The piano is undoubtedly the king of all instruments. It’s extremely versatile, has a huge range and it is probably the easiest instrument to express oneself on, and that’s not to mention the extensive timbres accessible through the push of a pedal. ‘Room to Expand’ from Fat Cat’s latest artist, Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann to his mum) furthers my point. This Düsseldorf-based pianist decided that, in the same vein as minimalist maverick John Cage, he’d chuck a bunch of screws inside a piano and then see what happens. Well, not quite. He ‘prepared’ the piano: clamping wedges of leather, felt or rubber between the strings, weaving guitar strings around the piano’s gut, that sort of thing. The result is fantastic: the album collates various clicks, pangs, scrapes and modified notes in layer upon layer of texture into a lovely multifaceted listen.

‘Paddington’ is a sprightly bundle of timbres and knockings, and it swells with tiers of assorted piano clatters, which is the idea running through ‘Room To Expand’. The ingeniously titled ‘Watercolour Milk’ slowly builds up one chord with sundry embellishments and one driving knock, and ends with echoing string scrapings. The serene beauty of ‘Sweet Spring Come’ is the album’s standout track – rather poignant considering the dismal English weather of late. It’s lead by a clever piano plonk acting as a snare, then minutes after a florid piano line, in comes a delicate bassline and a ethereal strum on the piano’s strings.

‘Room To Expand’ largely resembles the masterful piano vignettes of Aphex Twin’s ‘Drukgs’ album, and a more condensed version of John Cage’s ‘Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano’, yet Hauschka’s effort will take many, many listens before it becomes tired or predictable. Through close listening over time, the album unravels – it’s possible to discover a new sound in each song with every listen. This already has to be a contender for the most outstanding, even unique, album of 2007.

Pascal Ansell
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=218

The North Carolina based singer/songwriter David Karsten Daniels likes a wee trick. Looking at the artwork from his latest release, you’d expect something awfully dark: the drawing of a naked man eating a woman’s intestines is cheekily deceiving. What is delivered through the speakers is a completely different picture: gentle acoustic pop with florid orchestral arrangements (courtesy of Polyphonic Spree violinist Daniel Hart) fill the airwaves, instead of the doom and gloom anticipated.

Opener ‘The Dream before the Ring That Woke Me’ is an instantly memorable journey through ones childhood, while the triumphant horns arrangement on ‘Scripts’ provide much needed variety. ‘Beast’ takes a hefty slice of inspiration pie from labelmates Amandine and Sigur Ros: lyrics whispered at double-slow speed influenced by the former and the epic clashing moments by the latter. It’s such a sweetly soporific effort that I nearly fell asleep on the bus and missed my stop.

Daniels’ voice is clear and crisp, not the most remarkable of voices even on the mighty Fat Cat label, but it’s pervasive and it heats the slightly lukewarm parts of the album well enough. A snail-paced tempo is fixed throughout the whole of ‘Sharp Teeth’, narrowly escaping the pecks of tedium of Larry Lag-behind Jaybird. There are some beautiful moments on this album, yet it’s just not lively or evocative enough to transform it from a decent to an outstanding album. Sharp Teeth? More like soft chew.

Pascal Ansell
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=215

I couldn’t work out how to do that thing that Mar-C did where she made them all little neat thumbnails so you get bigger photos. Here’s 2006 in visuals…

Apparently Tim Pare jettisoned his past life in 2004, moved to China for a while and subsequently returned on the Trans-Siberian Express, swapping vodka for a guitar in order to write the six songs on this CD. So goes the story in the liner notes. Whether this is true or not is almost immaterial; the experiences gained with such travels don’t particularly inform these songs, which tell a familiar, yet always effective, boy-met-girl/boy-lost-girl story.

The music here is absolutely sparse, in the main. Pare’s clear, slightly breathy voice floats above simple guitar pickings and strummings. There are some subtle arrangements at work, though, with the addition of backing vocal harmonies, piano, cello and on ‘Losing My Touch’, a lovely female voice. The simplicity of the sound lays the songs bare, and it’s fortunate that they’re beautifully sung, carefully performed and affectingly heartfelt.

Tim Pare’s style leans more towards the singer-songwriter template of the Finn Brothers or (although I hate to say it) The Beautiful South at their quietest, but it retains an important sense of reality, purity and honesty that reflects the spiritual presence of Nick Drake and Crosby, Stills and Nash. It’s a frequently lovely listen, and one that captures moods of both hope and despair with deceptively effortless success.

Mumbo Jumbo Records
Tim Pare

I am addicted to You Tube. And specifically one micro-genre of films contained within – people trashing their musical gear at gigs (or, bizarrely, at home or in the yard). Seems like a mainly Americanised genre and most of the films are made by bands that are beyond awful or by surburbanite monosyllabic windowlickers. Lame as it is, I sort of get why you might do it at a gig – but in your back yard?
This has somehow made it appeal to me even more. It is addictive and often hilarious. It is occasionally excruciating.

Here are some of my favourites for you to enjoy – famous or otherwise, all totally pointless:

“I don’t come to the bus station and slap the dicks out of your mouth when you’re working do I?”.
My personal favourite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4NXlkt_o_Q

I don’t know what the fuck is going on here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=op_WDUaWZW8

Here’s about 7 minutes of Richie Blackmore acting like a nobber from 1974.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aQ9P4qi8uo

Kiddy toucher takes an age to break his guitar. His roadie loosens the screws for him too y’know. To make it easier. It’s true.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUY5oRd1lBk

And here’s the middle class big nosed art student doing it again. Ouch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URfzAemzG2s

This dude trashes his guitar to stick it to the hippies man and then his band launch into the most fucking amazing full-on rock you’ve ever heard. It stirs me, emotionally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLwrW77zTaU

The classic “switch to the shit guitar” trick. Genius. Great band too obviously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_9X0AN3Hg

Yngwie Malmsteen having a wank onstage. Check the drumming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMVbDtNBX0U

Journey? What fascinates me about this one is the way he keeps strictly to his side of the stage, as per the stageplan. He collects the guitar each time and then retreats to his position.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FT_6C9mF-Ow

This is priceless. A fat dude in his garage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzfzgGBctyw

A digger truck? Isn’t that cheating? And pointless?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG8-nYHNF9k

Man in bike helmet with strange moustache miming in garage and filming himself. On his own.I have to admit this one pains me a little as it’s a nice guitar. Or was. He looks like Bob Log III too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zrMb7HsRLI

OK, not strictly a guitar but this surely can’t be for real? It’s like watching myself deal with a mobile phone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2krt04eO6s0

My housemate Gareth’s favourite and one of mine too. Practise in the school hall style. Note the kiddy’s plastic red n yellow car onstage and the recoil in fear as the guitar goes mid-air.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDkAZFrOF6Q

And, finally, the real way to smash something in two. With your stomach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQTZEIDVVYc

A sub genre: the world’s need for those little red Grolsch bottle tops to put on their guitar straps…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKRJLz90NJI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l67oTM6FtIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avSYPyQ2GWU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx4K4A8r_-M

Some incredibly ambitious 2006 round-ups for you to enjoy. Makes our annual struggle to put together 10 albums look a bit pathetic.

Edward O counts down his Top 100 Singles of 2006 on Enthusiastic But Mediocre with much europop and, well, pop. His 2005 article was one of my favourite things and I am enjoying this year’s a lot so far.

The Silent Ballet write about The Top 50 Instrumental Releases of 2006 AND The Top 25 Instrumental Tracks of 2006 and still have stuff left over they have to put in an honourable mentions page. Hardcore.

Also, a small bit of self-promotion: Cake Tourism. We are eating cake around the globe, photographing it and posting it here for your delight. If you have eaten any exciting cake recently do tell us.

It had its good points amongst all the crap, didn’t it?

MUSIC
This Heat – their boxset finally came out, and it’s better than anything else you’ve ever heard.
Rob Lee/Wax Stag – http://www.myspace.com/waxstag
The Beloved Music by Paul Flaherty & Chris Corsano
Crescent by John Coltrane
10th Avenue Freakout by Fog. I know I’m late.
Super Golden Original Movement by Golden
Mother of Thousands by MV, EE & the Bummer Road
Racoo-oo-oon
Busdriver
The Dead C
Led Zep
AC/DC
50 LPs for a quid down t’market.
The resurrection of Siltbreeze

LIVE
Trencher & Kraufort @ The Social (Jan)
Part Chimp, Hey Colossus, Lords @ Cabaret (Jan)
Jack Rose & Chris Corsano @ Raffles (Jan)
Earth & Sunn0))) @ The Custard Factory (Feb)
The Evens @ Sneinton Hermitage (Mar)
Thee More Shallows @ The Social (Apr)
Burning Star Core @ The Old Angel (Apr)
Smegma @ The Old Angel (Apr)
Magik Markers @ The Matilda (May)
Subtle @ Coventry Colosseum (Jun)
Charalambides @ Bunkers Hill (Jul)
Alasdair Roberts @ The Maze (Aug)
Steve Reich, Konono #1, Gavin Bryars @ The Barbican (Oct)
Erase Errata @ The Rose of England (Oct)
No Neck Blues Band @ Taylor John’s House (Dec)

FILM
The New World pissed all over every other film released in 2006 from a very great height. Actually, it pissed all over every pretty much American film released since Terence Malick’s last effort (The Thin Red Line in 1997). The only reason I can think that it didn’t get into the diskant poll was because no one saw it – it slipped in and out of UK cinemas with alarming speed, and predictably has made fuck-all money. You can now buy it on DVD for about six quid. I recommend you do so.
Also, the Harvey Milk DVD.

BOOKS
The Road by Cormac McCarthy – not only his best book for 20-odd years, but so much better than any other book I read this year.
How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers
JPod by Douglas Coupland
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Mysteries of Pittsburgh & Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
Buying loads of second copies of books I already have in charity shops to thrust upon friends and insist they read them.

MAGS
I get more depressed at music journalism with every passing year – I don’t think I’ve bought a magazine in a good 3 years now. I did however finally chance across a copy of Simon Reynolds’ Blissed Out in a secondhand shop, which is always worth a dip.

EVENT OF THE YEAR
Finishing mixing the new Souvaris album after 3 months of sitting in a bedroom in front of a laptop, slowly going insane.

THINGS YOU DID MOST THIS YEAR
Waited at stations for trains that were either chronically delayed or cancelled. I’m biting the bullet and buying a car in 2007.
Complained how tired I was.

PLACES VISITED
Scotland’s southwestern coastline
The Lake District
Yorkshire
The Dales of Derbyshire
Sheffield
Taylor John’s House in Coventry

BEST THING
Love.
Rediscovering meat and how to cook it.
Rediscovering that decent electronic music is being made all over the world.

WORST THING
No time for love, Doctor Jones
So many boring noise/improv bands.
Labels and bands overkilling on the amount of stuff they put out that all sounds exactly the same. Again.
The Next Big Thing in music and bands covered by the mass media just seem to get worse and worse.

OVERALL
At some point I’m gonna catch up on all the sleep I missed out on. Maybe in 2008.

LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2007
A much-needed holiday. In the autumn.

Dolittle is a veritable early-90s-indie-fan’s dream, as the fine diagram to be found on their CD and website makes clear. Ange Dolittle, who did his time in years gone by with Eat, We Know Where You Live and Big Yoga Muffin, has teamed up with Oxfordshire brothers Mr. G and Rich in this new project; and this album is produced by Miles Hunt of The Wonder Stuff and Vent414. It’s like going back in time, and yet not going back in time.

The feel across the twelve tracks here is one of cynical, emotionally-damaged angst, set to a relatively gentle style of off-kilter guitar sing-song simplicity. The music isn’t going to set the world on fire, but it’s pleasant enough listening, with hints of not only the bands mentioned above but also a smattering of the weird guitar popitude of Pavement, Pixies and – at a stretch – Talking Heads.

It’s very much Ange’s show, with his voice mixed to the fore and lyrics delivered in a clear and considered manner. At times the self-consciously bitter and self-deprecating lyrics can grate; as if the desperation to seem as odd and as mixed-up as possible has resulted in lyrics that can be opaque and difficult to relate to. When the guard is dropped, though, as on ‘Shame’ and ‘Epicure’, Dolittle are a far more engaging prospect. They exude real emotion, rather than a shrouded, self-mocking posturing.

With at least two of the tracks here being reworkings of old Eat songs, and one a Wonder Stuff cover, it’s hard to place Dolittle in the context of anything except those happy indie-explosion days of the early 90s. I’m not sure that’s such a bad place to be. Sometimes the present can be too much of a challenge.

Punk Elvis Records
Dolittle

New year, no relenting in the fanboy enthusiasm for everything Wäntage USA hurl out my way. The Lights, for all their twisted melodic pop sensibilities, can’t help but screw everything around with a knife-twist in every track, with a self-effacing need to psych out at the beginning, middle or end. The twisted new wave sensibilities of the Fall intermingle with a gently crazed take on late ’60s garage stomp, and the result is never far from being steamrollered by waves of feedback and noise.

The album opens with a downhearted drone arc of misery, but it lets more light in as time goes by. There are caveman-thrown rocks of melody all over the songs here, but the glorious thing about The Lights is their inability not to chuck in a cement mixer of chaos at the most inappropriate time. They never, however, lose grip of a fundamental danceability, and tracks like White Harlem and Up the Stairs, Out the Window reveal clicking rhythms that recall Q And Not U or early Liars. It’s this paradoxical combination of elements that attracts me to this music. ‘Diamonds And Dirt’ album reads like a mixtape of essentials garage/indie/rock from the past thirty years – but it’s a physically mixed-up tape, rather than a tape of mixed tunes.

This isn’t an album like no other; it’s a distillation and extension of the best albums by (at least) Melvins, Nirvana, Gang Of Four, The Fall, Devo. But which are the best albums? Take a listen and make up your own mind.

Wäntage USA
The Lights

This is an impressively polished six-track EP, with tightness of playing and quality control that is surprising for a band that’s been together for less than a year. Semi Royal Blood may not be setting the world on fire with originality; these songs traverse familiar melodic and lyrical tightropes and suggest a cleaner Libertines, or a messier Razorlight. But in a world that’s currently rich with uninspired soundalike bands, Semi Royal Blood go beyond aping what seem to be obvious reference points. It could be the urgency of the vocals on lead track ‘Quandary’, or the up-there speediness of the keyboard-sprinkled ‘Take It Away’, or the subtly complex guitar lines on ‘Caught With A Feeling’, but here’s a band that seem to show glimpses of something beyond an average standard that’s often depressingly settled upon by many other bands.

For a debut, this is great stuff: it sounds to me like a collection of tracks that could easily stand up against the relentless avalanche of new bands mining this melodic, mini-epic-style of guitar pop. The challenge for Semi Royal Blood is to stay the course, and to hang on to the feelings of enjoyment and genuineness that are on display here. If they can hang in there, and develop their sound into something even more their own, they have a bright future.

Semi Royal Blood