2019, the insanity grows...

Odd title for an annual music review, but them's the times. With these words I aim to provide you with an escape from the creeping madness, which by the time you read this will have crystallised still further, or maybe it's still chasing itself round the kitchen garden wearing nowt but outsized bloomers on its head, who knows? Thank fuck for the music, is all I can say.

Expanding on last year's more informal layout, I will hopefully tempt you to dip your toes into the multi-coloured waters of my strange musical pond, as I witter on a bit about those albums that made me sit up and take notice, mostly in a good way.

Here's a handy playlist that includes a track from most of the albums mentioned below, which saves you having to read it all, I suppose!

In roughly chronological order of release, here goes...

We start the year with an album I missed from 2018, namely Marianne Faithful - Negative Capability, which oozes the class and dignity of one of life's survivors. 2019 was prodded into action by Free Human Zoo - No Wind Tonight, a new take on jazz rock, and Stephan Thelen, he of tri-tone monsters Sonar, whose solo album Fractal Guitar sounded much as you might expect, but still did the trick.

In September we went to see an intriguing idea called The Utopia Strong (more of that band further down... ), who were supporting Teeth Of The Sea, a punishingly loud live act that bludgeoned their fine album Wraith into the mostly willing audience with untrammeled glee. This band and those of similar outlook are naturals to be soundtracking the end of days, should the apocalyptic scenarios of soon come ecological and/or economic disaster prove correct. Not for Teeth Of The Sea a cosy nostalgic worldview through rose-tinted spectacles, oh no. This music tells tales from the beyond, and as a bonus is beyond classification. Brutal and beautiful at one and the same time.
A different prospect live, where they seem to be a "rock band for clubbers" who like their music to deploy insane bowel-loosening levels of low-end volume. The only gig I left before the end this year! I must be getting old.

A slight return for Talk Talk luminary Paul Webb, as Rustin Man, on his first outing in a mere 16 years with Drift Code, a very English record, from a slightly altered space. Robert Wyatt would approve.

And now we come to one of the year's highlights with Lost Crowns - Every Night Something Happens. I have already written plenty about this band and their album (see HERE and HERE if interested), and some of it made a kind of sense, much like the album in question. "Let Loving Her Be Everything... is leaping around in the kitchen in a peculiar collection of wrong time signatures while I’m attempting to prepare tea, headbanging furiously to THAT riff. I’ve seen this played live, I know what it can do where yoga takes twice the time." You have been warned.

A duo from Belgium now, both helmed by a guitarist of some note by the name of Michel Delville. First up is The Godel Codex - Oak, which is 21st century artrock carved from a rapidly receding glacier. Well, it would be if Belgium had mountains. Exploratory cosmic surfing from Brussels, via Canterbury, through an industrial electronic filter, with love. Then we have The Wrong Object - Into The Herd, wherein Michel Delville's psychedelic fusion band get down right deep into the groove and turn the lightshow on.

The new era of Gong goes from strength to strength, and The Universe Also Collapses took the pothead pixies along to the Knifeworld party to produce a very trippy hybrid. Where does Knifeworld end and Gong start is the question no-one is asking?! Motorpsycho followed up last year's triumphal The Tower with The Crucible, which is a tad looser, and definitely heavier, and it does the business in classic Motorpsycho style.

Long-running altered state Americana exponents Mercury Rev came up with a cover of Bobby Gentry's The Delta Sweete, which introduces a whole new audience to a classic outsider's album, especially this side of the Pond where I'm guessing 90% and upwards of the buyers of Mercury Rev's latest had never heard nor even heard of the original record, me included. The Rev filter the countryfied Americana of the original through their familiar psychedelic gauze, using a succession of guest female vocalists, but making it very much their own record in the process. A fine return to form.

A 14-headed beast by the name of Fire! Orchestra fell upon Earth from the drinking halls of Valhalla, gifting us mere mortals music by the longship-load. Arrival is breathtaking in its scope, and for good measure includes a sublime cover of Chic's At Last I Am Free, which I primarily associate with Robert Wyatt as I heard his version from 1978's Rock Bottom before I was aware of the original.

Three vastly different albums now: Daniel O'Sullivan - Folly gave us twelve sumptuous and magickal songs from the multi-talented musician with Ulver connections that will caress your weary soul. The Hedvig Mollestad Trio - Smells Funny is the loudest record in this list, and Hedvig's monster guitar rock from the jazz clubs of Valhalla will loosen yer fillings. Luvvly. Lastly, and in complete contrast, we have Michael Chapman - True North. Maybe doesn't quite hit the heights 2017's celebratory 50, but the veteran folk growler still makes the art of engaging and relevant songwriting sound effortless, creating a very listenable album in the process.

A couple from the Prog Pond now, starting with Tim Bowness - Flowers At The Scene. Full-on but cliché-free modern prog rock from the diminutive but forceful "David Cassidy of prog". To clarify, I mean for his breathy crooning, not that he gets knickers thrown at him by obssessive female fans. That's still to come, but judging by his ever-growing profile it won't be long.  The other is Isildur's Bane & Peter Hammill - In Amazonia. Having made an album with Steve Hogarth, the unashamedly prog Swedes now team up with one of the heavyweights, and the greatest lyricist of the originals, one Peter Hammill. It's far too tempting to say that this is what a new incarnation of VdGG might sound like, so I just did.

Meanwhile, back in Belgium, a strange but beautiful beast from the never less than interesting Guy Segers of Univers Zéro fame, by the name of The Eclectic Maybe Band gave the world their Reflection In A Mœbius Ring Mirror. Here, Segers surrounds himself with a cast of seasoned players and makes an album that is as out there and as genuinely progressive as you'd expect, while being entirely listenable. A contender!

Two albums as different from one another and from the previous album in this scattergun list that effortlessly reflects my obviously superb Catholic tastes, are Ebony Steel Band - Pan Machine, and Spellcasters - Music From The Anacostia Delta. The former injects Krafwerk's glacial classic with a large helping of Caribbean soul food for the ears, covering Man Machine on steel drums, and it works! The latter finds three American dudes on Telecasters rocking out, probably sporting acres of denim. These two tie for Fun Album of The Year.

Hip thang of the year was black midi and their album Schlagenheim had the Shoreditch beard gel consumers bobbing their man buns about in a studied cool approximation of orgasmic frenzy. Proof that BRIT School graduates don't just make pretty pop. They are indeed VERY hip, but that's probably not their fault. Angular, spiky, reminds me of early Wire, but it has a wily presence all its own. Might be too clever for its own good, and unlike the other deliberately clever album in this list (Lost Crowns) shows little evidence of a sense of humour, and takes itself a tad too seriously. The interesting question is how they follow this up!

WARNING (and general rant... ) - don't buy the CD version, it's probably the worst "designed" cover I have ever come across, if Amazon reviews are to be believed. The lyric sheet is apparently stuck under the shrink wrapping on the outside of CD-single case, and won't fit inside the case! Rough Trade are obviously run by kids who don't understand that the CD is a perfectly acceptable format being deliberately killed off by the major labels - no manufacturing costs in streaming, it's all about profit. This is not a good thing.

Another trio of releases that cover an awful lot of stylistic ground is headed up by North Sea Radio Orchestra - Folly Bololey. A joyous reworking of Robert Wyatt's classic solo album  Rock Bottom, plus some gorgeous extras, with John Greaves and Annie Barbazza. If it doesn't make you smile inside, your soul has had too much of life's botox.

Flying Lotus came up with a sprawling follow up to 2014's psychedelic extravaganza You're Dead, entitled Flamagra. Unlike that album, which wore its early Soft Machine influence quite openly, and put it through all sorts of modern production trickery to produce a dense trip hop stew, this time Stephen Ellison flings open the stable doors and the horses stampede their new-found freedom across lysergic plains of dayglo cinematic vistas. Or summat. In a word, epic! The last panel of this ill-matched triptych is Elephant9 - Psychedelic Backfire I & II. Keyboard wizard Ståle Storløkken, best known for his many collaborations with countrymen Terje Rypdal and Motorpsycho, and for leading his own jazz-improv group Supersilent, has another project named Elephant9 who are a trio consisting of his keyboards, plus bass and drums. They groove like muvvas on this double live release where they lock in to some tremendous ass-kicking grooves. On II they are joined by Reine Fiske, the guitarist from psych rockers Dungen, and things get very hot in the kitchen, oh yes! Live album of the year, no question!

Ståle Storløkken also makes a guest appearance on the weighty jazz-prog-improv collision Q by Krokofant, an album guaranteed to rattle yer ornaments. It is probably time to declare those flawless purveyors of sonic goodness, Norway's Rune Grammofon as my label of the year, given their many entries in this collection. Staying out on a limb with a sublime suite of chamber-rock music is the welcome return of Spanish band October Equus with Presagios, their first release in some six years, and a fabulous album it is!

Individualism, that's what attracts me where music is concerned, and four fellas with little regard for convention are up next. First we have the latest album from that insane NZ dwelling ex-pat Scouser chilli muncher (retired) Matt "It's Our Year" (probably, curses) Deacon and his also ex-pat Scouser LA-based drummer friend and colleague Chris Jago, who under the moniker The Bob Lazar Story inflicted Vanquisher upon us unsuspecting fools. Vanquisher is a triumph over a likely disaster involving fried guitar, smoochy electric piano, jazz fusion, weird electronica, and a hilarious interlude of frenzied shouting entitled "Tony". As Eno once said "Burning Arseholes Give You So Much More".

Meanwhile, back in the Northern Hemisphere, Our Man In Moscow, Emmett Elvin described to us heathen The End Of Music, which plays out as a headlong rush into the unknown, and is Emmett's most complete work to date, charging along with an almost manic intent. LOOK OUT!! CLIFF!!!...
After that, what better way to reflect on the crazy times we live in than to lose yourself in Charlie Cawood's understated but epic Blurring Into Motion? Probably the most cerebral offering in this list, Charlie's beautiful and introspective opus takes on a voyage into our deepest thought processes. The ego is left behind.

Incidentally, all those last three are on Bad Elephant Music, home for the genre-war refugees.

Long running jazzists Led Bib annoyed a critic or two, who really should know better, by taking a left turn to incorporate the distinctive tones of Sharron Fortnam on the highly engaging It's Morning. The album launch show, held in a cinema, was an otherworldly experience.

Prog metal - y'all know how I love it, right? Well, these next three pitched their hats into the ring...  Tool returned after 13 years with a rather strange and flat affair entitled Fear Inoculum that never really gets out of second gear, and lasts waay too long. No doubt it topped all sorts of lists, because, well I dunno... Less well known but taking the kinds of risks with this often hidebound genre that Tool have long forgotten about are Leprous with Pitfalls. They appear to be mining the same dark pop seam recently uncovered by Ulver, who are the most unpredictable band (this is a good thing btw) ever to have been associated with the genre that for the most part I find about as inspiring as a Michael Gove speech. Ulver are of course, genius writ large, and on this showing Leprous are not far behind. The third act in this threeway (no chickens were harmed) is Opeth with In Cauda Venenum, in which Mikael Åkerfeldt out-Wilsons his old mate in the non-generic application of vintage instrumentation department. It seems that after dropping the stale growly prog metal style a few years and albums back, that they have finally found the pantaloons large enough to fit comfortably.

That's enuff "prog" and "metal". Back in the land of the odd we came across the self-titled debut from The Utopia Strong, where 80s housewives' favourite Steve Davis (for it is he) messes around with a modular synth and puts his and his bandmates' reps on the line and comes up smelling of Kosmische cologne. This is far better than you might think, and live it was quite entrancing.

Bent Knee - You Know What They Mean is art-rock and then some, and a band at the height of their powers. The British equivalent are the rapidly maturing A Formal Horse, whose A Man From The Council With A Flamethrower, as well as being Album Title of The Year, shows a band who have progressed (eek!) in leaps and bounds from their previous EP releases. Keep an eye on that equine!

Sheffield jazz/avant luminary Martin Archer got the conceptual shakes with his Anthropology Band's fine double blast of Miles-inspired tuneage, and Sonar made an album as a quintet with David Torn called Tranceportation Volume One, which took us on a near-familiar journey. I also dabbled in the folk world, with Irish Gothic-folk practitioners Lankum and their Livelong Day, whose darkly impressionistic world is in stark contrast with the more direct and literal style of Richard Dawson's 2020, a record that pulls no punches, reflecting these stark times back at us.

Stick Men - PANAMERICA is a mahoosive five-album document of the Sticky beast's journey through cocaine bandit country, with violinist David Cross. A total headfuck, in a good way! no-man - Love You To Bits ends a busy year for Tim Bowness with the long awaited return of his and Steven Wilson's long-dormant musical project. I didn't expect EDM though! I reckon the Tunesome Twosome are another pair of musical artists who have been listening to Ulver's latest incarnation. This is not a bad thing. It also might be what Mr Wilson wants to do under his own name but is worried might lose him his burgeoning crossover audience. Possibly.

Back in the mainstream, modern urban soul giant Michael Kiwanuka's third album, entitled simply Kiwanuka takes the pulse of modern urban living, and has a gritty relevance combined with deep tunes, in a manner unseen since What's Going On. Yes, it's that good. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen is an album of love and hope after loss and grief, and Cave's songwriting gets better with every release. If ever proof be needed of the power of lyrics as poetry, this is it. Underworld - Drift Series was a project to release something new every week for a year, which perhaps inevitably took on a life of its own. The hour long sampler available gives you a miniscule peek into the year's finest conceptual shenanigans. There is a sprawling 7 CD box set version, including all the related films, and you can find all of it online, including the psychedelically mesmerising 47-minute collaboration with Australian tri-tone improv legends The Necks. Stunning!

2019 - a year of many decent albums, but nothing head and shoulders above the rest. Tying in a three-way (the chicken took charge) for my Album of The Year are Lost Crowns - Every Night Something Happens, North Sea Radio Orchestra with Annie Barbazza & John Greaves - Folly Bololey, and Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka. Oh, and Emmett Elvin's End Of Music has to be mentioned as it made my 10 best of the decade! I had a different hat on then. This is all bollocks obviously.

Other stuff...

Reissue of the year - Van der Graaf Generator - Aerosol Grey Machine
Thanks to Vicky at Esoteric for sending me a physical copy of this lavishly tooled box set commemorating the 50th anniversary of the release of the iconic prog explorers' first album. If ever the overused review word "sumptuous" applies, then this is the baby!

One fails to appreciate from the pdfs of the artwork and the book that came with the review download what a work of art this is. Anyone who doubts the rightful place of the vinyl LP as the pinnacle of music product expressed as an artform needs to see the LP contained herein, housed as it is in a gatefold sleeve adorned with the never used original artwork, and their curmudgeonly opinion should be shifted. If not, then frankly, there's no hope for them, the Philistines!

The rest of the package, especially the 12 x 12 book crammed with photos and a new essay by Sid Smith, ain't too shabby either. Well done Peter Hammill and all at Esoteric Recordings involved in making this lovely objet d'art.

Gig of The Year
Koenji Hyakkei - The Lexington, London 12th May 2019
Soul, humanity, staggering complexity, and dancing, all at once! Fabulous UK debut for long-running Japanese Zeuhl exponents saw many mouths left agape in wonder!

Worst Album Cover of The Year
A new category, because I couldn't let Big Big Train's Grand Tour album cover pass without comment! But wait, what's this? I'm afraid BBT's cheesy veneer is trumped (heheh... ) by the album cover for Tom Slatter's Demon, which looked like it had all of a minute's thought, and a budget of 5p. Knowing this Slatter fellow's arch ways (rather than his archways, which I'm sure are probably Gothic), it was probably deliberate. Still, KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!!

If you've read this far, you've probably read other examples of my torturous sentences in 2019 and not lost the will to live. For that, I admire your perseverance, and thank you most humbly. Now, go and do summat useful with your time, and try not to let the prospect of endless Johnson put you off.

2018 was a year, here is a list...

It's December 28th, and I have only just started typing this. You see, I wasn't going to bother doing my usual "Best Of" thing this year because my mojo has disappeared so far south, it's shacked up with a colony of penguins off the Megellan Strait in Chile, and I am quite enjoying my current extended hiatus from churning out reams of wurdz that no-one reads.

However (you knew there was a "however" coming, didn't you?), my good friend and wrangler of guitars, Mr Matt Stevens, posted this on his page:

""We’re so pleased so many people are discovering the band thanks to the end of year lists. Cheers for listening to weird stuff 😊"

It made me think that even if one person picks up on something I mention in my version of The List, then it's worth it. I was also inspired to once more take up the virtual Sheaffer by the typically po-faced ranting of a well-known interwebs music journo against The List wherein he gave reasons, in the form of...a list, as to why end-of-year lists are WRONG, and he is RIGHT - no change there, then. Cor, such cutting i-ron-ee, eh, how can I possibly compete? Why, by delving into my small but perfectly formed List of 2018, that's how. Read on, start a revolution, or put the kettle on!
...

This time I will try to keep it relatively short'n'sweet, with the year's highlights in rough chronological order followed by a straight list of those albums that rattled my cage without picking the lock. Right, here goes...

The beginning of the year saw the hep cats groovin' to the big fun pop-prog produced by Norwegians Dobbeltgjenger on their album Limbohead. This is music for folk who answer the door wearing nowt but a shocking pink merkin and a leery grin.

Unapologetically ROCK, Poland's Weedpecker with their third album saw any hints of pretension given a good kicking, right down to the album title, III. This Brobdanigian stoned colossus tramples everything underfoot, in between being rilly, rilly chilled, maaan. From the reefer-stewn deserts of the hinterlands of Warsaw. Possibly.

Changing tack into more considered waters, we visit the shores of a Swiss lake where we find an unlikely but inspirational hook-up. Swiss tri-tonal minimalists Sonar get down with avant-guitar slinger David Torn and produce one of the best records of the year in Vortex.

Cheer-Accident are veteran dwellers of the far flung fringes of modern music, and Fades is their 19th album, and it shows as much zest as a lot of debuts. The Chicagoans this time come up with some deep pop moves, including Monsters which has a relentlessness about it that The Fall would have been proud of. They are much more polished than the wilful Mancunians, of course! Oh...and Sacha Mullins' vocal on I'm Just Afraid are a delight, and worth the entry price alone. Sticking with the avant fringes, Jack O'The Clock are a band even more obscure but no less beguiling. Repetitions Of The Old City II is this year's model. Veering from avant chamber-folk to complex art-pop, sometimes within the same song, this unique band is led by a musical wizard by the name of Damon Waitkus from within a fairy grotto in the mist-laden forests of Erewhon, and they just get better and better with each release.

I'm told this is "smooth jazz", but categories are bunk. Kamasi Washington is the name and Heaven & Earth is the album. Unlike another recent(ish) album of the same name, the grandiose title here finds itself given a true vision, and is treated with suitable respect. You will also find sweeping arrangements and bags of swing, not to mention soul by the bucketload, something I find lacking in that other jazz/fusion band currently filling halls wherever they go. While jazz purists might consider both Kamasi Washington and Snarky Puppy to be coffee table jazz for folk who don't really like jazz, give me the raw humanity of Mr Washington's combo and the odd duff note they are prone to in a live setting over the clinical technical perfection of the Puppies all week long, daddio.

Oh, and whose effin stoopid idea was it to seal, yes actually seal, the bonus disc inside the middle panel of the CD case? Everybody knew it was there, so why make folk destroy the damn packaging to get at it? Apparently it was similarly hidden in the vinyl version, which given the vinyl LP's general allergy to sharp objects probing about in its vicinity has to rank as the most coke-fuelled marketing mistake this year. Twats.

And... breathe out... Well, there had to be one actual "prog" album in here, and Regal Worm's glorious Pig Views is it. A double album on shocking pink vinyl? Yes please, mista. Possibly the most gloriously fulsome sound of the year. Without descending into cliche anywhere and without sounding anything like Genesis or Yes, it's still "prog", and a bloody good job too!

I never thought I'd be putting an Arctic Monkeys album in one of my lists, but prejudices are there to be overcome, say I! Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, in which Sheffield's favourite sons complete their transformation from awkward and frankly irritating agit-pop oiks into a world of arty ultra-sophistication seen through swirls of Gauloise smoke from an observation deck on the Moon, is something of a classy revelation. Any band that generates 30% 1* reviews from its hidebound fans on Amazon must be doing something right. Fans don't like "their" band taking risks, doncha know!

Back in the land of exotic fruit, how about Sheffield's (third time in this list - must be summat in the water, 'appen) Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere, and their fourth mash up of the Kosmische, world music, and general avant strangeitude, entitled θ4? This time they've reigned in their excesses and restricted themselves to a mere near-eighty minutes of music on one CD. In places you can dance to it. Jah Wobble would approve.

All Them Witches had the keyboards take a back seat on Atw which allowed guitarist Ben McLeod to fling riffs and melody lines into the gaps with swaggering panache. Dig that groove, rainy day, dream away...

Another complete change of direction sees us getting all cerebral with Edinburgh's North Atlantic Oscillation and their fourth album Grind Show, here's what I said when I made notes at the time -
If The Beatles were a synth pop band with a propensity for grandiose arrangements, they might have written Spinning Top. Following track Sirens is monster, o yes... and then there's Downriver. Heck, just go give it a listen. Sample heavy - the many brass samples are a delight - and thankfully uncategorisable, this is one of those albums that I thought had passed me by, but Phil H wouldn't let it lie. And so it crept into my ears and went KABOOM! PLAY LOUD.

Staying in the land of chin-stroking, Thumpermonkey gave us Make Me Young etc. From a whisper to a scream, the ideas on display here are neither colourless nor green, but occasionally they are indeed furious, to quote their previous album which seems like an aeon ago. This new album is bigger than the largest thing you can imagine, and expanding all the time.

Finally, a truly wonderful racket to caress your ears at year's end, namely the new album from American sonic adventurers Far Corner that goes by the descriptive title of Risk. Who needs a lead a guitar? Not these folk, who make a thrilling amalgam of chamber rock and avant stylings with a truly devilish panache. Lovely!
...

Mentioned in dispatches, again in rough chronological order of release:
Ashley Reaks - The Earth Sings Swan Again, Vantomme - Vegir, Tautologic - re:Psychle, 7Shades - Monumental Midden, Not A Good Sign - Icebound, Ryley Walker - Deafman Glance, Jon Hassell - Listening To Pictures, David Kollar & Arve Henriksen - Illusion Of A Separate World, Det Skandaløse Orkester - Tenk om noen ser deg, Voivod - The Wake, Sterbus - Real Estate/Fake Inverno, The Fierce & The Dead - The Euphoric. King Buffalo - Longing To Be The Mountain, Gosta Berlings Saga - Et Ex, Alec K. Redfearn & The Eyesores - The Opposite, Forgas Band Phenomena - L'Oreille Electrique

... and of course, there are at least 700 albums released in 2018 I've not heard yet that would have made this list.
...

It remains for me to thank Jez, Bob, & Rob at TPA for putting up with me, Phil L for being great company and as mad as a as a as a... spoon, Phil W for allowing himself to be deafened at the many dives I've dragged him into over the year, and Phil H for being a mad bastard no longer 200 yards away, but 300 miles away. That's a lot of Phils, innit? All Two Els, too - what are the chances of that? Oh, and ta muchly to any and all of you lot who have read this far and probably also read my increasingly intermittent music-related wibble on the interwebs, be it here, at TPA or anywhere else. May 2019 not be quite as scary as most of us with any gumption know it will be!

Now... put yer knickers on, and make a cup of tea.

The MOJO CD - The Best of 2018

Here we are again, another year nearly gone by, another "Best of" CD to have fun with. They seem to come out earlier every year!

Idles - Great
Bristolian flavours of the year dip into their grandad's post-punk collection, add in some Iggy, both vocally, and via the chaos at their gigs, and come up with 2018's attempt to breathe life into the rock corpse. If I was 18 I'd love this racket. I quite like it at 307, as it happens. OK, this band have one idea, but they do it very well, and having one idea never did Coldplay any harm, did it? They even woke up Later for 5 minutes earlier in the year, for which many thanks are due.



Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - An Air Conditioned Man
Another band who take their cues from the explosion in sounds that happened when the dust settled after the Punk Wars, this time from their Antipodean ancestors from that time. This song is giving me Go Betweens plus added swagger. Not bad at all. Oh, and definitely Band Name Of The Year!

Elvis Costello - Stripping Paper
Only a wordsmith as accomplished as Mr McManus could write a surprisingly warm self-examination ostensibly about decorating. He may be mellowing with age, but with The Attractions.... sorry, Imposters behind him he can still come up with the goods.
This song is superbly recorded,the sonics on this track are sublime, and the bass sound alone is worth the entry fee. Otherwise talented but cloth-eared new artists (Syd Arthur and Ryley Walker spring to mind) take note.

Cat Power - Woman
I've heard of Cat Power, and I'm vaguely aware of her feminist credentials. Knowing that means that this ditty is deffo not aimed an gnarled old scrote like me. She sings "I'm a woman" a lot on a decent enough pop outing.

Christine And The Queens - The Walker
Another one that passes by my bathchair, more hurriedly than Cat Power as it is driven by an annoyingly obvious electronic rhythm that a child could have come up with. The song itself is pretty forgettable too.

Young Fathers - Border Girl
Another new one for me, this lot make an electronic bass-driven racket that I can imagine Peter Gabriel making now if he'd been born in 1993.



Low - Disarray
Veteran miserablists go glam, but quite slowly, obviously. Actually not bad. After all this computer music I'm beginning to long for some humans playing instruments.

Kamasi Washington - Will You Sing
Humans, you say? Well, it doesn't get much more organic than this, from MOJO's #1 album of 2018. Kamasi leads the way in the age of nu-jazz. More soul in this one song than an entire album of puppies.

Fatoumata Diawarra - Nterini
Italy-based Malian (good luck with that, you might need it) singer with connections to Damon Albarn via his African Express adventures. Familiar African female vocal gymnastics and modern rhythms combine to make a finger-poppin' pop choon. Further investigation needed, as I've always been hypnotised by the African beat.

Eleanor Friedberger - Everything
Passable synth-pop. Inoffensive.

Gaz Coombes - Oxygen Mask
I have toyed with buying Mr Coombes' highly praised latest solo album, it being recommended by a mate as well as the press. This particular track is a fine example of singer-songwriter melancholic reflection without getting maudlin, with a great arrangement thrown in for good measure. Another one I will have to check out, methinks.



Ry Cooder - Straight Street
Mr Cooder and his guitar. Not much more to be said really. If you know the name you know how it pans out. If you don't you must be under 40, and a treasure trove awaits. This is where Americana came from.

Spiritualized - Here It Comes (The Road) Let's Go
Stonesy blues number from Jason's twenty-one-year comedown. It seems Primal Scream have have a rival.

Gwenno - Hi A Shoellyas Liv A Dhagrow
Celtic rebel Gwenno Saunders' first album was sung in Welsh, and apparently the follow-up is in Cornish. Breathy vocals singing a song about which goes on first, the cream or the jam. I may have made that up. The music has a woozy psychedelic pop soundtrack feel, which complements the wilful obscurantism of the lyrics to anyone born east of the Devon border, and probably to most pasty munchers, too. Actually rather alluring.

Maisha - Osiris
MOJO bigs up this London band as the closest thing we have to Kamasi Washington, big praise indeed. They're right too, by the sound of this. Yet another one waiting to snap at my wallet.

Space-time continuum disruption, daddio! (Vol 2)

Amazingly, a volume two of this nonsense appears, so soon after volume one too! Whodathunkit?

The Who - Live at Leeds

The second album in my occasional series is another I have never owned, and for good reason, as I have never liked it, or so my memory thought. I suppose I got off on the wrong foot with this one from day one, my mate's older cousin finding much mirth in my naive assuming that the title of his new purchase by The 'Oo meant that the band lived in the Yorkshire city. I was only 12, is my excuse!

This may have clouded  my judgement, as I seem to recall that Pete Townshend spent most of the album proving he isn't a lead guitarist. To be fair the episodes of noodling are kept to fast and furious minimum, most of the time he's just chopping away in that familiar rhythm guitar style of his, rather well it has to be said.

The conventional wisdom is that this is the best live album ever. Well it's far too late for me to even begin to work that one out, but one thing I find odd is the track selection. At a mere 37 minutes long, the album contains three cover versions on the rather short 15 minute first side of the original LP, and side two ends with the throwaway Bo Diddley rip off Magic Bus, when the band by this point had accumulated a pile of much stronger self-penned material that they could have included. Tommy was played in full at the gig I believe.

I suppose they had to include the near quarter hour long sprawling mess of My Generation, it being the expected climax of the gig. Expanded here to include parts of other songs, and Townshend leading some general messing about, it seems the band had taken a leaf out of the new kids on the superstar block Led Zeppelin's book, and that band's excesses on Dazed And Confused, always a track I skip on Zep live albums. All that's missing here is a violin bow. However, I am thankful for small mercies, as at least Live At Leeds doesn't contain a drum solo!

Long-form wigouts although the flavour of the day didn't suit The Who, who were always song-oriented, and some damn good ones they had too. Shame more of them are not on Live At Leeds. Star of the album is John Entwistle whose thunderous and dexterous bass playing stops it falling apart as Townshend and Moon try to outdo each other in the splenetic fury stakes.

I listened to this album twice for the purposes of writing this, and that's probably doubled the number of times I have heard it in full since the early 70s. In conclusion, it's not as bad as I remembered, but I won't be rushing to buy it. The best live album ever is Space Ritual by the way.

Thanks to my mate and similarly opinionated music-head Leo Trimming, without whom, etc...

Space-time continuum disruption, daddio! (Vol.1)

Hi there
It's been a while since I posted anything here, so all my audience, all three of them, have wandered off over there somewhere, ne'er to return. The only visitors to this blog now are bots, worming away in a futile imitation of real life...or summat.

Anyway...this here thing will be an intermittent series of revisits to ancient records that have been gathering dust and spiders in my memory. Some may have been significant to my musical and sundry other forms of development, some will not. First up is:

Uriah Heep - Wonderworld

This is an album I had largely forgotten about, until I happened across a thread on Farcebook discussing Uriah Heep's new album. They're still going? Blimey, Mick Box must be about 107! As is the nature of these things, the discussion meandered and ventured into discussing this album.

Released in 1974 it was the Heep's seventh album, and the last with what would come to be regarded as their most consistent (you can't use a word like "classic" where a band this lumpen are concerned!) line up, as sadly bassist Gary Thain was shortly to become a victim of his long addiction to H. If we are to believe Wikipedia, the band handled his problems with Yes-like sensitive pragmatism!

"During his last tour in the United States with Uriah Heep, Thain suffered an electric shock at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas on 15 September 1974, and was seriously injured. Due to his drug addiction he was not able to perform properly, and was fired by the band in early 1975".

I never actually owned a copy of Wonderworld, a mate recorded it on cassette for me, and I am now listening to it (on YouTube I hasten to add) for the first time in at least four decades. Gawd, this takes me back!

Taken on its own it's not a bad album, although very much of its time and not particularly memorable. Where it falls down is that by 1974 Heep had hit on a formula, and it sounds like a fading shadow of what went before. It sounds a tad tired, a rehash of past glories.

Also by 1974 my musical tastes were broadening fast, having succumbed to the educational delights of John Peel. Heep's somewhat plodding straight ahead rhythms and Byron's and Hensley's sixth form poetry-as-lyrics now belonged to an age when I was but a child.

I got as far as Something Or Nothing, track six of nine, so I did quite well. By then it was giving me a headache so I had to turn it off.

Expect the next installment soon... or not.


Thanks to Jan Erik Liljeström for the Heep thread that inspired me to do this!

Spock's Beard - Noise Floor

This band may well be Les Grands Fromages of American prawg rawk, and I thought it would be good to use their new album as an indicator of why I need to stop doing this reviewing thing for a while.

I managed to sit through the first two tracks. Lots of predictable empty AOR bluster arriving from nowhere and going straight back there. It sounds exactly as I thought it would, and could have been made at any time in the last 30 years.

How this dull fare has the gall to call itself a word derived from "progressive" should be the least of anyone's concerns. Frankly, this is no less referential or unimaginative than anything Ed Sheeran has come up with. In fact I'd rather go see the ginger minstrel, as at least his audience would be more pleasing on the eye.

This uninspiring musical constipation clogging my earways reminds me why I need to take a break from the unrelenting tsunami of mind-numbing noise that is forever engulfing us all. Yes, the occasional diamond surfaces, and deserves the spotlight I might throw on it, but someone else can have go for a while. You may see more live reviews, interviews, and who knows, actual music journalism from my acerbic virtual pen in the future, but album reviews...as I said, I need a break.

Bye-ee!

The Fierce And The Dead - Truck

2018 is an important year for Rushden exiles The Fierce And The Dead, as they have sunk everything into the hopeful and fully deserved success of their much anticipated new album, which will be with us as Spring puts its knickers on, makes a cup of tea, and returns as Summer.

The album launch gig in May in That London has sold out, the band are no doubt relieved to know, and here we have a little teaser of what is to come with their new single Truck.

You will be delighted to know I am not going to dissect it, as you can find out for yourself by watching the accompanying video below, that IT ROCKS!!! Be sure to turn it up to ornament-troubling levels.

Spot that riff that comes in, around 2:50?...heheh

Anyone wanting more of this huge sweaty band of renegades will find them tearing it up out there in Hackney on Saturday 3rd February, as part of an all-dayer under the heading 8 Days of Chaos. Info on this and other shenanigans in the links below.

Links:
The Fierce And The Dead
The Fierce And The Dead - Facebook
The Fierce Army - Facebook

Get the single HERE from 26th January - pay what you like...or not!
8 Days of Chaos

The Winter Solstice Box

What did you get for Xmas in the way of music, then? These are my choice gifted shiny discs of the usurped pagan festival, narrated with my usual acerbic flare...


The Who - Maximum As&Bs

There really was something in the water in 1967, and Owsley Stanley probably put it there. Whatever it was, it made so many bands explode with creativity in a manner that was never anticipated, least of all by the bands themselves. One of those groups was The 'Oo, who up to that point had a knack for a catchy single, and in Pete Townshend they had a writer brimming with ideas, which combined with the potent chemistry of their line up made for an exciting proposition on Ready Steady Go. Like all bands from the early 60s, even The Beatles, the b-sides from their early years were more often than not filler rather than killer. Then in 1967 out of the blue came I Can See For Miles which witnessed Townshend's songwriting take a huge leap forward. Suddenly they were so much more than just a noisy pop band.

This nicely put together box set can be split into two, the first three and a bit CDs of five being mostly highly entertaining, the rest of the "play once and file" variety. Everything that comes before I Can See For Miles is a band scratching around looking for a road to travel, with occasional gems on the a-side hiding filler and  experiments at the mixing desk going rather awry on the b-sides. What the heck was going through Pete's mind while making the godawful mess that is Disguises?

I Can See For Miles arrives near the end of CD Two, and CD Three is where the main action is, starting with Pinball Wizard, which poffers the incongruous prospect of the pugilistic Roger Daltrey - what is it with musos called Roger and punching walls? - playing the delicate innocent abroad deaf dumb and blind kid, and ends with the perfunctory but nevertheless rocktastic Relay. It also contains my fave 'Oo single, The Seeker, along with four minutes of evidence in the form of Dogs Part Two that Townshend might be a great rhythm player and songwriter, but a lead plank spanker he ain't. Good to know that you don't need the endless racket of Live In Leeds, the world's most overrated live album, to tell you that!

The 'Oo's finest moment,  here in truncated single form is on the third CD too, and I defy you not to turn it up a notch or two when the opening riff of Won't Get Fooled Again crashes in. Another fave of mine is the rather underrated downhome rabblerouser with Jew's Harp that is Join Together, the by then somewhat dated hippy sentiment being at odds with the band's admirable aggressive stance notwithstanding. Predating Townshend's work with Ronnie Lane it has a "getting it together in the country" feel, with DM's on. Given their stance and their connection with their audience, The 'Oo were probably the first punk band when all's said and done. Join Together's b-side, a rather yawnsome Daltrey chest beating and Townshend guitar workout symptomatic of their live sound at the time, is the only filler on the third CD.

By the fourth CD, the law of diminishing returns has kicked in, and really, it's all over by track seven (of 16), the somewhat wheezing Who Are You, which rather pointedly, coming out as it did in the year of punk showed how the spiritual fathers of the UK safety pin generation had run out of steam. Also of course, soon after that single the band lost a cornerstone with the sad death of Moon The Loon. Maybe they should have had the dignity and sense to call it a day then, in a similar fashion to Led Zeppelin a couple of years later.

The rest of the fourth and the fifth CD are really fans only affairs containing as they do numerous live tracks and some non-essential studio work by later line ups that have little of the original band's energy or direction.

Maximum As&Bs is not bad at all, but I wouldn't have bought it. This is what Xmas is for, after all!



The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - 2 CD Edition

We are constantly told The Beatles had a lot do with or even caused the seismic shift in popular music that took place in 1967, so it must be true. Personally, I think that the likes of Hendrix, and to a lesser extent Cream had just as much to do with it, although to be fair it could be argued that the Scousers kick-started the process with the previous year's Revolver. As far as Sgt. Pepper goes, obviously there is nothing left to be said about what is probably the most well-known collection of tracks ever committed to tape, so I don't really need to add anything, other than the fact that Giles Martin's stereo remix is truly marvellous, and knocks his dad's team's original afterthought of a stereo mix into a cocked dustbin.

The second CD contains wonderful remixes of the contemporaneous Penny/Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever single, annoyingly hidden away as tracks 16 and 18, so you have to fiddle around with the remote to play them in sequence. I wonder how many folk are going to burn a CD or store a playlist with the single either before or after the main album, and never play the rest of CD 2 again, which is merely a collection of inessential play once outtakes?


Soft Machine - Live In Paris

This one is courtesy of my trusty gig-going companion Phil W, who knows my odd taste pretty well. Therefore, I sensibly waited until my better half was out of the house before entertaining the cats with its fulsome racket, recorded in 1972 at the venerable Paris L'Olympia.

Actually, Mike Ratledge's more edgy and teeth-rattling fuzz-driven Lowery organ work is largely absent, or buried in the mix, often replaced instead by his, or subservient to Elton Dean's electric pianos, so I need not have worried. This makes the sound far more palatable, even on the the band's most outre work Facelift.

The album features everything but Moon In June from Third, all but one track of Fifth,  and some great improv pieces. Dean's reeds are fabulous of course, and Marshall and Hopper are a rhythm section to die for, and all in all this is a fabulous live album.

The MOJO CD - 2017 The Best Of The Year

The first of the year's "best ofs", for some reason MOJO's CD contains a couple of tracks from reissues, as if there isn't enough new music to fill the 80 minutes of the disc, which of course is nonsense. As usual it is a largely populist-centric shiny disc, with a few obscure albeit mainstream entries for that "hip" factor, and as ever there are some glaring omissions. Even if we forget my home in the more esoteric hovels at the end of the rock spectrum, why no UNKLE, or Laura Marling, for starters? Anyway, here goes...

The War On Drugs - Pain
Possibly the worst band name currently extant? Actually despite the title this is quite pleasant, in a diluted electrified Waterboys stylee.

Songhoy Blues - Bamako
The funky afros git down. Not bad, at all.

Paul Weller - Satellite Kid
Paul Weller is 60 next year.

Ghostpoet - Immigrant Boogie
The heaviest thing here, musically and lyrically, it lurches along while the main man imagines the unimaginable plight of refugees marooned at sea. Easily the best track on this compilation.

Sparks - Unaware
Sparks are one those very few bands who get better with age. A song about the crushing ennui of modern living that awaits a wee innocent babby.

Nadia Reid - Right On Time
Everton 1980s midfielder Peter Reid's daughter sings a song about a last minute winner against Wimbledon that kept the team up, to an avant-metal backing. Or...a song from MOJO's No.2 album of the year that is pleasant enough, as it dream-pops along. 10000 Maniacs did this kind of thing decades ago, but hopefully it resonates more within the confines of the album.

Hurray For The Riff Raff - Hungry Ghost
"Hurray"? Wassat, then? A decent lively guitar pop number, but nowt to write home about to be honest.

Peter Perrett - An Epic Story
No-one is more amazed that Mr Perrett still walks among us than Mr Perrett himself, it seems. Here, he sings a touching love song to his wife, without whom, etc... How The West Was Won is a classy album that shows the louche Only Ones front man still writes a pithy lyric.

This Is The Kit - Hotter Colder
Murky African-sounding folk moves by Kate Stables that would have benefited from a cleaner production, or any production at all come to think of it. Another one that floats by without making much of an impression.

Endless Boogie - Back In '74
I have no idea if this is typical of this band, but to me they sound like a swamp rock version of The Doors with an earnest "singer" narrating in sub-Jimbo fashion about watching Kiss in 1974 while flying kites on bad acid, and getting bottled for having shaved eyebrows. Nope, me neither...
Underneath is a decent retro-rock soundtrack, although All Them Witches would make gumbo stew out of this lot.

Alice Coltrane - Er Ra
Timeless psychedelic devotional goodness with harp, from MOJO's Reissue Of The Year.

Julie Byrne - Natural Blue
Dreamy folk, nice but inconsequential.

Lal & Mike Waterson - Shady Lady
The second reissue on this compilation. Bluesy rootsy folk, with strained harmonies, as I'm sure you know. I prefer the Iron Butterfly song of the same name.

Richard Dawson - Ogre
Ramshackle seven-minute left-field folk epic. Reminds me of Kevin Coyne. At least it's a tad different.

Oumou Sangaré - Yere Faga
A brooding Malian dance number about suicide. Yeah, baby! Actually, it's rather good.


All in all, a disappointing disc that gives the impression it was rather thrown together at the last minute without a lot of thought. Usually, MOJO's end of year round ups while being more mainstream than my usual fare, often include some interesting sounds new to me that require further investigation. With the possible exception of Richard Dawson, not this time, I'm afraid.

5/10 - must try harder.

Frank Zappa - Halloween 77

Halloween 77 is an unusual box set containing all six concerts that were filmed for the Baby Snakes movie, with all the music in high-res WAV on a USB stick, and a Zappa Halloween costume and mask. Or, for those of us with more sense than money and no desire to have six concerts with the same set list, a mere 3-CD version of Uncle Frank's celebration of that lovely American cheesy horror fest and primary school bullies' night out Halloween at The Palladium, NYC, containing the whole set from the 31st October show.

A collision of extraordinary musicianship and occasionally toe-curling non-PC, some might say mysoginist lyrics that defies categorisation, Halloween 77 showcases a band that are drilled to perfection, and the musicianship on display here is of the highest quality. Thankfully the worst of the lyrics are only a minor intrusion into this gargantuan musical feast, and even the base scatalogical humour of the lyrically cringeworthy Punky's Whips is eventually overshadowed by some mesmerising musical derrring-do. Mind you, the less said about Bobby Brown Goes Down, the better. Shut Up, and Play yer Guitar, indeed. Incidentally, listening to the intro of this version of Punky's Whips makes you realise where the roots of the then unknown second guitarist and all-round Zappa foil Adrian Belew's 80s Crimson classic Indiscipline came from.

The first Zappa album I bought new was Zoot Allures in 1976, and most of that album is included in the set list. Black Napkins has always remained my favourite Frank Zappa guitar excursion, and, daft as it sounds its inclusion here was the main reason I bought this triple CD set. There is also a half-hour long (!) version of Wild Love from Sheik Yerbouti, most of which was recorded at marathon sessions thinly disguised as rehearsals for these gigs, although the album itself was not released until 1979.

Boy, could Frank write a tune, as well as being a great entertainer, witness Halloween Audience Participation Time, aka "A re-enactment of the sum total of human civilisation" which includes a blast at Warner Bros. Records, whom Frank had acrimoniously left not long before, and audience members administering discipline to each other on stage. It ends with Frank as ringmaster getting the entire audience to attempt to dance to the impossible time signatures contained within the otherwise straight 4/4 of The Black Page #2.

The final CD is mostly given over to the half-hour long encore, which brings the set up to the three-hour mark. You don't often get bands doing that nowadays, and you can see why Adrian Belew in his brief but amusing and informative essay in the otherwise overly slim and less than comprehensive CD booklet reckons Zappa was the hardest working musician he ever played with, Adrian eventually coming off stage with "that happily-drained feeling, no more to give...". The encore includes the aforementioned Black Napkins, so, I can't hear you asking, "was it worth wading through the rest to get here?" Too damn right, it was!

After the encore comes the Bonus Section, basically a few extracts from the other five shows and a further near half hour of classy music and Zappa's larking about. There's more comedic audience participation with a dance competition for those who freely admit to being a "chump" and are "definitely unco-ordinated", as the previous night's contest had been for those with "no natural rhythm". No more spoilers, go find out for yourself.

Halloween 77 is without a doubt one the most important archival releases of the year, and even if, like me, your ventures into the wild and wacky world of Frank Zappa are only fleeting, I recommend it highly.

"Just remember one thing...rock'n'roll is totally preposterous"

The MOJO CD - Neu Decade

This month the MOJO cover CD features sounds from across Western Europe that contributed to the musical zeitgeist that serenaded David Bowie during his brief stint in the German capital in the later years of the 1970s, to tie in with their feature article on Mr Jones' time in Berlin. Twelve of the fifteen tracks are German and the CD forms a loose collection of the less obvious Kosmische Musik of the times, less obvious because more than likely licensing issues prevented the use of the usual suspects. This makes it far more interesting than it might otherwise have been, and Neu Decade seems at times like a trawl through the lesser played slabs of vinyl in my small, yet perfectly formed Krautrock collection.

Developing free from the constraints of a deeply ingrained blues and latterly, rock'n'roll heritage, these bands and artists naturally ventured well beyond those base building blocks of all British and American alternative musical culture to forge something entirely new from the ruins of post war Germany, and beyond.  These musicians lived in a brave new world where electronics and keyboards often took precedence over the electric guitar, with a few very notable exceptions of course, and these pioneering sound technicians were boldly going where no ostensibly "rock" bands had gone before, and in that sense were making truly progressive music.

Michael Rother - Karussell
In keeping with the Bowie-in-Berlin theme it is fitting that the opening track comes from Deutschrock luminary Michael Rother, who was due to collaborate with Bowie in 1977, a pairing that unfortunately didn't come off. This track, from Rother's first solo album sounds like his former band Neu! with electronic motorik rhythms replacing Klaus Dinger's thunder.

Brainticket - To Another Universe
This multi-national band always gave the impression that they were powered by the choicest psychotropic drugz, as this dislocating voyage along misfiring synapses testifies. This track is lifted from the 1973 album Celestial Ocean, a fried trip recounting the "after-life experience of Egyptian kings traveling through space and time", and who am I to argue? Brainticket made much use of narration instead of singing, a gimmick that does wear a bit thin after a while. I can think of a modern band who should take note.

Amon Düül II - Fly United
One of the big names now... this track is lifted from Amon Düül II's 1973 Vive La Trance album. By then, the splinter group "II" from the original Amon Düül agitprop hippy commune had lost some of the more outlandish and experimental musical edge that gave birth to such masterpieces of unclassifiable lysergic wiggery as Phallus Dei and Yeti, but this song is still a fair representation of their loose acid rock vibe.

Can - Future Days (edit)
From the Cologne masters' new singles box set, Damo and the boys craft three minutes, twenty two seconds' worth of seemingly effortless sassy elegance. However, why bother with an edit when the full nine and a half minutes long version awaits you on the LP of the same name, I wonder?

Cluster - Dem Wanderer
Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius were perhaps the most bookish pair in Deutschrock...well, they were on a par with Schneider and Hütter at least. This intriguing example of what I can only term intellectual ambience from their marvellously rarefied 1976 Sowieoso album goes "sproing" in a fetchingly chin-stroking fashion.

Deuter - Der Turm/Fluchtpunkt
Primitive and experimental, this is what Deutschrock is all about. Listen to this free form piece of music from multi instrumentalist Georg Deuter and you can hear elements common to the early explorations of all the more well known bands that fall into this singularly individualistic category.

His first album, from which this track is taken was released in 1971 and is simply entitled D. It is something of a below-the-surface classic of the time, since when Deuter has gone on to amass a huge discography of exploratory music.

Guru Guru - Electric Junk
Apart from the later Roedelius track and the album closer, this is as close as anything on this album to rock music. But this is free rock music or ur-rock musik, as Mr Cope would put it. There are no rules, and after charging out of the traps, the LSD takes hold of the elephant as it wastes all before it. About halfway in the whole band decide...heeeyyy...let's talk about this, as they loll about on a burst sofa discussing the next move before a rolling bass line takes the tune down the road in the company of some fine Hendrix inspired wigout. Bloody marvellous! This is from their 1971 second album Hinten, part of a run of unmissable early albums you need to hear if you like having your mind fried by off the wall guitar music with seemingly no precedents.

The band are led by a wonderfully barking and very powerful drummer by the name of Mani Neumeier, whose Bonzo-on-acid tub thumping wanders up the garden path to Earthly Delights hand in hand with Uli Trepte's thunderous bass. The spearpoint of this unfettered power trio was a guitarist whose untramelled riffing and spiked soloing made for a whole that is a parallel universe Cream, born in a world were the twelve-bar had never been played. Also, the plank spanker has possibly the best name for a guitarist one could possibly wish for - come on down Ax Genrich!

Popol Vuh - Steh Auf, Zieh, Mich Dir Nach
Popol Vuh were formed in 1969 by classically trained pianist Florian Fricke, who, thanks to his rich family was one of the very first owners of a Moog Synthesiser. Depending on which source you believe, it allegedly cost up to DM800,000, and was probably the size of a small shed. Who said prog wasn't a middle class sport? Wanting to take his already reverential music in yet more elegiac directions, Fricke later sold his synth to Klaus Schulze, making him doubly influential in the instrument's beginnings.

This track is from 1975's Das Hohelied Salomos, the Vuh's sixth album, by which time Fricke's use of the synth is eschewed for a more organic and ethnic approach, with guest musicians playing sitar and tabla.

Roedelius - Am Rockzipfel
A later entry into the fray, this is from Roedelius' first solo album in 1978, and presents us with a very untypical bluesy chug that keeps on breaking down like it realises it doesn't quite belong in this universe. Satisfyingly odd.

Conrad Schnitzler - Die Rebellen Haben Sich In Den Bergen Versteckt (Schaltkreis Edit)
An early member of Tangerine Dream, and Kluster, the pre-Cluster group with Roedelius and Moebius that reflected the harder inital consonant in its steely-edged industrial soundscaping, Conrad Schnitzler went on to have a long solo career. His career-long experimental inclinations are present and correct on this sparse electro march of the robots from 1974.

Tim Blake - Metro Logic
The only Brit on this compilation, Tim Blake was of course a member of Gong, before escaping the mothership in 1975 to make some langorous synth music of his own.

Pyrolator - Danger Crusing
The next three tracks take us into the post-punk era. Pyrolator was ex-DAF member Kurt Dahlke, who here makes some almost friendly, yet icily creepy noise.

Richard Pinhas - The Last Kings Of Thule (Part 1)
Mavellously left-field French guitarist Richard Pinhas of Heldon fame should need no introduction if you've been paying attention, and here we have a track of typical brooding strangitude from the 1979 album Iceland, one I admit I have not heard before and will now be searching out.

DAF - Bild 4
Another entry from the post-punk years, DAF were a full-on music-concrete-with-a-punk-sensibility experience. This is from the group's feral 1979 debut album Ein Produkt der Deutsch Amerikanischen-Freundschaft. Uneasy listening to rattle yer fillings.

Tangerine Dream - Ultima Thule Part 1
Pick a tune to represent one of Krautrock's top six bands, in this case West Berlin's Tangerine Dream, whose Edgar Froese first used the words "Kosmiche Music" to define his and his peers' common ground, and it wouldn't be this VERY sub-Floydian throwaway debut single from 1971, that sounds like it should have been recorded in 1967. Still, a strangely neat end to an interesting CD, nonetheless.
...

As ever with these magazine CDs, there are some obvious and some not so obvious omissions. It is a shame that there is no Ash Ra Tempel from their early "guitar" daze, a band so out on limb they made Guru Guru sound like a completely rational proposition, but for anyone unfamiliar with all but the most well-known German rock of the 1970s this is not a bad compilation at all.

V Ä L V Ē - #1 [the theosophical society]

With every other member of Knifeworld being involved in at least three other bands as well as having parallel solo careers, as musicians, DJs, and sword swallowers, it would be remiss of the Knives' resident bassoonist Chloe Herington to sit at home putting up shelves, don't you think? She did too, so with the help of "a spectacular array of rather fetching collaborators" adding saxophones, found sounds, and fragile electronica, this somewhat beguiling EP was produced.

It sounds like anything that required electricity to power it was plugged into a single socket in next door's garage while they weren't looking via stacked three-plug adapters, such is the tottering fragility of the music herein. Some say that avant garde music is often unnecessarily indulgent, and wilful for the sake of it, but this is another creature entirely, blown on the winds of a febrile imagination.

If I am forced to describe this music in two words, that epithet is "dangerously cute", or maybe "cutely dangerous". #1 [the theosophical society] is a taster for a forthcoming album rather discomfitingly entitled Silent Reflux, which despite the name I look forward to with heightened curiosity, pricked further awake by the appearance of a fully formed song in the last track here, lights. #1 [the theosophical society] has inculcated itself with that song, and I require more.

Tracklist:
1. atmos #1 (6:18)
2. {da} FEM (3:14)
3. futures (4:27)
4. lights (4:24)

Total running time - 18:23

Line up:
Chloe Herington - voice, shelf, bass, melodica, percussion
Elen Evans - harp, voice
Emma Sullivan - microkorg, voice

Links:
Bandcamp
Facebook

Colouratura - Colouratura

"Colouratura - n. elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing."

So says the dictionary, and thankfully we can ignore what follows the comma, but the rest applies.

An album made in small hours in their spare time by Nathan James, who wrote the music, and Ian Beabout who twiddled knobs in his fast becoming inimitable fashion, this unusual trip throws the genre book out the window. Over the course of its 50 minutes, a seamless journey split into definable songs or tracks for convenience, but playing as one piece, Colouratura in its first three tracks covers spectral if unsettling ambience, plaintive ballad and Faustian space rock, which gives an idea of the "scattergun set to stun" nature of this record.

The height of the realised songwriting on the album arrives on Sea Shanty, which sways along in proto-Procol Harum fashion before a middle eight that rides the swell in triple time. Nathan James is a fine singer with a good range and emotive scope, so much so that pernickety bugger that I am, I can even forgive him very occasionally going slightly wayward with the pitch (no doubt something to do with the yaw) on Sea Shanty as he gives his soul to "For what is a man, if he's not really free? And what is human without dreams and destiny?" What, indeed?

The title track is a love song accompanied by lone piano, and the obviously needed bridge of The Other Side takes us straight into the baroque-prog territory of Jekyll.Hyde, which puts me in mind of The Stranglers from their Meninblack phase. Enlivened by Dave Newhouse's sax, an air of menace permeates proceedings as Nathan's treated voice sings his fatalistic lyric to us. A degree of continuity brings us the suitably creepy Old Nightmares, introduced by a piano in a Gothic setting, and like a Hammer movie, the horror is with an element of cheese. "There are voices in my head, and I can't get them out, but I can't let them in...I think I'm losing my mind" our narrator tells us along with mentions of "the witching hour", "evil" and Vincent Price cackling. Mmmwwwhahahahaha...

In fact, from Jekyll.Hyde onwards Colouratura becomes more cohesive, as if the spirits have aligned in a world of Gothic pop, confronting death, war, and the big Questions, the latter ending the album in a punky charge as the sun comes up over the mixing desk.

All bases are, if not covered, at least fleetingly visited on this never-a-dull-moment album of after hours winding down (and up), and it has developed a life of its own along the way. "A labour of love, and it shows" says Ian Beabout, but warts and all this is a fun ride through two mates letting off steam at the end of stressful days out there in the increasingly insane "real" world. The Matrix is broken, and this is part of the soundtrack.

Tracklist:
1. Cacophony (4:24)
2. Questions? (3:15)
3. Space Western (4:07)
4. Sea Shanty (6:55)
5. Colouratura (4:00)
6. The Other Side (1:22)
7. Jekyll.Hyde (7:57)
8. Old Nightmares (6:08)
9. Until You Slip Away (5:49)
10. Hymn (2:47)
11. Questions (3:14)

Total running time - 49:58

Line up:
Nathan James - voice, piano, bass, guitar, keyboard, percussion, ARP 2600
Ian Beabout - flute, treatments, narration, dragon breaths

With:

Ryan Smurthwaite - guitar
Brandon Collins - drums, cajon, guitar, whistle
Dave Newhouse - woodwinds
Connor Reilly - drums
Evyenia Karapolous - voice
Damon Waitkus - guitar, slide guitar

Links:
Bandcamp

The Fall - New Facts Emerge

New Facts Emerge is the 32nd album from that strange mental institution burning that goes by the name of The Fall. Led by Mark E. Smith, it is entirely probable that you or I is at least distantly related to someone who has been in The Fall, or at the very least is only three steps removed from a plucky musician with a career death wish to back Smith's by now embarrassingly random splutterings. They seem to be drawn to Smith like moths to a flame, and he has got through approximately 70 of the poor fuckers since crawling out of Prestwich with the first line up back in 1976.

Over the years this band has belted out some stonkingly classic records, and even now and well beyond their prime have until fairly recently managed to pepper their albums with blasts of righteous indignation that make the former fan such as I still occasionally part with readies for a shiny disc. Yes, we still buy CDs, for like Mr Smith we are now quite old. The last time I did this was back in 2008 for Imperial Wax Solvent purely on the strength of that marvellous old bloke empowerment anthem, 50 Year Old Man. That they actually played that song the last time I saw them live in 2011 was a minor miracle in itself as Smith's dictum has always been "Never look back", for which he can only be applauded.

Right...that's the good news. The bad news is that for a while now Smith seems to be doing little more than taking the piss, or letting it leak out, come to think of it. Coincidentally, the track I have playing right now is tellingly entitled O! Zztrrk Man, a title almost as unintelligible as the deliberately distorted and garbled (yarbled?) declaiming by the cult leader as he slumps in the darkest corner of the most downmarket cheap shit room imaginable, a two-thirds drunk pint of cheap lager next to his slumped head as it burbles incoherently into a pool of beer, drool, and fag ash. That about sums it up - Smith could make a recording of his bathroom noises and set it to the competent but uninspiring backing of his latest bunch of poor drone-slaves, and the regulation 19706 units would be shifted to the supplicants who will then declare it nectar from the gods to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately for them, some of us old fuckers still have our discernment faculties intact, fangyewverymuch.

OK, maybe it's not THAT bad - Gibbus Gibson is actually sung, after a fashion, and though I have no idea what he was singing about, it sounds vaguely melancholic, and possibly even self-reflective. Or is that hoping for too much? You see the problem is, much like the worst excesses of the obese and flatulent arse of prog rock, aka ELP, Mark E. Smith appears to have little or no self awareness, and seems to treat his audience with a similar lofty disdain to the 70s dinosaurs. Ironic that, doncha think?

By the time this grating record gets round to the last track, the almost prog-length nine minute Nine Out Of Ten, I just want it to stop, much like The Fall themselves. To think this sad spectacle once used to be genuinely cutting edge and singularly magnificent. Unfortunately, this album is nowhere near nine out of ten, and no new facts have emerged, it simply confirms my worst suspicions.
Bloody sad, really.

Jumble Hole Clough - Go and play quietly by yourself

Foreclose on the definite, obliterate all expectations. From the building blocks start anew. Reconnect the heart to the mind via the spidery funk line. Dangle a proposition and attach it to the running board of a runaway bus, for this is the start of a new adventure. The unknown is not un-named, it is Go and play quietly by yourself, the 758th album this epoch from Jumble Hole Clough, a possibly imaginary concept that exists both before and after Schrodinger opens his box in the troubled hamlet of Hebden Bridge yesterday. The tree fell in the forest, no-one observed it apart from Colin Robinson who wrote a tune about something else entirely called Skin & Hide that combined pop and the fractured dissonance of our troubled souls. "Goat and gland, Autonomy in hand, Don’t fill your ear full of sand".

Colin's work will engage your noggin as well as make you smile, possibly at one and the same time. This is the kind of multi-tasking I can cope with. Colin's hovercraft is always full of eels, which is probably why he gets few paying customers. Slippery blighters, eels, and some of these sprout wings and fly off dripping and shimmering before being sucked into the turbines of passing budget airliners, flying low to see if they can ascertain where all this goddam interference is coming from.

Can you send me one of Santa's Swearing Elves for Xmas?

You can get this sequence of noises HERE, and Colin invites you to Name Your Price. It would be good if you bought it for cash money, he needs a new shovel to bury all those dismembered eels that fell from the sky and landed in his front garden t'other day...

Schnauser - Irritant

Madness, they call it madness...

In my fevered imaginings I would like to think that the annoyingly over-capable DIY Sturmführer Dick Strawbridge, he of the unfeasibly humungous moustache and loveable teddy bear persona was playing the Midi-kazoo for Schnauser, the wonderfully strange yet cuddly combo from Bristol, as they cavort around the stage playing Have You Got PPI?, a particularly loose-limbed number from their fabulously tumescent new album Irritant. In my peculiar fantasy, Dick looks proudly over to his son, guitarist and singist Alan as he belts out the wonky wonderfulness that comprises Schnauser’s weird yet perfectly self-contained universe, as strange tiny creatures synchronously writhe about in Dad's bristling upper lip hair monster.

In other news it turns out that "We are the brainworm" as the Nutty Boys play klezmer, and enquiries are made by chanting girl choruses asking "Have You Got PPI?" while a craftily purloined cheesy synth line from Bowie's Sound And Vision burbles away. Above all this lunacy, the melody is king and queen, and on the lilting but portentous Fail Better, the lyric implores the listener to get off their collective ass and try again. Failure may be the only option, but goddamn, do it better! A curiously fatalistic take on the Protestant work ethic that no doubt has crossed all our horizons at some point. On the other hand "Get yourself a life boy, get yourself a life girl" as the broiling sounds of wildly careening guitar, saxes and and noises off permeate the stately pace of the melody. Groovy feckers, this Schnauser band, who have caused my newsfeed to be inundated with adverts for the International Schnauzer Society, Alsatians For Jesus, and Poodles On Stumps, the bastards...the band, not the doggies, c'mon.

The club band at the local Latino Disco strike up here and there with a carefree joyfulness that flies in the face of the heavy manners of these perma-weird times. Hypertension is only displayed in the tune's title as this infectious instrumental does odd things with your pelvis. The album title is another misnomer, for this fab record is about as annoying as being given a full body massage by...insert your fantasy rubdown applier here. She or he is however suffering from a caffeine overdose, won't stop talking while chewing his or her bottom lip. It's a small price to pay.

A New Atmosphere is a snake-hipped bossa nova for dancers with at least two left feet. This thing schwings, baby, in a louche Hatfields kinda fashion, before briefly meeting 10:15 as it furtively leaves the bedroom, then subsequently descending to the bottom of the well, where workers go blind making mustard gas shells. There be an underlying seriousness at work, doncha know? They even get in a good old rant against the Bullingdon Bullies and turkeys voting for Xmas on The Monday Club, another musically satisfying trip through a series of vaguely familiar motifs, that as a whole make for the knee-flexing Schnauser Sound, ending like early Roxy swirling away down the plug hole.

It is over two and a half years since Schnauser's last album, the defiantly odd Protein For Everyone, and the Bristolians have refined their once fierce quirkiness into a gloriously fun experience. Irritant is just right for these surreal summer months as collective madness descends upon this benighted nation. The ongoing Schadenfreude Party is going to be a long one, methinks. All hail Supreme Leader Boris as we barf into our soup.

Sorry, got sidetracked there...Gleaning the influences that inspire this record is like lowering a net into an over-populated fish tank and coming up with a bewildering variety of writhing aquatic wildlife. This smorgasbord of delights is the combination of everything you can think of, from Cardiacs, through Madness, to Ivor Cutler via The Beatles and very early Daevid Allen/Kevin Ayers' Soft Machine, and on to Syd's Floyd, Berlin Bowie and XTC. As a result it cannot be pigeonholed for convenience.

Just give it a listen over on Bandcamp, for it bears bounteous gifts. Hopefully, this drooling missive might make you curious enough to buy it. Right. I'm off to join The Chocolate Labrador Motorcyle Club...

Tracklist:

1. Spiele Mit Katzen (4:21)
2. Chinese Brainworm (Taenia Solium) (4:48)
3. Re-Mortgaging The Nest Of Hair (4:12)
4. Sorry, You Were Out... (1:24)
5. Have You Got PPI? (4:44)
6. How About A Kiss? (4:06)
7. Fail Better (6:35)
8. Hypertension (4:15)
9. A New Atmosphere (8:22)
10. The Monday Club (7:43)
11. Speile-Jangle (Reprise) (2:17)

Total running time - ...about as long as a couple of very leisurely pints, or the time it takes Kat to saunter up the garden at 2:30am, catch, bring home and devour a luckless rodent, at the foot of our bed.

Line up:

Alan Strawbridge – guitars, vocals
Dino Christodoulou – tenor and soprano saxophones, vocals
Duncan Gammon – keyboards, vocals
Holly Mcintosh – bass guitar, vocals
Jasper Williams – drums, vocals

Links:

Bandcamp 

Facebook  - Schnauser 
Facebook - Bad Elephant Music

Footnote: No YouTube video available for this album, though if you type "Schnauser Irritant" into YT's search engine the first vid is the instructional "How to keep your mini-schnauzer's beard unstained", which you might find useful. Glad to be of help.