This is a beautiful and nifty-looking little CD in a miniature sleeve. It makes me feel most giant-like. The three tracks on here seem to me like fairly close cousins to the music on Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, vol. 2; moody-sounding, sparse ambient instrumentals with a general lack of apparent beats. First track ‘The Beauty of Repetition’ is a wonderful 9’31” series of drones, which enveloped my ears and warmed up my chilly car this morning. As the CD goes by, the edge (for me) is slightly taken off with the introduction of more structured melody and rhythm, making things more FSOL than Sunn o))), to put it ham-fistedly. But what a great little item this is! A compact twenty-minute blissout in a pocket-sized edition for those with tiny pockets.

noground-r

Smooth-edged melodic independent pop music of the kind which America seems so proficient, this CD is almost defiantly removed from the ongoing vogue for violent, aggressive and dissonant underground music. The eleven tracks on the album chime and twinkle, with upbeat, clean guitar lines skipping across soft drum patterns at odds with the wistful and heartfelt vocals. This music evokes bands of a different era – McCarthy, the Pale Fountains, even Felt – but it is of course timeless. At times the addition of synths, brass and spoken word can bring things to a fearfully glossy place, but at the same time I can’t fail to love the simplicity and purity of a band like this. There will always be many such bands producing pure pop music, but this one has a grasp of melody, arrangement and brevity which helps them to poke out above the crowd.

Bird in Box Records
The Dalloways

It must be tough to be an electronicist nowadays, it being a genre that’s entered a kind of adolescence. Older forms have a long and fruitful past to draw upon. A guitar-rock band can easily flourish and become massively successful while sounding much like another guitar-rock band that was around thirty years ago, based entirely on an ear for a catchy tune and nice white smiles. Form a folk act, and while there are many qualities that your audience will expect from you, exciting new forms of sonic creation are going to be fairly low down on their list of priorities. Novelty, while always entertaining, holds far less value to a long-established musical genre than it does one for which the listener’s perception is that of acres of new ideas and possibilities stretching into the horizon, waiting to be harvested.

Partly, this is an illusion caused by massive growth spurts over the life of the genre. Hardware which would have required the taking out of a mortgage in order to possess a decade ago is now available, in one form or another, to any back-bedroom tinkerer of a modest income. Undoubtedly a good thing, optimistically leading to the democratization of music and making the major labels sweat, this rush of technological advance has had the effect of stamping a “best-before” date on almost every new work, to the point where the canny listener can place previously unheard records to within a couple of years.

Now that’s reaching an age where, while still a young pup, it actually has some kind of commonly recognized history, electronica is faced with a problem. How to address its past while still expected to be constantly eyeing the future?

Richard D. James gave us one answer with his Analord series of EPs, restricting himself to ancient equipment but approaching it without a hint of nostalgia to produce something that sounds every bit as fresh as you would expect if he allowed himself a less restrictive palette, but which is sonically rooted in his own personal tradition.

For Huddersfield’s Signal Generator, on the other hand, the past isn’t there to be dissassembled and pillaged for raw material, but is a place whose customs and architecture are familiar and comforting. If played this record without any prompting as to its origin, I would have placed it in 1995 sooner than 2005. By putting out an EP of electronic music which has so little regard for recent fashion, Signal Generator seem to suggest that the electronic genre might be one which could do with slowing down, taking a breath, and spending some time coming to terms with its own history before it goes tearing off again. If, indeed, there really is anywhere left that’s worth tearing off to. The four tracks on this record range from the playfully melodic (“Memory Helmet”) to the pleasingly ambient (“Legno Lungo”) or skittishly sinister (“Radix Lecti”) and are all perfectly effective and constructed with a sense of confidence which is admirable. Somehow, they fail to engage as they might, but there’s a sense of promise which, while frustrating at present, suggests that the individual behind Signal Generator might yet unearth something rare and exciting from his personal archaelogical dig.

Occasional Records

Make no mistake, this is nasty stuff. Trenchant, massively-distorted basslines, an entire Luftwaffe squadron of hissing guitars, sing-song Liars-style vocal snippets and The Locust’s misanthropic approach to melody – and that’s just in opening track ‘War Course’. ‘The Night The Rope Broke’ is relentlessly bleak, with some David Yow-style vocal acrobatics weighing in against an almost-industrial backdrop. ‘Rising up Through Your Chest’ complements its menacing coda perfectly by landing a gunship laden with old 70s synths square on top of it, and there are all manner of pleasing digital belches and skwerks punctuating the altogether more analogue aggression elsewhere. Perhaps best of the lot, if you’ve the stomach for it, is the sludgy magnum opus ‘The Last Friend Left Alive’, which finds the middle ground between The Birthday Party’s ostentatiousness and the bullish antagonism of Will Haven and celebrates its achievement by hammering the point home for ten minutes.

Sure, there are times when The Swarm lean a little heavily on their influences (viz. The Jesus Lizard on ‘Shacked Up With The Flies’), but they get away with it, through bloody-minded belligerence if nothing else. Not only are you guaranteed an absolute hammer blow of hardcore barbarism, but there’s measured intelligence waiting underneath all the bombast, each track slipping out of your grasp with a deft sidestep just when you think you’ve got a handle on it. Nasty stuff then, but excellent with it.

Who knows what they’re putting in the water up in Derby, but the fellas at Fight Me Records, who have already put out Fixit Kid and You Judas! alongside The Swarm this year, are starting to put together a very impressive roster. More please!

The Swarm
Fight Me Records

The theme for this offering is pretty obvious, so I’ll tackle each track on it’s own. I’m afraid to say that the bribe of chocolate coins has done little to sway me, even if I recognise it as a nice gesture.

Mistys Big Adventure – Have Yourself A Psychedelic Christmas

Pretty unispired stuff from a band who’s album I quite enjoyed.

Steveless/Syd Howells – Seasonal Schizophrenia

This is pretty ropey. Steveless often complain of being bored, but the problem is that they almost always sound as if they are.

Tiger MCs – The Way That You Arrived

This is ok, but I personally hate deliberately wishy washy stuff like this unless it’s really well done. Grow a dick.

The Hot Puppies – Green Eyeliner

Lena Lovich meets Altered Images meets Texas. I just don’t get stuff like this.

Sarah and the Johnsonauts – The Lonely Little Elf

One of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. A bunch of half pissed sounding students trying to do Jeffery Lewis. Problem is even he does Jeffery Lewis badly.

Hello, How are you? – Alice The Christmas Pie

A song that took me longer to type than it took me to listen to. Mercifully.

Grand Prix 86 – Everybodys Dancing

Thank God. A great track. About bloody time. This makes me want to ruminate on the intagible factors that seperate good music from bad. But I’ll simply thank the stars that there is at least one decent track on this record, even as it becomes repetative to the point of irritation.

Das Wanderlust – Sleigh Ride

He he, this is quite funny. A “cover” of sorts of the popular Xmas song it kind of reminds me of a friend of my grans who would “Les Dawson” her way through the classics on the slightest pretext.

Giant Robot and the City of Tokyo – Vest

This pretty decent track walks off with the “second best track on the album” accolade. Their mums must be proud.

Container Drivers – In the Bleak Mid Afternoon –

A perfect example of a song that need never have been written.

David Craigie – Christmas In A Can –

This is much more silly, imaginative and interesting. Loads going on here, including a sense of humour. Wee gems like this are the point of compilations like this in the first place I suppose.

Chihiro – The Plans That We Made –

A nice wee tale of Xmas heartbreak here. Sweet, nicely excecuted and intelligent.

Steveless/Syd Howells – This Is What Dying Is Like (Christmas In Swansea) –

Oooow ma lugs. It’s difficult to imagine there is any working technology that can still record something that sounds so bad. The poor sound quality is deliberate of course. Sounding like unfunny students mucking about I assume isn’t. A bit harsh maybe but you generally get much better from these guys.

So, sorry Xmas fans, I’m afraid this compilation is overall much more of a turkey than a cracker.

Cheeryade Music

This is an incredibly bleak, but incredibly beautiful CD. The perfectly-chosen cover photograph of a blurred electrical structure sitting in its environment, reproduced in monochrome, reflects the music within. Heavily reverbed, simplistic piano and guitar melodies are enveloped in found, effected naturalistic sounds to create a windswept intimate music. A little like the more abstract parts of Godspeed!’s F#A#Infinity, this is resolutely solitary listening. Like the best dark, chilly music there is, Library Tapes inject shards of hope and prettiness, keeping well away from repetitively moody textures. The seven tracks making up 33 minutes here are like notes scribbled in the margin of music, leaving the listener to join up the dots and read between the lines.

Resonant
Library Tapes

As a result of hearing this album, in my mind the collective record collection of The Mutts is made up of nothing but New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Hellacopters, Black Sabbath and Cramps records. Not that that’s a particularly bad thing, as it’s resulted in this set of barnstorming rock and roll songs which rarely lets up its barrage of growling vocals and riff-heavy slabs of overdrive. This isn’t a clever, intricate or delicate album, but I don’t expect that it’s supposed to be. There isn’t the sheer power of Part Chimp or Hey Colossus on display, or the authentically grimy feel of the Stooges or MC5, but perhaps that’s not what the Mutts are after. If they’ve tried to produce a straightforward, no frills rock record that sounds great in the car as you pull into work, windows down, playing it loud, to try and make out you’re a pretty cool guy and not a faceless office drone, they’ve succeeded.

Fat Cat Records
The Mutts

This is a very good single which could have been great but for the fact that it’s packed with just a few too many ideas. A very breezy pop tune, “Staci Stasis” would benefit from a clarity of approach that often eludes punk/ska/pop bands like this.

Personally I find all three tracks offered here pretty toe tapping stuff, but given that “Staci Stasis” is considerably lighter in approach than the other two tracks, I would assume it’s a stab at being more universal and I don’t think it will ultimately translate to a large audience simply because of the mish-mash of ideas and styles contained within.

It’s just a personal thing, but I always feel that bands with a highly stylised image and style of presentation have to match that with a certain clarity of vision when it comes to the musical approach. Think Cramps, think Ramones, think Blondie – the walk matched the talk exactly. They could also have done with spending more cash on the mastering.

But I’m being picky. This is a very good single by a good band who sound as if they are having plenty of fun – I just don’t see this particular record breaking down any walls for them, that’s all. Cool free comic though.

Zombina and the Skeletones

You know that ad that’s on at the moment, with the girl talking straight to camera about how she’s glad that she split up with her boyfriend because it’s given her inspiration for an album that she’s going to write, record and produce using Windows XP? Well, if that lass was real, then the first single off that album might sound something like this.

Four tracks, then, of spiky guitar tunes with strong melodies and lyrics about being young and working in a shit job and fancying someone and getting your heart broken, which, surely, are the themes upon which all great pop songs are built. In truth, however, this record made me feel a bit… well… dirty. Like illicitly reading a teenage girl’s diary. It’s just not for me. I’m still in my twenties (just), but I feel way too old for this record. I strongly suspect that it might be a great, and very fun, slice of indie-pop, but I’ll hate it forever for making me feel like my dad.

And marks off for shameless apostrophe abuse. Tsk – young folk today!

The Hussy’s

Here be a five-track mini-album by three fine men of Leeds. There be a bassist known as Stu, and there be a man economically manipulating tiny keyboards through some choice pedals known as Moz, and the drummer be Neil Turpin of Polaris/Bilge Pump fame (as well as previously heavenly rhythmic propulsion for the likes of Snail Racing and Doug Scharin’s HiM project). This minimal trio have conjured up 20-odd minutes of sublime trance-like pop songs, chock-full of bubbly and fizzing analogue synths, badass krautpoppin’, busting and droning basslines, and the obligatory smoother-than-smooth cool cat jazz of Turps’ insouciant rhythms.

I’ve been in a few minds about what I like best about this recording: the drums are predictably fantastic and infuse QQ’s every move with a wonderful restless energy and groove; but then the spare and solid basslines are the real weight behind their drive; but then the keyboards carry all the hooks and some fantastic square-wave textures and splutters and spurts that really do sound particularly lovely. Unfortunately, it looks like I’m going to have to resort to that awful music critic cliche of saying:

“The band is more than the sum of its parts.”
[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH. Bring on self-immolation.]

The problem is; it’s all too true. QQ is a minimal beast, but the economy of music (nothing too fancy, no pointless notes or sounds, every texture seemingly carefully chosen) makes the record a delight to stick on. It’s not too long (in fact the brevity is sublime), it’s not too produced (the sound is predictably spot-on), it’s not too ambitious or overwrought (every song progresses as far as feels absolutely right), it certainly isn’t slapdash or careless (not a note out of place). It just hits a number of buttons really, really well. Their music itself doesn’t scream maddening originality, but they do clearly revel in their influences – lo-fi synth pop, mantronic krautrock, chilled jazz, whatever – and weave a wonderful web of these sounds to end up giving you a CD that probably sounds different to everything else you’ll stick on today.

When QQ supported with Pit Er Pat earlier in the year, they made that band of (really rather good) keyboard-toting, fabuloso-drumming, quirkomatic popsters seem limp in comparison. At the time I couldn’t work out if it was to my chagrin that they blew away the headliners quite so sumptuously (and seeming so effortlessly), but now I have records by both bands I know which one I’m going to be returning to on a regular basis.

The final conclusion? A rare pleasure. Bravo, you three fine men. Now give me some more.

www.runofthemillrecords.co.uk