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

“Glitch, new-wave, playfulness, art-school, analogue synths, spoken vocals, computer burbles and real drums.”

The first couple of times through this album, all I was left with was a tiny collection of applicable mini-phrases, but no real sense of what the record was actually like. You can’t really describe something as guitar-based and beat-heavy as this as “ambient”, but it’s an effective description of how it slips past you without leaving much of a mark, as though the record’s reasonably dense textures are constructed from some new space-material that looks solid but is hard to get a grip on.

Most of the songs on “Make Motion Matter” establish a groove early on and then are content to riff away on it, hypnotically, until running out of steam. “Lost in Location”, for example, being an hallucinogenic spiral of overlapping spoken-word vocals and angular guitar that barely changes throughout its five-minute-plus length, while the title track nods at the current DFA-led nu-disco-punk fad, but in keeping with the rest of the album the increase in intensity that normally justifies an eight-and-a-half-minute disco tune is glacial.

But while the album may lack cheap thrills, it’s never trite, clearly isn’t desperate for your approval, and finishes before it exhausts its welcome. A pleasant musical palette-cleanser between more substantial courses, then.

Foolproof Projects

“I want this one back if at all possible.” said Marceline as she handed the CD over to me.

“What If I like it?” I replied.

“I’m pretty much prepared to fight you for it.” came the ominous reply.

Gulp!

I put it on, not sure if it would all end in violence.

And it’s brilliant, just a joy to listen to. I’m not going to compare them to anyone or draw comparisons as I’m want to do. Suffice to say this is jaggy, melodic, dramatic and as energetic and life affirming as anything you’ll have heard in a long time.

It’s just such a pleasure to sit back and enjoy a perfectly balanced band ripping it out, track after track.

If Marceline does want this back she IS going to have to fight me. That’s how good this album is.

Getting a copy is worth taking an ass-kicking from a girl.

Charlottefield

I’ll come out with what I don’t like about this record straight off. On a couple of tracks, there is some plinky-plonky, clean strat-style guitar that kind of sets my teeth on edge.

And that’s about it. Other than that, this is a very good, occassionally great collection of taut, stripped down country numbers.

Apart from some excellent songs, Lee’s great strength is his voice, half Layne Staley growl, half Neil Diamond melodrama, which he couples with a sharp instinct towards presenting his work in as uncluttered a fashion as possible.

It’s a good formula. The spartan production values allow both his soaring voice and deceptivley graceful songs to come to the fore.

Miles displays some fairly obvious singer/songwriter influences here, most notably on “Cold Wind Blowin'”, which borrows heavily (and knowingly) from Dylan’s “Isis”.

But there are signs here that Miles could develop into a genuinely significant songwriter, with cracking tracks like “My Protector My Punisher”, “Canned and Jarred”, “Mrs James” and “Mama They Made Me Beg” leading the line.

I’m a huge fan of Kris Kristofferson’s early records and that’s who Lee Miles reminds me of the most, a little less pithy maybe with a little bit further to go. On this evidence, I’m pretty confident he’ll get there sooner rather than later.

Lee Miles

I’m not on the payroll for Wäntage USA, in case my continual reviewing of their releases seems suspicious. They just keep releasing stuff that I want to give some wider exposure. Anyway. This five-track, thirteen-minute CD sounds like it was recorded five hundred miles underground in a lava-filled bunker. To strip The Pope down (no religion-baiting pun intended) would be to reveal, maybe, a pretty average hard rockin’ grunge outfit. They have pounding drums, riffs emerging out of sludgey, overdriven guitar lines, and yelping, tortured lyrics. What gives them their edge – on this recording, at least – is the incredible noise they’ve piled on top of everything. It’s all feedback, grime and intensity. I’d be interested to see the more Wolf Eyes-like direction they edge towards with some more abstract mid-song passages, but then again, I’d be interested to see them continue to batter the hell out of music, existing in their own peculiar fuzzy pit.

Wäntage USA
The Pope

This has been a tricky review to write. I like Denmark’s Barra Head a lot, I played some shows with them a few years back and they were great. But there is this weird thing with European bands that tackle this (largely) American genre of music. That genre being part hardcore, part indie rock, part (whisper it) emo etc etc. The best example of a band doing this stuff well is The Lapse (or The Breaks or Sparrow or whatever they are called now).
The last Lapse album In Truth Loved is a masterpiece. A solid gold masterpiece. The reason is that it moves the goalposts. To hear Chris Leo sing some of the words on that record was a revelation to me. To actually sing “I know I’m dirty but baby I’m still dandy and I know I can be a bit too dandy but baby I’m still dirty” was revolutionary at the time. Because all of us – male/female, straight/gay/bi – know what it’s like to walk down the street and eye up someone we fancy. ALL of us make crass comments. Hell, I bet Ian MacKaye has rude thoughts sometimes. I saw him kiss a girl once. It’s true.
Barra Head sound mightily like The Lapse. And their songs are cracking. This album also sounds exquisite. The guitar playing is wonderful throughout. But, like I said, the goalposts have moved. And to get back onto the European thing again, it seems to be a trademark of bands from mainland Europe to abide by some rules that really were never in place. There is a sterility to this music that should be fought and not embraced. From the packaging to the lyrics to the presentation, Barra Head seem to seek to remove the kinks and the eccentricities from what they do and it leaves it cold, good though it is. You’re just dying for a wah wah freakout in the middle or for the lyrics to be silly for a moment but the way it sticks to defined boundaries and is so reserved just feels like a step backward and ultimately you want to shake them so their music represents everything about their lives it can do – not just what they think is acceptable to be represented in the genre they exist in. Because when they do they’ll be out of the shadows of their peers and become the amazing band they’re only threatening at being here.

Excellently named band. The blurb says they have one song and “a whole heap of PISSED OFF”. The one song part is true. This seven inch has a remix of the A side as the B side. The original version sounds like Marc Bolan singing a Blues Explosion tune. But something off the last couple of records. It’s OK but if you’re going to come out of the gates blasting for 2 minutes it’s got to be memorable and there’s not much of a tune and neither is it really “well mental” enough to make you either shit or spume your pants (which is the mark of a good record, obviously).
The B side is a slowed down version of the vocals pasted onto some squelchy dub bass and a lengthy coda that sounds a bit like Snap. It makes more of a tune of it and the slowed down vocals improve them no end making them sound like the awesome exclamations of the God-like Lord Buckley, or Channel 4s WG Grace impersonator.

Beautifully packaged CDR release/demo callitwhatyouwant. It has a hand written quote inside it, mine’s from Woody Allen. I hope it’s a different one in each CD.
Kyote play a sort of downbeat indie rock that recalls Arab Strap if I was being lazy (I’m sure that’s the not the first time they’ve heard that) though The New Year is a better comparison due to the economy of the playing (it states the EP was recorded live).
The band sounds a little embyonic at times, the riffs are sometimes of the kind where they go exactly where you think they will. In a time of insanely complex mathematical bands who end up sounding like a Spectrum 48K cassette loading, this is no bad thing. And like The New Year and Bedhead there’s this tension created by the band constantly sounding like they could suddenly drop a rock-out with no problems at all, they’re just choosing not to. Good stuff.

Some music courtesy of our recent Talentspotter interviewee John Brainlove under the moniker of Junkplanet here. John used to be in an electro-punk band called The $hits, and he’s continued in a similar mindset here, creating slashed-up and spattering electronica that brings Kid606 let loose in a child’s bedroom to mind. Pelting a dizzying number of samples familar and unfamilar at you whilst snarling expletives in a familiar accent, or pausing to pay tribute to Aphex Twin’s ode to Pacman, or catching you unawares with a lull of acapella crooning, the one thing you can expect from this “album” is to be taken by surprise.

I say “album” because its ten tracks last for barely 17 minutes. A decent length, for any more brainmelting splatterings than offered here might well cause some kind of spastic fit. Lovely.

www.brainloverecords.com

The Open Mouths are two guys from East London who come across more like cabaret than a band. Making music in their bedroom, they’re a bizarre amalgamation of the Buzzcocks and the Moldy Peaches. Taking simple songs and strumming barely-in-tune guitars, they then proceed to tell gratuitously potty-mouthed lyrical stories that are either funny or annoying, depending on how you feel about hearing little ditties about internet sex, domestic abuse and being nasty to your family. All with incredibly annoying American accents. Bah.

The sound is appropriately lo-fi for a couple of guys having some fun with playing some music – there’s some incredible bad production on the third song “Sadistic Top”, which features the grunge staple of a guitar and some soft drums in the verses before “kicking in” on the chorus with some really distorted guitar and clattering drums that should obviously be about twice the volume as the verse. Unfortunately here the “huge” guitar and drums are about half the volume of the instruments on the verse. Oh well. It sounds shit, but it’s kind of amazing as well. Which is pretty much what can be said about The Open Mouths as a whole. Pretty shit, but sort of good as well. Or great, but terrible too. Like a Roger Corman film, or a Poppy Z. Brite book. Or a really tangy kebab from a skanky takeaway. You may well find them to be a guilty pleasure.

www.brainloverecords.com