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diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!

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PORT-ROYAL – Flares (Resonant)

Posted: September 9th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

In the world of science and technology, it’s often been the case that an important discovery has been made simultaneously by different people completely independently of each other, as if the thing itself decided that the time was right to be outed and revealed itself to a number of researchers at the same time, so as to avoid accusations of favouritism. This is somewhat less true of the music world.

Flares sounds a lot like a lot of other stuff that’s out there at the moment, and while it might be stretching the bounds of credibility to claim that that’s pure coincidence, it doesn’t mean that Italian collective Port-Royal are unoriginal bandwagon-jumpers. Instead of just being inspired by one or two fairly obvious things, what they do well is take good familiar bits from a number of sources (Manitoba, Mogwai, the Montreal post-rock scene, early Warp Records) and melt them together into an intriguing, well balanced and pretty cohesive blob, and we end up with 78 minutes of epic, sprawling, lush and quite uplifting electronica tinged post-rock shimmering (or shimmering post-rock tinged electronica. Rearrange the terms anyway you want).

Things start off underwhelmingly, it has to be said – the first track is a bit bland, with warm synth sweeps, Mogwai-lite reverby guitar, GY!BE minor piano chords and ‘found sound’ vocal mutterings, and the second track gets my back up because the anthemic drum sample that kicks in after a minute doesn’t quite loop properly, but somewhere during the third track, the three-part Zobione, the album starts to make more sense, and rises above mere unobtrusive pleasant-enough background music to become something genuinely worth listening to. There’s all sorts of stuff going on, from glitchy cut up urgency reminiscent of Magnétophone, to gently strummed acoustic singer-songwritery, to the kind of cinematic synth swathes and downtempo rhythm previously found on B12/Black Dog/Artificial Intelligence era Warp or Apollo Records, with those shimmery, delayed guitars-played-like-mandolins never too far out of reach. The album ends, and I actually feel like I’ve been somewhere. A good effort, and certainly worth investigating if you want a satisfying, late-night, immersive experience. Really nice artwork, too!

Port-Royal
Resonant Recordings

Name That Tune

Posted: September 7th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

Today I unearthed an old cassette marked only with the words ‘John Peel’, scrawled hormonally in teen-angst biro on one side. Side A, it transpires, is taken up with Mudhoney’s Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Side B, the ‘John Peel’ side, is a compilation of stuff I taped off the radio. So, we open up with Mercury Rev’s Trickle Down, then there’s some Unsane, some Jacob’s Mouse, Pitchshifter’s (A Higher Form Of) Killing, a bit of Verve, all of which timestamps this at round about mid to late 1993. But – there are three tracks on there that I have no idea who they are, and I’m very very keen to find out. This is where you lot come in. Listen to the following, and tell me please, who the hell are these people? I need to hear more. Especially Track 1, which is awesome.

Track 1 | That Was Really Funny by Gag.
Track 2 | Indie-rock hopefuls Unwound, apparently.
Track 3 | Slightly ponderous, sludgy, with histrionic megaphone vocals.

Richard Youngs’ Garden Of Stones

Posted: September 5th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

If you haven’t yet done so, get yourself over to The Wire and download Richard Youngs’ previously super-limited CD-R Garden Of Stones. Wow wow wow. It’s knickers-wettingly wonderful. If this isn’t top of the diskant Audioscrobbler chart next week, there’ll be some difficult and searching questions to answer. Go now!

What a difference 14-15 years makes

Posted: August 17th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

Last time I went back to my parents’ place, they gave me a stack of old Q magazines that they found in one of my bedroom cupboards. They’re all from 1990-91, and they are not mine. I can prove they’re not mine, because there’s a live review of an Erasure gig in one, and over the photo of Andy Bell wearing a white corset, suspenders and black high heels, someone has scribbled GAY BASTARD in blue biro. Anyway, I’ve been flicking through them, and it struck me that there was a lot of terrible music being produced in the early 90s. Obviously there’s a lot of terrible music being produced nowadays too, and there was some good stuff being produced in 1991 (any year that can deliver Loveless can be forgiven anything), and true, Q isn’t the best source of finding out what’s really going on in the music world, so the comparison is a little unfair. But still – there are three page articles on The Farm, for God’s sake. And the Milltown Brothers. And Tinita Tikarum. Joan Armatrading. Bedazzled. Definition Of Sound. Northside.

Meanwhile, it’s only August, but here are some of my contenders so far for Record Of The Year:
The Psychic Paramount – Gamelan Into The Mink Supernatural (I can’t adequately explain how awesome this record is)
Thuja – Pine Cone Temples
Jesu – Jesu
Thuja/My Cat Is An Alien – From The Earth To The Spheres Vol.2
Lau Nau – Kuutarha
Islaja – Palaa Aurinkoon
Fursaxa – Lepidoptera
Autechre – Untilted
Sinistri – Free Pulse
Minamo – Shining
BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa – Vikinga Brennivin
Mukai Chie & Gary Smith – Eight+
Konono No1 – Congotronics
Coachwhips – Peanut Butter & Jelly
Six Organs Of Admittance – School Of The Flower
Dead Meadow – Feathers
Hood – Outside Closer
Guapo – Black Oni
Giuseppe Ielasi – Gesine
Bohren & Der Club Of Gore – Geisterfaust
Bologna Pony – Early Summer (ha ha!)

and that’s just the ones I’ve heard. Times are good for music.

Make your own Bayeaux Tapestry

Posted: June 18th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

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Make your own Bayeaux Tapestry with the Historic Tale Construction Kit

Ulysses Speaks

Posted: June 15th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

Ulysses Speaks: currently showing issues 2, 3 and 4.

In loving memory of Prince

Posted: June 14th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

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1999 was released in February 1983. It’s a pop classic, and sold millions.
Come, pretty much a contractual obligation album, was released in August 1994. It flopped.

Vote Bean

Posted: May 5th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

The first candidate on my ballot paper this afternoon was Captain Beany, representing the New Millenium Bean Party. Because this is a secret ballot, I reserve the right to tell you whether I did or did not vote him. But check out the manifesto – it actually makes a hell of a lot of sense. Especially the bit about giving Prince William a bachelor pad in Cardiff Castle so he can date Charlotte Church.

The best is yet to come – for some strange, mesmerising reason I think this page is possibly the funniest thing I’ve seen in weeks: The Wales Yearboook General Election Guide

Update: Beany received 159 votes, just 17,833 short of what would have been a fantastic victory for Cardiff, baked beans and Prince William. Meanwhile, in nearby Cardiff North, the Vote For Yourself Party candidate received 1 vote. Presumably from herself.

FOLK MUSIC

Posted: April 30th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

On Wednesday night I visited the legendary Fillmore East Muni Arts Centre in Pontypridd. It’s a nice enough place, housed in an old deconsecrated Welsh Methodist chapel, and there’s a vending machine in the foyer selling baked corn snacks for 10p a packet. I was in two minds whether to go for Tangy Toms or pickled onion Space Raiders, but the sun had been out all day and I was happy, so I had a packet of each.

I was there to see two friends of mine supporting some guy I’d never heard of. I don’t think they’d heard of him either. We didn’t really know what to expect. There was a stack of promotional postcards next to the ticket office, and they were intriguing – a moodily lit close-up of an androgynous person in tragic-cabaret style with glitter paint lazily seeping from one eye, all done in tastefully deep purples. Very camp, very classy. The reverse was similarly intriguing: ‘a techno-traditionalist’ we were told. Great! ’21st century folk music’. Awesome! ‘Radio 2 airplay’. Fantast- wait, that didn’t sound too promising! But, you know, I’ve got an open mind. And I’m a big fan of Desmond Carrington.

Halflight (the friends of mine) were on first, and they were great. They always are. But I’m not here to talk about Halflight. I’m here to talk about Jim Moray, the 21st century techno-traditionist folk musician.

Jim shuffles onstage dressed in Strokes-lite. Slim-fitting black trousers, black shirt (sleeves rolled half up), 80’s new wave red tie. The geeky offspring of Dennis Pennis and Elvis Costello. His first song is an acapella ‘folk tune’, and is probably about some Merrie Maiden or Olde England’s Forests Green or whatever. It’s nice enough, but he doesn’t have the strongest voice I’ve ever heard. It’s Tesco Value Glenn Tilbrook. Kwik Save Elvis Costello. But the brilliant thing about it is – get this – he’s got a gadget. It’s a small silver box! With a cable coming out of the back! And it makes bits of his voice repeat over and over again! So that he’s doing backing! Vocals! With! Himself! The small audience (mostly 40-somethings sitting comfortably at tressle tables) love it. Couples look excitedly at each other, and squeeze each others hands. Look, it’s that lovely young lad! The one off of Radio 2! He’s singing a nice song! And he’s got a gadget!

Jim’s band enter the stage. They’re geeky new wave lite, too. And things suddenly get very bad. Now, I appreciate folk music as much as the next man. I have two Robbie Basho albums. I think Woody Guthrie was a genius. I have an Anne Briggs CD. I’ve seen the Albion Band live. My mum knows Ashley Hutchings. I’m a big fan of the new wave of world folk sweeping across the land: Avarus, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Hala Strana, Islaja, Lau Nau, Six Organs of Admittance. Ah, you say, then it’s Jim Moray’s technology you don’t like. He’s got a sample-and-hold box, see. And an Apple Powerbook. But no – as that legend of electronica Adamski once said, I love technology. What I object to, and in the strongest possible terms, are beautiful, traditional English folk tales repackaged in slick, bland, melodramatic, sub-Coldplay soft rock and cynically marketed to boring, meat-and-two-veg slackjawed morons for them to play in the Vectra while they’re driving to Carpet World, on the apparent premise that it’s an exciting and unprecedented marriage of tradition and technology, and on the actual premise that it’s mildly pleasant, easy-to-listen-to background music for tasteless idiots. I hate Jim Moray for the same reason I hate Kenny G. Jim Moray is not a folk musician in the same way that MacDonalds do not sell hog roasts.

For what seems like the next three hours, Jim and his band plod through Runrig-esque rock-pop tune after Runrig-esque rock-pop tune, all devoid of any passion, soul, or respect. Respect for the source material, or respect for modern music. The guitarist shuffles around self-consciously with his shiny new stratocaster and looks like he’d probably be able to instantly tell you the square root of any 7-figure number. He does smooth, American RockFM-friendly solos with a tasteful amount of reverb and overdrive. The bassist has an expensive bodiless upright, and he plays it smoothly and proficiently. The drummer, well, he’s no Elvin Jones. But he doesn’t have to be. As Owen, my companion for the night noted, it’s the first time in a long time he’s been to a gig where he could have played any of the parts. And we’ve been to lots of gigs recently. And of course, because this is a folk gig, the songs are all about Cuckoo’s Nests, Bonnie Black Hares, Raggle Taggle Gypsies, Rose-cheeked Milkmaids and the like. There’s a constant stream of urine flowing from each of the band members, and it falls collectively upon the corpses of everyone that’s ever written, performed and enjoyed listening to these songs in the days before recording, in the days when songs were sung and handed down through generations purely to entertain or to educate, with no marketing bullshit and no desire to get rich at the public’s expense. In the days before Pro Tools could sequence clinical, reverbed glockenspiel to add colour to a live track.

And in some ways, it was the glockenspiel and synthesized string quartet that made me the angriest. Here are four guys on tour, playing live. Presumably they have glockenspiel on some songs from their album. Presumably they also have a string quartet, playing sweeping, but slightly lame string sounds. Great. They have every right to those things. But if they want to have a glockenspiel in their live set, I’d prefer them to have a glockenspiel player. Not an Apple Powerbook trotting out a few simple notes of accompaniment. Why does this make me angry? Because it smacks of the fear by the marketers of the live sound deviating too much from the songs that people have heard on the radio, at all costs. As if the audience will walk out of the gig and demand their money back if they don’t get a perfect reproduction of the song they heard on the Ken Bruce show. You don’t need me to tell you that this is NOT what live music should be about.

It turns out that Jim Moray is only 21. We all have different ideas of success, but I would not be happy to think that I was being mildly championed by Ken Bruce to a nation of musically apathetic 50 year olds at any age, let alone when I’ve only just got the key to the door. Is this any worse than a bunch of 21 year olds starting a Green Day tribute band? I’m inclined to say that yes, it is.

But then – am I being reactionary here? Were the same things said in the 60s when Fairport Convention and their contemporaries started melding English folk and rock into one significant new sound? They were simply taking traditional song forms, and melodic ideas, and bringing them up to date by incorporating them into a modern rock framework. Isn’t that what Jim Moray is doing? Is Jim Moray, in actual fact, a visionary genius bringing people’s folk heritages bang up to date? Reminding them of things that would otherwise be forgotten? And if Jim is seemingly only popular with ordinary, common people, isn’t that what folk music was all about in the first place? Giving the common people a voice?

I get so confused. Now, where did I put that tankard of mead?

It’s time for two more links

Posted: April 16th, 2005, by Simon Proffitt

NWA’s Straight Outta Compton and Fuck The Police with all non-explicit content removed. The inverse radio edits.