(Originally posted July 2002)

It’s a real American sitcom thing to start a sentence with ‘So,’ don’t you think? As in ‘So, I was in the coffee shop and that girl I like spilt her mochachino all over my Danish’ and all that. I prefer using ‘Anyway,’ as in ‘Anyway, I went blind momentarily and ended up in the dock on a handling stolen goods charge!’. The intricacies of our fair language, eh?

So anyway, I saw SONIC YOUTH play live the other night and woooo I was excited about the prospect. They’ve been my #1 favourite band (if it’s not too teenage to have a favourite band) for over ten years now, and I only ever saw them play live once before, when they performed a Birmingham date of their ‘Goo’ tour for my acid-addled brain. It’s a bit strange how I felt about it this time, though, as I travelled home afterwards – and it got me thinking about how I actually feel about them as a band. I’ve not bought ‘Murray Street’ yet, and I didn’t buy ‘NYC Ghosts and Flowers’ yet either, which must be some kind of insight into something or other. I used to rush out and buy everything I could get my hands on by them. I still do, in fact, quite happily shell out for rare bootleg live albums from ebay or vinyl versions of their albums I already own on CD. Maybe it’s something to do with the music I grew up with, or the number of times I’ve listened to some music, but I’m much more comfortable with ‘Sister’ or ‘Daydream Nation’ than their more recent LPs. I’m not saying I don’t like the recent LPs, it’s just that I seem to like the older ones (especially that mid-to-late-80s-phase) a whole lot more. This would lead you to think that perhaps I’d have been super-happy about the split of songs played at their recent live show being pretty much 50/50 old/new material. And I was, to a degree, but I kept thinking “why are they letting me off easily like this? shouldn’t they be forcing me to appreciate and experience their new music, rather than treating me to a fanboy’s set of ‘the classics’?” It’s an odd situation. While I hear that their ‘Goodbye 20th Century’-style show at ATP a couple of years ago was excruciating to the point of delerium, I think I’d still like to have been there, forcing myself to accept the challenge of listening to music I wouldn’t normally experience. Sonic Youth have this role as ‘musical pioneers’, and that’s what I always want them to be – never a greatest-hits-played-for-solely-Goo-owning-dullards band.

So anyway, phew! They rocked on, regardless. And I dug them severely. They even played ‘Making the nature scene’.

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(Originally posted May 2002)

MY CHILDREN! Walk with me. Walk through the forest of popular (although some would say unpopular) music as I guide you through an inky morass of badly-formed sentences and hasty reviews of some bits of plastic what have been spinning on my dusty, antique turntable and within my shiny, laser-guided compact disc unit. These are the tunes you should be digging like a weathered cemetery operative whilst you go about your daily business, and whilst you relax in your silk pajamas after a hard day’s hanging out.

EMETREX
Curve of the earth
CD single
Seriously Groovy LLL2125CD-S
I was scrabbling for literally HOURS in the back of my mind to place what ‘Curve of the Earth’ reminded me of, and it’s just come to me in a literally blinding flash. fdsluc cuicoui900 cjk;sa;e;e .. Ho Ho. I’ve not really been blinded. Anyway, it’s Grandaddy it reminds me of, in a similarly bass-driven, laid back kinda way, very nice indeed oh yes. I like it. It may not be particularly original but this kind of unoriginality is still streets ahead of the most original dour indie-goes-AOR shiterock which we’re forced to think of as ‘alternative’ via the media of the NME and Radio 1. But you know that, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here with me, reading this over my shoulder (which, incidentally, is very rude). But, enough of that. There’s two more tracks on here which are a bit more half-asleep vocal in style, ‘langorous’ is a word which I don’t understand but which seems to sum it up. Like Built to Spill in a waking dream blah blah blah.
www.seriouslygroovy.com/emetrex.htm

I AM SPARTACUS
Forward
CD
Gringo Records 012
Hello like, antelope Greg marceline rocks xylophone. Seven at times unconnected words, here connected to form a sentence which ultimately reads as a slew of gibberine. But look between the words and that’s where you’ll find meaning. Or maybe not. But you get what I’m driving at, right? I’m drawing parallels, see, between music and poetry. It’s as obvious as the nose on your face. Which brings almost too neatly to this album, which I found in my little bag after visiting All Tomorrow’s Parties this year. Did anyone from diskant mention that we’d been to ATP? It was pretty good, like. And anywhere that you come back from with records and CDs in your bag which you never previously owned has to be pretty good. Unless they’re stuffed full of heroin and you’re passing through a Middle Eastern airport, in which case look out! Them internal searches can be hell on the organs. But you do the crime, and you should do the crime, you know what I’m saying? Anyway. Don’t annoy me, and let me get back to this album. It’s great, very restful, a kind of slow builder, like Godspeed You Black Emperor! (or A Silver Mt. Zion, I’m told) in its use of mournful, scraping cello (?), chattering violins, plucked guitars and intricate, yet relaxed and spacious, melodies and textures. It’s about as post- as post-rock goes, which some could construe as unoriginality, but it’s so warm and welcoming that you can’t get angry with it. Hurray!
www.gringorecords.com

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I got 3 CDs in my copy of The Wire this week. An extra copy of the subscriber-only Phonorama and if anyone thinks they’d like it, they can have it. Leave a mention or contact details in the comments.

Phonorama is an improvised electronic piece that’ll remind you of Fennesz or Oren Ambarchi. Extremely pleasant in my opinion and about as accessible as a Wire CD would get. The packaging’s cute too, if flimsy and all-in-all it’s better than the Wire Tapper compilation.

While on the subject of The Wire, their blog has led me to some good articles recently. I especially liked k-punk‘s essays on class and culture (but the specific one that caught my eye, I’ve lost; sorry).

(Originally posted April 2002)

I know, I know, I’ve left this too late again, and everything I write seems to be the blandest gibberine that’s spilt from my tired, flu-stricken fingers for some time. But I soldier on because I love you, and because I get the guilts easily. No promises about my spelling or quality control, I have faith in the other music columnists here to carry me through this time of uninspiration.

NIK TURNER’S FANTASTIC ALLSTARS/46000 FIBRES
Split 7″
Earworm WORMSS11
Crazy mad weird stuff this. Nik Turner’s Fantastic Allstars (featuring Nik Turner of Hawkwind, no less) do a kind of John-Coltrane-recorded-by-Stock-Aitken-and-Waterman-in-a-Stray-Cats-stylee thing, and 46000 Fibres do a Sun Ra tune in a murky, cack-handed triphop way. And that sounds horrible, right? But the strange thing is, something about the naive sounds here and the general feeling of being entirely off your face on hallucinogenics whilst listening to it give this record a unique charm.
THE SLEEVE: is an Earworm singles club standard sleeve, a generic two-colour affair with a sticker on it. ‘Workmanlike’ is the term.
www.earwormrecords.com

VARIOUS ARTISTS
A Boy, a Girl and a Rendez-vous
CD
Red Roses For Me RRFMCD01
A 15-song compilation which seems almost like a CD version of an old-school indiepop compilation tape (the likes of which are so very rarely seen around in these cynical, digital times). The thing about those tapes was that they were so cheap that you could put up with a few duff tracks on the understanding that there’d be a gem or two hidden away there too. The same theory applies here too, really, because whilst this dips somewhat in the middle (getting into a bit of a solitary-indie-boy-strumming-guitar-about-lost-love thang for four or five tracks), there’s good stuff aplenty going on. The mood never entirely shifts away from the indiepop/Sarah way of doing things, but hey – that’s not a problem for me. So, White Town, The Sugargliders, Callow and Tree Fort Angst all deliver assuredly soft-centred and tuneful tunes, with the absolute jewel being The Aislers Set whose ‘Hit the Snow’ is like Spectoresque girl group melody gone cute. Throughout the other tracks (The Dudley Corporation, Watoo Watoo, Lovejoy, Bart & Friends, The Windmills, The Jordans, Aberdeen, The Zambonis, The Arrogants and The Lucksmiths there are a couple of moments which remind me why I went off that whole cutie/Sarah scene, but that’s just my evil, black heart for you.
THE SLEEVE: sepia-style photographs of obviously American scenes give off a certain charm, but the use of what looks to be the nightmarish Impact typeface is inexcusable!
www.redrosesforme.com

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The press release accompanying this album from Build Buildings, the solo project of one Ben Tweel, seems calculated to get Wire reviewers all afroth, cramming in references to sound-colour synaesthesia, musique concrète and treated samples of everything from opening envelopes to desk fan noises. But get past the foregrounding of all the compositional details surrounding the record, and there’s actually something quite beautiful at work here, which I could easily imagine popping up on Sub Rosa or Kompakt. Ceiling Lights From Street, for all its fascination with process and source material, is thankfully not a record that requires you to have a track-by-track here’s-how-they-did-it guide to sample processing to enjoy it.

To fans of Matmos or Fennesz particularly, there’s little here you won’t have heard before, and while in isolation you could say that individual tracks don’t exactly have tunes to whistle in the shower, the record works beautifully as one piece. It doesn’t quite have the melodic edge that made the Fennesz’s Venice album so captivating, but Build Buildings scores big points on the texture front. Tweel builds up buzzing drones from layers of samples brilliantly, and is from that rare group of bleep-fuelled samplers who can make electronica sound warm and human, rather than cold and distant. Couple these comforting, rich layers of sound with skittering drum fills, as on ‘Letter Codes’, and you have a gorgeous record that matches any minimal electronica that will see the light of day this year.

Build Buildings

This five track album from the increasingly prolific Telescopes is the first in a trio of releases – two albums proper and one live recording – that reflect a shift in their style that sees them edging ever more deeply into the world of abstract noise and improvisation. This shift could be very likely due to the influence of Bridget Hayden (once of Vibracathedral Orchestra); with a new interest in the examination of sound in ever-increasing detail, stepping further and further away from the original song-based forms of the Telescopes’ past.

The five tracks of Infinite Suns are recorded onto analogue tape with recording levels set to intentionally overload. The album is literally packed with noise, often distorting so much that the recording itself breaks down into glitches of silence. It’s hard going, but impressive in its relentless focus. Across the album is shared a set of harsh, tinny core tones and textures, with each track digging around the roots in an exploratory fashion. ‘Thought Loops’ has a weirdly human, intensely repeating, pained voice throughout – pretty hellish stuff. ‘Northumberland’ is a purer circular drone, touching down and taking off regularly, delightful in its simplicity. ‘Tidal bandwidth’ is akin to being trapped within a broken wind tunnel: occasional rising and falling tones are buried beneath layers of fuzz and noise. ‘Chrome gulls’ is violent and sporadic, until descending into a relentless, bloody-minded scrawl of noise and feedback.

Easily listening this is not, but an interesting development for an outfit with a 20+ year lifespan it most certainly is. The Telescopes in their current form are several worlds apart from the band(s) they once were – but listen back to their earlier output and you can spot hints of experimentalism that are finally being given absolute free rein and free experiment.

The Telescopes
Textile Records

(Originally posted February 2002)

Oh no oh no oh no, I’ve left myself way too little time to write this, and I can barely remember yesterday, let alone the whole of last year. What shall I do ? What shall I do ? First of all, I’ll calm down before I fall off my elegant brushed aluminium chair – deep breaths, it’s not a race – and the best thing is probably if I just get going with this. No guarantees for the reliability of this here list, and no apologies for neglecting to mention some of the brilliant releases of last year which I’m obviously about to forget. Let’s get on. Here we go now with…

MY BEST FAVOURITE RECORDS OF 2001, OH YES
(not all released in 2001, you understand. just my favourites of the year. OK? And they’re not in any order. So keep your bleedin’ shirt on.)

OXES
OXES (LP)
Remember that Trumans Water LP, Spasm Smash Ox Ox Ox and Assss, or whatever it was called? Well, beef that up a tad, give it more angles and poke its teeth with a turned-off power drill for a while and bam! there you have this OXES album. Hurrah!

HOOD
COLD HOUSE (LP)
And yes! YES! it is raining and cold outside as I type this – just as it should be. HOOD continue in the melancholic vein of their previous two albums, adding a touch of garble and a spring of hip hop to the mix. But they still haven’t managed to cheer me up, thank heavens.

VINCENT GALLO
WHEN (LP)
Another reason/excuse for me to mention BUFFALO 66, one of the greatest films in recent history! Yip! Woo! Not that this album’s anything to do with it, unless you consider the trembling introspect on display here something of an aural equivalent to the visuals of the movie. I do. I haven’t heard the soundtrack to the movie, mind

THE FUCKING CHAMPS
IV (LP)
ROCK! blart!! Proper old school metal played with a math-rocker’s eye for detail and a comedian’s eye for dual-guitar harmonic action.

VARIOUS OLD CHANCERS
CHOCOLATE SOUP FOR DIABETICS (LP)
Classy old compilation of sixties psych out mayhem featuring, among others, the wonderful FLIES with their drudgealong cover of ‘Stepping Stone’ and DANTALION’S CHARIOT giving it some flutey tripout magic too. I just wasn’t made for these times!

VARIOUS POST ROCK TYPES
ROCKET RACER BOX SET
This looks neato in its little white box containing three seven inch singles containing the sort of repetitive drone-based noise candy you may well expect from TANK, PORTAL, LACKLUSTER, YELLOW 6, THE AND/ORS and STYROFOAM.

THE FREED UNIT
CHEWINGUMOUTH (7″)
And wouldn’t you know it, this single was out on Rocket Racer Records too – the crazy old American alternotypes that they are. Rocket Racer I mean, not The Freed Unit. Hey, you know what I mean. This is their finest hour I think, a rollin’ ode just on the weird side of a weird Flaming Lips tune. Perhaps.

THE PRETTY THINGS
SF SORROW (LP)
“My boyfriend looks like Phil May out of the Pretty Things” – anyone who tells me where that quote came from can have a special prize. More psychedelic madness going on here, with this – ooh – concept album which sounds like Rolling Stones go Beach Boys in a Brian Wilson stylee. Which is, pretty much, what it is.

AVROCAR
CINEMATOGRAPHY (LP)
OOOH class. An album which sounds like waking up after sleeping for a hundred years, breaking up with somebody you never really liked, reminiscing about the good times with that person, etc etc etc. Shame it’s CD only. Boo hiss. But at least the gentle chiming nature of the album doesn’t get interrupted by needle noise.

SONIC YOUTH
ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING THEY’VE DONE
Oh, just because, alright? 50% of my time last year was spent listening to Sonic Youth.

There has never been a more fitting title for an album than Volcano’s debut Beautiful Seizure. The Chicago three-piece introduced to an unsuspecting few a world of swirling electronics, spasmodic guitars and rolling, charged semi-improvised drumming – it’s one of my favourite albums. There’s no band that comes close to sounding like Volcano – a hot delicious juicy musical lava to be readily engulfed in. Actually, they sound a little bit like Storm and Stress, just not shit.

What sets Volcano from other bands is the choice you have to listen to any respective musician in any song and be entertained – each consistently provide endlessly interesting melodic lines, chewy noise or rhythmic rolls. Aaron With’s guitar is a scratchy, plucky delight with an abrasive and raw tone. The synths, laptop and bass player Mark Cartwright is even more intriguing to listen to, playing atmospheric rumblings and fuzzy keys; winding lines of bass guitar to all-out delicious noise, and he seldom stays in one mode for long. I might have read this somewhere before, but a perfect description of Volcano’s drummer, Sam Scranton, is that he resembles a jazz drummer playing rock. Like many a jazz hitter he’s delicate and soft in his execution, but with a generous enough groove to back up his bandmates.

The expectations laid upon Paperwork couldn’t be higher, but it is so good because it sounds in parts a bit, well, wrong. In ‘Sweet Tooth’ instruments are played how they shouldn’t; the faintly jarring guitar and keyboard are slightly out of tune with each other, and With’s muted plucking is a definition of understated beauty. ‘Astronomer’s Ballad’ begins with a floating splendour and carries on with a wonderful chaos, bordering on the free-improv. This is Volcano’s trademark sound: loose, wobbly, partially improvised, but somehow they never sound self-indulgent – and this is where Storm and Stress often fall flat on their skinny pretentious arses.

Apparently, ‘Paperwork’ is infused with cynical political stabs and celebrity-bashing, but With’s lyrics are often hard to make out. No matter. He’s got a ripe falsetto, a tremendous wail that’s relatively Thom York-ish in a more upbeat, less suicidal strain.

I doubt there’s a higher compliment you can pay a band or artist than to say that they are never, not even for the slightest second, dull. Volcano are always gratifyingly pricking the ears with some odd keyboard blip here and huge cascading wave of beauty there; they are a consistently entertaining listen. It’s hardly a problem that Volcano’s latest album is not quite as breathtaking as Beautiful Seizure because it’s barely possible for it to be bettered. To look at it another way, Paperwork is a more ordered and coherent listen than their debut, and is generally easier to digest. And the great consolation is that it’s an album you can play at the odd shindig without too many people scratching their heads.

myspace.com/volcanoisaband

Pascal Ansell

(Originally posted December 2001)

Today’s lesson begins with some ramblings about an ACTUAL, REAL BOOK with words in it and everything. Because oh yes, I do more than just listen to records, I live a fulfilling and exciting life which occasionally involves reading and watching the telly. Anyway, this ‘ere book is called ‘The Creation Records Story’ and is a great big eight-hundred page mutha of a tome, covering the, er, Creation Records Story from shambolic beginnings in the early 80s up to becoming The Record Label Of Oasis. And along the way, of course, we meet all kinds of crazy pop kids such as The Jesus And Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, The House Of Love and Teenage Fanclub. It’s an interesting story not just because any sane music fan will and must own many of the records mentioned along the way, but also because in a proper in-depth kinda way it takes in the surrounding independent music scene which grew up from punk days, through the eighties, up to today, when ‘indie’ means something entirely different to the pop man in the street. It’s packed full of juicy little anecdotes and revealing insights into the machinations of the evil big business side of music, it if nothing else it’ll make you dig out some of those old 7″s in wraparound sleeves to remind yourself of times gone by.

But, no time for reading? Then let’s get on with talking about some records. Or CDs. (Much as I hate CDs, they don’t seem to be going away).

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It’s a rare band indeed that can play the irony card without coming across as just plain irritating, and sadly for them, The Chap fall well short of that dubious gold standard. This latest 7”, out this week, offers up two examples of the kind of music that it’s impossible to enjoy without the application of a liberal dose of irony to one’s own critical faculties to mask all the self-congratulatory whimsy. It’s crammed to the gills with falsetto-ridden, over-enunciated globs of lyrical smugness that nudge you in the ribs, raise their eyebrows and demand that you acknowledge how clever they’ve just been. ‘Massive tunes, put them on your ‘pod, Rod / Proper songs about girls and clubbing’ – tailor-made drivel for new media tools to jig themselves into a froth over.

It’s a shame, really, because when they put their foot down towards the end, drop the frolicsome archness for a few seconds, there’s actually some deft guitar work on display here, with some neat high-end figures building over an undercarriage of bubbling synth tones. That doesn’t, however, prevent this from being a really annoying piece of music that I want nothing more to do with.

The B-side does little to improve my mood – a half-arsed, teeth-grindingly pointless cover of Tina Turner’s ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’, in which the singer can’t hold his deadpan spoken-word drawl together and bursts into peals of laughter at how clever it all is. It’s a sad day when you’re aching for the proper rock delivery that only Tina Turner can provide.

The Chap website