Stillman is the one-man-band alias of Chaz Craik – ex-lead guitarist in Cab – the Britpop band that never were. However, lest i mislead anyone, Stillman has little in common with the cheeky nostalgic bounce of Britpop. After spending two years on the dole eating Readybrek and baked beans (never in the same bowl!) Chaz honed his bittersweet melodies to near-perfection and cobbled together this remarkable EP using a couple of guitars and a creaking PC. With a voice pitched somewhere between Tom McCrae and Magnet’s Even Johansen and a batch of wistful vignettes that put me in mind of the cracked poetry of a post-Britpop Paul Simon, ‘The Weightless EP’ is a truly special record. This is music that glows with confidence; music shot-through with a brave ambitious streak – akin to a dole-queue version of Elbow. Heart-warming stuff.

www.stillman.org.uk

Grandiose pop-noir from the hotly-tipped Wrath Records stable in Leeds…

‘Horrible Face’ is so bombastic it hurts… A swooning, crooning anti-tribute to an “ugly, ugly cow” by Leeds-based body-fascists/Wrath mainstays The Scaramanga Six. It’s easy to admire their epic aspirations, cheeky subversive streak and face-ache taunting agenda. It’s less easy to enjoy the record itself. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it (the coupling of lavish strings and mean-spirited lyrical content is a nice idea) but the song is tainted for me by the nasty whiff of novelty-pop piss-taking that hovers nearby.

As if to reinforce the point (and bolster their comic credentials), B-side ‘Elemental’ put me in mind of The Darkness trying to coax Electric Six into the back of an old estate car with sweets, puppies and novelty records. Make of that what you will.

However, final track ‘The Throning Room’ is a frantic dose of sweaty care-in-the-community noise-rock, and seems a lot more honest as a musical statement.

Whilst this single certainly isn’t as ‘horrible’ as i’ve probably made it sound, it’s hard to care too much about something as tongue-in-cheek and ultimately (gulp) soulless as this.

Sorry.

www.thescaramangasix.co.uk

First release by brand new Leeds label Run of The Mill, run by Sophie who used to co-run Jealous Records, and this lovely 7″ slab of lime green wax continues in Jealous’ previous series of getting two of the finer bands from the UK’s DIY rock scene to do covers from long-missed music legends. This time around, two of Leeds’ math/punk heroes have a go at tackling the progmeisters King Crimson. Now I can categorically state that I’m not a fan of the KC, but the execution of each of these covers is deft enough to leave the imprint of the performers all over the original songs.

First up, That Fucking Tank have come on leaps and bounds from their early adolescent days as a Kill Yourself side project to start manifesting themselves as a full-on brick-hard party band, and this is their best hormonal discharge yet. As a baritone guitar+drums duo, they’re not afraid to acknowledge being influenced by other famous ultra-smart/heavy-as-shit two-pieces, but also have enough of their own brittle-then-ten-tonnes-of-steel sound and enthusiasm to stamp it all over their version of Red. Ripping up the tempo and reducing the melody to its most functional form, TFT tear free from the fairly leaden pace and sickeningly rich tapestry of sounds of the original to recreate it as an insistent stomping machine. You could almost dance to this shit.

On the flip side, Monster Killed By Laser tackle Larks Tongue in Aspic (Part 2) retaining more of the prog, but also injecting more of the zaniness, some rootronics (no doubt a tongue-in-cheek reference to KC mainman Bob Fripp’s self-acclaimed Frippertronics) and a great big widdly guitar solo over the end. Still a young band, MKBL have seemed to change identity every time I’ve seen them, but to give you an idea here they’re guitar, bass and drums that all do very complicated things together when necessary and then break down to the simplest crunching riff when also necessary. All very pleasing, and even managing to do the old Dungeons and Dragons-style mathery when required without sounding like the pompous arses I’ve always assumed KC to be. Plus, there’s some pleasingly strange squealing sample going on in the background towards the end of the song (the afore-mentioned rootronics?). The recording’s a little tinny, but what do you expect from DIY?

Oh yeah, and packaging is as gorgeous as all Sophie’s other designs. This is good. All is good. We like.

There is a message thread on the Drowned In Sound site where people are posting their favourite guitar solos of all time.
I sat and I thought about it. I can think of a few off the top of my head: Clap Hands by Tom Waits (Marc Ribot on guitar), Stereo Sanctity by Sonic Youth, Hell Is Chrome by Wilco, every note ever played by Sonny Sharrock, Precious & Grace by ZZ Top, Howl! By Wolves Of Greece and of course Hot by Golden.
Like the Top 10 albums of all time and ‘if you could kill 5 people and get away with it who would they be’, it’s one of those eternal questions (to most people) where it will continue to change as your tastes change and you discover more music.
Not for me though.
I can tell you my definitive Best Guitar Solo Of All Time. It will never change.
It is by Dean Carter on his cover of Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley. Mere words cannot do justice to this slab of genuine cuckoo bed wetting lunacy. Lunacy not only because of what Dean plays but mainly because the engineer must have been off his fucking tits to allow it to stay on the record. Let us give thanks that he did.
Up to the guitar solo, the record is pretty whacked out anyway. A motoring, pulverising version of the original recorded in the red and with Dean sounding like he’s in the middle of a nasty trip and is on the verge of a crying mental breakdown. Then out of nowhere comes his legacy.
I guarantee this will stop any conversation immediately. It makes Sonic Youth sound tame. Essentially, Dean strums his guitar as hard as he can, with no thought to the timing of the song, and runs a metal slide up and down the strings. It is part hilarious and part terrifying. It is mixed so high in the song that the backing track just disappears and when Dean bails out after a few bars you have no idea where the hell you are rhythmically (or emotionally). You feel battle scarred but deliriously happy.
I am trying to track down Dean’s back catalogue (which is reissued on Big Beat) as I am reliably informed this kind of totally unschooled, rabid outburst was pretty much his trademark.
He left the industry to preach the gospel so I am told. On his version of Jailhouse Rock, he already did it.
PRAISE THE LORD.

See, this is just as quirky on the surface as the Mistys Big Adventure record but the difference is PAA can actually write a song and their oddness is not a means to an end, they are an odd band but first and foremost they’re a band that works. They’ve always been a shambolic but fun live proposition but there’s no evidence of that on this EP and it surprises me. The production is hi tech and it suits them. I will defend any band where the vocals are delivered in the speaking accent of the person singing them so they’re up already. Their home of Derby has this history of producing bands who are so self effacing and modest that, ultimately, they write themselves out of contention. I’m not saying PAA need to be cocky or arrogant but they’ve got nothing to think small about, this is no lo-fi indie release, it’s a well crafted pop winner and they should be proud.

I agreed to take some CDs to review to clear the backlog a bit. It’s hard, you know. I mean, I always just review things that I love and then it’s easy to write about them because I am enthusiastic. And especially if it’s music I like too. Or a musical form I like. I hate bad reviews, I’d rather people didn’t write anything at all but the diskant bosses say that presents a one-sided webzine and that we need to review everything. So here goes.
I haven’t been a student now for about 6 or 7 years and even when I was one I hated them, me included. I imagine some of them will like this band and maybe buy a T shirt from them at a local gig night with the band’s name written on the front and an amusing drawing. In 10 years time, on a Sunday, they’ll paint the gables on their house wearing said band t shirt and they will comment to their partner (who they will have met in their final year at uni and will still be with) “Ho ho, remember the gig where I bought this?” and he or she will say “Yeah! Wasn’t being a student great!” and they will hug each other. They will be happier than me and you know what, good fucking luck to them.

Julian Gaskell is part of the Icons of Poundland collective that wreaked musical havoc in the north-west with their home-baked folk/skiffle/punk mischief. He now resides in the more sedate climes of Falmouth and writes spooky, upbeat songs that sound like Tom Waits strung-out on fresh-air! The four tracks that make up ‘Demonstration Recordings’ aren’t a million miles from Mr Waits’ often-potent light jazz/dirty blues cocktail, and rattle between whacked-out, lowdown gritty stompers like ‘Learn From Your Mistakes’ and the gothic, gypsy-blues of ‘Gather! While Ye May’. His voice is full of bedraggled, smoky mystery and he plays guitar, harmonica, balalaika, banjo and zither. For anyone who doesn’t know what at least one of those instruments sounds like, the answer is: pretty special. This CD bubbles along like a particularly bucolic avant-folk experiment. If you like your avant-folk experiments bucolic then you’ve come to the right place.

Contact: julian@iconsofpoundland.co.uk

Weird, weird, free-associating anti-folk which makes me think that Charles E. Cullen has done too much acid and spent too much time living on his own, rocking wildly and intently on a hand-made rocker on his hand-made porch. Twenty songs of bluesy, reverbed vocals and beginner-style guitar with a variety of comedic titles (‘I got a rare poultry disease’, ‘Kenny’s outdated muscle relaxers’ etc). They remind me of very early Beck; stream-of-consciousness glimpses of strangeitude recorded without apparent reference to anything, and played with the fervour of the Shaggs on an off-day.

The enjoyment of the sheer oddness on display is slightly tempered by the volume of material, which is sometimes overwhelming. I feel this might be a good CD to put on after picking up a sketchy hitch-hiker: make sure to turn up the guitar solos, which sound like the scratching feedback of a murderer.

Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation

Beep… Beepbeepitybeep… Blame a squandered youth spent indoors cultivating a cathode-ray tan when I could have been out interacting with other kids and developing social skills and the like, but I’m a sucker for music that sounds like it could be from an 8-bit computer game. As a result, track one on this EP – “Jesus Son” – has my sympathies right away. Then it immediately goes and squanders them by turning into a lazy Primal Scream knockoff, as if Bobby Gillespie were replaced by a rhyming dictionary. “Severed Head” does a bit better, ditching the guitars in favour of the electro-funk thing, but again the vocals spoil it with sub-Gallagher “can’t be fucked singing properly” whining. “One Last Cigarette, One Last Call” is an instrumental that makes heavy use of synth-strings. Enough said there, I think. Final track “Junk” returns to the plundering of 90’s ecstasy casualties, but this time it’s the Happy Mondays who get the treatment, with similar results. Meh.

Viva Stereo

It’s nice to hear a band having fun, and given that The Scaramanga Six come from Yorkshire, where, as is my (admittedly limited) understanding, there’s nothing much else to do but hang around in coal mines drinking brown ale and watching whippet races, one can hardly begrudge them that. Rocking out glam style is the order of the day throughout the four tracks of this single. Saxophones skwonk, riffs riff, and lyrics are all knowing rock’n’roll braggadocio, with tongues not quite as cheek-penetrating as the suspiciously similarly-named Electric 6, but certainly enough to cause minor speech difficulties in the band’s members. The second track “Pincers” is probably the best of the lot. I wonder if the chorus is referencing Dark Side Of The Moon or The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack? I don’t suppose it’s important, but the piano, saw and surface-noise break in the middle invokes a sense of movie-matinee kitsch that makes me suspect that their affections are with the latter.

The world really doesn’t need a band like The Scaramanga Six, and neither do you, but like a final After-Eight found nestling among the empty wrappers after the guests have all left, they’re nice to have.

There’s a video on this CD as well. Nice shirts.

The Scaramanga Six
Wrath Records