It’s time for your six-monthly review…

 

What a shock; I haven’t even slightly kept up with weekly (or even monthly) updates on here and now we’re in July already. Everything in the world seems so grim that it’s hard to actually do anything at all so I shall fall back on music. Instead of the (not very) usual playlists and so forth here’s a kind of 6-month catch up/review or “summer summary” or some kind of alliterative roundup of my musical intake of 2018 so far.

These aren’t necessarily going to be in my ‘albums of the year’ in December (always assuming there is a December this year), but here’s a selection of things that I think are definitely worth checking out from the last 6 months:

Firstly, and most unexpectedly -I really didn’t expect to spend months listening to atmospheric, oddly queasy/wheezy electronica – this is just a fantastic album:

Phantoms vs Fire
Swim
Hypersoma Records

I don’t really have enough knowledge to give a rundown of what Swim is for fans of*, but to me the album has an extremely evocative atmosphere, though what exactly it evokes is hard to say. It has something of the retro-futuristic feel of Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack, if it was spinning on a dusty turntable with a wobbly motor in a dimly lit room; not that the tempos are as wonky – or the music as formless – as that description suggests. Somehow though, its blend of warmth, melancholy and forlorn familiarity has made it the perfect soundtrack to our current dystopian age.

Facts that you might want to know: Phantoms vs Fire is Thiago C. Desant, a Brazilian composer and graphic designer living in Italy. An extended (and just as good but not better) version of Swim is available here and you can also buy his excellent prints from the Phantoms vs Fire  website.

* Press release says Tycho, Com Truise, Youandewan, Bonobo, Philip Glass, Japan, Mike Oldfield, if that helps

 

For the last couple of months a great source of brilliant music has been the Portuguese dark folk label Equilibrium Music. One of the label’s key releases of recent times has been the great Urze de Lume album As Árvores Estão Secas e Não Têm Folhas; and it really is beautiful.

Earthy, elemental (though not primitive) folk that reminds me equally of Sangre de Muerdago and Wardruna (without sounding much like either one of them), the album is simultaneously soothing and invigorating, if that is possible.

 

 

 

 

It has been overtaken for me though by the Equilibrium release I least expected to like, namely:

Daemonia Nymphae
Macbeth

This amazing album is actually the soundtrack for a Greek theatrical production of (obviously) Shakespeare’s Macbeth by the ancient Greek/neoclassical/neofolk duo Daemonia Nymphae.  As you might expect, it makes for a very strange and eerily archaic dreamlike vision of dark age Scotland viewed (or heard) through a prism of ancient Greek ‘world music’. I love it, even if/especially because the bagpipey bits (there aren’t many) are weirdly alien.

 

 

This year has seen the very welcome return of the Acid Jazz legends Corduroy with their new and same-as-it-ever-was album Return of the Fabric Four.

Same as it ever was c. 1992-4 that is, as the album is far closer to the mostly instrumental sound of Dad Man Cat and (especially) High Havoc than the more pop-song-focussed The New You! etc. It’s a really nice collage of camp, kitsch cleverness. And good tunes, naturally.

 

 

 

 

A couple of outstanding metal releases so far this year are:

De Profundis
The Blinding Light of Faith
Transcending Obscurity Records 

I am (as I think most people probably are!) quite fussy about death metal, but without being retro in any kind of self-conscious way, De Profundis make music that would sit happily in the late 80s/early 90s death metal scene. The Blinding Light of Faith is an album that can hold its own in the company of any of the big names of death metal; superb, intelligent musicianship and songwriting – it’s a seriously impressive album.

 

 

 

At the other end of the metal spectrum is

Lizzy Borden
My Midnight Things
Metal Blade Records

80s veteran(s) Lizzy Borden (both a singer and a band) seem always to suffer from being mis-pigeonholed, whether as a glam band (he/they did have the image), Twisted Sister clones (ditto), or some kind of Alice Cooper-esque horror-metal act (partly the name, partly the image innit), but if you listen back to the best of the band’s 80s work, especially Love You To Pieces, they were really a classic metal band, more Iron Maiden-meets-W.A.S.P. than Motley Crue. On the new album Lizzy himself takes centre stage, singing better than he ever has – no mean feat – and playing all the guitars on what is a very song-based album. It’s not very heavy – more a kind of homage to bands like Cheap Trick and Queen than the early 80s Lizzy Borden sound. But it’s really good if you like that kind of thing, and it’s great to hear Lizzy really going for it after a couple of slightly patchy, compromised-sounding, ‘not bad’ records.

Adam Stafford
Fire Behind the Curtain
Song, By Toad Records

Away from metal, this is a really interesting, good album if you like – well, what? “Film soundtrack music” isn’t really a genre, is it, but that’s what Fire Behind The Curtain makes me think of. I’ve seen it described as neoclassical and minimalist too, but neither of those feels quite right to me. It’s a beautifully cohesive-yet-eclectic collection of mostly-instrumental pieces vary from haunting and bleakly forbidding atmospheres to warm and embracing melodies.

 

 

William Carlos Whitten
Burn My Letters
I Heart Noise

I can’t really write an awful lot about this album from the always-dependable I Heart Noise label, as I’ve only just started listening to it really; but so far I love it. It makes me think of Lou Reed, or Alan Vega covering John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band album; sparse, forlorn, world-weary and a little bit sleazy.

 

 

 

 

What else?  Lots of other good things; oh – Grid of Points by Grouper is great, but I forgot about it until just now. I was a bit underwhelmed by the new Immortal and Marduk records, though they are both pretty solid. I really liked the new albums by Tunjum and Uada, there’s a great Souljazz compilation of old hip-hop etc, I’ve been quite impressed by the recent Ill Considered album though I haven’t gotten used to it yet and… well, I’ll come back if there’s anything great I’ve forgotten!

 

The Dead Cannot Contradict: R.I.P. M.E.S. 1957 – 2018

Mark E. Smith 1991 by Matthew R Lewis

There have been a lot of obituaries for the great Mark E. Smith in the last week. This will not be one of the better ones, but it is my one. In my experience, the bands you love in your teens are, although they have a special place in your memory, mostly not the same bands you listen to for the rest of your life (to date). But unlike most of my favourite artists from those long years between 16 and 20 or thereabouts, I never went off The Fall, I just didn’t listen to them very often. But whenever I did, they seemed just as strange and clever and funny and unique as they had the first time I heard them.

The Fall are legendarily supposed to be a hard band to like, or to get into, but I never found it to be so. The hard-to-like quality obviously has something to do with their spiky, unpredictable sound (and Mark E. Smith’s indomitable/hectoring voice) but is perhaps also due to the fact that – for the most part – their music doesn’t appeal to the emotions, it is not (hopefully) about you; nobody (as far as I know) wallows in The Fall, the way as an adolescent I wallowed in The Cure or The Smiths or the Cranes or whoever it might be. The first Fall song I heard was a snippet of then-current single ‘Telephone Thing‘ (a funky, catchy wah-wah-led pop song with a phone-tapping theme, which namechecks EastEnders actress Gretchen Franklin – i.e. as typically atypical as any Fall single) on The Chart Show, which was enough to make me buy its parent album, Extricate. As a reader of the music weeklies (Melody Maker was my favourite, but I often bought NME and Sounds as well) I was of course aware of The Fall, and specifically Mark E. Smith, at that point – as he was to remain – a figure who polarised the magazines’ writers, while – unlike say Morrissey or Robert Smith – having the (admittedly sometimes grudging) respect, seemingly, of all of them.

Extricate is in itself a classic Fall album, but it was intriguing in all kinds of ways. I liked. firstly, the tunes, but also the the mix of the un-selfconscious artiness of the abstract cover painting/assemblage by contemporary artist Anthony Frost, with the barbed humour of the lyrics (the album contains the classic ‘British People In Hot Weather‘as well as the aforementioned ‘Telephone Thing‘ and (I have the cassette version) ‘Arms Control Poseur‘). But one of the great things about coming to this – or I think any – Fall album as an introduction to the band, is that it hints at so much more than it contains. This, the reviews said, was an unusually accessible/conventional Fall album and indeed, Mark E. Smith’s sleevenote reinforced that impression:

There is no central track, as I’ve/we’ve tried to give out The Fall as it should be and not as it is perceived. Therefore, the first half of the disc reflects on things witnessed and/or sensed, while the second half is NOW. This means there’s a thin dish-up of stories and characters etc, but that format’s well flogged and pushed of recent, so hopefully EXTRICATE’s simplicity will confound all bores, imitators and anxiety mongers./ EXTRICATE! All the best from M.E.S.

This was odd. Mark E. Smith reminded me of nothing so much as Alex from A Clockwork Orange; sophisticated, articulate, menacing but not unfriendly. A few years later, when I began to read Wyndham Lewis I was reminded irresistibly of Mark E. Smith. And indeed the whole of The Fall’s early work is extremely Vorticist/BLAST-like. I didn’t know though until quite recently that Mark E. Smith was a fellow Wyndham Lewis fan (though I think MES often agreed with Lewis where I don’t) – it seems so obvious now.  And the reference to stories and characters was intriguing; if this was The Fall gone normal then what did they sound like before?? I think the next album I bought might have been the essential compilation of early material Palace Of Swords Reversed; here were ‘Marquis Cha-Cha‘, a story about a Lord Haw Haw character stranded in South America which opens

“He can never go home
Stranded in South America, nothing to go home for
Just another Brit in the bar
Hernandez Fiendish comes over to me
Offers a job as broadcaster…”

who else was writing songs like that? Or ‘Leave The Capitol‘ (“exit this Roman shell!“) or, even more peculiarly, ‘Wings‘:

“Day by day
The moon gains on me
Purchased pair of flabby wings
I took to doing some hovering”

And that’s just the lyrics; another thing about The Fall that made an impression on me early on was that, although MES was incredibly fussy and perfectionist about the band’s music, he wasn’t snobbish in the usual way; no tune, if it was catchy, was too silly for Mark E. Smith. Think of the speedy but somehow miniature-sounding rock guitar on ‘Underground Medicine‘ or loping, bouncy beat to ‘Gramme Friday‘ or the oddly jaunty, countryish ‘Fit And Working Again‘. or the kazoo on ‘The North Will Rise Again this was ‘angular’ (the definitive descriptive term for late 70s/early 80s UK indie rock) if you like, but it was not standard ‘post-punk’ music, nor was it (as it could easily have been) twee in that beloved ramshackle UK indie/C86 kind of way. Perhaps because Mark E. Smith was not (99% of the time) a melodic singer, the band could play anything behind him and it sounded right. When, at the beginning of one of my favourite songs, ‘Slates‘, MES shouts ‘this is the definitive rant‘ he’s nailing part of the charm of his work. As long as the rant was in place, no tune was too small, too jingly or too silly to make something worthwhile out of.

After Palace Of Swords Reversed I bought anything I could get my hands on. Luckily there was a lot of it, and it was mostly pretty affordable, especially the stuff from the band’s then slightly maligned, now justly celebrated mid-80s period of relative commercial success. In itself, that success was odd and underlined just how unique the band, and specifically Smith’s vision, was. I loved that Mark E. Smith saw nothing elitist or strange about working with a ballet company, or in writing for the theatre and working with ‘serious’ artists and yet the people I knew who derided Morrissey as being “poncy” never seemed to think that about MES. The fact that he refused to separate the ‘high’ arts from his work with The Fall was so powerful. Everyone knows, for example, that Brian May is an astrophysicist, but imagine if astrophysics had somehow been indivisible from his work with Queen; they would have been far a more peculiar and far less successful, but also (with no offence intended to the band or its members) probably more interesting band.

Although most of my favourite Fall albums are the early ones (especially Dragnet, Grotesque (After The Gramme) and Hex Enduction Hour) those 80s albums with the Mark and Brix-led lineup(s), especially The Wonderful and Frightening World Of The Fall are pretty unassailable and perhaps the least overtly commercial ‘commercial’ period of any band I can think of. The band stayed good though, and although I am not a Fall completist (a vocation rather than a hobby) I’ve found that any Fall record one picks up will have something great on it; and there aren’t many bands with a 40 year career you can say that about.

A few random but significant (to me) Mark E. Smith/Fall things:

  • my favourite Fall release of them all is Slates (1981); typically awkward, it is a brilliantly ungainly 6-track 10″ which Mark E. Smith was proud of as it was too long to qualify for the singles chart but too short for the album chart; not that it was likely to trouble either one. Plus, it opens with MES shouting “Pink press threat!
  • I must be impressionable; I think I got into Albert Camus because The Fall were named after one of his books.
  • I don’t remember which music paper it was in, but Mark E. Smith was a guest reviewer in one of the weeklies c.1992 and gave Morrissey’s Your Arsenal a surprisingly positive(ish) review. One phrase that stuck in my memory (perhaps incorrectly) and seems definitively MES-ish to me is “the guitar player has too much equipment”
  • When I first read (in the late 90s?) Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical novel Lions And Shadows (1938) the idea of ‘The Other Town’, the sinister unseen parallel reality accessed through various apparently ordinary gates and doorways in Cambridge reminded me irresistibly of the band, especially the bizarre, creepy but also funny narrative songs like the (actually quite Lovecraftian) ‘Impression Of J. Temperance’ :

“A never seen dog breeder
This is the tale of his replica
Name was J. Temperance
Only two did not hate him
Because peasants fear local indifference
Pet shop and the vet, Cameron…”

 

  • when I finally listened to the classic German band Can it was because the Fall song ‘I Am Damo Suzuki‘ made me curious about them
  • one of the key things about The Fall’s music is its palate-cleansing quality; their music makes almost any other comparable popular music sound sentimental in comparison. And yet on the rare occasions (‘Bill Is Dead‘, ‘Edinburgh Man‘) when MES is sentimental the songs are among his best.
  • Edinburgh Man‘ was probably the first song I heard by a band I liked that was about a place I knew
  • I have been a Fall fan for half of my life, but I’ve only met maybe 4 or 5 other people who like them (though I realise they are quite popular)
  • I never particularly wanted to meet Mark E. Smith, but I’m very sad that he’s dead.

 

 

PS – the title for this piece is from an enigmatic line in the – obviously – highly peculiar song New Face In Hell: 
The dead cannot contradict/Sometimes the living cannot

Play For Today – Current Playlist, 12th January 2017

 

Currently working on several more substantial articles, but in the meantime, here’s what I’ve been listening to in the last little while; which quite a lot of actually new music, as it turns out…

julia kent

  1. Julia Kent Asperities (The Leaf Label, 2015) – a beautiful album of experimental cello music I like so much that I was moved to actual pay money for the vinyl version.
  2. BathshebaServus (Svart Records, 2017) – the forthcoming album from Bathsheba impressed me a lot; ‘atmospheric occult doom’ is something I’m actually a bit weary of, but the songs are great and singer Michelle Nocon has a Patti Smith-like authority that makes it all very compelling.
  3. Code – Lost Signal (Agonia Records, 2017) – I thought this EP of re-recordings (plus one new song) would be a waste of time, but no; really good in fact.
  4. Nick Mazzarella Trio – Ultraviolet (International Anthem, 2015) – the apparent contradiction of free, expressive jazz welded into tightly controlled compositions turns out to be a recipe for vibrant, gripping music.
  5. Ashen Spire – Speak Not Of The Laudanum Quandary (code666, 2017) – I have to admit the thought of melodramatic, A Forest of Stars-like artifice welded to doomy and atmospheric extreme metal is not something that always fills me with joy – but Ashenspire are more peculiar and less pantomimic in their theatricality than I expected, and the title song is one of several hugely effective compositions here. An acquired taste, as I assume it’s supposed to be, but one worth acquiring.
  6. Bruno Sanfilippo – Piano Textures 4 (2016) – beautifully evocative, modern minimalist piano pieces cover
  7. David Bowie – Hunky Dory (RCA, 1971) – This was my favourite Bowie album (actually, my favourite album) for years, but I hadn’t listened to it for ages. Being impressionable, the fact that a bunch of music critics voted it his greatest work sent me back to it again. I don’t agree, but I see why they think so; Bowie at his most accessible and (relatively) least artificial.
  8. Julie’s Haircut – Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin (Rocket Recordings, 2017) – hypnotic, psychedelic-occult-krautrock that is mesmerising without being boring.
  9. Cryfemal – D6s6nti6rro (Osmose Productions, 2016) Even though I wrote about how much I like Cryfemal here aeons ago,  I actually didn’t notice when they/he (Cryfemal is still just ‘Ebola’) released this album. It’s great – in theory nothing-special, bog-standard black metal, in reality that, only made fantastic by Ebola’s way with a tune.
  10. Nicole Sabouné – Miman (Century Media, 2017) – not 100% made my mind up about this, but when in the mood for langorous, Dead Can Dance-influenced baroque gothic pop, it’s definitely pretty effective.
  11. Uriah Heep – Sonic Origami (Eagle Records, 1998) – what could be less promising than an album by 70s rock dinosaurs, struggling to find their place in the post-grunge landscape of the 90s? And yet the mighty Heep rose to whatever occasion there was with warmth, grace and some understated rock tunes that still sound very nice indeed.
  12. Juliana Hatfield – Hey Babe (Mammoth, 1992) – still in the 90s, this alternative rock gem is a bit overlooked these days, but it still sounds great to me.julianahatfieldtop4
  13. The Veldt – In A Quiet Room (Leonard Skully Records, 2017) – my dubiousness about the current shoegaze revival almost made me overlook this great band, but I’m glad I listened;on paper their music is such a peculiar mix (experimental shoegaze + soul etc) but in fact it just sounds natural and right.
  14. Tom Waits – The Heart of Saturday Night (Asylum, 1974) – to me, this is the album where he first found his true voice and, if not quite as great as Nighthawks at the Diner, it’s still a collection of great songs.
  15. Claire Waldoff – Die Berliner Pflanze (Berliner Musikinder, 2001) – I’ve been fascinated by the art and culture of the Weimar Republic for years* (just as well; seems like that’s the kind of period we’re living in now) and Claire Waldoff’s music from that period (early 30s mostly) is incredibly evocative and moving, and a bit silly. Plus, I love her voice and I am one of the few people I have come across who thinks German is a beautiful-sounding language, so that’s a bonus.
  16. Tenebrae In Perpetuum – La Genesi: 2001-2002 (Ordo MCM, 2017) – I’m a sucker for Italian black metal (the most underrated black metal scene in the world, mostly) and this reissue of the early works of Tenebrae In Perpetuum captures the band at their most atmospheric and unhinged.
  17. Kathy McCarty – Dead Dog’s Eyeball Songs of Daniel Johnston (Bar/None Records, 1994) – Kathy McCarty did a lot to make Daniel Johnston’s songs palatable to people who don’t like the lo-fi home-recordedness of his early work (or his voice, for that matter) and this is still a great album in its own right.
  18. Queen – The Miracle (Capitol, 1989) – an oddity for me, I really don’t like Queen much after Hot Space but I bought this for 50p in a charity shop and so have listened to it a few times. It’s not great, but I like the title song and a few other bits & pieces; Freddie’s voice is always nice to hear.qveen

and that will do for now!

  • re. The Weimar Republic & its culture, there’s a great article about the photographer Marianne Breslauer here

The Second Monthly Report: February 2016

 

A short month, but full of things, not least my own birthday! So plenty of stuff to discuss…

Unfortunately, David Bowie is still dead and in fact has been more productive than ever as a commercial entity, as music, magazines, TV shows, pop stars and books pay tribute to the great man.

One of the more unusual books to appear in the wake (sorry) of Bowie’s death is the (big even for a coffee table) book: produced by the personalised gifting website ijustloveit.co.uk:

David Bowie: A Newspaper History

meer

Published in a large (indeed, tabloid newspaper) format, but with an embossed leather cover, David Bowie: A Newspaper History is an extremely fascinating but mostly not at all heartwarming memento of a career of dazzling highs and normal human lows as seen through the distorting lens of The Daily Mirror; revealed here – in case you didn’t suspect it – as a sensationalist tabloid that never really understood anything about the man except for his fame and newsworthiness. Although there is some introductory scene-setting concerning the outrageously long-haired Bowie of 1965 (with a great full-page photo) and a brief snippet about his Man Who Sold The World man-dress, the book really takes off, as one would expect, in 1972, when Bowie became a household name after the Ziggy-era singles began to chart, to the bemusement of the older generation and, one assumes, the readers of the Daily Mirror.

For the next few years, the Mirror veers between the predictable extremes of fashion icon idolatry and ‘has-he-gone-too-far?’ tabloid outrage. So we see David and Angie, the toast of the fashion world, David and Lulu, the ‘odd couple’, ‘Bowie Goes Straight!’ as glam rock dies, depressingly muck-raking coverage of David and Angie’s separation (“ZOWIE: boy in the middle”), rumours about his love life, innuendo about his drug use, continuing surprise at the longevity of his career and good health. What makes the book so fascinating is that the Bowie stories are framed with whatever else was going on at the time; political scandals, murder, adverts for banks, cheap chicken, New Mirror Bingo, all giving a vivid and immediate contemporary context that a biography can only do justice through exposition and anecdote. It also incidentally shows how central Bowie was, and continued to be, to popular culture in the 70s and 80s; film and television, Live Aid, riots in Brixton, new advances in technology and marketing (‘Vote for the songs you want to hear on Bowie’s 1990 tour’); Bowie was there, leading, following, keeping his distance or taking part; it’s no wonder his absence is felt so keenly.

If the tabloid culture of the 70s and 80s was deplorable but kind of fun in its eminent shockability, worse was to come in the 90s. The Mirror may(?) have been a cut above The Sun or News of the World, but its journalism epitomises the tabloid culture where anything private is ‘secret’, non-married partners are invariably ‘lovers’ and the language used is a bizarre mixture of pedestrian illiterate-friendly English, salacious puritanism and puerile baby-talk. From being the ‘bizarre pop phenomenon’ of the 70s and ‘pop chameleon’ of the 80s, Bowie now becomes just ‘rock star David Bowie’ and the Mirror wants to have its cake and eat it; being shocked and condemnatory where there is suspicion of drug use or disharmony between Bowie and ex-bandmates, shocked/amused by anything vaguely unusual that Bowie said/did/wore (We can be hairdoes..), but also devoting ‘heartwarming’ stories to anything that normal famous people do; a full page is devoted to the birth of his daughter (Daddy Stardust) and his recovery from heart surgery (I AM HUNKY DORY).

snobo

In amongst all this are a some genuinely interesting pieces; a fairly short and shallow interview with Alun Palmer in 2003 is fascinating because the Mirror wanted to know about things that NMEMojo etc didn’t; his health, his personal life, his smoking; everything in fact except the actual music he was making.

In more recent times it all becomes a bit reprehensible; Aladdin Retirement (2012) attempts to pry into his private life and quotes nameless ‘friends’ about his desire to avoid the limelight without the slightest sense of irony or self-awareness. Even worse are the frankly vile speculations by ex-music journalists who should know better concerning his flurry of activity in 2013 (DOES A TRAGIC REASON LIE BEHIND THE THIN WHITE DUKE’S RETURN?) which fizzle out as Bowie doesn’t die and the paper loses interest, instead satisfying itself as usual with photos of Bowie caught off-guard, looking normal and, sin of sins, his age.

And then, inevitably, comes Blackstar (Album of the Week no less; actually a very good review) and then the obituaries; the hypocritically respectful overviews of his life and career intercut with whatever snippets and details they could get on the state of his health during the final months of ‘secrecy’ while he fought cancer.

David Bowie: A Newspaper History is a fascinating, absorbing book. Fans, people who have followed Bowie’s career and work will find in it hundreds of photographs they may not have seen before, the kind of stories that don’t make it into serious biographies, but also a peculiar parallel universe where their hero is distorted into somebody that only unbelievers will recognise; David Bowie the ‘superstar’.

Highly recommended; in an odd way it’s a very fitting memorial to a life lived in public, even if it leaves a funny, slightly bitter taste in the end.

 

 

Some music that occupied the ears during February:

The reliably interesting Folkwit Records have a few excellent new releases:

RivsAstrophysics Saved My Life is the second album by folk-rock group Rivers of England and it’s a rich, accessible and pleasant album that wears its unorthodox aspects very lightly. The most audible reference point is less folk (let alone ‘folk rock’) and more the jazzy John Martyn of Solid Air, although Rivers of England’s sound is never quite as unearthly as that comparison suggests, not least because singer/songwriter Rob Spalding has a David Gray-like (though not David Gray-sounding) directness in his vocal performances that is very different from John Martyn’s allusive, intuitive delivery.  It’s a strong set of songs that seems set for mainstream success; they would be an eminently suitable festival band, so hopefully they should be on some main (or at least big) stages this summer.

 

 

jackanLess ‘normal’ and slightly more my cup of tea is Melody Cycle  by Jack And The’, the musical project of Edinburgh-based French multi-instrumentalist Julien Lonchamp.

The album presents, in beautiful widescreen clarity, a kind of incidental-TV-music-baroque-jazz-pop that has a breezy charm that veers towards twee-ness at times, but is so brilliantly orchestrated that its complexity never overwhelms its sunny, life affirming quality. If you imagine The Beach Boys’ immortal ‘Aren’t You Glad‘ being played by a French version of Cornelius’ old band Flipper’s Guitar aided by Roy Wood-era ELO on strings and woodwind and you are not only being weird but possibly getting close to the sound of Jack And The’; better just to listen to Melody Cycle though, that way you’ll know exactly what it sounds like.

 

 

Away from Folkwit, I fell in love with sound artist Lisa Busby‘s superb Fingers In The Gloss, lutenist Josef van Wissem‘s beautiful new album When Will The Bright Day Come and the Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto Walt Whitman release Leaves of Grass and some great songs by awesome synth-punk/pop duo Sex Cells but as I’ve written about those in depth on the brilliant site Echoes and Dust I shan’t discuss them further here; but check them out though. Also great is the new Hexvessel album, When We Are Death, see the new issue of Zero Tolerance Magazine (issue 071) for more on that, including my interview with frontman Mat McNerney (also of Grave Pleasures, CODE, DHG etc)

 

arktis-2-01In a heavier vein than the Folkwit records, my favourite metal musician Ihsahn is preparing to release his new album Arktis. through Candlelight Records. Where Das Seelenbrechen (my favourite Ihsahn album to date) mixed avant-garde electronica, classic songwriting, Scott Walker-ish experimentation and rock and metal elements, Arktis. feels like a true successor to the first two Ihsahn albums, The Adversary and angL. It’s an unashamedly, exuberantly heavy metal album for the most part, and while it isn’t without experimental elements it feels like Ihsahn is concentrating more on songwriting, the riff and having fun; and it’s great.

 

 

holocaustSpeaking of unashamed heavy metal, an unexpected treat to (belatedly) come my way was the latest albums by Scottish NWOBHM legends HolocaustReleased through Sleaszy Rider RecordsPredator is 100% a classic metal album, displaying that the band have lost none of the fire or power that brought them to the world’s attention with The Nightcomers back in 1981. As with fellow NWOBHM survivors Saxon, the band’s approach bears little resemblance to the kind of nostalgic pastiches of 80s metal made by so many modern ’80s style’ bands, instead drawing on the same impulses that made the NWOBHM so vital in the first place; passion, skill, good songwriting and an absolute disregard for the dictates of fashion.

Predator isn’t only a great set of songs, it’s a heavy metal album for the twenty-first century and not just for ageing metal warriors longing for the golden age of their youth. They will like it too though.

 

 

RatatatcoverAway from current releases, birthday presents allowed me to overdose on the works of RATATAT, specifically their perfect debut album as well as LP3 and LP4. RATATAT are an interesting band to study chronologically, since their work manages to be both hard to label and surprisingly homogenous in itself. LP3 feels like the most experimental of the three (of all their albums in fact), but it’s a slightly deceptive perception, since LP4  was mostly recorded in the same sessions, so it’s mostly a matter of selection. It feels as though the duo are attempting to explore all of the possibilities within a fairly narrow range of sounds/styles and since their latest album Magnifique (2015) is perhaps their best to date, they hopefully still have plenty of exploring to do.

 

 

NationofMillionsGoing back in time, but never sounding more relevant than it does in 2016, Public Enemy‘s immortal It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back was being played probably too loud in my earphones for much of the month. Listening to Chuck D’s incredible delivery on songs like Louder Than A Bomb (to me one of the best rap performances I’ve heard) two things spring to mind; firstly that Chuck D has the perfect balance between power/authority/style and coherently getting his message across, and secondly that, from the perspective of Public Enemy in 1988, the USA in 2016 is probably both better and worse than they could have foreseen.

 

If all Public Enemy had done was to inform and warn though, they would certainly have been important, but they wouldn’t necessarily have been one of the great musical groups of all time; It Takes A Nation Of Millions… is also a superb album just as sound. Terminator X’s innovative sampling and superlative turntable skills and Flavor Flav’s irrepressible personality bring as much to the album as Chuck D’s more authoritative persona and it’s no surprise that the album was embraced by kids and critics, people of all races and nations; that’s what classic albums do.

 

lencoOlder still, Leonard Cohen‘s Songs From A Room is an album I knew but didn’t own and it seems as good a place as any to start with his work. Strangely, I mainly know the songs from trying to learn to play the guitar with them (I can’t remember why, but the songbook for Songs From A Room and a Songs of George Formby were the only two chord books I had for years; sounds like a charity shop purchase). Maybe it’s because I spent large chunks of late adolescence listening to Joy Division, Cranes, The Smiths etc, but I don’t find Leonard Cohen at all depressing; and really, if as people often claim apologetically, ‘he isn’t really a singer, he’s a poet’, then what is Bob Dylan, or even Lou Reed? Cohen’s voice may not be flamboyant, but it’s inherently musical, and it delivers his emotionally complex lyrics with perfect clarity. The musical sparseness of the album too is a plus, stripped of late 60s ornament, it is timeless and beautiful.

I read some books in February too.

 

grandAn extremely fun, quick, easy but not simple read was the first volume of Bryan Talbot‘s graphic novel series Grandville. Named in honour of the French caricaturist Grandville* the series consists of old fashioned ‘scientific romance thrillers’ that are part pointed steampunk satire, part Rupert the Bear; a very satisfying mixture as it turns out, and beautifully designed and drawn too. As it happens, Bryan Talbot had already drawn possibly my favourite ever steampunk comic art in his tenure as artist on Nemesis The Warlock in 2000AD comic. His ‘Gothic Empire’ episodes are beautifully atmospheric, some of the finest artwork from one of 2000AD’s golden ages.

*Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard; Freddie Mercury was also a fan, the imagery of his final Queen album Innuendo was influenced by Grandville

 

 

vvAnother book with pictures is the brilliant Viviavv2n Maier: Street Photographer edited by John Maloof and published by powerHouse Books. Another beautifully designed book, it collects the amazingly evocative street photos of Vivien Maier, taken from the 1950s onwards but not discovered until after her death in 2009. As a record of the minutiae of everyday life in big cities in days gone by, her photographs would be valuable enough; but they are also the testament to a genuinely remarkable photographic talent, a photographer who knew exactly what would make a good picture and how to capture it, both naturally and strikingly.

 

 

psychAs February ends, I’m reading Jon Ronson‘s now famous Theronso Psychopath Test. A superb and funny investigation into the nature of madness of various types, it retrospectively suffers a little from its own success, the ideas and stories having been widely disseminated since publication (Channel 4’s Psychopath Night etc) and on the whole I think I prefer his latest, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (recently published in paperback) which should be made mandatory reading for anyone who uses social networking sites or thinks that the world needs to hear their opinion. It’s genuinely one of the best books I’ve read in a long time and manages to say something new and meaningful about the ways the world has changed over the last few years while no-one was paying attention, except to their computers and phones.

Oh; here’s five minutes of your life you’ll never get back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsBAmwSgX7w

 

Anyway, onwards: March!