(Originally posted July 2002)

If you, like me, have been watching VH1 every day almost constantly in the hope of seeing
that Enrique Iglesias video where he gets off with Anna Kournikova, it’s probably time you, well, got out more frankly. And while you’re out of the house, you might want to go and buy some new music. Maybe even some of this new music.

’03/04/02. Michael injures his lungs. 03/04/02. Bass’s nut broken in sword fight. 20/04/02. Michael blows the output tubes on his amp.’ Wisconsin’s New Blind Nationals don’t have photos or a list of influences on their website like mimsy indie rock hopefuls. Theirs is a list of damage – and what’s more, ROCK damage. Onstage lung wounds notwithstanding, opening track ‘Used Up’ proclaims ‘rock ‘n’ roll is pretty lame’ with the conviction of an English oak wardrobe being dropped onto the Hives’ collection of IKEA fake pinewood furniture, to labour the metaphor. In fact, by the time I’ve finished typing said metaphor, ‘Sturtevant By Night’ (Sturtevant? Free copy of the album to anyone who tells me what this means) has already pissed on my shoes and run away laughing. Four of the tracks here are terrific and make The Vines sound like the sub-GCSE Nirvana covers band they are, swelling and cracking their way out of the speakers as if they were recorded through blown amps using instruments nicked from the skip outside …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s house (which they may have been, given the band’s apparent propensity for BREAKING STUFF). Vaguely grungey, and garagey in neither the Strokes nor the Genius Kru sense, the nearest reference points that fling themselves from the shelves of HMV are Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge-era Mudhoney and the much-touted second coming of grunge, The Catheters. Unfortunately for the New Blind Nationals, calling a song ‘End Of The Good Songs’ only works if it’s a storming rock anthem direct from the toilet bowl where AC/DC got rid of their last curry, rather than actually being the end of the good songs. To be fair, it’s not that bad, but the final three plod along with a few inconsequential keyboard sounds, as if the band are being (slowly) pursued up the road by a lame Moog, until the screaming finale of ‘In Armed Decision’ sticks a few drumsticks where the sun doesn’t shine and reminds me why this would be the demo of the month, were such a spurious award to exist.

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Light are some tricky fellows. First of all, their name is Light. And they packaged their CD entirely in white with lots of folded paper, making the whole thing look quite delicate. You might be thinking you’re in for some ambient drone, right? But then they smear some (supposed) menstrual blood on the disc itself. What kind of drone band does that? I’m not sure but it’s definitely not Light. Because Light makes black metal.

I have a hard time describing A Million Dead Beneath The Ice because I think my brain isn’t synching up with my ears. I hear Light and I hear black metal. Slow moving, buzzing guitars, demon vocals, the whole nine badass yards. But there’s something that’s telling me this isn’t your momma’s black metal. Maybe it’s more like gray metal. Take out the doom organ and the growling hell spawn and you would have some really awesome ambient music. Yeah, it might be kinda scary ambient, but ambient nonetheless. And there’s some Midwestern Americana hiding in there, too. I just know it.

But I keep going back and forth. Do I just think this is gray metal because of the band’s name and the CD packaging? Is this really just some straight up black metal? Or is there something more to Light than the hordes of other BM bands.

I think I’m just going to ignore this slight conundrum in my brain and enjoy A Million Dead for what it is. It’s really some intensely doomish black metal that may be a bit rough on the surface (like all black metal) but is actually quite beautiful. Especially on “When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In” with the mournful guitar that’s right up front, paired with the oh so sad and angry vocals. Whatever sub-genre you decide to throw Light into, know that this is some truly special black metal.

Light

(Originally posted May 2002)

Press releases are funny things. Like a CV, you can spend days honing phrases like ‘a smorgasbord of honey-dripped ballads in sharp contrast to the coruscating hardcore on display elsewhere’ until you (or your publicist/manager/label whore) have made the band in question sound like the greatest, most essential new band of the decade. That is, until the reviewer/A & R person puts the CD into the player and your music undoes all the good work your flowery prose did in five seconds.

A good press release, like a good CV, should be clean, to the point and no more than two sides of A4. It should only tell you what you need to know: where you’re from, what you’ve done, what you sound like, how to get in touch with you. So let’s take a look at the peculiar phenomenon of press release hype.

If size really did matter, then Dustbyte might possibly be bigger than U2, offering up a seven-page behemoth of a press release, detailing every bit of press the band have ever had (including about a page’s worth of gig listings from two years ago), every review and possibly some guff about how they all like fish fingers, except the singer, who’s allergic to them. But as we’ve established, a long press release is almost as bad as one that’s too short, and kind of gives the impression that the band are trying to make themselves out to be one of Britain’s biggest bands. It’s like reading through the guitarist’s mum’s scrapbook of the band, and half expecting to see a baby photo over the page.

And the music? Live, the influence of the Jesus Lizard and the Pixies on Dustbyte is clear enough in their pleasing squealy guitar noise and infectious (not in the disease sense, don’t worry) stage presence. Here, though, first track ‘Priscilla’ sounds like Hüsker Dü being played through jam while Brian Eno juggles bits of keyboard in the background with the help of a few of the Clangers. The chorus, rather than being spiky and catchy in the way that good choruseseses in this sort of music are wont to be, is actually pretty irritating. ‘The Misadventures of the Great Red Shark’ is much more like it, bounding along like an excited teenager on the way to his first Frank Black and the Catholics gig.

Muleskinner Jones (Terrible Stories EP) make the mistake of not actually putting their name on the press release, but it does take the form of a hand-signed, typed letter asking for ‘any feedback/criticism/abuse’. There are no biographical details at all, though, so I’m going to have to make them up. ‘Muleskinner Jones were formed in late 1953 in Mid-West America and raised on a diet of cowboy movies, trips to the American Adventure theme park and Mary Poppins. They moved on to Ireland sometime in the early 1980s, where they listened to the Pogues and took acid for 22 years.’

This would go some way towards explaining the finished product of their output. First song ‘How Come That Blood On Your Coat Sleeve?’ genuinely sounds like a cross between Kirsty McColl and Shane MacGowan’s hit pop song and something from Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads, as sung by Kirsty Gallagher off Sky TV and ‘top’ impressionario Alistair MacGowan. I honestly can’t tell if this utterly bizarre countrified duet about murder and bloodstains is taking the piss or not. It’s Nick Cave if he’d been brought up by Cletus and Dwayne, the only inbred gay couple in all of Arkansas. And I mean that as a compliment, really I do. Traditional songs recorded on an Apple Powerbook by an insane genius with straw between his teeth – Muleskinner Jones, we salute you, because we don’t know what else to do.

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(Originally posted April 2002)

So this is a column designed to shout about a few new bands you might want to check out, but you’ve got to have a system, right? You get a huge pile of miscellaneous tapes, CDs and records to pick and choose from, and like a magpie trapped in a giant box of Quality Street, the nice shiny things catch your eye first. So I’m going to review these bad boys in order of how nice they look from the outside, even if they end up tasting like those horrible coffee creams that make you gag every Christmas. Send me pretty things. I like pretty things. Mind you don’t send anything that sounds like the Pretty Things, though.

First up is West Wales’ Jarcrew, whose press release takes the form of a bit of A4 with some scrawl on it in black felt pen, which is a nice personal touch. It does, however, promise the bribe of several – several, mind – Kit Kats, none of which I’m yet to see, so words will have to be had [sorry, I steal all the bribes – overlord]. The CD’s a fantastic home made package covered in brown parcel tape, black cardboard and that silver pen that only the pretty art teacher at primary school gets to use. Quite apart from the quality packaging, they also have things like ‘kill all musos’ and ‘sex ‘n’ hugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll’ written all over it, which puts me in a good mood straight off. First track ‘Deemo’ is 30 seconds long: drums, bass, weird keyboard flid-outs and a man who has reverb in his mouth shouting ‘deemodeemodeemo’ over and over. I’m not sure what ‘Deemo’ is, but I like it. ‘Deth Car’ is one and a half minutes of dirty garage rock and distorted vocals that I entirely agree with – it’d ace to drive round, pull up next to a load of girls and invite them to get in my deth car for a ride. And if I did, this would be the soundtrack. ‘Boy Wonder’ is more expansive and instrumental, and gets going just when you think it’s just a mimsy instrumental to link tracks together. The most disappointing track is ‘Opakow’, if anything because it’s the most straightforward, after the band have set themselves the (high) standard of being wilfully strange. More please.

Next, it’s disoma from Southampton, whose tape package must have taken longer than the songs to put together. Every line of text is individually cut out on separate bits of paper and stuck to the tape sleeve, hopefully not with Pritt Stick but with industrial strength atom-bonding glue they guzzled between takes. ‘Squeal, squeal, squeal – DAH DAH DAH’ would be my answer if I were asked, for example in an oral examination to pass my GCSE in math rock, ‘how would you describe disoma’s music using only the medium of onomatopoeia?’ And I like to think I’d get at least a ‘B’ for that. ‘I Like Me, You Like Me, Let’s Be Friends’ stops, starts, stops, then chugs off in all the right places, punctuated by one of the young scamps shouting ‘BLAAAR’ (the Emo Noise(r)). So far a cracking tune, until it goes into a hilarious sub-solo that sounds like it might have sounded funny turned up dead loud in the practice room. It’s not funny, at all. In fact, it’s rubbish. Second track ‘God vs. Prog’ does pretty much the same thing, only without Joe Satriani turning up in clown shoes, so it wins the day in my book. ‘Ollie’s Dead Too’ does the quiet/loud thing, but not half as interestingly as the rather splendidly-titled ‘Providence Exotic Fish’, which builds up ‘Yes I Am A Long Way From Home’ style like the world’s biggest sandcastle made by a busload of kids with attention deficit disorder. I bet they’re ace live. I’d go and see them. ‘Have you ever been so low that you cried?’ What kind of a lyric is this, please? It’s like ‘have you ever found something so funny that you laughed?’

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There is a subtle amount of responsibility that comes with reviewing music that no one else is willing to touch. To heavily criticise such a piece of music and slag it off at ground zero is a heinous act akin to kicking the crutches away from a cripple. Sometimes however it feels like a necessary evil.

This two track CD single (I think) is released to coincide with the most frightful of Hallmark holidays (along with the commercialisation of Eid) “Valentine” is a tepid and gloomy offering confusing the most quizzical parts of my brain (if I have one) and causing me to stroke my chin and wonder just who is going to listen to this.

For such a commercially orientated release, the sound really stands out as being muddy and cheap sounding. There is no bite or purpose to this record it just sounds like grown ups trying to play music they don’t understand from a tab book purchased in a bad music shop.

Referring to the press release, the boast of “full on percussion” really is not the most salient of points and where the “harmonious venom” just quite is, is something of a Baker Street mystery to me, Baker Street that would probably actually embrace this release for all its big ties (major label distribution apparently) and business acumen. It is all built on sand.

I have to concede at this point that when I was sent the email asking me if I wanted a copy I was drunk.

Thesaurus moment: devoid.
Chapter xiii
Levelsound Music

It’s been almost four years since bluegrass boy Charlie Parr hit paydirt and considerable acclaim with his fourth album “Rooster”, but it’s not like he’s been sitting on his hands ever since; “Roustabout” is his seventh full-length release, and the first to be released by Bristol-based label, the highly excellent Misplaced Music. Misplaced are celebrating this by making it  first ever long playing record they’ve ever released – vinyl limited to 500 copies, though you can get it on plain ol’ CD too if needs be.

Charlie’s sound, rooted in the crackling ’20s and a’30s recordings of Smithsonian Folkways and discoveries by Harry Smith, can hardly be charged to have ‘progressed’ since his first album 8 years ago, but then that would be beside the point. Fingerpicked resonator, 12-string guitar and banjo accompany his unique gravelly voice as he works his way through twelve songs, three of which are covers – not that you’d know it, to his eternal credit.

“Authenticity” is a word that has been misused for so long that it seems an awful tar to brush someone with, but by God Charlie deserves to reclaim it for the realms of respectability. He’s not some godawful “roots” act wishing that it’s still the (original) Great Depression and we all live in mud huts in Virginia – Charlie sings about the world around him without pretense or irony. There’s no hint of cynicism about him. To that I can say only one word: HURRAH!

Speaking plainly, if you heard and liked “Rooster”, you should get this. If you haven’t heard Charlie Parr before, you should go to his myspace page, listen to him, and buy this. Alright?

“Roustabout” is available from all good shops from Monday 17th February. Charlie’s currently in tour in Ireland andthe UK until the end of the month. Go check him out.

www.myspace.com/charlieparrduluth

http://www.misplacedmusic.co.uk

Surely it’s too early for Festival season to be getting started? Well, here’s some info we’ve been sent.

Instal sets up in Glasgow again this March with their usual awesome/incomprehensible line-up of ‘brave new music’. If you’re quick, you can snap up an early bird weekend pass for just £20! I’d tell you the line-up but grr stupid Flash site and no copyable text. Insert your own joke about obscure music festival not letting you tell people about the line-up and then click over to the website for all the info.

All Tomorrow’s Parties have a bunch of events lined up for 2009. The UK gets two in Minehead in May. First up The Fans Strike Back featuring Devo, Sleep & Jesus Lizard  plus newly added diskant faves ERRORS and PARTS AND LABOR. Following that it’s curated by The Breeders and features Shellac, Throwing Muses, Holy Fuck, X and lots more. Both are on sale now. If you’re on the other side of the planet then there’s ATP New York in September curated by The Flaming Lips. More info on all of these at the ATP website.

And finally, if you’re in the North West of England over the next few months, make sure to check out UK DIY, a series of events, exhibitions and projects exploring DIY crafts across the UK. Opening this weekend at the Turnpike Gallery is an exhibition of zines including some by yours truly. Should be fun!

(Originally posted February 2002)

2001. A year in which one of the top selling albums was a compilation of classic lounge covers by Robbie Williams and The Strokes used the events of September 11 as a marketing opportunity (we’ll pull ‘New York City Cops’ from the album, in case any of you were worried. Go Team Strokes!). What else happened? I can’t really remember, but I expect it was good. You’ll have to make do with my vague top ten of 2001 – imagine it’s being excitedly presented by wee Gail Porter in a tiny top or something.

Starting at the top, the gold medal, bottle of champagne, scantily clad girl and place atop the winner’s rostrum goes to an EP called Morning One by a gentleman going under the assumed name of Aarktica (Ochre Records). The lead track of the three, ‘These Days Fail To Bring Me Near’, is the most involving piece of new music I’ve heard this year. It’s basically five minutes of ambient washes of noise, vocals you can barely make out and a really simple picked guitar part. And that’s it. The most pretentious thing about the EP is that it’s themed around soundtracking the moment when you wake up in the morning with your arms around someone you love (your mum doesn’t count) for the first time. Which would make me laugh in its face, apart from the fact that Jon only goes and pulls it off. The other two tracks (predictably) don’t rise to the same heights, but this has the first choice of biscuit from the Tesco Finest selection simply because I want ‘These Days Fail To Bring Me Near’ to be the last song I hear before I die, it’s that good.

No prizes for originality for choosing Confield by Autechre, but that’s not the point. Messrs. Booth and Brown have been making fantastic records for forty-nine years now, records consistently far better than anyone else in electronic music (yes, even Gary Numan). ‘VI scose poise’ starts the journey like the track Aphex Twin meant to write when he was messing about with ‘Bucephalus Bouncing Ball’, and by the time ‘lentic catachresis’ arrives, Autechre have actually smashed music to bits like petulant children with drum machines. Half of this record makes me want to sit down and write something even a quarter as good, and the other half makes me want to give up making music because Autechre are so far ahead of the game, it’s pointless anyone else even trying. As that German bloke might have said to Ned Nederlander in The Three Amigos, ‘Autechre are gods in my country.’

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Ah, shucks. It’s always going to be difficult because the stuff that hasn’t been done before has all been done before. Know what I mean? Look at Volcano! And Deerhoof for that matter. Just look at them! Where do you go from there?

To the point then. Hi Red Center come from New York and are on the Joyful Noise label that lives up to its name. In comes HRC’s Second album ‘Assemble’ is a treat, but there are holes.

This album glitters and sparkles. It’s a hall of mirrors where you occasionally get tripped up, clothes snagged but ultimately it’s an exhilarated by the jarringly fun tour. Track six it grew on me like the rash on my neck: give me Chicken Gorlet anytime because this song is brilliantly addictive.

They have tackled the Deerhoof approach not in the naïvest of ways (cutesy melodies, sparse and interchangeable dynamics) yet they haven’t really pulled it off. While I’m at it there’s a rather too noticeable use of the Deerhoof rubato i.e. the whopping loosness of rhythm, the holding back… until the niggling smash and wallop of instruments. It doesn’t quite convince. But to hell with it: this review is too full of doesn’ts and haven’ts and rashes – this makes cracking listening and I may be hoping for a bit too much. Songwriting takes precedence from experimentation, and the attempted sound is just not quite their own. But note the ‘quite’. This is a very decent album – HRC are on their way to making something pretty special.

I’m going to the doctor by the way. About the rash.

Hi Red Center

Pascal Ansell

Vladimir Martynov is a very special Russian composer. He’s one who is primarily interested in minimalist, avant-garde, and religious music. I’d venture a guess that there aren’t very many of his type. Night In Galicia takes all of his fascinations, churns ’em up, and spits out a stunning and endlessly intriguing piece of work.

Galicia is a little over an hour long with 13 separate tracks but it’s the 15 minute opener that stands out as the epic focal point. It starts out nice and pure, with a man and woman going back and forth, unnervingly reciting the various pronunciations of our alphabet’s vowels. When I first played this, my wife hated it. She wouldn’t let me get past the 2 minute mark, which is a shame, because that’s exactly where it gets a bit more dynamic. More and more vocals come in and they form some sort of syncopated beat. Eventually, everything bursts into a grandiose chorus that sounds halfway African and makes you want to stomp your feet and and break out in tribal dance. It’s seriously amazing and hypnotic. The CD could end there and it wouldn’t even matter. But there’s still another 50 minutes left to knock you off you feet.

The remaining songs on Night In Galicia alternate between edgy orchestral string drones and majestic vocal work that brings me to the same place as Yoshi Wada’s Lament For The Rise & Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile. The moods may be dissimilar but the technique and approach are very much alike. And considering how highly I regard Lament, that is one honorable compliment.

My guess is that Galicia might take some getting used to. Granted, that’s only due to my wife’s reaction, but I guess it never hurts to take precautions. I was immediately hooked but it’s possible this might be considered a “tough listen.” If you’re feeling brave, give it a go. I know I’m new here so my word doesn’t mean much, but I 100% recommend this record and will defend it indefinitely.

Vladimir Martynov (Long Arms bio) (Wikipedia)
Long Arms Records