Terrific title, dubious album. New York’s self-proclaimed chamber ensemble/band declare their existence with the objective to “end the segregation of sound vibration”. Idealistic? Quixotic? Proof and pudding situation: essentially this means freeing all genres, tossing about with the sound and seeing what happens.

Sound Liberation try their hand at a wildly ambitious number of genres: crap happy-clappy rock, urban rap, soul and straight-down-the-line pop, as well as chucking in token world and jazz for good measure. This has to be the most incoherent album I’ve ever heard. It’s in the latter styles that Sound Liberation are finally listenable, feeling far more at home with jittery klezmer nonsense and moody modern jazz.

Things really fall apart with Xzibit-esque rapping that doesn’t just border on but wilfully tramples around embarrassing. However, this album is worth your attention for its instrumental sections. Where a lot of the album sounds horridly confused there is a shimmer of class not evident throughout. ‘Let Go of my Soul’ is fantastic – a subtle, reserved but charged tour though a fast-paced techno landscape. Other winners expose trumpets, whirling John McGloughlin-esque guitar and smooth bass lines competing for space.

Things are best when the rappers shut their gobs and let the 16-strong band take you for a ride. This may be the Sound Liberation but a few shackles would do this motley bunch a world of good.

Sound Liberation

Col Legno

Pascal Ansell

Castrovalva. What’s that name all about? I don’t know. They’re a new band from Leeds, a duo who play totally ripped bass through loads of effects and hammering drums. Yeah yeah, just another band that worships at the feet of Lightning Bolt. Aren’t they about (at least) 3 years late? That’s a bit harsh, to be fair. How long have Magma been throwing out brain-frying bass/drums mayhem?

Castrovalva have been together since mid-2007 and this is their first “proper” release, a short 8 track mini-album. Despite the total LB-aping  totally-distorting-bass-hits-pounding-drums sound, they’ve got more in the closet than you might think. Mashing up the usual low end throbbing attack with hints of disco influence, classic rock riffs, blast beats, a generally twisted sense of humour and even a bizarre guest vocal on one song, this duo manage to display a fair range in the 20-odd minutes of music in this release.

The sound on this recording is pretty dandy too. Producer Ross Halden has done an exceptional job of capturing a punishing low end from the bass whilst retaining real punch and dynamics from the drums, all of which serves extremely well to show off the tightness and interplay between the two musicians. Castrovalva are a tight outfit and their chops are not to be sneezed at. Thankfully, neither are a lot of their riffs and melodies, which stay just the right sides of inventiveness and head-banging familiarity. One weak note is the ambient track “London Kills Me” – a welcome change of pace it may be, but it doesn’t seem to serve any other purpose and is pretty irritating to be honest. Apart from that, it’s a bracing and entertaining listen overall.

Castrovalva – s/t is released on Tuesday 4th May 2009.

Castrovalva myspace

Brew Records

World in Winter are the kind of label I like a lot – interested in unusual or experimental music, but consistently finding stuff that is familiar enough to make listening an easy thing. It may sound obvious, but it’s a hard balance to strike as consistently and as well as WiW do. This, their latest release, is a split 7″ between solo guitarist Dean McPhee and the band Chapters, who I reviewed a while back.

This would appear to be the debut release by Dean McPhee, a man who marries a melodic fingerpicking style to unusual guitar tunings and chords, backing them up with subtle effects to increase the otherwordly atmosphere. You can listen to his contribution to this 7″, a song called “Water Burial”, at last.fm. A smoothly echoing series of variations on a raga-like theme, it’s a beguiling and soothing listen. Personally, I can do without the vibrato effect on the guitar, but that’s probably what gave the song its name – the sound is akin to ripples of water spreading out from a slowly sinking object – say, a coffin? Overall it’s nice stuff and should be a decent precursor to a debut fell-length album later this year.

Chapters are an experimental group who tend towards the more ambient than the crashing crescendo side of rock. Their song “The Whiteness of the Whale” is a further development from ‘EP1’ and a triumph of sparse beauty. A heavily tremeloed guitar starts the track, joined by a droning moog organ and muted drum machine beat. These three elements intertwine and then ebb and flow from each other as further layers of muted keyboards, guitar and electronics are added to the mix. It’s a a subtle and slowly unfurling beauty of a track, and hands down the best thing I’ve heard by Chapters to date.

Overall all then, this is a tasty listen and well worth tracking down. It’s been out a wee while, so head on over to the World in Winter website to hear some previews and find out where you can sort yourself a copy.

Dean McPhee

Chapters

For a while now there has been something of a subtle buzz regarding this band and in reality it all seems something of an exercise of style over substance but a style such as this, compared to the current defining fare, I am very happy to find myself being suckered in and lapping it up like a kitten licking milk.

I always wanted to date a reformed goth, a lady with a dark demeanour but obviously one that would not be laughed at in the street by teenagers.  My ideal goth lady would possess a finely tuned sense of humour in addition to a pretty good record collection including records by The Cure (the good ones and the bad ones).  Now if you added to this equation the lady being Asian, chunky and with a killer fringe you have something and someone I could get very excited about.  Suddenly you see how I (and not I alone) have been suckered in my An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump.

Musically there is a restrained, undistorted Jesus & Mary Chain feel to the band with primal Moe Tucker-esqe drum beats and patterns coupled with looping guitars and a tribal sounding delivery in both the vocals and lyrics that are goth in a Lydia Lunch kind of way, unashamedly taunting in content.

By the time we reach the cover version of “100%” by Sonic Youth a distinct No Wave tone appears to have found its way onto the b-side (named the “Inside” to the a-side’s “Outside”) followed by the most expressive song of this restrained release in “The Past Between Us”.

This band would have been a perfect goth band for 4AD in the eighties but now, I’m not so sure.  Here’s hoping for good things however.

Thesaurus moment: mode.

An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump

Trouble Records

(Originally posted September 2003)

Some albums I have downloaded, loved momentarily and then tossed aside without a second thought, never to be listened to again.

The Mars Volta – De-Loused in the Comatorium
To begin with, a brilliant sprawling wailing mess of crazy madness, twitching and staggering its way through a solidly pretentious concept. Boredom eventually sets in waiting for the damn songs to just, y’know, START. Someone should cut out all the good bits and stick them together to make the best 20 minute song ever.

The Faint – Danse Macabre
Always a sucker for bouncy keyboards, foghorn effects, bleepy noises and showing off, The Faint were bound to have some attraction for me. Their gigs the other year with Trail of Dead showed them to be boomingly loud eighties disco goth fun and thus, I assumed, tinny and crap on record. Luckily not though, and Agenda Suicide and Glass Danse (those titles!) in particular sound HUGE. Sooner or later though, it all feels so, so empty. Plus it’s EIGHTIES GOTH DISCO. What was I thinking?

The Postal Service – Give Up
Look! It’s the emo guy from Death Cab for Cutie singing his aww-ain’t-it-cute observational lyrics over some blip-blip bumpy electronica! What a fantastic idea! Well, apart from this song which is a bit lame. And, well, this one too. And, well, all of them except the spunky girl/boy duet. That’s pretty neat. Okay, sick of this now.

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(Originally posted February 2003)

Righto. Another month, another …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead single to review. This month I have the European release of Another Morning Stoner [Interscope] which has the same tracklisting as the UK release but, get this, instead of three songs from the Peel session you get the same three songs but recorded for Dutch VPRO radio! What a stroke of marketing genius. I had to go to some lengths to get this, ordering online from a Swedish website. Nothing like entering your credit card details, skimming over some incomprehensible Swedish sentences and then clicking OK. Yes, I would like you to add three million kroner in Idiot Tax, thanks! So, is this a worthy addition to my stupidly excessive collection of TOD rarities bought for the express purpose of dragging out a column theme into a third year? Well, yes. Homage is riotous as ever with Jason screaming, wailing and drawling with his usual flailing abandon. Baudelaire I can never decide on. Some days it’s a great pop tune, other days it’s a just…there. This version sounds flat and the vocals hoarse and bored so it’s missing the spark. But don’t worry ‘cos we’ve still got Richter Scale Madness and it’s a topper of a version with Conrad rapping mid-song and some ferocious guitars. Not to mention an extended ending of squealing mentalism, crunched up disco drumming and the sound of broken equipment.

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(Originally posted November 2002)

Hah. I went out specially and bought the new …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead single so I could review it in last month’s column and then it all got a bit hectic and I never managed to write my column. At the time I couldn’t believe I was spending FIVE POUNDS on a slab of weird looking picture disc containing two songs I don’t even like. I’m listening to it now to see if I’ve changed my mind. Relative Ways I liked at first but I am so bored of it. And particularly when there’s literally three better single type songs on View > Source Code, as the album’s not called. Hardly set the charts alight either did it Interscope? eh eh? Great video though. Blade Runner is still an overlong piece of instrumental arsing about. Apparently there’s good stuff on the CD version including Hot Roman Scandal Action but I was so horrified by the horrendous cover art that I haven’t been able to bring myself to buy it as yet.

Right, onwards with the new stuff I have been sent which has been providing me with some much-needed new listening material since I still don’t have a job or any money. Sob etc.

So, hurrah for Econoline and their new album Music Is Stupid [Seriously Groovy]. I get thanked in this which is always a nice surprise, especially when I’ve done nothing to deserve it and even more so when I get can one over Simon Minter. Haha etc. I like Econoline a lot. They’re refreshingly straightforward which sounds like an insult but when there’s so much twiddling post rock and clever-clever instruMetal around it does your heart good. Full of fuzzy/loud/jangly guitars, and tunes, you won’t likely find a better indie rock guitar album this year. From the fast thrills of I’m Plagued to the impassioned epic-ness of EmV to the quirky dynamics of Buddy Bradley it’s quality through and through. Somehow you get the feeling that the only reason the NME hasn’t gone mental for Econoline is because they haven’t got interesting enough hair.

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(Originally posted August 2002)

This month’s Trail of Dead record is entitled Murray Street and damn great it is. Oh no, hang on, this is Sonic Youth. hohohoHO, I kill myself sometimes. Aye, so I haven’t bought any Trail of Dead records this month: no albums, laser discs, 8 track cartridges or 7″ biscuits. I haven’t bought a Sonic Youth album in years. Jet-Set Trash and No Star was the last one though I’ve got A Thousand Leaves on tape somewhere. You know why I stopped buying ’em. Yep, All Tomorrows Parties 2000. Sorry to harp on about this but it wasn’t even a studied decision. I didn’t come out of that set vowing never to buy a Sonic Youth record ever again. But maybe it was like aversion therapy. I reach out to pick up a Sonic Youth album and my instincts go ‘NOOOOOO!!’ and I stop short. So, whatever. I wanted this new record, I wanted to go see ’em play London. Money prevented both. Luckily Simon’s whining in his last column got us a copy and so here we are.

Murray Street, as you may have heard, is a return to form. And Sonic Youth really can’t win here. They play a set of avant-garde boundary pushing stuff and we all complain, they play all the hits and everyone digs it but kind of feels pandered to, wondering where the challenge is. Same with the records. We want a return to form, a stop to the Wire-adored side projects and collaborations. And when we get it we think, hey, this is Sonic Youth on auto-pilot. Where’s my challenge? But maybe we should quit complaining and just enjoy ‘cos this is the most fun straight up classic pop album you could want. There’ll be some avant stuff round the corner, take some time off for quick kicks. And, hey, if it’s Sonic Youth by numbers [which is isn’t really, but if it was] then it’s Sonic Youth by numbers. And it’s time to stare out those indie upstarts with a copy of Daydream Nation in one hand and Dirty in the other and say, yeah, Sonic Youth soundalikes? You wish! I’m not going to go through this album in detail – it’s got every cute little guitar trick you’d expect, all those heart-stopping quirks and sparks, the drawling and the sprawling and the tunes, the tunes! If you’ve not bought a Sonic Youth album in a while then go get this and get back in. If you’ve not got any Sonic Youth then here’s a damn good place to start. And next time Sonic Youth visit Scotland can they do a proper show instead of playing third on the bill of the little tent at the hell that is T in the Park? Why why why did they do that?

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(Originally posted July 2002)

Token Trail of Dead record of the month is a tiny wee five inch vinyl single for promotional use only. It’s the size of a normal cd and only has about one inch of grooved vinyl. Awwww. Unsurprising then, that they’ve chosen two of their shortest songs for this; the riotrock Homage and the gentle brooding Relative Ways Segue. This would be a cute little promotional idea if it wasn’t for the fact that most record players won’t play them!! A concept only a major label would think up – promotional records you can’t actually listen to. Way to go Interscope…

So onto the real stuff. Since I haven’t actually bought any records in the last month I’m actually going to listen to some of the stuff I’ve been sent recently. Oh no, real work!

But then it’s not really work when you get given stuff by good bands for free. So let’s start with Fighting Red Adair who went down a storm at the diskant 020202 gig and have been kicking up a racket in the venues of Glasgow rather a lot lately. Aural Exciter [SSB] is their first release and has a massive seven tracks which is their entire set surely. FRA are part quirky, part straight -the song structure is odd enough to keep things interesting and tuneful enough to appeal across the board with a generalised american ROCK style. Muckraker opens up with some searing metallic guitars and you know they’re badmouthing you when they mutter under their breath. They know it too so they drop the disguise and go full on metal screamout crazy. The instrumental Gatekeeper has a slowly swaggering bassline with chipped guitars and an impressive show of don’t give a fuck eyebrow raising confidence. Killing Line of the Just has a nice line in dual hollering and menacing bassline and Mega-Meat is just mental, managing to fit in about four different tunes, some sinister mutterings and some head battering backup. Nice graphic art style sleeve too. Out soon so get queuing.

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I gotta get this right out there, and I know I’m not alone in this. Punctuation in a band name is mostly intolerable. There are a few exceptions both with specific punctuation (commas, hyphens) and specific bands (Godspeed You! Black Emperor is probably the only one I really have no problem with, although why they moved the exclamation point from the end to the middle is beyond me). And for some reason, I never seem to enjoy the music these grammar obsessed bands create. I don’t think I’m being petty and shallow but then again, it’s hard to tell.

Death Sentence: Panda! already has, let’s count ’em, two strikes against them but I’m doing my best to look past that and focus only on the music. Thankfully, that’s a pretty easy task with these guys. They take a generally overdone genre like noise punk and add their own skronky artness to it. Like a slightly mellower Melt Banana with horns. Or They Shoot Horses Don’t They if they took lessons from Lightning Bolt. This is in your face and impossible to ignore. It’s loud as hell and somehow only coming from 3 people.

There’s all sorts of weird stuff going on like flutes and Glockenspiels, disgusting, growling guitars and crazy ass drums, and, of course, a female singer. The songs are super short and super catchy. They don’t always have a chorus or even lyrics but there’s there no shortage of hooks on Insects Awaken. You’ll have songs like the 22 second “Progress” running loops in your head the instant you hear it.

I feel like Insects Awaken is probably objectively better than how much I specifically like it. Which is saying a lot because I am really fucking into this record. I just think that the horns (which I generally am not a fan of) and the punctuation thing are making me hold back a little bit. If that’s the case, then even those who are in the same boat as me will really like Death Sentence: Panda! And for those of you that aren’t as superficial as I am, Insects Awaken is your new favorite record.

Death Sentence: Panda!
Upset The Rhythm