

In non-alternative Britain, somehow accusations of child abuse do not constitute a ‘royal crisis’ while two of its members making vague gestures towards some kind of unobjectionable normal life does; and maybe this is right. The idea at the heart of monarchy and aristocracy (that is, aristokratia; ‘rule of the best’) is by definition about not being ‘normal’ so perhaps, as we get further and further from the days when the monarchy involved some kind of mystical aspect and what Monty Python (RIP Terry Jones) called ‘supreme executive power’ we should expect all kinds of by-normal-standards transgressions to appear and not be seriously acknowledged by the royals and their fans, while (admittedly approximate) attempts at living ordinary lives will be punished.

I have no intention of going into serious political discussions here because I don’t want to, but 2020 has seen a minor shift in my own political views, insofar as, although I still regard (and I guess always will) nationalism of any kind as regressive and illogical, if there was to be another independence referendum in Scotland tomorrow, I would vote in favour of independence. Not without regret, as I fundamentally believe in internationalism and the principles mocked on the Brexit coin; but at some point, if the government that people vote for is not the one they get – and despite the apparent landslide won by Johnson and co, their support in Scotland is minimal – then something is fundamentally wrong with the system. That said, I’d be wary of writing off the Tories’ 25% of Scotland’s vote as insignificant; 690,000 people is a lot, even in a country of over 5 million. Overall in fact, the Scottish election results echo those of Britain as a whole, with the most noticeable feature being the collapse of anything resembling a left wing movement, depressingly. But anyway; in the unlikely event that a referendum is given by the current parliament, I hope the lessons of Brexit will be learned and that an independence campaign can well-informed and practical, but also optimistic and aspirational, rather than overwhelmingly negative and defined by the things people don’t want/like/believe in. Too much to ask, perhaps.

Onto more positive things; my friend Paul, who introduced me to the Nouveau Roman, has written a nice introduction to the movement here, which means I have more things I need to read; luckily, I have rejoined a library for the first time in over a decade. And the experimental string group Collectress have finally followed up my favourite album of 2014 (Mondegreen) with Different Geographies, out on 6 March via Peeler Records. It’s a beautiful, mysterious, allusive and elusive record; I’ve not really absorbed it yet, but here’s a nice video –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nf0P8HHsAQ&feature=youtu.be

So, to sum up; it’s all a bit of a mess, but it’s a new year and a new decade, so one might as well be positive and try to do good things. Will write more soon.