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

Inevitably, the releases of the year, 2016 (Part One)

Last year, I ended up writing multiple ‘releases of the year’ lists because I kept forgetting great things and having to add more posts to include them. I feel like keeping it (relatively) concise this year but will probably end up doing the same again.

 

Anyway, I thought I’d group things differently this time, so here are a few (non-exhaustive) groups of things that all fall into my ‘releases of the year’. They aren’t in any order of preference aside from the ‘release of the year’ itself, which will come last of all. I use the term ‘releases’ because, although it sounds far less good than ‘albums of the year’, I am including all sorts of releases. There aren’t really any rules (aside from year of release, obviously) because why would I make any? And so…

Hellos of the Year (new artists/debut releases)

All years are probably good for new artists and 2016 was no exception

Kib Elektra – Blemishes (Bezirk Tapes)

kib

I’ve written about Abi Bailey‘s Kib Elektra at length here as well as reviewing the EP for Echoes and Dust so will keep this brief. Kib Elektra’s debut is a brilliantly orchestrated collection of contrasting textures and sounds, organic, electronic,earthly and celestial; and the songs are great.

 

 

ThrOes – This Viper Womb (Aesthetic Death)

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An impressive debut in every way, This Viper Womb is remarkable for the balance between precise detail and overall effect; it’s an emotionally involving, musically intense journey – brutal but subtle, extreme metal that doesn’t fit easily into any pigeonhole.

 

 

Naia Izumi – various releases

naia

Guitarist/singer/composer/etc Naia Izumi has released a series of fantastic and wide ranging EPs throughout 2016. Her style is not easy to define, but it incorporates elements of math rock, R’n’B, blues, ambient music… Lots of things, but all done with feeling and amazing instrumental skill – listen here

 

Zeal & Ardor – Devil Is Fine

zeal-and-ardor-devil-is-fine

Sometimes classified as black metal but really a kind of blackened blues, Zeal & Ardor’s music has deep, but varied roots and a spooky atmosphere all of its own. Listen here

 

 

Debz – Extended Play (Choice Records)

debz

Again, I’ve written about this elsewhere, but this EP is a refreshing and messy mix of grungy pop, punk and peculiarity.

 

 

Candelabrum – Necrotelepathy (Altare Productions)

Candelabrum

Unhinged but hugely ambitious Portuguese black metal, Necrotelepathy is a true symphony (while not being remotely ‘symphonic’) of rusty, shrill, clanging and nasty black metal that lasts for a long time (two songs, 33 minutes) but has a strangely cleansing effect on the ears.

 

 

Dia – Tiny Ocean (Manimal Records)

dia-tiny-ocean

A lovely EP of shoegaze-infused baroque pop, or something like that. I wrote about it here and you can check out Dia here. Hopefully lots more to come.

 

 

 

New-old Releases of the Year

Many, many great reissues this year, these were ones worthy of attention:

Uriah Heep – …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (deluxe edition, BMG records)

uriah

I’ve written about this at length elsewhere, but in short – one of the great (and not as respected as it should be) heavy rock albums of the 1970s, remastered, repackaged and with another disc with a whole new, previously unreleased version of the album, great sleevenotes etc etc etc. The reissue of the almost-as-epic Salisbury is just as great. If the (presumably forthcoming) Look At Yourself and Demons and Wizards maintain the quality, 2017 already has something going for it.

 

 

Thus Defiled – An Unhallowed Legacy (Shadowflame Productions)

thus-def

Not quite as lavish than the Uriah Heep reissues (Shadowflame’s budget presumably somewhat less than BMG’s), but just as iconic; two classic turn-of-the-millennium releases from UK black metal overlords Thus Defiled, packaged nicely, sounding fantastic: classic stuff.

David Bowie – Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976) (Parlophone)

who_can_i_be_now_1974_-_1976

I can only dream of having the vinyl version, but whatever the packaging, this is Bowie’s best (i.e. my favourite) period, treated with respect and sounding perfect. I just wish the missinGouster songs were there.

Established artists, latest Releases of the Year

  In no order…

Iggy Pop/Tarwater/Alva Noto – Leaves of Grass (Morr Music)

iggy-pop

A criminally overlooked record, perhaps because of Iggy’s great but more conventional Post-Pop DepressionLeaves of Grass is an EP of readings from Whitman’s book of the same name, with atmospheric electronic backing. Iggy proves himself an unexpectedly, but on reflection not surprisingly brilliant interpreter of Whitman’s poetry. I wrote more and better about it here

 

Wardruna – Runaljod – Ragnarok (By Norse)

ragnarok

Not so much a recreation of the lost music of the viking age as an imagining of it through immersion in the culture, literature and instruments of the era, as well as in the natural landscapes of Scandinavia, Kvitrafn’s latest album is harder to define than it is to feel. The atmosphere is primal and traditional, while not really following any musical traditions; sonically Runaljod – Ragnarok is as much an archaic, organic version of an Eno or Vangelis record as it is ‘folk music’, but somehow the authenticity of Wardruna’s vision and passion makes it feel like a window into a living past.

Egor Grushin – Once

egor-grushin_once-wpcf_300x300

Once made a big impact on me partly because of the deeply worrying socio-political context in which it was released (my review of this album for Echoes and Dust goes on about it), but months later, its graceful, logical beauty is still deeply soothing.

 

 

SubRosa – For This We Fought The Battle of Ages (Profound Lore)

subrosa

Inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic 1921 dystopian novel We, SubRosa’s themes of freedom and control couldn’t be more prescient, and the album is suitably challenging, aggressive and epic. By far their greatest album to date.

 

 

 

end of part one…

next: more releases of the year, including the Goodbyes of the Year

Ride On A Golden Wave: Uriah Heep’s …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble

Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (Vertigo/Mercury, 1970; Bronze shortly thereafter)

This year (2016), BMG begins an extensive reissue campaign of releases by one of the original Spinal Tap-influencing ‘rock dinosaur’ bands, the mighty Uriah Heep. Along with an anthology, the first of these releases is, logically enough, the band’s 1970 debut – one of my favourite albums of all time – …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble. This album is probably not cool. Judging by the mostly negative reviews it got in 1970 (‘If this group makes it I’ll commit suicide’ and ‘it’s too loud, too repetitive, too predictable’ are representative quotes) it never was cool, but 46 years later it can stand proudly alongside any of the hard rock, blues rock, progressive rock or rock-rock albums of its era.

And it was an era of rock; bear in mind that that particular year also spawned Deep Purple In Rock, Black Sabbath AND Paranoid, Led Zeppelin III and many more and, while the mighty Heep are perceived to be a relatively underground cousin of Deep Purple & co, they too ponced around the US in Lear jets and limos in a way that few new rock bands do nowadays. Judged on those 1970 albums alone, the band were clearly up there with the best. Slightly less heavy (but who wasn’t?) than Black Sabbath, more jazzy and poetic than Deep Purple, more riff-centric and bluesy than (1970-era) Led Zeppelin,  …Very ‘Eavy… is monolithic but nimble, straightforward but, except in its most bludgeoning moments, not at all simplistic.

Unlike most decades, the 60s is often felt, culturally, to have a clear and decisive ending; from the perspective of nowadays, the Stones at Altamont and the Manson Family in Death Valley ended the peace & love/flower power era that was already shaken by the revolutionary events and protests of 1968. But the pre-Uriah Heep story, that of a band called Spice, (essentially Heep sans organist Ken Hensley), talent-spotted while playing in ‘The Blues Loft’ in High Wycombe, could not be more redolent of the hippy era. To me, the best work of Uriah Heep always has a hazy aroma late 60s underground optimism and …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble is a kind of time capsule of a world almost as distant and quaint now as the Victorian Age. This was a time when – as the great Charles Shaar Murray wrote (in a Cream magazine T-Rex article in 1972, just as the world moved into another cultural phase) – “Any gentle freak who believed that Nostradamus and King Arthur were alive and well in a UFO hovering somewhere over Glastonbury Tor, or who read Tolkien and Moorcock over his brown rice and apple juice, just had to own the Tyrannosaurus Rex albums...” It was these kind of freaks, one assumes, who in their less gentle moments, wanted to rock out to Spice. In High Wycombe. Incidentally, it may be this very hippy-hangover aura that prevented Uriah Heep from being as influential on the metal scene as their contemporaries, Black Sabbath (whose musical background in blues rock was very similar). Indeed, I can personally testify that the whole flared-trousers-and-moustaches vibe of the Heep (as well as the slightly bland rock they were putting out at the time) was enough to prevent some 80s metal kids from checking out their older work.

spice

Anyway; Spice became a pretty well known band on the progressive rock circuit in the dying years of the 60s. In fact, their music as preserved on the first few LPs is very much ‘progressive’ in the late 60s blues rock sense (in which sense Led Zeppelin were also progressive), but not in the sense that ‘prog’ came to mean as the 70s wore on. Mick Box, founder, guitarist and, to this day the real heart of Uriah Heep, began as a jazz player and it was perhaps this more than anything, that coloured the heavy blues rock that Spice played; parallel to the British Blues boom but not really part of it, the band used elements of the blues, but they were never constrained by its structures.

The Band

Mick Box: guitar

mick

(highly underrated as player, composer & all-round riffmeister)

 

 

 

 

 

David Byron: vocals

DByron

(a versatile, very English-sounding rock voice, equally at home with swaggering, earthy blues-rock vocalising and delicate fantasy

 

 

 

 

 

Ken Hensley: organ, guitar, vocals etc.

kenhen

(Without Hensley Uriah Heep would have been far more like a standard late 60s blues-rock band)

 

 

 

 

 

Paul Newton: bass, vocals

newton

(in the classic 70s tradition the bass is loud, clear & occasionally funky on this album; co-wrote lots of the songs.)

 

 

 

 

 

Alex Napier – drums (on half of the album)

alnapier

(great, agile and subtle drummer, not as thunderous as some contemporaries, but for my money up there with the best; retired after leaving the band I believe)

 

 

 

 

 

Nigel “Ollie” Olsson: also drums, plays on a few songs

olsson

(another great drummer; went on to play with Elton John after his stint in the Heep)

 

 

 

 

 

THE ALBUM

1. Gypsy (Mick Box/David Byron)
The perfect opening track; after the busy little intro the simple, bludgeoning guitar/organ riff provides an excellent backing for David Byron’s authoritative vocal, establishing the Heep as a band of (for the time extremely) heavy sound and somewhat whimsical, romantic preoccupations; hippies in fact. Excellent organ and guitar soloing and harmony backing vocals by pretty much everyone make this a superb manifesto for the band’s approach. 70s heavy rock par excellence

2. Walking In Your Shadow (Paul Newton/David Byron)

An excellent funky drum intro which should be (has been?) sampled leads into a dynamic blues-rock song with another perfect vocal by David Byron. The song is a relatively understated version of the kind of pleased-with-itself blues rock swagger that Whitesnake were to excel in later in the decade, and it has an excellent Mick Box solo too.

3. Come Away Melinda (Hellerman/Minkoff)

A delicate and drama-filled version of the much-covered melancholy anti-war folk/protest song. Byron’s clear enunciation and expressive voice make the most of the (possibly slightly twee and pretentious) post-apocalyptic lyrics. Lovely mellotron-flute intro and lovely acoustic guitar; the key word is ‘lovely’. The great vocal is made even better by imaginative use of stereo.

4. Lucy Blues (Mick Box/David Byron)

A somewhat quizzical and sad blues-rock song, Lucy Blues is, despite occasional claims at the time that they were Led Zep clones,  the closest Uriah Heep comes to Led Zeppelin on this album; not all that close. And with all respect to the iconic Robert Plant, David Byron managed the same kind of expressiveness without the melodramatic whimpering and screaming. As the original sleevenote remarks; ‘hardly unpredictable but rather pleasant’. Nice piano work adds to the barroom blues feel, far less epic than the usual Heep sound. Byron’s English accent gives the song a strange and unique flavour, as it tends to do on all of the more blues-based material – one of the features that makes early Uriah Heep so distinctive. Meanwhile, Ken Hensley proves himself master of the classic blues Hammond organ solo too.

5. Dreammare (Paul Newton)

Side two commences with one of the heavier songs on the album. Dreammare has an ominous organ intro, a strangely funky, reverby riff and a suitably feverish quality, enhanced by the speaker-to-speaker shimmer on the vocals. A nicely bad-tempered, squalling guitar solo too. This is perhaps the only song where the claims of sheer noisy unpleasantness could be deemed fair enough; for non-rock fans anyway.

6. Real Turned On (Mick Box/David Byron/Paul Newton)

Proto-Whitesnake swagger again (but even more so), Real Turned On is a cocky mid-tempo blues-rock tune with an angular riff, several good solos, tons of slide guitar by Ken Hensley and a good naturedly sleazy David Byron trying to lure a young woman with wine and so forth. Unreconstructed 60s freewheeling sexual (and arguably, but arguably not, sexist) revolution rock, it ends, oddly, with screeds of apocalyptic feedback.

7. I’ll Keep On Trying (Mick Box/David Byron)

Archetypically 70s flared-jeans hard rock, with organs, screaming guitar and an impassioned David Byron vocal. The tune skips between sinister-toned, portentious organ and wailing vocals and nimble-fingered fiddlyness during which every band member gets to show off, before settling into a heavy blues riff. There are tranquil interludes and dramatic, siren-like guitar and even a Zappa-esque wah-wah solo. If you don’t like this, you probably don’t like Uriah Heep; fair enough.

8. Wake Up (Set Your Sights) (Mick Box/David Byron)

The final track on the album is also the most ‘progressive’, jazzy one, which manages to encapsulate all of the facets of early Heepdom in six minutes. The intro has David Byron intoning ‘aaahhh’s over a bass and organ scales before a dramatic, grandiose verse about justice prevailing, before the music becomes a kind of hoppity, percussive jazz with some excellent bass playing and very understated guitars. As the song builds (with some enjoyably silly vocalising; ‘justice, justice, just-iiiice‘ etc) it breaks not into rock but another jazzy verse/chorus and then a lovely soft pastoral interlude before fading out. Byron’s vocal is highly theatrical and generally one of the best he ever recorded and it’s just an excellent, dynamic end to a superb album that people don’t like as much as I do; their loss.

daheepAs if all this wasn’t enough, the album is housed in one of the great rock sleeves of the era: a fallen warrior (David Byron in fact) covered in cobwebs, the darkness surrounding him only broken by the (superbly-fonted) logo and title. The gatefold features a photo of the band onstage.

heepin

The album was released in the US in a different and slightly inferior form (missing Lucy Blues, and featuring instead the great Bird of Prey from the band’s second album, Salisbury). The US album is simply called Uriah Heep and its cover – a kind of dragon/wyrm thing – is not one of the great rock sleeves of the era.

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Although …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble is one of those rare perfectly formed albums that can only be marred by adding bonus tracks to, it is also one of those albums I have to own on multiple formats, and the 1996 CD release adds bonus tracks, thus:

Gypsy (single edit)
What is says; a shorter version, omitting the organ intro & so forth. Pretty great, though unnecessary

Come Away Melinda
An early version recorded by Spice before they changed their name to Uriah Heep. Interesting, not hugely different from the album version really, but  Byron’s vocal has less feeling and it’s generally not quite as good.

Born in a Trunk
A rocking Spice tune, this features the kind of dynamics that early Heep excelled in, plus another strangely English David Byron vocal and some great funky drum breaks.

BMG’s latest version is in all regards superior to the 1996 version: wisely retaining the whole of the original album (but with beautifully remastered sound) as disc one of two, it adds an entire (and to be fair, slightly inferior) version of the album on disc two. These are unreleased (earlier or alternate takes) of most of the songs, plus the US mix of Bird of Prey and a nice Spice track called Magic Lantern.

Although the earlier versions are, naturally, mostly not quite as good as the finished ones, they are nearly there and, while Spice without Hensley can never equal Uriah Heep, that late 60s atmosphere, an indefinable (and you would think incompatible) mixture of unpretentious ‘let’s just get up and play’ attitude and love of airy, fantastical romance is present in its most concentrated form.