There are some great bands coming out of Liverpool at the moment who don’t sound like they come from there. To my mind that’s a good thing, I long ago tired of Sixties pretenders. Frontrunners include Wave Machines, Hot Club De Paris, 28 Costumes and this band Voo, who I discovered at Liverpool Music Week 2007. Their debut album has been out for a while now and they have just released a new single in anticipation to their sophomore offering. Having recently received it though, I think the first album is worthy of some press.

Fans of jingle jangle pop suffused with nineties college rock look no further. Voo provide that deadly mix of intricate and beauteous guitar work with light touch vocals, unswerving bass and percussion.

Think Death Cab for Cutie meets Teenage Fanclub with some Lemonheads thrown in. ‘For Sake of Space,’ boasts an enticing swirling guitar line that hooks you and has you humming ‘the music lived for the last time today.’ ‘Shape & Size,’ contains synth work reminiscent of Grandaddy and possesses the unshakable vigorous quality of Pavement.

‘On The Return,’ is a former single of layered resonance. ‘Favourite Films (the films we like)’ sounds like Polytechnic meets The Shins, which is always welcome in my house. While ‘The Constant Threat of Falling Buildings,’ is an upbeat stop start piece that ends the album in style.

Their single ‘Same Mistakes,’ is from the forthcoming album ‘Songs We Used to dance To.’  It gallops along with the urgency of The Spinto Band. It is of course interspersed with telltale Voo, a sense of beat driven harmony. I actually prefer the b-side ‘What Will Happen and When’ which meanders and draws you in. ‘The music’s loud enough to drown me out…to cover this up,’ they intone. The new album can’t come soon enough for me. Voo wrap you in a blanket of low-fi sound. They’ll keep you warm in winter.

http://www.voo-rock.com

http://www.myspace.com/voorock

http://www.spankrecords.com

by Mandy Williams

(Originally posted October 2003)

“Next month,” I wrote [something like], “expect arbitrary gurglings about Lightning Bolt’s ‘Wonderful Rainbow’”. That was back in April. Since then there’s been a bit of an upheaval here at Diskant Towers, so we’ve been away. However, normal service can now be resumed – if under a different, altogether more appropriate, banner from now on.

You may have come here after reading the blurb about me being an obscurist bastard, for which I applaud, because I certainly wouldn’t have bothered. There’s nothing worse than reading a whole load of shit by some twat dribbling on like some heinous King of the Scene about some bands that you’ve never heard of (and will probably never hear of again), in terms that mean nothing to the average passer-by. So if you find yourself thinking, “What an [elitist] asshole!” at any point during this column, please feel free to email me and admonish me accordingly. It certainly isn’t my intention to alienate or blow my own-fucking-cleverness trumpet.

Speaking of which, do you know that godawful scene in that heinously smug film ‘High Fidelity’? You know, the one with Mincing John Cusack doing a wonderfully subtle bit of product placement for the Beta Band by saying “Watch me sell three copies of the Bayda Band”, putting it on the stereo, and having a strategically placed ‘customer’ turn around and say “What’s this?”; just so he can knowledgably assert “It’s the Bayda Band!”, and the customer guy can nod approval and say “cool” whilst stroking his namby-pamby adolescent beard like a faux-pseudo-bohemian hipster? I fucking hate that contrived ‘hey, I’m Hollywood, but I’m hip to the alternative’ scene. Unfortunately, it is the closest reference I can find for my intentions for this column. Bah.

But there are few things that make me happier than seeing someone turned onto music that I myself have discovered by random chance, or by taking a blind leap of faith in something I’ve heard about. It’s not the ego rush of being there first and being a superior snobby bastard about it, but the genuine pleasure of seeing someone get a kick out of something that presses your button too. The last time this happened to me was a couple of weeks ago, and once again my hapless victim was Simmo, who has frequently been my passenger on road trips. (In fact, most of my tapes in my car are designed to assuage/aggravate his moods, depending on how annoying I’m feeling whilst I drive.) This time around, we were off gallivanting to what was going to be our shared abode in Nottingham, and I’d just got this self-titled 7” on Wantage by an American band called The Whip. Upon hearing it once, I had to dub it straight onto the end of a dodgy Orchid tape, because it was the biggest, best, most rockingest new thing I’d heard in absolutely ages. Like since the time I first heard the mighty Part Chimp fellas. Even better, they had these huge heavy riffs with slightly odd rhythms, and weren’t afraid to pound them out again and again for your sonic delight. Hell, the A-side even has a couple false endings before it blasts through a few more repetitions towards a final conclusion. Plus, the singer sounds like Ian McKaye fattened up by years of WeightGain3000 abuse and no skateboarding. I haven’t got a clue what he’s singing about, but it sounds grand and I’m sure it’s deadly important. Unfortunately, The Whip’s drummer recently passed away in an unfortunate riverside accident (which isn’t funny, you Spinal Tap-loving trickster), and I’ve not idea whether they intend to carry on or not. It’s a damn shame because there’s some fantastic skin pounding on this, and it’s some really good stuff. Gah. In fact, it’s safely the best 7” single I’ve bought all year – mainly because I can’t think of anything else I’ve acquired that was any cop at all that wasn’t something grotesquely expensive+by Black Dice.

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(Originally posted April 2003)

[Cue: shift from bright-eyed enthusiasm of a spazzy debut column to world-weary sighs for this month’s disorganised heap of inconsequential rubbish.]

I’m sure you’ll be incredibly grateful to find out that since I moved into my current bedroom there’s always been this great stack of records that resides somewhere around me feet whenever I dint to use this pathetic excuse for a personal computing machine. Usually comprising of the stuff I’ve most recently bought/received/borrowed/stolen, it lives perpetually piled up against my stereo’s speakers. And though the vinyl and CDs (occasionally abetted by tapes and minidiscs) are in a constant state of cycle, some occasionally get clogged up in the stack for months and months. The Dischord box-set is still there (something to do with 73 songs to listen to), as is The Polyphonic Spree’s album, for some bizarre reason (probably because I’m never cheerful enough to trust myself to put it on). A bunch of CDs by Rob Crow’s bands have just found their way into there, and I can’t see them leaving for a while: Heavy Vegetable/Thingy/Pinback are just all too endearingly good for a day to go by where listening to at least one of them isn’t required. All of this is fascinating, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Anyway, top of this heap for the last month has been Sole‘s second album, Selling Live Water. Not long after I first discovered Anticon through cLOUDDEAD (much like everyone else, then), I heard lots of intriguing things about Sole… he was an original co-founder of the collective, and a rap prodigy at 14, only to ‘lose it’ and disappear for the best part of a decade. This is his second album on Anticon (I haven’t found his first in 18-odd months of looking), and a fine creation it is too. As an MC, Sole’s scathing wit and coruscating delivery often verges on brilliance, and he scores points over his similarly talented label-mate Sage Francis (an amazing live performer and freestyler, if you get the chance to see him) by avoiding gauche cartoons of self-flagellation – neatly reducing the Marshall Mathers comparisons. Instead you get a nice sticker on the front, screaming about David Koresh meets G.G. Allin, or something (I wish), which is partly a lie, but at least gives you a warning that Sole’s well aware of the troubles in the world/his soul, and he’s not gonna let up until you’ve heard all about them too. So, right, like; the album’s really good and everything, and there are some great words and some decent loops and beats and shit, but I’m starting to worry. I now own the best part of a dozen Anticon LPs, and they’re all starting to sound the same. I’ve seen the press release for this one talking shit about “a bomb squad of a production team,” or some such rot, which just means that again all these friends in Anticon are making ‘guest appearances’ on eachother’s albums. Predictions begin here that within six months all Anticon output will become as depressingly and numbingly monotonous in its consistency of sound/output as Morr Music managed last year. This album is definitely going to be the last Anticon record I buy unless persuaded otherwise by several positive reviews – admittedly because it’s probably as close as you’re going to get to a definitive MC’s record from these guys. (If you’re thinking of doing the same, make sure you get cLOUDDEAD, Boom Bip & DoseOne, and either Alias or Sage Francis before you pack it in. Actually, anything with Dose One is bound to be good).

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A few words about Fortuna Pop! Records, who have been happily doing their own thing as a label for the past fifteen years, and who recently sent me a few CDs for review, and in doing so created a rare and momentous occasion – actually receiving unsolicited stuff in the mail that I enjoy listening to, and that appeals to my musical sensibilities rather than being an obvious, desparate push as part of a scattershot PR campaign in order to raise the profile of yet another identikit, no-mark, faceless, bland musical puppet in the thrall of yet another misplaced record company advance.

Anyway, I digress. Fortuna Pop!’s output, in the main, seems transparently influenced by the work of Belle & Sebastian and Sarah Records in the past, along with a variety of twee/indie-pop/C86 labels and bands. But that stuff goes on forever, and despite any trends and turns taken by independent music, always seems to exist. Simple tunes, kind-hearted intent, and a relentless exploration of human relationships: what went right, what went wrong, and how it was affected by it being winter or summer (in general). Continue reading »

(Originally posted February 2003)

Introductions? Pah! You’ll get no introductions here. Or explanations, for that matter.

Instead, I’ll break into full-flow about a rather dandy 7″ EP by Fonda 500, entitled ‘The Colours and the Birdsongs.’ Though it’s a donkey-flogging second single from their third album, it’s another engagingly quirky and mildly endearing release from the band. Which is always nice. Like a particularly lively Attention Deficit Disorder-suffering infant, it wobbles and gurgles all over the place, rarely stopping on one idea for more than thirty seconds. All mildly silly instrumentation and occasionally indecipherable vocals, there’s identifiably an ‘indie band’ hidden beneath the plethora of vocoders, Casio keyboards and crappy drum machines, but don’t let that put you off. Moreover, there’s seven “tracks” in the space of fourteen minutes, so little room for baggage on this decidedly rickety yet incredibly comfortable and familiar cart. Decidedly lovable then, all wibble-and-burble-y, and it all far from outstays its welcome. The words woo and yay are rarely more appropriate in such a cutesy setting.

Continuing the “damn you all to hell, we like stupidity and we like it pop” ethos, Grandpa Records‘ own Stars of Aviation (okay, so it’s their own label) are looking for someone to release their music, you insensitive tripe. They used to be called Florence y’see, under which banner they got played by the John Peel man who dares spin records on airwaves reserved for music you’ve already heard a thousand times, and also released an EP too. For some inexplicable reason, they decided to abandon all that momentum and become another band with stars in their name (see Stars on the Water, Stars of the Lid, Trembling Blue Stars, Planes mistaken for Stars, yawn…)… and for what reason? We know not. Oh well, names matter little when you’ve discovered the magic Grandaddy trick of arpeggiated keyboard chords, which instantly makes any song a heady mix of lovely pop lullaby and heart-aching slow depression. Just as well that they’ve got a whole bunch of other good things in their little bags of songsmithery to keep you distracted.

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The press release for Child Bite’s brilliantly-titled second album is refreshingly modest. None of this ‘landmark album’ rubbish, just a sigh of annoyance at the pointless “‘post-post-post’ suffixes” that have been slapped upon them. A heck of a lot of music I find interesting is notoriously difficult to label, but personally that’s what makes it worthwhile listening.

Child Bite hail from Detroit, Michigan and I’d say they don’t sound unlike the various ‘spastic’ and ‘abrasive’ epithets used to describe them. You wouldn’t be wrong in noting punchy keyboard and guitar riffs with twisting melodies and eerie yelps. Songs are intricately written and put together but never sound contrived or self-consciously clever.

There is a general feel of a horrorshow to Fantastic Gusts of Blood – due to the jarringly high guitar lines and freaky shrieks from singer Shawn Knight. The vocals can get a tad annoying but the ridiculous yelps are mostly bearable. The song Banana Gorgon sees Child Bite at their most impressive. A winding riffs rips its way through an utterly infectious song and gains from the repeat button. Other efforts on the album come close to this brilliance but not close enough.

Not only has this got my favourite album title for a good stretch but the cover art is brilliant. The fold-out sleeves reveal primal scrawls, naked ladies and snakes… Cool!

This is hardly a spectacular album but it commits no crimes against humanity: unoriginality, tedium or triteness fail to present themselves into a single bar in these decent ten tracks. Their difficulty with overeager journalists (and their often being misunderstood) just means Child Bite are running a particularly individualistic streak.

Child Bite

Pascal Ansell

Polymath, published writer, Renaissance Man – and regular diskant.net contributor – Wil Forbis is now an official recording artist. Shadey’s Jukebox, released a little while back on Rank Outsider Records, is a collection of ten tunes with Forbis on vocal, guitar, mandolin and banjo duty, backed up by a collection of what sound like good ol’ boys on a variety of American Class Rock instrumentation choices.

Anybody familiar with Forbis’ writing, myself included, would expect this album to be a mix of authentic punk rock, piss-taking hair metal and comic-book japery. But it seems that he’s gone so far into the heart of weirdsville Americana in the past that he’s come out as a very straight-laced, by-the-book, normal musician and songwriter. The music here is a combination of swingin’ croon, hick bluegrass and country twang – I guess that nothing could really be more American, and its poker-faced normalcy is more bizarre than any ‘joke’ recordings would ever have been.

Sure, there’s a sense of humour at play – songs called ‘Let’s Get High on Jesus’ and ‘Where There’s a Wil There’s A Way’, goddammit, they’re never going to be humourless. This still sounds authentic however, like Forbis means it – and I severely hope he does, and that it’s not some elaborate art prank. Some of these songs are actually pretty tender and touching. In the context of a world full of knowing, clever-clever music and musicians, this album succeeds by doing things simple: have some ideas, write some words, get some tunes to back them up, and there you go. I expect a tour of whisky bars and shacks across middle America to be forthcoming.

Rank Outsider Records

Wil Forbis

Manchester-based misanthropes Kong return with their second single, this time on CD and everything. “Leather Penny” is another track from a forthcoming-in-2009 debut album called ‘Snake Magnet’ and is backed by two versions of a song called “Count Too Nine” featuring special guest vocalists from bands The Bronx and Future of the Left that I can’t tell you about because there’s just the one track on my promo copy.

So then, first single “Blood of a Dove” showcased a band weaned on the sharp edges and heavy weight of early ’90s Chicago-based rock bands such as The Jesus Lizard and Shellac (I know, both are still going in one manner or another…), with an admirable feeling of dread looming over the disjointed riffs and malformed chords. It sounded pretty great too.

“Leather Penny” continues in much the same vein of skullfuckery, featuring another killer riff that hooks itself to your brain and refuses to budge, despite the song lurching all over the place rhythmically. The bass and guitar woomph and screech appropriately, whilst the drums do the inevitable pounding on your cortex. Dramatic pauses to emphasise the weight of the band’s attack mean the vocals take a full minute to come in, and it’s no bad thing because they’re spat out in a manner so venemous it would make Johnny Rotten proud (and, hopefully, ashamed of hawking butter on television). Frankly, I really don’t like the sound of the guy’s voice much, but that’s almost a boon to this type of music.

I haven’t got a clue what the fuck the lyrics are about because I couldn’t understand a word of them. It’s not really an issue because what Kong are all about is SOUND. Sheer fucking brutality of juddering rock ballast slamming against your earlobes SOUND. Running a blunt knife down the back of your knife and boxing your ears for a laugh SOUND. The vocals are just another part of the arsenal they employ to onslaught your ears. They’d be a great band to see live.

Just two singles into their life, Kong are still a young band, even if their members have apparently been around the musical block once or twice. Their sound is pretty great and they have cool riffs seemingly coming out of their ears. At this stage, originality isn’t their strongest suit, but I, for one, will be watching with interest to see where they go next.

Kong Myspace page

Brew Records website

“Leather Penny” official video

“Leather Penny” live video on YouTube

“I’d rather beanflick my granny.” Perhaps the best line in this old-skool style 12″ EP, with 5 jams on the A side and instrumentals with well dodgy skits on the B side. This here is the debut release from brand new UK Hip Hop label The Gull’s Trunk Records, and also the debut by (Droylsden) Manchester-based Chopps Derby – described by his own label as a “well hard bumbaseed turn bare sick emcee”. Make of that what you will.

Stick on the music and you’re greeted with some slinky rough-assed beats dumped on top of a load of samples – so far so good – and then Chopps Derby (barely) opens his mouth: “Have a fuckin’ good time… go down the dogs!”. Yep, ‘Down the Dogs’ is all about going down the track, getting blitzed and getting up to all kinds of filthy mischief. Further songs talk about Top Gear, Matalan, getting pissed, casual racism and bigotry, disgusting habits and driving like a prick around car parks (“Smashed into this kid riding a bike with stabilisers then I laughed / The pigs think I’m a twat cause I got on my fog lights /They keep sayin’ next time I’ll be fined – yeah right…”). Slick and smooth flow this is not: a bitingly  satire on modern UK culture it may well be. Whether you find it hilarious or not depends on how liberal your values are and just how strong your comedy stomach is. Chopps Derby is probably the musical equivalent of the morning after a lamb jalfrezi followed by a dozen pints of Red Stripe and then a dodgy kebab on the way home. Either you’re lovin’ it or you’re feeling slightly sick. Whatever the case, if you can put up with a chorus like “Open the window / put my nob in your gob / and now you cry like a tart,” you’ll probably be fine.

So, comedy hip hop. It’s a bit of an albatross tag, but Chopps Derby does his best to wear it well. His delivery is like a someone stoned on ketamine and probably doesn’t do much for ‘proper’ hip hop heads, but who gives a fuck about them? If you can make sense of it, it’s vaguely in time and – most crucially – if the words are good, it should be good enough. Think of Chopps Derby as punk hip hop if you want. Personally, I find moments on this EP genuinely funny and even occasionally snort-inducing. You may just be offended. Best way to find out? Watch the video below:

[youtube]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X-nzdyBEAEY[/youtube]

http://www.myspace.com/choppsderby

http://www.thegullstrunkrecords.com

If you have ever laughed at a Derek And Clive record/routine you will have acknowledged just how funny and satisfying swearing and being crass can be.  In times of such hellacious judgement and subtle political correctness squashing almost every form of art containing an element of edgy humour or anything that challenges the status quo, you just need to blow off steam and go all out to offend with view to weeding out.

When Bob Weston pointed out at ATP that the audience resembled an “indie rock Taliban” he was very much onto something, he was also probably wondering to himself “what are they hiding?”  I sense your average guitar wielding may frown upon and fail to see the humour in such infantile musical exploits.

For a release to contain a “libel-free radio edit” this is generally a sign of good things in the bad taste stakes, an indication and suggestion of a person taking lyrical risks being playful in delivery.

Very rarely these days do you encounter releases that are enjoyable and challenging, that are genuinely likely to cause offence and sting with a true cavalier approach and attitude of being so carefree and callous?  Ultimately Kunt (and Little Kunt) is only saying what we are thinking but delivering it with skill in a manner the majority of us could only dream of.  This is visionary poetry.

Thesaurus moment: indelicate.

Kunt And The Gang