(Originally posted November 2002)

KIDS: You have to read the previous episode of Bargain Bin Culture for this to make any sense. Ahhh, who am I kidding? Nothing I write ever makes sense.

Surprisingly, I didn’t even blink when the Air Force Sergeant pushed me out of the airplane into an open freefall in the dark Middle Eastern night. I had several minutes to waste before I’d be below radar level and able to open my ‘chute, so I calmly reminisced on the events that had led me to this moment. I’d been tapped by the CIA to infiltrate the camp of the famed General Zarcon, a Middle Eastern despot set on worldwide domination. Whereas many other agents had failed to integrate themselves into Zarcon’s closely knit group of advisors, they had not had my secret weapon: an omnipotent command of pointless record trivia. You see, Zarcon demanded that his cadre of serviceman be able to answer any query he proffered about obscure musical groups both past and present. As the United States leading expert in such matters, I alone would be able to work my way into his camp.

However, my task at hand was a mere prelude to my final mission. Today I was assigned to sneak into an encampment containing General Zarcon’s beautiful daughter, Sally Zarcon, and do what I could to pump her for information. All in all, it seemed like a pretty cushy gig: parachute into a well-guarded fortress and convince the resident beauty to give up her allegiances to her father and provide me with whatever information might prove useful. Nothing I couldn’t handle in my sleep. After all I was an amazingly talented super-spy, I…

Egads! I’d reminisced so long I’d forgotten to pull the cord on my parachute. Now it was too late. The ground rushed up to meet me, closer, closer!

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Capillary Action’s previous album, 2005’s Fragments, was a riotous mess of oh-so-hip angularity and pleasingly backward-looking progressive rock arrangements. So Embarrassing continues along similar lines and themes, crashing headlong into the forked crossroads of jazz and prog with eleven tracks even more deranged, confusing and inventive than ever.

Opener ‘Gambit’ sets the tone – being seemingly angular vocal-led guitar music, before breaking into screaming hard rock noise, introducing chamber music strings and then collapsing repeatedly on itself. It plunges into skipping, vocal harmonies, piling on more noise and, illogically, muted trumpet. Throughout the album one track falls indistinguishably into the other: before you know it, ‘Pocket Protection is Essential’ has appeared and turned proceedings into a Herbie Hancock-style jazz fusion odyssey. This music is so complicated that it must be scored and performed – surely it’s not dreamt up by a band unit? – it’s amazingly precise, and has the vibe of ‘trained musicianship’ all over. It’s generally melodic, but with considered atonality sprinkled liberally between tracks. If there’s a hit in here, it’s ‘Elevator Fuck’, a 1960s spy show theme tune turned uptight, with rolling melodies, xylophone and trumpet. The mid-song church organ break is followed by some outstanding fuzz synth repetition, and it’s a super-catchy piece.

Vocally, there’s a lot of Elvis Costello-style pronunciation in here; with some Robert Wyatt feeling to the precise, conversational lyrics. In fact, there is much of Soft Machine’s experiment circa Volume 1/Volume 2 at play, and late 60s/early 70s progressive rock seems more of an influence than the modern bands this superficially recalls (Battles, Don Caballero, Oxes and so on). Capillary Action use modern sounds and styles to further some kind of compositional dream. It’s almost too relentless in its inventiveness and chaos – at times, it threatens to be just too much (for example, the mariachi stylings of ‘Paperweights’ or the vocal style that can grate at times). All in all, however, things are held together. Moments like the heavy metal power chord action in ‘Bloody Nose’ and the vocal chant/drum ending to ‘Badlands’ quickly dissolve any doubts. An outfit like Capillary Action are always going to be too downright bizarre to be of mass interest – but that’s what they have going for them. This isn’t an easy listen by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a surprisingly rewarding one.

Capillary Action
Pangaea Recordings

Ah, it’s nice to receive vinyl once in a while. This one comes from a new label that goes by the quietly sinister name of Autumn Ferment Records – Lisa O Piu marks their first release.

Lisa Issaksson is a Swedish singer/songwriter and with her band are known collectively as Lisa O Piu – the Swedish ‘piu’ roughly translating as ‘and more’ according to the press release. This release gives us two songs which both master the plain and darkly beautiful niche in the acoustic/folk genre. ‘Whisperers, Wavers, Hunters and Sailors’ is a brooding and melodious tune with just enough gleams of light in a dark and dense couple of minutes. The second track ‘Equatorial Changes’ is crammed full of delicate harmonies, gorgeous guitar picking and little else – the lily left ungilded in all its rough charm.

The general production (or lack of) is what makes this release really shine: stark and rugged, and with an unbeatably warm tone that you can only get from recording it on your 4-track as Lisa did. Good stuff; some great cover art designed by Lisa herself, and I look forward to any more Autumn Ferment releases. 

Pascal Ansell

http://www.myspace.com/lisaolillportan

Autumn Ferment Records

My Bloody Valentine
By the time you read this I will have seen MY BLOODY VALENTINE three times and having been lucky enough to see their comeback show at the ICA I was literally floored by the revival flavour of the month.  They’re doing “Slow” and somehow they have managed to make “Soon” sound even better, which is something I previously thought unimaginable.  Earplugs are for wimps (and those with hearing). [JGram]

Monotonix
I can’t remember the last time I saw a band where you would never buy a record but could never forgive yourself if you missed the live show when they rolled into town. At the Rose for England gig in  Nottingham they started their set by setting their drums on fire and finished by playing on the shelf above the bar. Absolutely bonkers. [Dave Stockwell]

The Night Marchers / Obits / Monotonix
Digging the post-Hot Snakes bands The Night Marchers and Obits a lot right now. The Night Marchers are far less immediate than Hot Snakes or even Rocket From The Crypt but reveal a more subtle, tuneful, hell – soulful side to things. Obits are awesome, matching Rick Froberg’s hoarse yelp to Creedence-esque riff-jams that bop along to the listener’s total satisfaction. Also liking new sounds by Broken Arm, Mob Rules, Helm, Awesome Color, Zun Zun Egui as well as some old sounds from Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Bo Diddley, Flower Travellin’ Band, Jimi Hendrix… Monotonix live were also an event that I cannot recommend highly enough. [Chris Summerlin]

Please
London 3-piece Please played an immense set in Oxford earlier this year; tribal riffs + messy Lightning Bolt-style yelps = MASSIVE TUNES. [Pascal Ansell]

Icebreaker International
Pretty much the only bonus of all the diskant reformatting work was re-reading some of the excellent and hilarious content from years long gone, and digging out the records for another listen. Icebreaker International are still one of my favourite interviewees – we went into it not having a clue about how much of what they claimed was truth and how much was audaciously ridiculous nonsense, and left in pretty much the same state. Their second album, Trein Maersk, was supposedly recorded on a container ship travelling between Yokohama and Halifax and is probably the only real musical documentation of globalisation. I’m a total sucker for lies, manifestos, uniforms and instrumental electro-pop so of course I love this. Sadly they never did much else after this and now seem to have parted company. Alexander Perls now writes Europop chart hits for a number of faceless acts. It seems right somehow. [Marceline Smith]

Shield Your Eyes
Very, very loud and very, very lo-fi brainchild of hairy maverick Steph Ketteringham (see Candles, Guns or Knives). Because I’m a lazy bastard, I’ll copy from my earlier review of them: “riotous, colossal noise… SYE employ the warped, reversible structures of Hella with the crunchy lo-fi sound of Lightning Bolt… Stef is an absolute maestro, teasing out grimy squeals with intricate fingerpicks and uplifting riffs aplenty” (Nightshift). Myspace. [Pascal Ansell]

Hot Club De Paris
Hot Club De Paris are only in their mid twenties but are at the core of Liverpool’s ever burgeoning musical output and exhibit an indefinable sound. If you had to try you might describe their work as two-minute tracks of elaborate quick-fire pop punk with American math rock tendencies, quirky barbershop style lyrics and racing harmonies. Their narratives often consist of surreal analogies and odes to inanimate objects.  HCDP are currently at the end of a nationwide tour promoting their second album ‘Live at Dead Lake.’ which was recorded in Chicago. From it comes the best song about a piece of masonry ever written, the single ‘Hey! Housebrick.’ Both are released on Moshi Moshi.  Highlights of the album include ‘Mr Demolition Ball’ with Soweto inspired instrumentation and lyrics as incisive as Billy Bragg, with odd stop start arrangements and chord progressions of the ilk of Field Music. ‘My Little Haunting.’  Is a ghostly tale ‘why do you wear these clean white sheets,’ their singer Paul Rafferty inquires. Imagine the scene, the suit of armour in the corridor; a skeleton tumbles down the stairs through cobwebs and over banisters – wooo hoo, spooky! ‘Boy Awaits Return Of The Runaway Girl,’ is about the boy with big ideas who sold them all for pizza and weed. Rafferty’s chanty chorus leapfrogs the fidgety guitars and tinkly keys. The two-minute tracks flow really well into one another and before you know it you’ve spent an enjoyable half hour getting re-acquainted with Liverpool’s hottest export. [Mandy Williams]

Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element
Because fuck it, it’s my band and we’ve got new product to sell. [Simon Minter]

(Originally posted October 2002)

Slowly, I lifted my third gin and tonic of the evening to my lips and took a deep sip.

It went down smooth, but couldn’t chase away the bitterness and resentment I was feeling. After three years as the chief record purchaser for McRainey’s Rock and Roll records, I’d been let go. I’d been replaced with a machine. The Xoltan 3000, a device that could give the blue book value of a record within three seconds, with an accompanying printout listing the musicians who played on the album cross referenced against their favorite groupies. It was a mechanical horror that didn’t take coffee
breaks, didn’t ask for raises and didn’t tell the customers they looked like a leftover squash that had been left to sit in the sun for three days and then sprinkled with acne. It had been with a swift boot that McRainey had shown me the door.

What was I to do? Records were my life. And truth be told, I had no other skills. I couldn’t mix an espresso, but I could tell you who played bass for the progressive blues band, Camel. (Dave Ferguson) I couldn’t deliver a pizza but I knew that Kansas guitarist Steve Morse had a career as an airline pilot. I was doomed!

Suddenly a strong hand gripped my shoulder. “Snap out of it, soldier!” a manly voice
commanded, and I turned to face a portly woman with a three o’ clock shadow,
dressed in the military greens. Several high ranking Army types stood behind her. “Your country needs you!”

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(Originally posted August 2002)

I hadn’t slept for three days and I was jonesin’ bad when I met my source at a dilapidated record store in south Los Angeles. “I need something, man,” I told him, my voice shaking. “Give me anything, as long as it packs some punch!” My source nodded and led me into the back room. Lest you think I was merely pining for some some junk, let me correct your feeble-minded assumption. I kicked the horse long ago and was in total agreement with Keith Richards’ observation that “heroin is for pussies.” I had a new monkey of my back now… music! I craved it with every fibre of my being, but only the good stuff – the crazy stuff. You can take your Britney Spears, your P.O.D., hell, even your …Trail of Dead, and stuff it up your socks. I wanted something that spoke of the lost generation of now, the reckless angst of modern youth. Like an empathetic vampire, I thrived on such musical cacophony. “Check this out,” my source said, removing a long play album from its plastic wrap and placing it on the turntable. The needle hit the groove and suddenly the room was fill with sweet, wonderful music. It was sound unlike any I had ever heard and it filled my soul like a Truck Stop waitress filling a mug with the murky black. “Yesss…” I said, feeling the driving hunger in my soul subsiding. “This is it, man… I’ve never felt this high before… don’t stop… don’t stop… oh, man, whatever you do, DON’T STOOOPPPPPPPP!!!!”

My source, a longtime music addict himself, knew what I was going through. He held me in his arms as we listened to this musical ambrosia over and over into the night. I question whether I should reveal the identity of this album to you. It may well convert you into a music fiend as well, my friend. I may be creating a generation of night travellers that walk the record shops in vain, looking for a greater high. But my journalistic integrity demands that I must reveal it to you. I cannot hide from you what is the greatest musical collection ever. It is… SESAME STREET: THE BEST OF ELMO!

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Pissed Jeans – Hope For Men
I think pointing out that bands have done this before is missing the point somehow. I don’t think even the Sub Pop bands of yesteryear summed up the total dismay of being in the middle of utter averageness as well as Pissed Jeans do. Luke Younger described them as perfectly encapsulating the myriad of feelings that come with a really depressing wank. It’s nice to see a band make so much noise about such close-to-home, mundane stuff. Some footage of them in Nottingham. [Chris Summerlin]

Nicole Atkins: Neptune City
I seldom find myself browsing aimlessly for records – usually I base my purchases on live shows or recommendations from friends – but t’wasn’t more than a few months ago that I was milling through a major chain record store, wasting time before a movie, when a particular album caught my eye.  Thus began an obsessive love affair with Nicole Atkins’ “Neptune City” album.  It’s an intensely melodic, ornamental almost symphonic collection of 10 pop songs, each drenched in wistfulness and melancholy.  The album clearly tips its hat towards 60s girl groups like the Ronettes, but the backing music sounds more like something you’d find in musical theater – the best comparison I can make is the soundtrack for “Moulin Rouge.”  Most striking about the album is its cohesiveness.  Ignoring all conversation about the rise of the MP3 in the death of the album, Atkins has created a collection of songs that live perfectly together.  This is one of those “the whole is greater than the parts” situations.  Each song is good, but it’s made even better by the fact that it’s coexisting amongst such complimentary siblings.  The result is a sonic experience that allows the listener to transcend the limitations of his/her humanity and embrace the all encompassing magnitude of the omniverse.  (Two or three listens may be required for this effect to take hold.) [Wil Forbis]

Human Bell – S/T
Essentially a duo of Dave Heumann from Bonnie Prince Billy’s touring band / Arboureteum and Nathan Bell who played bass in Lungfish for my favourite 3 albums from them. So, I was never going to ignore this one. But it delivers more than I thought it would do. Again, they won me over live where they weaved a dense sheet of intertwined guitar sound that recalled Lungfish’s economy and throb but with a more primitive and direct blues and Americana influence. Some dark and fuzzy film of them in Nottingham. [Chris Summerlin]

Portishead – Third
The new Portishead album is the first new record I’ve listened to in ages that’s really captivated me. They’ve managed to do once again what they did with their first album – create a whole world of sound that seems to have always been there, but which you’ve never heard before. Spooky and rhythmic and weird and excellent. [Simon Minter]

Washington Phillips – What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?
A reissue of some ancient private press LP called “What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?” by a guy called Washington Phillips, who played some bizarre instrument that has been lost to the mists of time, but was probably a dolcea – an ghostly-sounding cross between a piano and a guitar. Phillips’ voice is pleasantly reedy and his conversational tone in some really reverential songs is totally awesome. “What are they doing in heaven today?” he asks at the start of the title track, “I don’t know, but it’s my job to sing about it.” Totally cool and strangely reassuring despite its haunting, distant sound. Mississippi Records have been cutting  and reissuing a slew of amazing LPs in annoyingly limited editions over the last year or so (their “Lipi City Yodi Council” and “Life is a Problem” compilations were two of the best things I heard last year) and this is just the latest little miracle they’ve unearthed. [Dave Stockwell]

The Enablers – Output Negative Space
Quite oldish now but they’re touring again later this year. Loud and aggressive, yet exceptionally subtle and trimmed of all unnecessary fat it’s a real grower in the old sense of the word that’s undoubtedly helped by seeing them play live where they are an utter force. Video. [Chris Summerlin]

Paulo Angeli – Tessuti
One bloke producing a wild variety of sounds with a large upright Sardinian guitar. I saw him play a few months back and rushed to the cash machine to buy his album. ‘Tessuti’ is a mix of covers including Björk (‘Unravel’ in stunning) and Fred Frith plus some of Angeli’s own compositions. Attached to his guitar are little foot pedals which correspond to each string. While stomping on  these he bows and taps his guitar, setting off a flickering string device; general mayhem but absolutely beautiful. Review | Video 1 | Video 2 [Pascal Ansell]

Errors – It’s Not Something, But It Is Like Whatever / Blood Red Shoes – Box of Secrets
On the one hand you have heart-tugging melancholic electropostrock and stupidfun danceable tricksy electroPOP. On the other, you have sharp-edged, super-catchy singalong indie rock. Together, you have a soundtrack for any Summer day the UK might bring you, and two of the best upcoming bands in the UK. [Marceline Smith]

Harvey Milk – Life… The Best Game In Town
Just getting to grips with this one. “Heavy” doesn’t even do it justice. It’s King Crimson-heavy but utterly non-po-faced. Plus, any band with an album named after Dusty Hill’s finger is good by me. Looking forward to seeing them live…Video. [Chris Summerlin]

Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs
Their seventh album follows up on their critically acclaimed album ‘Plans.’ To begin Gibbard’s high tenor emotes plaintively ‘I descended a dusty gravel ridge beneath the ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge,” on the superb opening track, which mixes hard ass percussion with the melody. Next up is the hypnotic eight-minute single, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart.’ The spooky instrumental has a ‘Riders on the Storm’ feel. It possesses a relentless quality, which is appropriate for the subject matter of stalker and prey. The gorgeous ‘Cath’ is a standout track on an album of standout tracks. Melancholy lyrics create images in your mind. ‘And as the flashbulbs burst she holds a smile like someone would hold a crying child.’ It’s lump in your throat stuff, which is dominated by some very creative drumming by Jason McGerr. ‘Grapevine Fires,’ is a masterful piece of tranquil understatement. ‘The firemen worked in double shifts with prayers for rain on their lips.’ is whispered over electric piano chords and insistent drumbeats. On ‘Long Division,’ ominous verses lead into sing-along hysteria. ‘His head was a city of paper buildings and the echoes that remained of old friends and lovers. Pessimism goes pop with ‘No Sunlight,’ and on ‘Pity and Fear’ tablas take centre stage. ‘The Ice Is Getting Thinner’ is about a relationship in decline and replaces the live piano with an electric guitar. This album is less produced than ‘Plans’ but it has the usual remarkable mix of literacy and orchestration. After a three-year hiatus Seattle’s finest produce another tour de force. [Mandy Williams]

Free Kitten – Inherit / Paul F Tompkin – Impersonal
I have genuinely tried to find a record I have truly loved this year but alas I have failed.  That said INHERIT by FREE KITTEN became the first record that ever prompted a fellow passenger to request I turn my iPod down.  Personally I didn’t think the volume was too high so perhaps it was the piercing and meandering shrieks of Kim Gordon’s offshot that upset the grumpy fat cow.  I have also found myself listening to PAUL F TOMPKIN’S comedy album IMPERSONAL on repeated plays, super funny.  Oh and BOOTY LUV of course, they rule the world. [JGram]

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Pifco are brilliant. I just wanted to get that out of the way right now.

A fantastically unique two-piece from Leeds, they consist of Ste (clanging guitars and yelping vocals) and Mary (super-motorik drums and keyboard drones) and this is their first release proper after some compilation appearances and a self-released tape that was dead swanky. I can’t even recall how long Pifco have been going any more, but they always seemed to have been ‘around’ and have perked up many a live show I’ve attended. Kudos then, to Run of the Mill, for getting them to finally release something.

It’s a pretty tasty package too, with a full album’s worth of tunes squashed down and packed into barely more than half an hour. Pifco songs rarely get as far a bridge or coda, but then Pifco really don’t follow any musical ‘rules’ – they are a perfect example of a band that exist entirely in their own universe and, by God, it’s a great place to visit sometimes.

The official press release for this album, fantastically named “Pifco A Go Go”, mentions Sonic youth, the Fall and the Coachwhips, but to my mind they’ll always make me think of those early Stereloab records (you know, the really good ones, before they went all cafe pop). It’s probably the Roland keyboard drones that Mary tends to use as a bass guide for Ste’s rambling, jangling guitar lines, but there’s also something of that killer combination of Neu!-style droning motorik with simple pop hooks that works so well on so many songs on this killer of a little album.

Reputedly, Pifco have three more albums’ worth of material good to go. They’ll probably record them in their cellar, as this album was. I, for one, can’t wait.

http://www.myspace.com/pifco

http://www.runofthemillrecords.co.uk/

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUKj0VuCBl8[/youtube]

Oxfordshire bunch The Youngs Plan are an indie 5-piece and are, yak yak, rather young – this year sees them contributing a new track to the Truck Fest compilation as well as playing the marvellous weekend. Woopee!

Singer Ash Cooke* provides most of the songwriting, and has an excellent upper-range. ‘Our Getaway Car’ is a tricky but not contrived tune, serving as an example for the whole album; a shrewd balance between technicality and artifice. At times borrowing from At The Drive In and Bloc Party (the beginning of ‘Temper, Temper’ features some ace ‘choppy-guitar’ action of the latter band) but sounding original enough to fly from its immediate inspirations.

Thankfully, ‘Eveningtalk’ is bursting with an unhealthy amount of anxious, neurotic lyrics. It begins with the hyped-up energy of a beginning of an epic night out, twinned with comic-book fantasy: “the streets, this heavy concrete, so I’ll tight-rope walk the telephone wires” and the heavily ironic “tonight let’s migrate to where the bass is pumping”. The latter lyric almost achieves its object in sounding like the more cool, less ill-at-ease half of the digital generation – conveying instead is the pathos of not belonging, not fitting in.

‘Eveningtalk’ embodies the diverse kinds of twilight conversation: the hyper, rambling speeches; maniac splurges; deep, profound discussions and plain (danceable) banter. Twenty minutes in and the EP lolls itself to the end of its night-out: “now I’m tired. Everyone can stay here.”

It seems TYP are a bit of a tricky band to be in considering you’d have to literally crap in a bowl or record child-birth to create something original. Crap indie, i.e. jaunty guitars and brooding ‘situational’ lyrics indie has been done to death. But somehow they slip through this almost ubiquitous net: TYP are genuine enough to pull off the sheer complexity of the music and achieve an intelligent but not unfeeling EP.

Pascal Ansell

http://www.myspace.com/theyoungsplan

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=6hrFZjobmsk[/youtube]

*The reviewer acknowledges the fact that he shares a close (and some would say amorous) acquaintance with each of the five Youngs Plan chaps. The reviewer also acknowledges the fact that no review is ever fully objective – you could say I have a more intimate knowledge of what’s going on with the music. Whatever, TYP are good enough for me to stoop down to the level of ‘my homies’, and bribes aside, TYP are a good band like any other I’d go out of my way to review.

(Originally posted July 2002)

It seems like lately I’m doing all my review columns according to themes in which I group the albums by genre or some other predefined categorization. Like, last month it was heavy metal. Before that it was fusion. And the first column of the new year was the ten best albums of last year. Despite every indication that the universe is a meaningless, random place, I still attempt to find some way to compartmentalize it. Well, enough I say. I give up. I’m through fighting.

If anything, the events of September 11 have shown us that any attempt at making sense of it all is lost. My mind may scream out with a desire to organize, to systematize, to classify… but it’s a lost cause. Our universe is a random stream of floating nucleons and electrotrons that can just as easily end up in the brain of rabid terrorist as they can a harmless puppy dog. Therefore, I now offer you five record reviews that have nothing to do with each other. They share not same genre nor artists, they are totally random. And meaningless. Just like the real world.

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