Aug/090
NEW MUSIC: Radiohead – These Are My Twisted Words (2009)
The blurb:
Radiohead leak their own track in Scene style on various BitTorrent sites? Part of a yet-to-be-announced EP/LP, possibly titled Wall of Ice? To the former, quite possibly; to the latter, it seems not. Who cares though, this is a wonderful sign of things to come.
Sounds like:
Lashings of washed out guitar, buzzing bass and a fantastically crisp up-tempo groove. A slow-burning five and a half minutes of simple, confident Radiohead.
Thoughts:
There’s no sign of a drum machine or a synthesiser on this track, and who knows, that might be a relief for some, but the hallmarks are all over this record of a group who have totally mastered the electronic aesthetic and integrated into how they make music. The metamorphosis, the attention to detail in the mix, it has that precision.
This really is the best ‘band’ recording I’ve heard from Radiohead, probably ever. The production is impeccably poised: the insistent high-hat rat-a-tat never gets smothered by those layers of delayed guitar, and the result is instantly mesmerising. Admittedly, there’s a little too much vocal in there at times, but I’m really nit-picking.
Verdict:
They just keep refining and refining. You can hear the lessons learnt from all their previous records in this one, and it’s glorious.
Media Links:
Jul/090
NEW MUSIC: Fever Ray – Fever Ray (2009)
The blurb:
An offshoot / solo project from Karin Dreijer Andersson of acclaimed Swedish electro duo The Knife. Andersson combines variously twisted vocals over crisp downtempo beats.
Sounds like:
The production reminds me in places of Pan Sonic’s ultra-lean Aaltopiiri, particularly in the rhythm sections, albeit liberally smothered with 80s sonic bling. Thow in a clear love for “world” instruments, and you’ve a got a bonkers combination which I’ve only ever heard on this record.
Thoughts:
This post has been in draft for far too long. The honest truth is that I’ve spent far to much time listening to and enjoying Fever Ray which has distracted me from writing it up. It’s bloody excellent. Can I stop writing and go put it back on repeat now?
This is a record full of smartly crafted, expansive, shuffling beats – replete with the hand claps, tersely cut snares and natural crashes expected of a serious modern electronic production – but the way they are delivered is quite unique. The appearance throughout of tabla, gamelan, acoustic guitar and other cross-cultural touchstones (including a particularly enjoyable pan-pipe line on Keep The Streets Empty For Me, which somehow reclaims that sound from the South American street band) give the music much more character than if it just stuck to synth sounds. That pseudo-nomadic aural reference really works with the isolated, exposed, drifting lyrical persona. As an album it has a fantastic awareness of it’s own sound palette. Oh, and the lyrics are touched with a charming, frustrated madness: “by the kitchen sink / we talk about love / we talk about dishwater tablets / and we dream about heaven”.
Verdict:
Mad, claustrophobic, personal and very well executed. Now I can go put it back on.
Media Links:
Jul/090
FAVOURITES: Lindstrom – Where You Go I Go Too (2008)
The blurb:
Lindstrøm pulls together previously disparate styles of classic disco, funk, house and minimalism into just over 55 minutes of reverential but entirely fresh electronica.
Sounds like:
Herbie Hancock playing to a nightclub chill-out room.
Thoughts:
Looks happy, doesn’t he? As well he might. Lindstrøm really pulls off a fine balancing act on this record. Where You Go I Go Too is influenced by so many classic sounds, yet avoids pastiche through forging them into something seamlessly and convincingly original. This is a dense, swirling record; the unsubtle mid-pace 4-beat that drives so much of it is massively compelling by virtue of the subtleties that surround it.
The record opens with a series of slow-burn synth swells, accompanied by ever-so-light percussion and cymbal splashes, all before that 4-beat fades in and the record starts confidently striding off. It soon strikes you just how meticulously crafted this is; every synth part knowingly toes that line between electronic and acoustic sound, and it really doesn’t matter which side of the line they actually are. Even the instruments that sound like they have been lifted straight out of Jeff Wayne’s The War of The Worlds don’t offend; if you can just throw yourself into this futurist epic they actually make so much sense.
Indeed, epic is the word to describe Where You Go I Go Too; this is not a standard dancefloor record. Consisting of only 3 tracks (although I certainly think of it as a single piece), Lindstrøm has loads of space to play with texture and there is no pressure to suddenly “drop a bombshell” like a normal DJ. There is always something being built into the mix and that keeps that sense of forward progress going which is so central to the feeling of this record. In that way, it is a bit like some kind of extensive Trance mix, except the vocabulary and dynamics are entirely different.
Verdict:
Witty, sincere and very funky. This one gets played a lot.
Media links:
Jul/091
NEW MUSIC: Soap&Skin – Lovetune For Vacuum (2009)
The blurb:
Haunting and powerful piano driven project from Anja Plaschg, the bold 19 year-old Austrian farmer’s daughter.
Sounds like:
It’s a little too simplistic, but imagine Vespertine-era Björk with a large dose of central European melancholia. Skipping beats and eclectic synths that wouldn’t sound out of place on an Autechre release, but here they’re just the support for Plaschg’s ever so delicate songcraft.
Thoughts:
Now this girl has a voice on ‘er. Expansive and ethereal, it would be far to easy to reference Björk (see, I’ve done it twice now already) or even Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir of Múm, but the wide, confident and breathy delivery is somehow more touching than either of these.
The reason, I think, is the honesty of it all. The production is clear and crisp; the piano in particular is the best I’ve heard on a “pop” record for a fair while. This is consistently intimate in a way that Vespertine isn’t (that’s thrice now) as it sounds like Plaschg is singing for herself as much as anyone else. It gives me a similar feeling of claustrophbia-tinged romance as when I listen to Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago.
So what is it that really makes this record stand out from the crowd? The beats are modern and competent enough, as are the moody tunes themselves. However the magic here is in the voice which has so much promise in it. This is the first record from Soap&Skin, and I’m really looking forward to more.
Verdict:
Grows and grows. If you have a heart, you’ll fall for this one.
Media Links:
Jul/090
LIVE: Why?
The blurb:
It’s whiteboy indie-hop, playing live at the Garage in Highbury.
Sounds like:
Buck 65 with less of the gravelly voice and more skinny jeans.
Thoughts:
Hip-hop is not somthing I “do”. I have to admit to having preconceived ideas about unnecessarily offensive men mumbling about “biatches” which definitely turns me off the genre. However when I was in Canada some years ago I picked up a record with a nice cover (always a good technique for finding random music) which was Secret House Against the World by Buck 65. Here was a raw piece of work, with a particularly harrowing track about domestic abuse delivered in a wonderfully direct spoken word way. “Wow, hip-hop aint all bling!”, I thought. Guns = bad, angst = clearly a good thing, right?
So my eyes were opened up somewhat by that chance encounter although I haven’t explored the (yes I’m going to say it again) indie-hop avenue much since then. So, apparently Why? are a very “in” band at the moment. Indeed, the recently re-opened Garage in Highbury was full of skinny jeans, Converse and checked trucker shirts. I didn’t let my lack of 50s revival hair-do spoil my evening, however, and once Why? were on stage it was clear this was not just a haircut band.
Their frontman Jonathan “Yoni” Wolf clearly has great rhythm, bashing away with a small selection of percussion while delivering his lines poker-faced into the crowd. Although the few more traditional (and wonderfully arranged) indie rock tracks go down well, the crowd are here for the smart dry rhymes of big hitters like By Torpedo or Crohn’s. Highlight of the night had to be the perfect execution of the short and snappy glockenspiel-led A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under: “when I’m eyed I tongue my bottom teeth / and look at the sidewalk in front of me / as my tennis shoes go in and out of the frame”. Lovely stuff.
Verdict:
Hip to the hop. I’ll probably be exploring their label anticon in some more detail.
Media links:
Jul/090
LIVE: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui / Antony Gormley / monks from the Shaolin Temple – Sutra
The blurb:
Take one Flemish-Moroccan dancer/choreographer, a modern artist known for his work with the human form and throw in a very generous helping of kung-fu, and this is what you get. A concise one hour show demonstrating how the very honest movements of martial arts can work alongside the precision of Western contemporary art.
Sounds like:
Szymon Brzóska’s soundtrack sat somewhere between Rachel’s Music for Egon Schiele, Arvo Pärt, and Esmerine’s If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True. Beautiful and engaging.
Thoughts:
I saw a lot of Gormley in this. I’m not sure how much of a say he had in the choreography (although I suspect that he and Cherkaoui collaborated closely, given that this at least their second piece together at Sadler’s), but there was so much in there about the body as statue and how someone can move through anonomynity, group membership and true individuality. The monks would move from a semi-chaotic swirl around the set (which consisted solely of a series of moveable man-size plywood boxes against a stark grey stage) to becoming part of a static installation piece on the stage that would remain some seconds and then begin transforming again, and this all being lead by the master and apprentice tale depicted by Cherkaoui and a young boy-monk.
The set itself was notable for its lack of inherent scale. They played with it; one moment it was a forest-like maze, the next the entire thing formed a single blossoming flower, whilst at other moments the forms were entirely abstract or mathematical. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the boxes were arranged in a simple expoded triangle, monks atop and cross-legged as they ran through elegant, flowing kata with their hands and upper bodies.
The other joy for me was seeing the contrast between the style of Cherkaoui and that of the monks. There were a small number of sequences where Cherkaoui was integrated into the group kung-fu, and it was clear that he had been training hard to learn the speed and subtleties of their art, yet he delivered those moves with the more delicate arm and body lines of a traditional European dancer.
Verdict:
Excellent. A challenging feast of the pretentious and the unpretentious.
The show is at Sadler’s Wells from 30 June – 4 July 2009.
Media links: