This brief missive is a to make you aware of a rather fab double live album by those masterful purveyors of Crim, and of course their own classy compositions and improvs, the mighty Stick Men. Midori is a document of one of four shows the band did in Japan in April 2015, previously only available in that country, but now out as a CD limited edition of 1000 on MoonJune Records.
The "+" added to group name is none other than David Cross, who seems to be in the midst of something of a renaissance at the moment, much to our delight. David adds his violin textures to interpetations of the timeless Starless theme, and makes other contributions to what is in effect a ProjeKct, in all but name.
Stick Men are also rightly reknowned for their imrovs, something lacking to any great degree other than the percussive interludes provided by the current line-up of the parent band, and there are some great examples here. Not forgetting the band's own compositions, which carry on the ethos of the Stick-based line ups of latter day Crim, the two strands weaving together seamlessly.
This double CD will also be available at the band's gigs, and next month the group embark on a lengthy tour of North America. My heart lit up when I saw the name "Northampton" in the gig list, but sadly it's the MA version, not the original. Ho-hum, we'll just have to wait for a UK appearance, I suppose. In the meantime, all of us this side of the Pond can content ourselves with this fabulous document of what must have been two stunning performances out there in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Tracklist:
First set
1. Opening Sounscape - Gaudy (10:36)
2. Improv - Blacklight (7:14)
3. Hide The Trees (8:54)
4. Improv - Moth (9:07)
5. Industry (12:35)
6. Cusp (4:48)
7. Shades Of Starless (8:07)
8. The Talking Drum (4:52)
9. Larks' Tongues In Aspic, Part 2 (6:30)
Total running time - 72:43
Second set
10. Opening Soundscape - Cyan (5:20)
11. Improv - Midori (7:07)
12. Breathless (4:16)
13. Improv - Moon (4:42)
14. Sartori In Tangier (6:51)
15. Crack In The Sky (5:37)
16. Shades Of Starless (7:18)
17. Firebird Suite (10:49)
18. The Talking Drum (5:52)
19. Lark's Tongues In Aspic (6:48)
Total running time - 65:40
Line up:
Tony Levin - Stick and Voice
Pat Mastelotto - Acoustic and Electronic Drums and Percussion
Markus Reuter - Touch Guitars® AU8, Soundscaping and Keyboard
David Cross - Violin and Keyboard
Links:
Buy the CD or download version at Stick Men Bandcamp
Anyone who seriously considers themselves a critic, be it of music, fashion, high art, theatre (sic), cars, dishwashers, sex toys, whatever must push themselves into writing about something they consider to be a load of crap once in a while or risk falling into a far too comfortable luvvy-dovey relationship with the creators of the targets of their wordy fawning. Of course unlike Joe Public on Amazon, I can't and wouldn't want to get away with calling something "crap" and leaving it at that, a proper dissection is called for. Or so I reckon, anyway.
Earlier in the year the prog interwebs were stickily saturated by lengthy spurts of coverage of a new album by American ego-flexing exercise...sorry, band...Dream Theater. That wouldn't normally have bothered me a jot, but when it became clear that this strangely unlovable bunch had written a musical, my flagging interest got a tad perky. When you get to my age, you have to make the most of anything getting perky, so here goes...
You may guess from that opening salvo that Dream Theater do not not float my peculiar looking coracle, and you'd be dead right. This band to me have always been at best a triumph of technical flash over real content, and at worst dreary purveyors of artless unsubtle bombast.
As if that weren't enough, Dream Theater are often credited with inventing "prog metal", which swiftly became the first refuge of the musically stunted imagination in our particular brackish pop backwater. Yes, I know there is good prog metal out there, but most of it is about as interesting as watching a Manchester Utd football match - it's all dull recyling of the same old weary riffs and guitar sounds ad infinitum. And don't get me started on throat-shredders...
So, down to business. If there's one thing Dream Theater have never lacked it's self-belief. Calling an album The Astonishing shows no lack of confidence, but of course leaves it open to ridicule. The worst part of this self-inflicted torture is that I have to listen to the thing, as it is an interminable splurge that even fans seem to be saying is about a week too long. I do not expect any sympathy, of course.
After some opening space age ambience, the thing gets going with a typically bombastic instrumental featuring lots of time signature changes and portentous playing, as a cheesy as can be, replete with a synthesised choir. Entitled Dystopian Overture, it is about as far removed from its titular implication as can be. "Tacky" does not begin to describe it. It sounds like what Andrew Lloyd Webber would come up with if asked to write "in the style of prog". This is a musical, so there is a story which so I'm told as I'm listening on Spotify and don't have the lyrics to hand, concerms a future where music has been outlawed, only to be saved by a Hollywood style "little guy" hero. Pete Townshend should sue.
The Gift Of Music is a sub-standard AOR rocker with dreadful lyrics and the drummer...Jeez, this guy sounds like he has about eight arms, none of them doing anything interesting. It's like listening to a speeded up jackhammer, and about as painful. The following The Answer is the first of several tub-thumping ballads, and the the trite lyrics continue: "Why am I afraid of facing the unknown?" enquires the singer. Is it because you are in a comfortable niche that hasn't moved forward - with a few notable exceptions - in two decades, perchance?
And so it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on.... fuck this I've got better things to do, as no doubt you have too. I highly recommend this album to anyone who is afraid of the dark, lives with mummy, and types angry missives on the internet while wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, unchanged in a week.
To conclude on a more serious note, the sad thing is, and I'll admit I'm not helping here, is that this steaming pile of faux thespian nonsense will garner far more attention than the genuinely progressive music that is out there, and anyone unfamiliar with "prog" will listen to this bombastic excess and have all their worst prejudices confirmed. Now, go away and do something useful...
One of the delights of this amateur scribbling lark is receiving unsolicited music. Conversely, if the scribbler has a conscience then he or she feels a compunction to write about it, despite the impossibility of covering absolutely everything that may get sent their way.
Luckily it is a given that anything on the Stone Premonitions label is at the very least, interesting, so here I will attempt to do justice to three releases from the Cumbrian stable that landed unbidden on my doormat a few months ago.
...
NagMet - Water Is Conscience
First up is this strangely compelling oddity from a duo comprising American poet and and musician Daniel J. Harris, and Dutch keyboard player, producer and general tecchie whizzkid Nico Jongenelen. How they ended up on a label based in Cumbria is anyone's guess!
This is a very weird trip indeed, where Daniel's surreal poetry floats over Nico's soundtracks of found sounds, treated voices and instrumentation through a kaleidoscopic lysergically altered world. Some of the 24 tracks on this album are mere seconds long, others meld together to form avant sound suites where imagination is given free reign. Elbows On High is nearly seven minutes of sound and vocal collage that progresses from a mournful cello intro to chilled techno beats via "Living letters in milky balls, happy plans in fuzzy malls" across eerie plains, echoes all around. There is much humour to be found in here, too. iShirely chronicles a disease that creeps up from the toes to to the face. "Marching up my chest I did detest without rest dealing with my nipples was not very simple. I was doomed to a life of itching and bitching..." Sometimes there are no words, just gibberish voices reverberating around the stereo image.
The whole thing is a 50 minute continuous piece of music, there are no gaps between the tracks, which leads to all kinds of surprises. Suddenly out of nowhere, or more likely erewhon, a lovely piano melody floats by, later joined by a cello on the quite lovely Time & Less. This reverie is disrupted by Ha-PP-PP-PP-PP-PP-y (10 ways to make yourself happy), with its skittering techno beats and dislocated funk. Another highlight is The Swing, a nasty little gremlin lurching around to a kind of industrial proto-funk with a dirty synthetic guitar-like thing grinding away, and some great wordplay by Daniel: "Into darkness I yell, for I fell, for a spell, and I'm here to tell, about a swing. The chord goes on forever, not alone yet not together, until I swing."
This music is uncategorisable and quite odd. That's a couple of boxes ticked, then!
...
The Spectacles - Report From The Border
Far easier to get a handle on than NagMet is this straightforward and enjoyable album of modern folk songs, infused with a good-time vibe. Mixing down home country with a vaudevillian joie-de-vivre, the stripped down instrumentation aside from guitars both electric and acoustic includes banjo, kazoo, spoons, concertina, and ukelele, to name but a few items from the unplugged cupboard.
Big Screen and others have a similar feel to The Mekons' country
infused songs, with Jan Croot and Penny Grennan's vocals making for a
lower register parallel to Sally Timms' unaffected soulful tones. Four Hands features the two singers in acapella harmony, and the following traditional song Sally Gardens sees the two ladies joined by guitarist Andy Clarke for a three-part harmony, again unaccompanied.
There are some good songs on here, some in a trad folk fashion, some swingers like The Beck & Tarn Boys, and a fair few country shindigs. The pithy lyrics recount working life, love gone sour, the cycle of nature, and generally finding joy or sadness in the mundane, all addressed in a direct manner that complements the music.
One for the folkies!
...
Glodblug - Globule
Finally we have an album of Kosmische improvisations based on soundscapes left over from recording sessions by Stone Premonitions' raison d'etre, Census of Hallucinations. Globule is a 50-minute aural travelogue, ostensinsibly split into seven tracks given titles Glob 1 to Glob 7, where synth washes and sequencer rhythms, with added percussion and drum programming form the basis for guitarist John Simms to occasionally indulge his psychedelic muse with flights of liquid fret wizardry. Glob 4 is a particulalry fine example of the former Clear Blue Sky plank spanker's innate sense of melody and restraint, where our guitar hero sets off across deep space for a long trip, fuelled only by space dust and an untethered imagination, all filtered through an acid rock gauze.
The results are in a similar vein to Øresund Space Collective, embellished with intermittent fiery Hillage-like guitar. While there is nothing particularly groundbreaking here, any lover of space rock synth ambience and languid acid-guitar is in for a treat. It works just as well played quietly as semi-meditative or work accompaniement, as it does turned up to 11, where it becomes transformative. Very nice indeedy!
...
Italian eclectic prog outfit N.y.X will rattle your jewellery and shake the dust off your ornaments with this splendid sprawling beast of an album, their second following on from their agitated debut, 2009's Down In The Shadows. Once again they have called on a stellar supporting cast to flesh out their already turbulent sound. Their sonic cup brims over, indeed!
As you may correctly surmise from the album and track titles, The News is a conceptual collection of songs transmitted via a fiery musical discourse, dissecting the everyday stresses of 21st century survival amid an unending stream of establishment control and media mainpulation. While a hardly unique premise, especially within the modern Progwelt, The News transmits edgy nervousness and twitchy paranoia with aplomb, both lyrically and musically. Groundhog Day... will intentionally set your teeth on edge before descending into exhausted calm in the denoument.
N.y.X display an obvious love of Crimsoid weirdness, a tune like A Sarcastic Portrait... ascending a particularly fine construction of light, but they soon leave those influences behind as their own unique brand of propulsive energy drives the pulsebeat ever onward. Indeed, A Sarcastic Portrait... eventually ends up in an entirely different universe to turn of the century Crim, that influence no doubt being more than a little down to the presence of former Crim front man Adrian Belew on guitar. He's fairly unobtrusive in the busy mix, but you can recognise that psychotic elephantine plank spanking anywhere, and one particularly fine assymetrical solo will have your kneecaps facing in opposite directions should you attempt to shimmy to it. This after all, music you can really only dance to in your head.
Discord (Domestic Policies) takes a deserved breather, whisking the sound away into a psychedelic swirl of soaring guitars and early Floydian spaciousness, with the languid cosmic vibe recalling British space explorers Census of Hallucinations. N.y.X appear to be sonic cousins of their similarly lysergically inclined countrymen Daal, and if anything are even more out on a limb. It's a fine and shapely looking peg, so I'll stay here if I may, musing on the alluring stocking seam enticingly disappearing into a mysterious but inviting dark warm world.
The sound mix, by band leader and chief writer Walt F. Nyx and his bandmate Danilo A. Pannico is superlative, and you can turn it up without fearing for your sanity or indeed your ears, as thankfully it now seems that the loudness wars are a thing of the past. The "quiet but loud" of the latter half of The Paper and the percussive detail of Oscillations... being fine examples of the warm and involving sonics.
If The News has one slight failing it is that the manic energy of the first half of the album cannot be maintained, and the latter half while still generating enough power to light my shed for a week does not quite hit those earlier giddy heights. The pacing of the album was no doubt intentional, and after repeated listens it all falls into place, so it seems I am looking for cracks in the pavement where there are none - the critic's curse, I guess.
Despite having an electronic opening ryhthm that reminds me of mid-80s synth pop, The Daily Dark Delirium soon wins me over by going Crimsoid again, this time courtesy of Warr Guitar supremo Trey Gunn. The song jumps around like an over excited puppy, and for me recalls early VdGG in its manic intensity, which is enough to get me past the slightly "sixth form poetry" declamations of the lyrics. I can forgive that as Mr Nyx is writing in a second language. And here we end, quite breathless and none the wiser as to where this unique band are coming from or indeed, going. That is a good thing.
Occasionally Bad Elephant Records pull a really odd looking rabbit out of the hat, and thus far this year the Bad Elephant Unseemly Carrot Award definitely goes to N.y.X, and The News is a must for any lover of the quirky end of the prog telescope, or of avant rock in general.
Tracklist: 1. Restless Slumber (At The Break Of Dawn) (4:43) 2. Groundhog Day (Wakening, Dressing, Starting Up.) (7:09) 3. A Sarcastic Portrait (Editorial, Home and Foreign...) (6:14) 4. Discord (Domestic Policies) (7:20) 5. The Paper (Titles & Subtitles) (5:25) 6. Oscillations Du Chaos - Part III (3:23) 7. The Daily Dark Delirium (12:52) Total running time 47:06 Line up: Walt F. Nyx - lead vocals, bass, acoustic and electric guitars, synthesizers, electric piano, loops and devices Danilo A. Pannico - electronic and acoustic drums & percussion, piano, synthesizers, typewriter Kaos - harmonica, gold chain, Italian voice track 6, loops and devices Klod - electric guitar, backing vocals, soundscapes and devices
with: Adrian Belew - electric guitar and soundscapes (track 3) Ivan Bridon Napoles - piano and keyboards (track 6) Marco Allocco - cello (track 2) Trey Gunn - Warr Guitar and soundscapes (track 7)
Footnote: With a website that seems to be a dead link and with no YouTube videos, this band seem to like hiding in the dark. The News is all there on the Bandcamp link above, thankfully!
Many thanks to Colin Robinson of Jumble Hole Clough infamy, via whom I am made aware of this rather fine 110 - yes, that's One Hundred And Ten! - track compilation lovingly and meticulously put together by the obviously publicity-shy "Ruby & Lamorna" in aid of the Refugees Welcome collective, who provide much needed support, sustenance and shelter for the embarrassingly few refugees our dreadful government allow on to this sceptered isle. For a mere five of your English or Scottish pounds sterling, or more if you're feeling munificent, you can download this one third day-long journey into every kind of music, radical or not, that you would care to wave your cleft stick at.
There be folk, there be reggae, there be funk, there be skewed pop, heck, there's even some rock of the "post", "avant" and "space" varieties, and of course bucketloads of general wigginess, but mostly there be beats a-plenty to shake one's booty at to one's heart's desireé, yessir!
Here it is, in all its splendiferousness, and if you think I'm providing a track listing....just enjoy!
In the words of Neil from The Young Ones "I don't wanna bring you down, guys, but..."
As pop music becomes more and more easily accessible and by extension worthless and disposable, not to mention ever more homogenised, truly challenging popular music, as epitomised by David Bowie will become increasingly marginal until, for all practical purposes, it disappears completely. Pop will indeed eat itself. Those of us born between the early 1940s and the early 1960s, or the Baby Boomer generation as it is known, have been lucky to have become teenagers at varying points between the mid 1950s and the 1970s when pop culture, its music and everything that went with it formed the most important part of our leisure time.
When our Baby Boomer generation that provided the bands and their audiences die off, as it will at an alarming rate over the coming couple of decades, the era of music as the main driver for popular culture, mainstream or otherwise will fade away with us, and the signs are already here. Whatever comes after us in popular music can never have the same impact and sense of wonder and exploration. There will never be another artist who can release something as out there and uncompromising as Bowie's Berlin trilogy, for example, yet still manage to shift hundreds of thousands of units of that same wonderful noise.
Real progressive music will continue on the margins, but as a hobby for its participants, as no-one can now make a living from non-mainstream music. The current economic model of popular streaming sites will force out all but the already large-scale acts. Yes, pop will indeed eat itself...
Tied into this, the gig circuit over the last 10 years or so has shrunk dramatically, with only the larger urban centres able to sustain venues. If like me you are lucky enough to live within a reasonable distance of the capital, then there are still a fair few options gig-wise. However more recently the gentrification of London in particular, although I guess this no doubt applies to other UK cities as well, has seen the closure of small and mid-sized venues continue apace, driven by ludicrous property prices lighting up £ signs in venue owners' eyes as they envisage turning your local sound emporium into chicken coop apartments for the self-satisfied and smug who will then complain endlessly in their loud whiny voices at the very idea of hordes of plebs enjoying themselves in their vicinity, should there still remain a nearby fleapit or two. Pop has now eaten itself and belched copiously, and by doing so has allowed bland corporatism to take over the means of production, distribution and consumption. I can only hope it gets severe indigestion. Perhaps we need a 21st century version of the punk rock revolution to tear it all down? The problem is the yoof of today are either too subsumed by enforced educational debt and worry, or are living a life on breadline wages in prospect-free employment to have the leisure time to care. As for the cowed general populace, addicted to their computer games and mind-numbing shite TV, their opinions moulded by a media with an increasingly right-wing agenda, they have been turned fat and lazy by convenience foods and couldn't give a shit...which they are incapable of anyway, as all that McD can only make you constipated. Now, where's that bottle of JD, barman? Wotcha mean, I drank it already?... This has been your Warr Correspondent Roger McNasty, 56 and counting...
Is there anyone in the world who owns every Fall album? I somehow doubt it. If there is, they probably need a shrink. I've got 307 of the buggers bowing out a shelf, but there are at least another 158 I have never heard, and that's just fine. The Fall are a band, nay an institution (madhouse?) one can dip into and out of at will. They seem to have always been there, and they will only stop when Mark E. Smith slumps over his last pint, never to curmudge again.
There is no reason to buy this 2009 released album for the soundtrack alone, unless you were there. No, the real strange attraction of this set is the DVD, documenting the last ever gig at that famous old venue the Hammersmith Palais, on April 1st, 2007. The last crowd of white men (and a few women) in "'ammer-palay", as Joe once immortalised it were to be moved on, they don't want your type here no more, make way for the never-ending encroachment (Yarbles!) of gentrification.
"Northern white crap that talks back"
Mark E. Smith, national treasure and icon of angry middle aged working class blokes up and down the land sat alone in dreary sink estate pubs nursing their 12th pint of cheap weak lager, not that they would know who he is anyway, leaves it four minutes after his band have started before he shambles on to the stage at the soon to be defunct Hammersmith Palais, located in "your so-called capital-ah". During this time the band belt out the mantra "Senior twilight stock replacer" over and over with manic enthusiasm to a furious backing, no doubt brought on by paranoia at the prospect of being intimdated at worst, or having their amp settings buggered up by their curmudgeonly old soak of a boss at best. They can't get away with owt, as Smith's wife is there with them as they thunder along...who knows, does she spy? Paranoia in cheap shit room, indeedy.
"Fall Sound - no laptop wankers overground"
Fall Sound has maintained its shambolic origins, and now covers up musical deficiencies with a sledgehammer relentless beat. Musically, the star of this show, the last in this famous old venue before it was no doubt turned into a block of apartments priced way out of reach of normal Londoners, is the twin-bass attack of Rob Barbato and Dave Spurr, whose churning rumble threatens to make the waiting wrecking crew redundant before the gentrification rebuild has even started. Determinedly amateur, Mrs Smith aka Elena Poulou's childlike keyboard playing slaps a layer of strangely sinister naivety over proceedings, recalling Yvonne Pawlett on that very first album, released almost 38 years ago. There are no laptops in evidence, natch.
"Repetition in the music, and we're never gonna lose it"
Repetition is at the centre of The Fall's sonic template, taking its cues from classic Krautrock. Klaus Dinger sounds comparatively subtle in comparison, for here the motorik rhythms are flattened out by jackhammers. The pace is even, but relentless, building up to a crescendo with the superbly and dangerously hypnotic Blindness.
"Check the record, check the guy's track record"
A vast number of albums have spilled their invective over a pavement (heheh) near you since 1979's Live At The Witch Trials, but MES is notoriously wary of nostalgia, so checking out his track record in a live environment is a definite no-no. Of the 12 numbers on this album, five come from the then latest album Reformation Post TLC, and of the rest, only Wrong Place, Right Time can be claimed to be an oldie in any true sense of the word, coming from 1988's I Am Kurious Oranj - my favourite Fall album, for what it's worth.
"How dare you assume I wanna parlez-vous with you"
It's OK Mark, I have no desire to meet you, as you are certainly of the "hero not to be met" subset. I'll bet your taste in beer is quite poor, too.
With his twisted verbosity, MES can make what at first listen might even be a love song - heaven forfend - turn into something quite nasty. "My door is always open to you" slurs Smith incessantly on My Door Is Never but beware, for "...my spectre is coming after you, I crave your death within my mind's eye".
"Eccentric lad,
He keeps flawless, plastic women's bosoms under his TV desk and dressing room"
Stranger than MES is is his wife's monotone East European intonation of the above line and other bizarre cut up lyrics contained within a charging version of The Wright Stuff, which like everything else here pummels the studio version into submission.
The band veer between being tight as a nut to the point where the whole thing nearly collapses during a shambolic take on rockabilly standard White Lightning, with one of the guitars being woefully out of tune, but hey, that's all part of their charm. Prog rock this ain't! That was the more conventional of the two covers in the set, a thing for which MES has a keen ear. The other is Zappa's Mother's tune Hungry Freaks, Daddy...no, really!
As legend has it the previous version of this band were goaded by MES into mass resigantion after an incident on a tour bus where our Chief Grouch allegedly poured a full pint of beer over their coach driver's head while said busman was piling along a freeway at 70mph. That 208th line up of the band left us with an album appropriately titled Fall Heads Roll, incidentally the last Fall album I bought. Contained therein is a Fall anthem to rank up there with the finest, and here it is in all its nine-minutes of Krautrock via Salford-unter-blitzkreig glory...
Bearded bass player Rob Barbato, who for most the gig seems to be glancing nervously at his Glorious Leader, perhaps expecting some kind of censure for being ill-advisedly facially hirsute-ah, finally relaxes and beams like a kid when Smith gets playful and almost ruffles his beard during this final number. Smith later gives his microphone to the crowd, who ironically enough, rant into it unintelligibly, while the Glorious Leader messes about with his wife's synth. What a glorious racket this Northern misanthrope and his charges make. I can quite understand if you hate it, and so could MES. We wouldn't have it any other way!
So, it seems The Hammersmith Palais fell to gentrification-uh, as blindness takes over the nation-uh...I, plagiarist-ah. Thangyew and gudnite...
Tracklist:
1. Senior Twilight Stock Replacer
2. Pacifying Joint
3. Fall Sound
4. Over! Over!
5. Theme From Sparta FC
6. Hungry Freaks, Daddy
7. Wrong Place, Right Time
8. My Door Is Never
9. The Wright Stuff
10. White Lightning
11. Blindness
12. Reformation (encore)
Line up:
Mr & Mrs Smith, and some other blokes, some of whom you may know personally. After all there is now only three degrees of separation between The Fall and everyone in the UK. Four, if you live elsewhere!
This brief missive is a to make you aware of a rather fab double live album by those masterful purveyors of Crim, and of course their own classy compositions and improvs, the mighty Stick Men. Midori is a document of one of four shows the band did in Japan in April 2015, previously only available in that country, but now out as a CD limited edition of 1000 on MoonJune Records.
