throughsilver

The Black Dog - Music for Real Airports

2011-03-29T22:34:00.000Z

Soma (2010)

The Black Dog’s Martin Dust mentioned, in his recent interview with FACT, that he was disappointed with Brian Eno’s 1979 precursor to this album, Music for Airports, as it lacked reality. “It just seemed so out of place”, Martin observed, “like something from a sci-fi film”. I’m not sure whether it’s involvement in the art removing objectivity, or simply aesthetics evolving over time, but the main cultural reference point throughout numerous listens to this record for this writer has been Moon, the 2009 film by Duncan Jones. Moon, were you unaware, is a science fiction film.*

This isn’t your reviewer being a dick, rather it’s a hopefully understandable reaction to this record, before having read said interview. Both Moon and MfRA are super-modern, minimally beautiful and surprisingly poignant works that serve to remind us, in this world of overkill and hyperbole, of how effective a decent level of imagination combined with killer execution can be. There was some trepidation prior to hearing Music for Real Airports: after the ridiculously good recent one-two of Radio Scarecrow and Further Vexations, a concept album? A retort to Eno that pimps the importance of reality and legitimacy? Is this an album or an art installation?

While it begins with traffic noises and samples of disembodied welcomers (and how nice it would be to drift in and out of an airport within the hour it takes to play this record...), you do not have to be waiting in a departure lounge to feel the music on here. While it’s certainly true that the juxtaposition of haunting, trembling, arpeggio and ominous low frequency of ‘Sleep Deprivation 2’ benefits from contextualisation within the mass-dehumanity of the holding bays we pay for the privilege to perch in, the music is not dependent on location. A graduated ambient album, MfRA uses real world samples and cues as signifiers and enablers of a concept, rather than allowing them to become what the album is. Instead, the arrangement ebbs and flows while generally building, reminiscent of Ricardo Villalobos’ Fabric 36 set, albeit replacing South American sexual tension and catharsis with the satisfaction of (just about) getting home.

I very nearly went to Leeds Bradford Airport for this one. I didn’t, largely because I had nowhere to go, the World Cup was on, and I have a job. I did manage to listen to it while taking the train to Wakefield. Railway stations are like shitty little airports; you wait around, feeling your soul ebb gradually, yet inexorably, away. And then you get in a large vehicle and turn your brain off, lest the tedium of your situation divorce you from sanity. And, in this context, MfRA definitely worked. What’s refreshing, in this day and age of Sigur Ros and soft ambience, is that this record does not emulate the feeling of rising through the cloud canopy, nor does it enhance the sensation of being above the mortal Earth, peering down at seas and mountain ranges like so many patchwork quilts.

No, given their punk backgrounds amid the steel and perspiration of Sheffield and agit-electro, TBD focus on the more earthly ‘delights’ of your journey. ‘Future Delay Thinking’ and ‘Delay 9’ sum up the (non-)passage of time, while the heavy breathing of ‘Passport Control’ and snippets of barely audible voices mixed in with numbing aural thuds and blotches of ‘DISinformation Desk’ (love the sentiment, but the nomenclature is a tad heavy-handed) bring the paranoia you sometimes feel. Granted, when I was travelling from Iran to Turkey during the former’s post-election troubles in 2009, even I wasn’t quite as shook as your man on ‘Passport Control’ seems to be. But it takes all sorts, I guess.

What we’ve got here, then, is an album that is many things at once. It does convey, to a very real extent, the weariness and boredom of waiting around at various points of an airport-based journey, but it makes a virtue of it, somehow maintaining the ennui while transmogrifying it into something beautiful. It’s a fitting third part in the recent trilogy (so far) of albums. And, if we’re being honest, it hints at a desire to move into soundtrack work. But why not, when here is a collection of sonic vignettes that evoke on their own, yet combine to form a seamless whole? We’ll know in advance who Duncan Jones can call when the time comes to make Moon 2: Electric Boogaloo.

* If you really don’t want to think of this as a sci-fi record, despite its Death-Stargate front cover, you’ll do well not to listen to ‘BCN4’, from the limited edition Thee Lounge EP. While very good, its voice samples, banging on as they do about galaxies an ting, do little to back up Martin’s argument. Or perhaps it’s a sly dig at the whole ‘Music for Airports as sci-fi’ thing. Who knows?

Burzum - Belus

2011-03-23T21:21:00.001Z

This is so old! From about a year ago. I'm playing catch-up on sticking things here. He has a (presumably rubbish) new album out now. Anyway.

Byelobog Productions, 2010
Belus, the latest album from one man black metal machine Burzum, carries with it a great deal of baggage before even the first note is heard. The most infamous detail surrounding Burzum (aka Varg Vikernes; formerly Count Grishnakh) is the fact that he recently spent a decade and a half behind bars after murdering one-time collaborator and Mayhem member Øystein Aarseth, also known as Euronymous. Combine that with multiple counts of church-burning and a behind-bars transformation into a neo-nazi, and we have on our hands quite the jolly fellow.

Before he went to jail in the mid-90s, though, he released some incredibly impressive albums, most notably Hvis Lyset Tar Oss and Filosofem (1994, 1996; both Misanthropy Records). These were epic, bleak, wildly individual pieces that set Burzum aside in the black metal world from what was otherwise tinny symphonic thrash metal. This combination of quality artistic output and disgusting personal behaviour has led, in his absence from society, to Vikernes enjoying a rather misguided cult of personality. His music has been proudly revered in direct proportion to the lowlife scumminess of the man: thanks to the infinite word of mouth that is the Internet, and the perverse interest in the dark side of humanity, Burzum has become a legend. 'But, you know, I don't agree with what he did...'

His alleged brilliance has been blown out of all proportion, as evinced by a couple of dire spooky-synth albums he recorded while doing porridge, and now by Belus. Fans of dark music may well display demand characteristics upon hearing this album: ostensibly making all the right noises, it'd be easy to look at the nature-fetishising cover, listen to the long BM songs, and declare the KVLT leader well and truly back.

The shame is that Belus presents to the listener a washed out, cliché, concept of black metal. That thin production from the early 90s is present and correct: what was presumably a side-effect of the scene's recording equipment eventually became an emulated aesthetic; tinnier than thou. Amusingly enough, posh boy BM act Cradle Of Filth started out with a great sound ('Nocturnal Supremacy' was actually a right tune), but as they got bigger, they got tinnier. Rarely does a band buy in, rather than sell out, as success beckons, but such is the world of black metal. So, having traipsed around the Bergen woods in his sweatpants and stroked his beard, Varg decided his new album - that grand statement of freedom regained - would be as tinny as in the good old days. So everything here is low in the mix, and not in a cool, Burial, 'ghosts in the radio' way. It's just quiet for an ostensibly heavy album.

The music itself is also lacking. I wouldn't expect Vikernes to have stayed in touch with the movers and shakers in the scene (he likely hates what black metal has become), but one could be forgiven for thinking such a misunderstood genius would have at least developed his art individually, removed from the possibly restricting context of genre. Scott Walker disappears for years at a time (without killing, say, Tom Jones or Lulu) and re-emerges a transformed, inimitable, artist. Burzum has simply shambled into view with all the aplomb of a Resident Evil zombie, flailing about and making spooky noises. After the album's yawntroduction (surely that 30 seconds isn't deserving of its very own track), the black metal stereotype machine clunks into action with some washed out, speed-picked, slo-mo melodies and disembodied shrieking. It's as though the last decade and a half never happened.

'Belus' Doed' and 'Glemselens Elv' could be anyone, which is what is really gutting. Had Burzum returned with an album even close to the quality of Filosofem, we'd all be happy. But this could be anyone. That is not to say this is a bad record: the last couple of tracks do trad-BM rather well. It's just disappointing and generic. Frustratingly, when Vikernes does move away from the cold drizzle that makes up the majority of the album, as on the two centre tracks, things pick up massively.

A real grower is 'Kaimadalthas' Nedstigning' ('Kaimadalthas' Descent' - answers on a postcard as to who he is, Norse mythology fans). Initially a bizarre mishmash of speed metal riffs, spoken work chorus and slightly embarrassed singing, the myriad loose ends of this song eventually intertwine into a triumph of dynamics, vocal arrangement and proper fantastic seediness. The melodic segments sound almost like 80s northern indie, eerie in their calm delivery and juxtaposition with the mania of the rest of the song. That goes straight into 'Sverddans' ('Sword Dance') which is refreshing in that it actually brings the riffage for once. It's a spiralling descent of a melody; just don't let on that you think it sounds like Apollo 440's 'Lost in Space' theme. The corpsepaint brigade round your end probably won't take kindly to that one. Part of its charm is the contrast with the wetness of all the other metal on the album: it shreds in its context, but not compared to, say, any Black Breath song ever.

Belus, then, is just a bit sad. And that's worse than being a morally repugnant work of horror. When you strip away the new clothes of murder and arson, you're left with an emperor who's just a bit mediocre. Not a conquering return, nor a reclamation of past glory. This might sate the Burzum faithful, but if they've sat through Dauði Baldrs, they can probably handle tedium well. If you want a decent idea of modern black metal, then go for some Watain, Leviathan or Drudkh. If you fancy listening to a song that's a nice break from the norm, check out 'Kaimadalthas' Nedstigning'. Overall, though, Burzum is about as relevant in 2010 as Iron Maiden were in the 1990s.

Albums in the year 2010

2011-01-02T01:00:00.005Z

Hello! A day late (edit: okay, it took til 1am on the 2nd) on this, but that's certainly better than over a month tardy, eh? You know the deal by now: 2010 was a year; I listened to some music, but not all of it; I liked some of it more than others; the ten favourites are below, accompanied by some explanation. Ready? Go!

01. Shining - Blackjazz

Pretty solidly the album of the year, this one. Funny thing is, I knew as much four days into the year! And then for sure by the end of January. How boring, right, readers? Wrong! Wrong because Blackjazz was the gift that kept giving: its gleaming spires and whirring cogs held within them enough depth for you to gaze into for months without getting tired.

It was almost like a black hole, but instead of destruction and anti-matter, it gave and created. Everything about it is fantastic. It opens up with some pretty easy to digest tunes and soon gets bigger and more complex, til it ends up consuming itself. There are references here to all types of metal, numerous types of non-metal, and there are even nods to Shining's own past; old ideas and motifs get dusted off and given a new coat of paint. Of course it was going to be album of the year. If there was anything better, the concept of music itself would likely have been cheapened due to the onslaught it was receiving.

=02. Black Breath - Heavy Breathing
=02. Ke$ha - Animal

I am really having trouble deciding between these two. You'll know, and dislike, one of these, and you probably won't know the other at all. I'll start with Black Breath. Some members of the band were in a hardcore outfit called Shook Ones, who I heard of but never actually heard. Rumour has it Black Breath was started as a bit of an ironic thing. Hur hur, let's do an old school thrash thing, they probably didn't say to each other. Anyway, they gave it a go, and it turned out they are really good at it. They put out an EP called Razor to Oblivion a couple of years ago, which was on that Saviours/Accused/Black Cobra tip. As good as it was, it was nothing on this album.

I don't know if I'll actually do a 'proper' review of it, so here are the key points. It kicks in pretty much from the start. No spooky acoustic arpeggio interludes for Black Breath! Only on two songs does this band let up at all: the title track is an eerie instrumental tune that puts me in mind of Splatterhouse or Halloween or something; proper menacing. The other is 'Unholy Virgin', which at first sounds like it's going to be Alannah Myles' 'Black Velvet', but instead bludgeons, just pretty slowly. The rest of the record is a wicked mix of Discharge-style speedcore and early Entombed death 'n' roll. Both of which are legitimate things. Best thrash album in absolutely years. Since either the first Haunted album (1998) or second Strapping Young Lad one (1997). And better than any Entombed album. Yeah, I said it!

Ke$ha is the one you will now. She's bratty and trashy and loud, so it'll have been hard for you to avoid something like 'Tik Tok'. This album was just a pure sugar rush to me. I listened to it a million times. Those million were mainly in the first few months of the year, but I still love the album, even if I over-played it a bit. As the 'big dog' Westwood would say, Animal is heavy hit after heavy hit. It's officially a problem! I love the hooks, the production and the attitude Ke$ha displays. Some people say she's a Gaga knock-off, but where Gaga is the high-class would-be Madonna, Ke$ha has a lot more in common with the pure energy blasts of Andrew WK or Be Your Own Pet. And coming from me, that is high praise indeed.

04. Harvey Milk - A Small Turn of Human Kindness

I know, I know. Harvey Milk were officially cool in 2008, when they released the fine, quite catchy, Life... The Best Game in Town. I'll let you in on a little secret: this is a lot better. Another album I wish I'd got off my arse and reviewed for Fact, it's a beautifully sad album that people mistake for ugly or difficult. It's not difficult at all; its 37.5 minutes actually pass by pretty quickly, a victory of musical integrity.

I don't mean integrity in terms of the chest-beating hardcore punk 'don't sell out!' thing. Integrity in this case is an album wherein each song flows straight into the next. It's a single, 37.5 minute, entity. But not in the boring drone-doom sense. Each song is its own man, but there is still a thematic coherence lacking in pretty much all other albums nowadays. Look at some of the song titles: 'I Just Want To Go Home'; 'I Know This Is No Place For You'; 'I Know This Is All My Fault': it'd be almost emo, were the emotions here not so raw and real. This is beyond the sludge of their early material. It's emo for men, and yes it is harrowing, but sometimes you can't just look away from the painful things in life. Milk have a history of taking the piss a little, and this may just be a laugh, but I'm taking it super-seriously, because it's a work of art. The last two songs are actually utterly life-affirmingly beautiful. Melvins wish they were this good.

05. Mike Patton - Mondo Cane

Yes! When he wasn't travelling the world, making millions of dollars with the dusted-off Faith No More, Patton was actually releasing new music! And not just any old new (?) Mike Patton music, but easily the best Patton album since those two ridiculously awesome ones in 2001. You know the ones: the Tomahawk debut and the Fantômas 'sophomore effort', as Americans might say. Funnily enough, while FNM were peddling creaky 1990s nostalgia to 30-somethings, Mondo Cane was a different kind of nostalgia.

It was all 60s and 70s Italian pop songs, apparently. Well, it was all in Italian, anyway. And that was nice, because we heard Patton sing in Portuguese on 'Caralho Voador', and his label put out a magnificent Ennio Morricone compilation in 2005, so it made perfect sense - especially when you consider Mike's love of film themes, a lot of this sounding like that. So it's very poppy - really strong melodies, cool orchestration, and the insanely high standard of vocal performance to which we have become accustomed from the great man. While largely faithful (I imagine) to source, there was still some blatant Pattonism. 'Urlo Negro', for example was weirdly hardcore in its delivery of the verses, juxtposing to my endless amusement with the instant jump to one of the jauntiest choruses I have heard in my life. It was as though someone had stitched Sick Of It All together with Gael's cover of 'I Want You to Want Me'. Magnifico!

06. Warpaint - The Fool

I have actually reviewed this one, so I'll leave my banging on for that. I will just say that this is the second fantastic record this all-female band from LA have put out, and it's (just) their best. But it's not 'shoegaze' or anything like that. Closest genre would probably be post-punk, somewhat anachronistically; maybe a soft take on Riot Grrl, I dunno. Anyway, it's lovely and not very obvious, and I'm happy such a good album has got some hype. But everyone should check out Exquisite Corpse too.

07. Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

I have also reviewed this, so yadda yadda. All you need to know, til I post the aforementioned, is this is brilliant. While all your other bands, like FNM, Soundgarden, Pixies, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and everyone else ever just reform to play gigs and make money off the weight-gaining and balding, Swans did it right in 2010. When Michael Gira brought back his legendary band, he made sure it was because there was an album good enough to justify the return.

And My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky was it. It's not like he'd been sitting about, counting his money in the 14 years since Swans got dead, or - worse - trying to make music but realising he sucked without his 'classic line-up' (eh, Frank Black and Chris Cornell?). Gira had spent the whole time with Angels Of Light, who sounded like a more introspective, quieter version of what Swans turned into anyway. So it only made sense that, when he did want to make some noise again, he'd bring it out as Swans. But beyond that, it sounds different from any previous Swans album. It's a new one, and sounds new. It's called 'artisic development', a concept sadly all too alien to most veteran musicians today.

08. Hayaino Daisuki - The Invincible Gate Mind Of The Infernal Fire Hell, Or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki?

Not really an album, at four songs and 12 minutes. It's good enough that I don't care. While Dave Chang, now the human avatar of grindcore music it seems, didn't quite get the new Gridlink album out (February 2011, apparently), he did get out the now-traditional warning shot, from the alter-ego Japanese speedfreak thrash mentalist Hayaino Daisuki. The Invincible Gate Mind Of The Infernal Fire Hell, Or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki? followed debut EP Headbanger's Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire in similar style: insanely fast, heavy, shouty and... well, just insane, really. And moreso than the debut.

It's the kind of thing non-metallers hate. You know that really annoying phase, around the start of last decade, when metal fans became all self-loathing, and got into 'music that non-metallers can listen to'? Isis, Pelican, and all them? "Ooh, listen to how lovely it all is. There are none of those nasty vocals or riffs or bits of iconography to turn people off. It's all very Mogwai and Sigur Ros, isn't it. Would you like a cappuccino?" No! I wouldn't. And I don't want to listen to your poxy metal that pretends it isn't metal. It was fun for a while (Isis, Neurosis, Kayo Dot and The Angelic Process did put out some fantastic examples of the form, admittedly), but then it dragged on for far too long and bored anyone with half a brain completely senseless. That's why thrash came back: a response to the utterly inert, self-important, po-faced crit-metal nonsense.

Anyway, this is the ultimate in that. Your friend who owns Takk will absolutely hate it. Good.

09. Best Coast - Crazy For You

Read what my man Adrien Begrand had to say about it. He's not as hate-filled as me. Go on, I'll still be here.
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OK. Lovely, wasn't it. Now, obviously I don't like it as much as he does, but it was sufficiently summery and delightful to melt my heart. Best Coast are a bit like Vivian Girls but, though it pains me to admit it, rather better. Crazy For You is girl-pop played by a band, and it's got enough songs to rule but doesn't outstay its welcome at all. Its hooks stay in your head even though you don't intend them to, but you don't mind at all when they do. It's a very traditionally feminine sense of musical yearning performed in a more straight-forward fashion that that of, say, Warpaint. It's quality.

10. Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

I really didn't listen to this as much as I should have done. Erykah, like her sometime musical partners in crime Sa-Ra Creative Partners, is so good that I'll listen once to her record, know it is absolutely excellent, and then not disturb it any more. And it's an absurd thing to do, because whenever a song from this record hit my ears, I was bowled over as though it was completely new to me. I really should just immerse myself in the work she and Sa-Ra have put out since 2007, because it's aesthetically cohesive, very expansive, and just brilliant. You should too!

There was other good stuff, too. It included, but was not limited to, The Secret, Dillinger Escape Plan, Nails, Autechre, Squarepusher, Jaga Jazzist, Jaguar Love, Ceremony, Pale Sketcher, Eskmo, Melvins, Flying Lotus and Joanna Newsom. And Lovers, who should totally have been somewhere in the top 10. Damn it! Not to mention the inspired and ongoing thrash metal revival of Exodus, Overkill and Death Angel. Quality albums all. I love thrash!

Then there was the stuff I didn't listen to, and wish I had (some of which I do actually own): Actress, Mt. Kimbie, Phantom Band, Venetian Snares, Cee-Lo, Janelle Monae, Ghost, Agalloch, Oneohtrix Point Never, the Shackleton Fabric thing and probably a fair bit of Fact's list.

Let's give a mention to the bands whose albums I was hoping for in 2010, but which never materialised: Gridlink, Genghis Tron, Aphex Twin, Rye Wolves and Akimbo! Get off your fat arses and give me more music!

Whose albums am I looking forward to? Well, it'd have to be Propagandhi (pleasepleaseplease), Pig Destroyer, Lady Gaga, Gridlink, Cave In, Melt-Banana, Ear Pwr, Duke Spirit... look, everyone, just surprise me, okay? And, go on, I'll issue my annual appeal to Lift To Experience. Come on, a second album ten years on from your debut would be just poetic!

Last, and very definitely least, is the most disappointing album of 2010: the Captain Ahab one. It was so disappointing that I do feel the urge to make a separate post on it, so watch out for that one. It's seriously one of the biggest drop-off albums I have ever heard in my life. For shame!

Afterschool

2010-11-21T01:05:00.002Z

Antonio Campos (2008)

This was sent to me by LoveFilm, but I have little to no idea how it got on my list. I don't recall anybody recommending it to me, and it can't have been added to my list following a director/actor trawl (they're all largely unknown). The only thing I can think of was that I added it after the recent Sight and Sound 'Latin American Cinema' thing. I dunno. However it got on my list, I wish it hadn't have. It's not that Afterschool is terrible. It's just mediocre and boring. But read on, nevertheless, dear reader!

Really, it's just a school-set Todd Solondz film. Like Storytelling, then, but without The Todd's ability to utterly repulse his viewer. Campos tries, though. The film concerns a kid in a boarding school who's, like, rilly weird or something? He doesn't play sport, and looks at rude things (with a violent theme) on the internet. He's a member of the audiovisual club and is really shy. Anyway, he's friends with a girl, and they fool around, and he tries the slightly violent thing he saw to make the fooling around a bit more kinky, and she doesn't like it. How dare she not want to be strangled. He also gets slightly bullied, but not in a major, this-is-a-film, kind of way.

It's all a bit low key. The pivotal plot moment comes when two pretty twins, the girls who rule the school, stagger into a corridor, and fall over. There's blood and screaming, and laboured breathing. Our weirdo protagonist just happens to be there. We only see the action from a CCTV camera, so don't know what exactly is happening. It's so mysterious! As he discovered the girls just before their untimely demises, Weirdo is counselled. But then everyone is. A detective asks him questions, but nothing develops there. Our boy gets asked, as a member of the AV club, to put together a tribute video to them.

Only it turns out to suck! Man, what with that, the light and occasional bullying, and his not-girlfriend not liking strangulation, he seems to be a powder keg, just waiting to combust! Think about it. He keeps himself to himself! He has impure thoughts! And he's in a boarding school! It's got Posh Boy Columbine written all over it. Only there's no KMFDM on the soundtrack. But hey, there's no anything on the soundtrack. He gets into a fight with his room-mate, and gets suspended for a bit. When he comes back, he's still really quiet! And it turns out he actually hastened the death of one of the girls: instead of running for help, he put his hand over her breathing bits! The monster. And it turns out someone is filming him. And it finishes.

Did I miss something, or was that just a completely underwhelming film? Maybe Campos decided a swathe of murderlisation would have been cliche, and he's too cool and arthouse for that. He's low-key, and would rather very little happens. Smaller episodes can mean more, of course, but only if you create a strong relationship between protagonist and audience. Campos doesn't. His protagonist is just a little shit who we see jerk off and punch himself in the face (not at the same time; that would have been more interesting). We don't care. We're not given any reason to. Apparently being a slightly put-upon, spoiled kid in an indie film is enough to make us care. Sadly not. The film's hour and 42 minutes feel like a little eternity, and nothing is gained from surviving its duration. Catharsis in the form of homicide or suicide would have been something. Or just a cool little idea. His turning around to find a camera on him is just pitiful. Wow, the fourth wall just, like, totally collapsed or something.

Whatever.

Emeralds - Does It Look Like I’m Here

2010-10-08T23:43:00.001Z

Editions Mego (2010)

While very enjoyable, last year's What Happened was a somewhat ephemeral delight, awareness of its quality fading into the dark recesses of memory. Perhaps a very clever reference to the inherent temporary nature of beauty. Or not. Whatever the case, that fact occurred to this reviewer when listening to Does It Look Like I’m Here, the Ohio trio's latest, and Mego debut. It's another delight while it lasts, but is it missing that special ingredient; the confounded x-factor?

When an artist works in the candy shop(pe) of synthesisers and samples, the temptation can be great to simply construct a melange of loops and arpeggi, before sitting back, content in the knowledge he has once more involved himself in the art of composition. The effect can be super-luscious when layered just right, but this method is rather more miss than hit in the grand scheme of things. Once or twice, Emeralds fall foul of this trap on Does It Look Like I’m Here. Perhaps the thrill of buying new equipment over-rides what may seem a Promethean desire to interfere too much with the novelty of sounds. I don't know.

Emeralds seem to realise this potential pitfall. 'Double Helix' loops along in a relaxed manner (admittedly fittingly, given its spiralling namesake... but the song was presumably named after its own structure, rather than the moniker forcing the song into its shape), but the group has compensated for this in advance. Ever-important track #1 is 'Candy Shoppe', a song that begins by laying out a Sim City spaghetti junction of pixel layers, but which transcends that by injecting actual melodic progression.

Just as you're starting to get all cynical about the form the song - and album - might take, the dirt-bass synth line enters to chart a line that's oddly similar to 'Never Meant', the beautiful signature anthem by emo/indie mayflies American Football. This happy submission to the traditional song empowers, rather than compromises, Emeralds' message: electro-fuzz translations of decade-old emo classics = A Really Fucking Good Thing (and a breath of fresh air, however unintentional). It's a human touch, a sense of sentience in what could otherwise have been a faceless jumble of rather nice aural strands. While it's accessible and fun, the song's charms are too delicate for clubland: this is a cosy, personal buzz.

When the twin paths of textural and melodic progression unite, as on the epic 'Genetic', we end up with a clear album highlight. Opening with the kind of Philip Glass-ular rippling repetition you might expect to soundtrack a montage of rushing rivers, newspapers and money being printed, and the trails of speeding cars' lights on night motorways. Equally, it summons images of myriad digital seraphim batting their wings against the neon stained glass of the Church of Kraftwerk. For twelve minutes it ebbs and flows, but with ever-building inertia. Electric guitar once more shows Emeralds' fearlessness in the face of retro or corniness, as it adds to the tonal palette of the piece, as well as the welcome audacity of the band. From here we get early 90s Orbtechre synth-waves and random Sounds of the Future. Perfect for balmy summer evenings, especially in the last few minutes when the mix turns itself inside out, a la Kyuss' '50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)'.

After the euphoric of 'Genetic' comes a welcome change of pace, in the serene 'Goes By'. This juxtaposition raises a question about Emeralds. When you hear these two songs together, as well as that blinder of a first song, the less memorable songs get put into perspective. While nothing on here is less than good, it makes you wonder how much of it you'll remember a year from now, when Does It Look Like I’m Here is as old as What Happened. There is definite growth here; whether Mego courted Emeralds due to their increasing sophistication, or the band decided to poshen up after being invited to Rehberg's party (or a combination of the two), the move towards more coherent structures is evident. This is not Emeralds' "pop album": the coincidence of this lot, Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance and Black Dice (and whoever else's sound is - gasp! - evolving) all making the same move in the space of 18 months is ludicrous.

But this is more accessible than past albums, and at its best, more complex and rewarding. You get the feeling that there is better to come; that there is a record on their horizon that can consistently achieve the high points of What Happened, Emeralds and this one. It's a fine line between dynamism and patchiness, and it's not as though an album full of 'Genetic's would particularly work. You do get the feeling that while they may not quite be there yet, Emeralds have it in them to walk that line with aplomb.

Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis

2010-08-27T22:28:00.001Z

Season of Mist (2010)

How disappointing can a very good album be? Along with Converge, the Dillinger Escape Plan are the big survivor of the late 1990s short sharp shock that was Noisecore. Like Thrash metal laying waste to all that preceded in the 1980s, Noisecore was another razing of the rock establishment. DEP pretty much killed off first-generation Metalcore with their 7.5 minute(!) EP Under the Running Board, in 1998, before minting their bewildering signature sound the following year with début proper Calculating Infinity. This was a super-technical, ultra-heavy, imaginative record that sat comfortably with other gems from that year such as Botch's We Are the Romans, and 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening, by Coalesce.

After half a decade, a Mike Patton collaboration and a change of singer, Miss Machine (2004) was both their breakthrough and disappointment. While vocalist Greg Puciato brought a new-found sense of melody to a couple of songs, the record, for the most part, was retreading a now-familiar path. The quality was upped by the slightly more dynamic Ire Works (2007), but the norm was still the Noisecore bluster the band mastered in 1999.

Option Paralysis is the latest Dillinger Escape Plan record; and the song, largely, remains the same. Familiar is the breakneck, technical metal of opener 'Farewell, Mona Lisa', as is the choppy arthythm of the guitars. To be fair to the band, they have integrated the shouty tech-hardcore with the melodic choruses to a greater degree, to the extent that they have progressed past the heavy song/melodic song duality. But while the recipe may have been revised on Option Paralysis, the ingredients are the same as they have been since 2004. There is no reason why, for example, 'Good Neighbor' could not have been on Miss Machine. 'Endless Endings' could probably have been on Calculating Infinity, moving, as it does from syringe-incisive guitar stabs through jazzy interludes, to disoriented arpeggio. It is very good, but nothing new.

In 1986, Megadeth were pretty much the hottest property in metal, instantly antiquating the NWOBHM that had directly preceded. By 1997 they were completely insipid, replaced by the younger, hungrier, more brutal likes of Machine Head, Pantera and Fear Factory. Time has been kind to Dillinger Escape Plan, in comparison. Unlike decades past, musicians in many genres can release music in 2010 that sounds not unlike music from 2000, and few will bat an eyelid. (Have the likes of Kid A, Dopethrone, Stankonia, Tragic Epilogue and Rated R really aged?) But, compared to their own oeuvre, DEP are growing stale.

The guitars are still phenomenally-played, and do run the gamut from off-kilter staccato to melodic rock riffing and pretty much everything in between. Drummer Gil Sharone, on his second DEP album, further justifies his replacement of human octopus Chris Pennie, whose move to Coheed And Cambria remains a mystery. And Greg Puciato is still emulating Mike Patton as best he can. He's more macho than Patton, but lacking in the Faith No More frontman's endless charisma and vocal variety. Puciato can shout, he can hold a tune, and he can talk all crazy, like. But he just doesn't bring the variety the music is so desperate for.

There are times when it all comes together perfectly, as on the quite stunning 'Widower'. As with 'Mouth of Ghosts' from Ire Works, a piano-based track that leaves all but a handful of Nick Cave songs from the last decade and a half in the dust, 'Widower' lets the keys do the talking. It builds very gradually, from almost A Reminiscent Drive-level gentleness, and even when the guitars are in full effect, they don't overpower the mix, instead weaving buoyant chord progression into it. The dynamics, hooks and performance are all top-notch on this track: its very excellence is maddening, as it gives you a glimpse as to how good Dillinger can be. As they did with 'Mouth of Ghosts' and 'Dead As History' from the last album. As they did with 'Setting Fire to Sleeping Giants' and 'Unretrofied', from the one before.

There are other tastes of heavy mental brilliance, as on the softly lovelorn, Commodores-meet-Mr. Bungle tones of 'Parasitic Twins', itself following lyrically and musically from the spiteful, excellent, dizzyingly ambitious second half of 'I Wouldn't If You Didn't'. At times like this, Dillinger sound like themselves, and nobody else. Which is why it's so galling that they seem content to sound, for the most part, like a band that's trying to sound like The Dillinger Escape Plan circa 1999. Wanky pastiche is fine for the likes of Estradasphere; let Meshuggah lose themselves in the endlessly repeating, labyrinthine circuit board twists and turns of their own musical creation.

'Heat Deaf Melted Grill' is a bit of a damp squib on which to end things, though it's apparently a bonus track. The second half of the album is certainly the superior half, oddly. It's as though the band, despite chestbeating proclamations of being daring or experimental, fears turning off its core fanbase of fratboys and toughguys, seeking to reassure them with familiar moshpit beatdown soundtrack. But it's this - baffling - apparent self-handicapping strategy that is holding them back from actually creating a brilliant record. For years, they have been hinting at greatness, delivering two or three phenomenal songs amid a sea of 'very good' complacency. Option Paralysis is another very good record, but how great could it have been? And for how long will they continue to intentionally nobble themselves in favour of scoring video game soundtrack paydays?

Skullflower - Strange Keys To Untune Gods' Firmament

2010-08-22T16:20:00.001Z

Neurot (2010)

I tried. I listened to it on low volume, to see if that noise-as-ambient (and vice versa, for that matter) rule worked. I played it hella loud, hoping an unholy black maelstrom would sweep me up in its infernal clutches. I tried because Matthew Bower has released some impeccably powerful music in his time, including Orange Canyon Mind and Desire for a Holy War, in recent years. I tried because this is his debut on Neurot Records, a label run by the legendary Neurosis, which has released absolute stunners in the last couple of years from the likes of Akimbo and A Storm Of Light.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do, beyond enduring two hours of boredom. Tracks begin as confused churns of noise, and go nowhere from there, sometimes for up to 15 minutes at a time. The only changes occur when one track ends and another begins; the listener is plunged once more into incessant drudge, like being buried alive in worm-ridden soil. Gone is the fizzling, exciting potential energy of Orange Canyon Mind, replaced with nothing but lethargy.

I once read that, rather than the comic-Satanick likes of Morbid Angel, Skullflower were the real, pitch-dark, death metal deal. Even if that were once the case, this lumpen example would be dead metal. Any energy, light or imagination has been eradicated, as though Strange Keys To Untune Gods' Firmament represented the last signal broadcastable from the singularity of a black hole. And, at least for nihilism on such a scale, Bower should be applauded.

Your reviewer tested this album in a number of contexts. Most successful was a walk home, after a particularly ferocious rain storm. The streets were empty, the uneven surfaces of the footpath filled with stagnant, acidic water. The sky was baleful in its bruised complexion, threatening another downpour. And then it came, soaking everything in seconds; raindrops pounding all beneath them as though with bad intentions; water-covered spectacles reducing vision to a haze of dusk and blotch-streetlights. In this situation, the album made more sense, as a soundtrack to a low-key Omega Man, walking the streets in grim un-light.

Were you able to guarantee blustery weather bordering on the malicious for each listen, Strange Keys To Untune Gods' Firmament might come quite heartily recommended. Similarly so if your aesthetic taste overlaps with the soundtrack of a construction site: pneumatic drills, cement mixers and idling engines coalescing into a steady drone. Otherwise, it's hard to find a silver lining on this darkest of nimbostratus clouds; two hours you'll likely wish you had back. If this is a grower, you probably won't live long enough to enjoy the fruition.

Great news from Propagandhi

2010-04-18T18:22:00.002Z

I learned some info today from fantastic Canadian punk rock band Propagandhi. Read it yourself here. The long and short of it is they are writing a new album already, which will be ready for recording at the end of this year. That's special for a couple of reasons:

1. They usually tend to do albums every four years, and the last one was last year.
2. Their last two albums have been clear albums of the year for me. 2005 and 2009. No contest. And, apparently:

judging from the 7 tunes we have going so far, it’s going to leave everything we’ve done in the past in the stinking dust. yes, virginia, even ska sucks.

This is very exciting for a Stan like me, and for anyone who likes things that are good. The one cloud under this silver lining is the fact that they need a new record label, after current home Smallman Records 'is calling it a day and moving on to real lives that don’t involve unstoppable bangers at the top of their game (that’s us, hosehead)'. But, given that the'Gandhi is the finest band on science's green Earth, that should not be a problem. Hopefully.

First quarter listening: artists

2010-04-12T15:54:00.002Z

Okay, so I did the songs. Next in my cavalcade of music-related geekdom is the artist analysis. Most of it is pretty simple stuff ('I listened to an album a couple of times'), but humour me, eh? This is the first of what will hopefully be... a number... of quarterly reviews that I can use to spot patterns of listening, trends and longevity, areas of nostalgia etc. Or just a way to pad my post count. Either way, here we are.

***

Ke$ha (318 plays)

Wow, after the last post, you'll be super-surprised to learn that the most-listened artist of 2010 q1 is Ke$ha. Bloody hell, what an upset: she only had 15 of my 16 most-played songs of the young year. Well I'll be. You get the idea. Facetiousness aside, her album is great, and I listened to it a lot. I've slowed down now, thankfully. (Later in the post we'll address what happens when obsessions don't die down so readily. It gets messy.)

Propagandhi(135 plays)

They are pretty distant second in 2010, but absolutely owned my 2009 in terms of plays. I might one day actually get round to my planned 2009-in-numbers dorkfest, but you know what I'm like when it comes to planning anything. Let's just say they had 1339 plays and leave it at that for now. They're the best band in the world, and I think it'd admirable that they were still the second most-listened artist in the fourth quarter after their most recent album (Supporting Caste, in March) had been released. To be quite honest, I can add 30-40 plays to their count at any time without really thinking, such is their quality and staying power. I even like the relatively lame first two albums now.

Paramore (128 plays)

I don't know why, but I used to think Paramore were Canadian, like Propagandhi. Instead it turns out they're from Tennessee. Like Ke$ha. Err, and Miley Cyrus, Jay Reatard, His Hero Is Gone and Be Your Own Pet! Now that's what I call a musically awesome state. At one point, most of their listens came from criminally under-rated sophomore album Riot! (2007). Now, I'm really starting to feel the more traditionally (i.e. second generation, rather than the current third) emo debt album. You know: plaintiveness and sensitivity, rather than melodrama and rocking out. But you already know I think 3rd gen emo has more in common with glam metal than it does any other type of emo. Finally, after initial disappointment, latest album Brand New Eyes is growing on me. I expect this band to surge as the year goes on.

Lady Gaga (98 plays)

I can pretty much guarantee la Gaga will win q2, as I think she's already added 100 plays to this total since the screengrab was made. The Fame was good, if rather lacking in consistency. The Fame Monster displays outrageous growth, both in terms of overall quality and in variety of sounds. But I'm working on a review of that one. Yeah, that's how weird I've got now. Reviewing Lady Gaga albums apropos of nothing. So I'll leave most of my fawning for then.

Shining (87 plays)

As I said in the songs round-up, this lot would be a lot higher up if iPhone scrobbling wasn't outlawed by Apple's hardware. I seriously listened to this every day in January/February, because the album was imminent, because the then-constant snow put me in mind of the band's native Norway, and because Blackjazz is the best album of 2010. I also listened to the two great albums preceding it - In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be a Monster and Grindstone - once or twice in anticipation. They really need to tour England. Especially now the snow's gone!

Miley Cyrus and Black Breath (64 plays)

Slightly contrasting artists here, but I'm no snob. If something is worth listening to, I will listen to it. At least half the Cyrus plays (maths was never my strong point) come from the two songs I banged on about in the last post. The one album I do have, Breakout, is rather hit and miss. Some of it is perfectly serviceable pop-punk-pop (the title track especially); some of it is crap (the 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' cover springing immediately to mind); overall it's surprisingly listenable. The Black Breath is destined to be reviewed by me in the very near future. Suffice to say it's the best pure thrash album I've heard in years, and makes Municipal Waste sound like a set of chancers. Dark, brutal, fast and brilliant. Just wait for the review!

Also, I'd pay to hear a Miley Cyrus & Black Breath album.

Blink-182 (59 plays)
NOFX (46 plays)

The finest exponents of pop-punk. After a youth spent denying the '182, and claiming they were just a crap band for kids, I caved and bought Enema of the State (1999) in 2008. Turns out it's brilliant, and one of the best albums from that year. Were any evidence needed, I'm still listening to it. I think this quarter's listening was bolstered by my finally buying the following album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. It's reasonable, but not a patch on the faster, fresher Enema... hmm, that sentence looks so wrong. NOFX are just the masters. Been into them since 1997, the year their magnum opus (the unfortunately- and misdirectingly-named So Long and Thanks For All the Shoes) was released. Still listening to it. I mentioned patterns and nostalgia earlier. Pop punk seems to be that particular trip, even though I wasn't really a fan at its 1990s peak, preferring instead the far more manly post-thrash (Sepultura, Machine Head, Pantera, Skinlab et al) at the time.

Soundgarden (39 plays)

No real pattern for this one. I just happened to listen this number of Soundgarden songs in this three-month period. It may have been a subconscious return to the musical womb in reaction to how crap the once-brilliant Chris Cornell had been. Soundgarden, Temple Of The Dog, that brilliant first solo album: he was on fire in the 1990s. And everything he has done in the intervening decade has seen a downward spiral into mediocrity. And then further, into Timbaland collaboration. Let's just pretend that never happened, and listen instead to this. How hot was he.

Trapped Under Ice (38 plays)
Snapcase, Integrity and the Dillinger Escape Plan (25 plays)

Went through a big metalcore phase around a month ago. Discovered some new stuff, such as the Trapped Under Ice (a big and pleasant surprise for 2009), and revelled in the nostalgia of yer Snapcase, Dillinger Escape Plan and Strife. I'd never actually given Integrity the time of day when they were knocking about. This was due to the combination of their singer seeming like an idiot, their being called Integrity, and the singer firing everyone and forming Integrity 2000. Turns out their early stuff was really good. Though I planned on doing so, I never really did listen to any more recent metalcore, TUI excepted. Still, DEP (not technically metalcore, but I've written over 1000 words at this point) have a new one out. I wonder if I'm going to review it...

And then other stuff. I listened to the Reatard because Jay very unfortunately died during this quarter. He was born in the same year as me, so it's very sad stuff. Jaga Jazzist had an album out this quarter, but like the Shining, I did most of my listening on the move. I listened to the Posehn album once. It's good, but beeped promos are rubbish. MadLove, one of the highlights of 2009, are still getting some... love off me. Naked City, Genghis Tron and Kid Dynamite are all fantastic jazzcore experimentation/techno-noisecore/good old-fashioned punk rock, and I will hopefully listen to them as long as I live. Just not in massive amounts.

And that was my first quarter!

First quarter listening: songs

2010-04-04T19:49:00.005Z

Right, so FACT have done their state of first quarter 2010 thing, and informative it is too. Check it out!

I'm not going to suggest 20 best albums of the quarter. I'm not sure I've even listened to 20 new albums in the last quarter. (This will largely be explained below.) What I will do is look at my personal listening habits in the last three months (so yeah, technically 4 Jan-4 Apr, as I took the screengrabs today. What can you do). This won't be completey accurate, as my iPhone scrobbling is not working particularly well, and I do a fair bit of listening to records. However, most of my listening gets scrobbled, as I do it through my MacBook, which goes into the Death Deck, for full high fidelity. But without further ado, my Q1!

As you can see, Ke$ha took the quarter by storm. What, you wanna make something of it? Yeah, thought not. While I don't consider hers the album of the year thus far (it's second behind the still stunning Shining record), Animal is a heck of a lot more accessible than Blackjazz. That's pretty much the size of it, really. 'Tik Tok' is one of the most-listened songs, as it was her single, and I illegally downloaded it before the album was released. Sorry about that, Sony Music. The other two songs with 22 plays are the high points of the album: 'Stephen' and 'Boots & Boys'. They're awesome.

It'd be remiss of my not to mention the actual winner of Q1: 'Full Circle', by Miley Cyrus. To be honest, I'm not really sure how that happened. I'll not lie to you: it is really bloody good, and I feel no guilt whatsoever. I just can't really recall how I began listening. Clearly, I'm getting more and more into sugary pop music, and Miley represents that. And I was watching a fair bit of Disney Channel with my sister over xmas. So I banged the album on the phone and set to shuffling. This stood out as a highlight of her album, which is pretty average overall. What makes this one is the chorus. Cyrus staggers it, so it becomes pretty epic; one of those great choruses that just keeps going, and just gets better the longer it goes on. Plus its last line is harmonised, so you can't go wrong.

Funny story about the other Miley song on there. Apparently on her first album as herself, 'See You Again' gets remixed on the one I have. It sholdn't be good, but it is. Maybe it isn't actually good, but I like it, so there you go. It's a Euro-dance remix of the song. I used to loathe Euro-dance (you know, Vengaboys, Whigfield, Cascada et al). It was, and still is, the cheapest form of popular music out there. But while it used to make me feel dirty, I have since softened on it, presumably due at least in part to hearing it a lot while in Iran and southern Europe over the years.

On a conscious level, this softening has come from the pastiche of the fantastic Captain Ahab. (That they have promised 'the end of irony' for their imminent album is exciting indeed.) Their 2006 album, After the Rain My Heart Still Dreams, was full of brilliant parody, with no small amount of Euro-house. And I think it grew from there. Please don't hate me, but I actually legitimately like that Cascada song now. As I have always maintained, there is no ironic liking: if you like something in any way, you will like it genuinely, even on a subconscious level. Seriously. So this remix is another Cyrus song with a great chorus (I love the conversational style of lines like 'my best friend Lesley said/"Oh, she's just being Miley"', in this ballad of awkward teen crushes), underpinned by a cheap house beat. And I can't get enough of it.

Hopefully the presence of Lady Gaga speaks for itself. She's brilliant. And if you doubt the quality of a 'Paparazzi' or 'Bad Romance', then you can sod off and listen to anonymous indie and dubstep for the rest of your life.

The Shining songs are there because there are two pairs of songs that have the same name. And, because last.fm cannot differentiate between them (they are 'Exit Sun' and 'Exit Sun', as opposed to parts 1 and 2), they get double the plays. Crafty! Blackjazz, by the way, is an album that would really have benefited from iPhone scrobbling not being borked: I played that every day for weeks, on my snowy trudges home.

And that's it for the songs. Next up: which artists have I listened to the most? I mean, other than Ke$ha...

UFC 111

2010-04-03T15:11:00.002Z

Every time I write on the UFC, I preface it by saying it's been ages since the last time I did so, and let's see if I can get back into the habit of it. So let's pretend I've said it just now, rather than saying I usually say it. What a catchy lead-in! Okay, let's try again...

Despite valiant Dan Hardy's best efforts, he was unable to prevent Georges St-Pierre from leaving the Octagon, once more, as reigning welterweight champion. I knew going in that Hardy wasn't going to stand much of a chance. When asked my prediction for this one, I said GSP would 'eat Hardy alive'. I actually thought this fight would represent GSP's first stoppage win over a full-time welterweight in two years (that would be his revenge fight against Matt Serra, at UFC 83; BJ Penn, at UFC 94, was game, but clearly made for 155lbs). Credit, then, to Hardy for weathering the storm for five gruelling rounds.

What's stunning about GSP's clear dominance of the 170lb division is the fact that 'weathering the storm' is all his opponents can realistically hope to achieve. Whenever a challlenger emerges who everyone else allegedly fears, or who represents GSP's sternest challenge yet, they are lucky not to be pummelled into stoppage.

Witness Jon Fitch (UFC 87): he was a welterweight bogeyman, along with his team mate Josh Koscheck (dismantled by GSP at UFC 74). But he died numerous deaths when he faced GSP. I was blown away by Fitch's resistance in the face of unceasing adversity; he should have folded on at least two clear occasions, but he battled on. Ditto Thiago Alves (UFC 100): he'd been on a run through such leading 170lb lights as Karo Parisyan, Matt Hughes and Koscheck.

In both cases, predator became prey. Victory was not an option; surviving five rounds became a moral victory. And so it was here. Despite some (notably Koscheck, less notably me) thinking Hardy wasn't ready for such a fight quite yet, I was impressed at his refusal to submit to a variety of excruciating-looking arm submission attempts. At no point was Hardy on the offensive, nor did he so much as postpone any of St-Pierre's takedowns, but he survived. And that, in the face of a machine such as GSP, is commendable.

As aforementioned, St-Pierre hasn't stopped a 'proper' welterweight since April 2008 (and if you're one of these viewers stuck in the past, who views Serra as a fat lightweight, that'll take it back to the December 2007 dismantling of former 170lb king Matt Hughes). Some might think, albeit foolishly, that this represents an inability on GSP's part to stop his opponents. I wouldn't suggest that and, to be fair, I've not seen anyone suggest as much, but hey: he's winning a lot of decisions of late.

This one wasn't a stoppage simply because GSP wanted to submit Hardy, who was commendably resistant. Had the French-Canadian decided he wanted to stay in Hardy's guard (as his corner increasingly recommended), he should have been able to gain the early victory via ground and pound. Had he wanted to stand and strike with the Thai-trained Nottingham fighter, proceedings would have been more competitive, but one could easily have seen GSP wearing Hardy down by the fourth round; especially after a few rounds of takedowns and top-dominance.

Elsewhere, Shane Carwin made his name in a big way by demolishing former champion (and seeming automatic 'interim champion' whenever injury or contract dispute waylay the genuine article) Frank Mir. When predicting this one, I went for Carwin by KO, so go me. Mir's stand-up striking has come on in leaps and bounds since embarrassing performances against Wes Sims (UFC 46), evinced in fights with Cheick Kongo (UFC 107) and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (UFC 92).

This will have given him the confidence to strike with heavy-hitting Carwin, or perhaps he felt needs must on that front. While Mir's guard is something to be feared, he'd have a job getting the fight to the ground if Carwin didn't want it there. And, once there, would he want Carwin on top of him? This was a question that didn't need answering, as Carwin stuffed Mir up against the Octagon wall until he was able to knock the consciousness out of the former champ's cranium. Very impressive first round knockout win for Carwin, even if referee Dan Miragliotta stopped the fight only after Mir had taken way too many strikes.

If GSP isn't coming in for any flak for not finishing opponents, welterweight peer Jon Fitch certainly is. Making like a lighter Matt Lindland in terms of elite, grinding, competitors who get mysteriously under-rated, Fitch absolutely dominated lanky Ben Saunders en route to a clear decision win. Apparently boring according to what commentator Joe Rogan accurately terms 'the meathead factor', due to not engaging in dumb brawls, Fitch's complete shutdown of the much taller opponent was actually pretty scintillating. Only once or twice in the fifteen minutes did Saunders mount any sort of offence, as Fitch controlled and battered him constantly.

Brilliant performance from Fitch, whose win brings us to an interesting point in the welterweight division. It has been an unwritten MMA rule that team-mates do not fight each other. However, when you have both Fitch and Josh Koscheck on the same team and in the top five, overwhelming most foes, but dominated by GSP, it seems the two should fight. UFC president Dana White apparently put Fitch on the spot about this one, at the UFC 111 press conference. Fitch and Kos have been known as gamers so tough that it's hard to find opposition for them: dare they fight each other? If they do, it should be an exhibition of awesome wrestling and cardio, at the very least.

And in a round-up of other stuff I saw: Nate Diaz continues to impress, this time with an easy win over Rory Markham, halfway through the first round. Jim Miller snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in an absolutely thrilling tilt with Mark Bocek that you should really try to see. Picked both of them to win. Two fights I didn't make picks for, but would have got right, were both Rousimar Palhares and Ricardo Almeida submitting their opponents Tomasz Drwal and Matt Brown, respectively. Zhoo zhit soo!

Ke$ha - Animal

2010-04-02T13:12:00.003Z

Sony Records (2010)

When a pretty, young, popstress is introduced to the world via a guest spot on a FloRida song, and is sufficiently well-connected to secure a P. Diddy cameo on her first solo single, you might be forgiven a touch of cynicism. However, Animal is an album of a high quality that is both massively surprising and effortlessly thrilling.

The aforementioned single, 'Tik Tok', is the second track on the album: you'll know pretty quickly whether or not you like her. Her natural obnoxious brattiness is likely to turn off as many listeners as it attracts, but it works incredibly well throughout this album. The last decade saw many female pop stars who were sufficiently lacking in overt personality that they allowed production to overtake them; this made it easier for fans of Proper Music to get into them.

Ten years ago, we had Aaliyah. Her 'Try Again' single set the stage for how the decade would develop: a pretty, competent, singer with a fantastic production (pretty much the last time Timbaland was great). Following her tragically premature demise, the likes of Rihanna and Rachel Stevens emerged, making pop music it was okay for dadrock magazines to get behind. While they certainly had their moments, the pattern of anonymity was in place, seemingly culminating in La Roux, a 1985 Boris Becker singing over rejected Sega Megadrive soundtracks.

In this context, it would be churlish to criticise a new singer who actually has personality. She's nasty, and shrill, and immature. And it's fantastic. Aside from 'Tik Tok's proclamations that 'I'ma fight til we see the sunlight', she's calling out 'backstabbing' women, and boys who 'act like sluts' when she's out of town. It's a level of confrontation that recalls Kelis on 'Caught Out There', or Britney's 'Do Somethin''.

Captain Ahab copyists 3OH!3, famed for their recent Katy Perry collaboration, also pop up on Animal. Their song, 'Blah Blah Blah' is musically competent, but is made by Ke$ha's aggressive reversal of gender stereotype: 'turn around boy, let me hit that'. While males get a rough time of it on the record (dissed for being too old on 'Dinosaur', objectified on the electroclash masterclass 'Boots and Boys'), it's certainly more logical than the whine of a 'Bills, Bills, Bills', and still refreshing after decades of pop patriarchal hegemony.

There is superficial softness in the Imogen Heap-baiting 'Stephen', until it turns out this ostensible love song is actually delivered from the POV of a crazed stalker (fading, ominously, into the backing vocal of 'Stephen... call me... waiting'). Ke$ha, like Andrew WK, her spiritual predecessor, parties so hard that even feelings of romantic regret are described in terms of feeling 'hungover'. All the while, her strangely charming voice (its shrillness belies a girlish vulnerability) is soaked in the Auto-Tune dunk tank and backed by a satisfyingly busy arrangement.

The character's facade slips a tad near the end, sadly. More traditional ballads, of love pangs and heartbreak ('Blind', 'Dancing With Tears in My Eyes'), rear their ugly head, somewhat undoing the great work done earlier. The weakest song, bafflingly, is the title track: essentially Snow Patrol sprayed pink. But for the most part, Animal is a trashy, catchy delight, with more hooks than a pirate convention. I've already listened to it more than I did Merriweather Post Pavilion in the whole of 2009, and the addiction shows no sign of slowing. While some corners of the pop world are conspiring to bland us all to death, Ke$ha joins Lady Gaga at the forefront of the fightback.

***

Witness the hilarious fallout from butt-hurt Worthy Music wastemen here!

I absolutely adore this album, and it is so much better than most albums I've heard in the last few years. She's been burning up my last.fm chart, and that's without counting most of my listens out and about. Along with the recent Shining and Propagandhi stuff, it's so nice to find albums that force me to listen enough to know them inside out. I wonder how many of those kneejerk anonymities have even heard the album.

The Hills Have Eyes

2010-03-23T22:25:00.003Z

Dir: Alexandre Aja (2006)

For too long, whenever I would wax lyrical about fantastically addictive eye-crack The Hills (which is a regular occurence with me, sister), the response from bemused 20-somethings would be 'The Hills Have Eyes?' I would then have to clarify that, no, the everyday Hollywood travails and tribulations of Lauren, Audrina, Whitney et al, have nothing to do with innocent city folk being brutalised and cannibalised by nuclear-radiated mutants. To the chagrin of many, admittedly, but here we are.

Anyway, I've been going through something of a horror phase recently (and I've been watching scary films. Hahaha, right?), including the work of one Robert Q. Zombie. I even made references to The Hills Have Eyes in my writing on House of 1,000 Corpses. So I figured I'd better see it. I really want to see the original, but I'm currently trying to get films from last decade watched, so I plumped for the remake. There is something quite charming about how visceral some of these modern horror films are. And it's nice to see how the genre varies nowadays, from the gorefests of later Saws and Hostels, to the more subtle charms of The Strangers and (hopefully, not seen it yet) [rec]. How's that for a jinx?

So yeah, The Hills Have Eyes got watched by me. Today, in fact. Not the best thing to watch on an afternoon, perhaps, and certainly not one for eating a pizza in front of (joining Saw III on that particular pantheon). But it's good. Weirdly for a modern-day massacre flick, it starts really slowly. There is exposition for days (not literally), and the meandering in the desert made me think I was watching a cut-price No Country For Old Men. Lots of desert, as you may reasonably expect, I guess.

What I liked about this one is the justification for everything: the characterisation is solid to a surprising degree. The family of victims doesn't just end up in the desert; they're no a bunch of annoying punks like in House of 1,000 Corpses. See, the crazy petrol station man has a stash of something illicit, and he thinks the ex-detective and the familia are on to him. So he directs them to a 'shortcut' to California: the eponymous hills, with their eyes. He's a bit like Ho1kC (is that the correct abbreviation?)'s Captain Spaulding, but with infinitely less charisma. But yeah, every time someone goes somewhere, or does something, it's for a reason. The film may not be original (an obvious negatory there), or especially well executed (it's not), but it's logical.

Well, it's as logical as a film about a society of nuclear-testing offspring living in already inhospitable desert can be. For some reason, when you have kids after nuclear testing has gone on in your village, your kids all look like Sloth from the Goonies. It is the slightly lax make-up that hurts the sense of threat the film attempts to pervade. What is supposed to be a Blair Witch/The Strangers/1000 Corpses vehicle for utter helplessness becomes a Troma-tastic comedy horror romp because, while the race of neo-Sloths do unspeakable things to people, they look funny. And that's not too scary. Actually, it could be more scary. But not in this case.

As I was saying, the characterisation is solid. Despite initially being a gallery of archetypes, the victims of the piece are pretty well fleshed out, especially the smarmiest of all: the cellphone salesman. Bah gawd, he's a demmycrat! He don't believe in gunnin people down! They took our jobs! But, despite the now-traditional middle class scepticism of the danger at hand, the series of events he has to endure sees him turn into a white collar being of vengeance and catharsis of a degree not seen since the heyday of Ash, star of the Evil Dead trilogy. I'm not saying he's anywhere near as cool as Ash, nor that Aaron Stanford is as iconic as Bruce Campbell. I'm therefore not saying his chin can kill, nor that his one-liners are a patch on Ash's. No. I'm not saying that. But bloody hell, you end up on his side in a massive way; if you don't, I fear for you. He's vaguely reminiscent of Paddy Considine, actually.

To sum up, then: it's good, but not great. Worth a watch if you like your horror. It's gratuitously gory, but strangely touching in places. Thankfully not touching in strange places. That'd just be weird. Emilie de Ravin, what was in Lost, is good, but has a weird American accent. A baby gets snatched, but it's not hers. That'd be a right coincidence. As per usual in the horror films (and pretty much any film, for that matter), everyone can take way more damage than they should. But hey, it's par for the course. It doesn't really drag at any point. And whoa: it leaves the door open for a sequel.

Well I never.

Harvey Milk - Harvey Milk (a.k.a. The Bob Weston Sessions)

2010-02-25T22:42:00.003Z

Hydra Head (1993/2010)

Following critical acclaim of Harvey Milk's latest album Life... the Best Game in Town (2008), current home, Hydra Head, has gone into the archives for this new/old album. Originally recorded in 1993 by one Bob Weston, these recordings never officially saw the long-playing light of day. Until now. The band is known for being somewhat curmudgeonly, and this proto-debut is fittingly nasty and strangely disconnected. Not for the 'Milk the youthful exuberance of early spotty Metallica or grinning Slayer.

It's classic sludge - true sludge, of a bygone era - which means that deep within its shroud of brutality is a real sense of melancholy. People think of the term 'sludge', with regard to rock music, and they think of bass-heavy, booming rock, that's not as sharply-mixed as more typical heavy metal and hardcore. But real sludge goes beyond the superficial, past the guitar sound of the Mastodon or Kylesa of today. It's music of the most direct lineage from the progenitors, Black Sabbath. Sludge is not about heaviness as personal empowerment: the Darwinian strength through aural brutality espoused by Pantera, Hatebreed or early Rollins Band. Sludge's heaviness is the unbearable weight of the world wearing on you.

'Merlin is Magic' has the snaking, heavy, guitar melodies of late Black Flag, at that point where their early, frenetic, assault had given way to the more philosophical frustration of the Henry Rollins era; guitarist Greg Ginn only too happy to take his guitar to similar places. But after the relative brevity of 'Merlin is Magic' and the more up-tempo 'Dating Pressures', we arrive at the ten-minute 'My Father's Life': proper badboy sludge that really lets you know what the genre's about. It begins slowly, quietly, as though it's a ballad. And then that massive, fat, guitar smears itself all over the mix, a walking melody line like a tramp trudging shit into your house.

As is the way with pacing on this kind of rock album, that epic is followed by a couple of short, faster tracks ('fast' sludge not being far off vintage punk rock in pacing and delivery), before more meaty fare is served up, in the shape of 'Jim's Polish' and 'F.S.T.P.'; together, they are as long as 5-6 of the shorter songs on the album combined. Maybe I'm biased, but its on these longer compositions that a band like this can really show you what they're made of.

'Jim's Polish' (whether it's about a can of Glade or the fact he's a compatriot of Stanley Kowalski is not made crystal clear) is an exercise in insistence. It settles initially into a single note, repeated over and over, drilling into your brain like Chinese water torture. It eventually develops into a fine display of sauropod-scale riffery, switching tempos from slow to slower, but the sheer agitation of that opening segment is glorious. Throughout, Creston Spiers bellows like a wounded bear. Sometimes he's aggressive and blustery, but at other times his roars are strangely affecting, like a much filthier version of Crowbar's Kirk Windstein.

This album is not a shining example of elite modern recording or production techniques. It was left unreleased at a time, within a scene that wasn't magnificently recorded (certainly not for CD) at the best of times. So, where even your Griefs and Buzzov*ens didn't quite equal The Orb or Underworld for 1993 production values, this Harvey Milk set is poorly produced. In all honesty, such murk is really a virtue. You can hear the muddy guitar, tree-trunk rhythm section and pained vocals, and that's all you need from this. It pays to be lo-fi in this game.

While the Bob Weston sessions aren't as advanced as either the 'proper' debut My Love is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be (1994, where some of the better songs here eventually ended up), or the belated breakthrough Life... The Best Game in Town, it's a fitting snapshot of a great band in chrysalis. It's also a fine example of 1993 second-tier sludge, below the real monsters offered up by Neurosis, Eyehategod or Dazzling Killmen. One for 'Milk completists, then, while we wait for the proper new album. That should be an ugly beauty.

Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit

2010-02-20T13:29:00.004Z

Ninja Tune (2010)

Half a decade after the gorgeous What We Must, Jaga Jazzist finally return with a band album. Lars Horntveth did recently release an album of his own, the forty-minute song Kaleidoscopic. And he was involved in the second National Bank album, in 2008. But it's not the same: you hear something as life-affirmingly perfect as All I Know is Tonight (a cruel edit, I must add), and you naturally want more Jaga. It'd be nice to think Shining's leader, Jørgen Munkeby, threw the gauntlet to erstwhile bandmate Horntveth, as both bands' albums have been released at the same time. That theory is yet to be confirmed, sadly. After such a long time away from the game, and with such a lush album to follow, it's interesting to see what this Norwegian nonet have to say for themselves.

After 'The Thing Introduces...', a preface so slight as to nearly not exist, the title track spoils us with almost too many sonic riches. It goes through so many changes of mood, tone and instrumentation that you imagine it might soundtrack one of those TV shows whose title sequences show the cast members' different personalities. Maybe if you ran the Desperate Housewives theme (a real highlight of Danny Elfman's career, its arrangement is pretty mind-boggling for such a brief piece of music) over the Thundercats visuals you'd get a real-world example of what this song is about. It's like Henry Mancini stepped out of cryogenic suspension in search of a modern equivalent of Charade or Arabesque to soundtrack.

'Banafleur Overalt' is classic Jaga, in as much as it recalls the last album's sense of lake surface-serene beauty without overly troubling one's aesthetic sensibilities. It's the kind of chilled-without-being-bland thing that fans of early DJ Shadow or Cinematic Orchestra tend to love, while also turning off the people who'd rather a bit more grit in their life: it could be accused of being background music by those more churlish than your reviewer. Besides, the rhythm section really fires it up about halfway through, taking the song on a joyride before returning it to its more careful owners, Horntveth and the keyboardists.

Rather more earthy is '220 V / Spektral'. Despite the similarity of nomenclature, it doesn't really sound like anything off Squarepusher's Just a Souvenir. Clarinet drifts up like smoke signals in the right speaker while electronics stew away in the left, before electric guitar texture adds grain to the mix. As the sonic picture fills, everything suddenly drops out again. That punchy rhythm remains as buzzing bass and crystal-sharp clarinet take centre-stage. Maybe this binary is what the title is referring to: a song of two halves in which noise and clarity, electricity and ethereality coexist. Similar is the shimmer of 'Toccata'; waves of piano sparking over and over, like Philip Glass and Trent Reznor dropping Es and re-fixing the latter's 'La Mer', as booming brass and breakbeats gradually take over.

The trick Horntveth and co. hide up their collective sleeve, and the main detail that differentiates it from What We Must, is this sting in the record's tail. 'Prognissekongen' echoes the title track in as much as it assaults you with change after change, but each time returning to a familiar phrase to keep the composition grounded. Everyone has their own riff, and plays it at the same time, but it all seems to fit. 'Music! Dance! Drama!' is the popcorn percussion of Prince's 'Sign 'O' the Times', paused and stretched out into a frozen moment, before the band realises the tape's stuck and get to work cranking up the machinery for another dose of magic.

Concluding piece 'Touch of Evil', despite the name and occasional guitar riffola, doesn't sound all that malevolent. I'm not sure Jaga can do. It is suggested by the respective bands' current cover art, but it is becoming ever clearer that Jaga Jazzist and Shining seem to have a yin/yang relationship, however unintentional. The darker and more brutal one gets, the other is equally more pleasant, but no less technically astounding. It's almost like a martial arts film. It may be another half-decade until the next album, but there is enough here on which to feast for a while. I just hope that, if Jaga are the yin to Shining's yang, the bands never reach a state of quiescence.

Random play

2010-02-18T00:35:00.008Z

Today was another of those days when the portable music player just seemed to be fantastic at DJing for me. Granted, it was yours truly who actually populated the thing with music (from scratch, since the great iPhone 3.13 upgrade debacle), but the boy done good. Oh, according to Google Docs, 'debacle' is not a word. Suggest the accent then, you nincompoop of a virtual office suite. as time has gone on, I have developed a taste for the faster side of music. Energy music, I call it, where upbeat pop, grindcore and punk rock can all meet quite happily as long as they all energise me. Be Your Own PET, Andrew WK, NOFX, Melt-Banana, KoxBox, Kelly Clarkson: me not bothered.

So I banged on a bunch of energy music for this most recent playlist refresh. Ke$ha went on, as she's clearly my thing of the moment. Her album has only been out for a few weeks, and she has already entered my top ten most-listened for the last 12 months on my last.fm thing. Yes, I am hooked on her album. So she made it on. I have also been rocking the thrash for a while now. Technically a few years, but only in the last annum have I been rejoicing in the newer offerings from the sub-genre. Stalwarts such as Megadeth, Testament, Overkill and Sacrifice have all been bringing it in a big way. So I banged on some Sacrifice, Testament and Overkill.

And, because they're related in the big tree of heavy metal, I also included some grindcore (Agoraphobic Nosebleed: Altered States of America; Discordance Axis: The Inalienable Dreamless; Gridlink: Amber Gray) and metalcore (Strife: In This Defiance). Funny thing about metalcore. It was one of the coolest things going in the mid-late 90s. Strife split up (or at least went on a long hiatus), Earth Crisis went a bit pump, Integrity made their name even worse by adding a '2000' on the end, and I stopped paying attention. Next thing I know, the scene has been listening to a lot of Swedish death metal and 'metalcore' is a dirty word. Strife, though; there was some lean, brutal, metallic hardcore. I've been meaning to revisit Gothenburg-core of late, though, so who knows.

I've also put some music that mixes the thrashing and the punking, like Slayer's Undisputed Attitude (their best, fastest, heaviest and most aggressive album), and the ever-present Propagandhi. And Captain Ahab and Genghis Tron, who mix the electronics with the rocking to fantastic effect. Oh, and I have a Blink-182 album on there because it's energetic and great (Enema of the State). So, with that fine-tuned lot, I walked home from work in random land. That was the method of playback, not the area in which I work. Hoping for some Slayer, the first song was... Slayer! 'Spiritual Law' epitomises that album's efficient approach to delving into hardcore punk's history and pulling out exhilaratingly modern-sounding rock. But not really 'rock': this stuff is way angrier than Reign in Blood, and it's a decade later!

Given grindcore's fondness for songs brief and numerous, I got a lot of DA and AN. But strangely no GL. Surprise surprise, The Inalienable Dreamless tracks (including the bostin title track) were better than the ASA ones. But hey, I'm a grindcore heathen who prefers Agorapocalypse to AN's older stuff. Soz. I also got a choice selection of Propagandhi - 'Rock for Sustainable Capitalism' and 'Name and Address Withheld' (two of the finer songs from their magnum Potemkin City Limits opus), which was nice. The thrash veterans reared their heads for some weirdly modern-sounding material: 'The Devil's Martyr' and 'For the Glory Of' really stood out. The one Strife song I got, 'Force of Change', really energised, but the real treat was saved for the home stretch.

If you have the time or inclination, play these songs in this order:

Slayer - 'Mr. Freeze'
Discordance Axis - 'A Leaden Stride to Nowhere'
Genghis Tron - 'Greek Beds'
Discordance Axis - 'Sound Out the Braille'
Blink-182 - 'The Party Song'

It works so well, and I'd never have thought of putting them in sequence. We begin this run with another of those concise blasts of precision hardcore brilliance from the California thrashers. Then, the DA track lets us know how far extremity came in four years. It's an epic for the album, clocking in at over four minutes, and it complements the fury of the Slayer track perfectly. Six years on, Tron hits us with a slice of cybergrind that is rare for them in that it kicks in instantly. While it sacrifices DA's finesse for sheer volume it's nevertheless a fine example of the band. (An even better example would be 'White Walls', so get that listened.) As though this were a considered compilation, DA return with the far briefer 'Sound Out the Braille', to provide both an accidental bumper and happily coincidental thematic coherence. After less than a minute, that rage is replaced by... a man swearing under his breath. It's Blink-182, to provide comic relief and a dynamic swing. I must add, though, that this is probably the fastest Blink song I've heard. While it's very silly, it's also really good, and rounds out this set of songs quite nicely.

Albums in the year 2009

2010-02-08T16:30:00.012Z

Bit later than planned, isn't it. The reason for that is I wanted to write a bit more than usual, and am doing. But it's all taking rather longer than planned. Best laid plans and all that. But I'll stop saying 'plans' and move on. I'm going to do what Cephalochromoscope have done (although I did decide on this quite independently), and write a short thing now, and link to the fullness. But I'm doing this in reverse, with the brevity now (brevity, moi?), and the justification to follow.

Anyway, 2009 was a good year, with old favourites bringing the impressive, and a bunch of new favourites being installed. The new Captain Ahab album spent another year not coming out, but I hear on good authority that The End of Irony will finally see the light of day next month. The intervening time between their last and next albums has seen Ahab-lite see a lot of success, most notably in the form of Ke$ha and 3OH!3, who display a level of satire, but not really. And not as good. But that's for 2010. And this, my friends, is 2009. [Cue wavey lines as we journey into the recent past.]

01. Propagandhi – Supporting Caste

Be warned: while I haven't banged on about this pon blog, I will, and it will be in a big way. Album of the year, by a long way. 2009 was all about the 'Gandhi for me. Not only was this one fantastic, but I got into their older stuff like never before, even Potemkin City Limits, which I had previously thought I'd got the fullness from. Massive stuff. March to December, seriously. Every other album by every other artist suffered. I even have some stat JPEGs that I'm gonna bust out at a future date to visually evince this fact. And, after years of limbo, I could finally settle on a new current best band in the world. And it's not even a contest.

But why are Propagandhi so good? Well, I'm gonna save the detail for later, but they have the best lyrics of anyone. They manage to take the political and make it personal. They make it interesting, and something you want to sing along with. And they take those fantastic, incisive lyrics, and they stick them over brilliant rock music. Propagandhi used to be a pop-punk band, like your NOFXs and Millencolins. And they were fine. And then they got a bit heavier, and seem to have finally completed their transformation into a thrash-punk phenomenon. They slow it down when necessary, are pretty much always melodic, and write better songs than anyone else. That those songs mean something is a bonus. Best album since... the last Propagandhi album.

02. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion

Back in January 2009, I thought this was it, in terms of album of the year. After spending half a decade unconvinced by the Baltimore crew, I was really impressed with this one. The messy nonsense of Sung Tongs was relegated to mere memory, as hot pop bangers like 'My Girls', 'Bluish' and 'Also Frightened' blew me away. People dissed 'Lion in a Coma', for some reason, but it was one of the best songs on the album. Pop-Flaming Lips (just not rubbish)-Underworld festival madness.

Which is what the album was all about: despite being released in January, they wanted this to be an outdoor, fun, communal experience. I didn't see them at a fest, but their Leeds gig in 2009 had a nice atmosphere, and the album is just a massively consistent collection of well-arranged electronic pop songs. That doesn't really do justice, though. It's as if that first Gnarls Barkley album was all as good as 'Crazy' and 'Smiley Faces'. Didn't end up the album of the year, but who knew Propagandhi were going to dump everyone else on their collective head?

03. MadLove – White With Foam

This was a pleasant surprise. Didn't even know it was coming out til it was on the verge of doing so. Trevor Roy Dunn, what was in Mr. Bungle and Fantômas, decided to do a poppy album, rather like Mike Patton did in 2006 with Peeping Tom, and released it on Patton's Ipecac label. Err, rather like Patton. But, unlike Patton, Dunn brought the pure musical fire with MadLove, instead of being disappointing. Press release cited bands like The Pretenders, Cheap Trick, X and Blondie. Not far off, then, as Dunn brought in jazzy singer Sunny Kim, to provide technically superb female vocals. And some dudes from Kitchen Motors, Xiu Xiu and other bands on other instruments. Comprehensive!

So it's melodic pop-rock, which means that the tunes have to be excellent for it to work. And they are. I'll never forget the first time I listened to it, each new melody a brilliant surprise. And the details are all there, from synth lines that spring out of nowhere to obscenely luxurious backing vocals. This being Dunn, the album is inordinately technically proficient, with some odd time signatures. But it is never to the detriment of White With Foam's accessibility; it just subtly adds to the majesty. Only lower than the Animal Collective because the quality drops ever so slightly in the final third. Gorgeous stuff though, and the best Ipecac album for some years.

04. Ear.Pwr – Super Animal Brothers III

2009 was clearly the year the pop took over for me. Not so much the bigger cool-pop names like Dizzee and Annie (though they're fine), it was all about the surprise. Which is what we have here. Now, I've blogged about this duo (now trio) in the past, as they are a colourful ball of childlike enthusiasm, and actually made me get off my arse and write something. They're just that damn motivational. The album was released on Car Park records, and I got sent it. Have to admit the artwork is not really to my taste, which meant I wasn't expecting much from it. But the title of the record made me play it, and I was glad I did.

Super Animal Brothers III is an exercise in energy. And one in awesomeness. It's ostensibly very simple stuff, with Devin making synth splodges which Sarah sings over, but it's an alchemical mixture that works massively well. The lyrical themes are so innocent (best song being about a 'Sparkly Sweater'), and performed in singalong nursery rhyme fashion, that you just can't resist. It all finishes before you can even think about tiring of it. A masterclass in how an unassuming record can knock you for six.

05. Converge – Axe to Fall

Reviewed this one already, so won't say too much about it. It's Converge: it's angry, it's heavy and it's great. It's a lot better than the disappointing No Heroes (2006), and not as good as Jane Doe (2001). There are a lot of guests but, last two songs aside, you wouldn't really know it to listen to them; it's Converge through and through. The guests who are obviously identifiable are Steve Von Till and Mookie Singerman, and they're from Neurosis and Genghis Tron respectively, so it's all good. Funny thing I realised is that, however heavy and macho they get, Converge will always be a set of emo kids at heart. As the gatefold reads: 'we may get better... we won't get well'. They're one step away from 'I'm not OK (I Promise).

06. Evangelista – Prince of Truth

Reviewed this one already too. And, like the Converge album, I've not really listened to it since finishing the review. Also like the Converge, it's the latest fantastic album from a ridiculously consistent talent (top ten albums in 2006, 2008 and 2009 is not bad going). Also also like the Converge, I liked this one so much that I got it on vinyl. And the vinyl version is lovely. What more can I say than I said in the review? Prince of Truth is dark, involving, sounds wonderful, and is just a deep, deep album. I'm really looking forward to the new Joanna Newsom album, but I doubt it'll be as good as this. That's right homes.

07. Sa-Ra Creative Partners – Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love

This should be higher. I've just not listened to it enough. For some reason, I don't really like the first song, which kinda put me off listening to it as early as I should have. That, and I held off downloading it for as long as I could. (Somebody buy me it on vinyl please.) Finally got to listening, and it's a hip hop/soul epic to rival Stankonia in terms of last-decade (last decade?!) thrills. There is nobody quite like Sa-Ra: the closest would be Timbaland or the Neptunes, but way more psychedelic, and without turning to crap like the more famous producers did. Seriously, Neps could do no wrong til about 2003. From 2004 onwards, their output was pretty unmitigated.

Sadly, Sa-Ra are yet to enjoy that level of commercial success, but they seem to be working more like a boutique than the chainstore the Neptunes became. So they produced the highlights of Erykah Badu's wonderful latest album, but saved the best for their own record. This was technically their full-length debut, but everybody should listen to The Hollywood Recordings, which was a collection of their singles/EPs, and was just divine. This is still grand, though, as a super-modern soulsploitation work of art.

08. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Agorapocalypse

Ah yes, the record with which Agoraphobic Nosebleed sold out, am I right? Gone is the millions of songs per album model for ANB, replaced by a quite sordid collection of quasi-grind episodes. The best, and most logical, point of comparison is the last proper Pig Destroyer album, Phantom Limb. This is partly because both bands feature the not inconsiderable talents of one Scott Hull on million-string guitar and production, but because Pig Destroyer also saw accusations that they were no longer grindcore, and merely death metal. Eww! Well this isn't quite on the level of Phantom Limb (the main difference being J.R. Hayes, PD's thrillingly twisted lyricist), but it's brutal, brilliant and nasty. And the artwork is just inspired.

09. Black Dog – Further Vexations

So. If you want to be cynical about my list, the Sa-Ra was this year's Erykah. ANB was this year's Pig Destroyer. Evangelista was, let's face it, most definitely this year's Evangelista. Making Further Vexations this year's Burial/Neil Landstrumm. Well that's fine, but these things aren't intentional; I'm not quota-filling, honest. Though completely different, a whole lot classier, and 100% less metal than the ANB record, Further Vexations is nevertheless a dark piece of work. The production is amazing. On triple vinyl, this thing sings like few others in the last few decades. Ken Downie and the Dust Science boys are on a roll at the moment, as there has been little in music (electronic or 'organic', I guess it'd be) as seductive as a new Black Dog album.

Radio Scarecrow (2007) was mean stuff, I unfortunately didn't hear Silenced (2005), and this is just stark and brilliant. I actually prefer this lot to Boxcutter, and possibly Burial. They're definitely better than Martyn, but for some reason are being slept on. There's as much bass on this as on most other records, and it's easily as well produced. maybe Downie is too associated with his legendary early 90s work with the dudes who ended up splitting off into Plaid, I dunno. What I do know is this is one of those records that I need to devote a lot more time to (told you, it's that bladdy Propagandhi thing again), and it's as good as any other British music in absolutely ages.

10. Coalesce – OX

Coalesce are back! In fact, they had this and OXEP, which were both great. Not quite as good as the Converge, but you'll have inferred that from the numbers sitting next to the respective albums. One of many victims of Propagandhi striding, Godzilla-like, through everybody else in 2009, I listened enough to know that OX was definitely worth Coalesce coming back for. And, for a band dormant for a decade, this is vital stuff. It's pretty damn vital for a band that hadn't been dormant for a decade. I know, they had that 'Salt and Passage' single, but that was a single. This is an album. It sounds enough like Coalesce to justify the name, but not so much like Coalesce that there was no point making new music. It's a broadening of horizons, but within reason.

OXEP pushed things a bit further, which was heartening. It means the next album (yes please) should be a branching even further out and, if they can get anywhere near the prolific run that led to their three original albums blasting out at your ears in three years (1997, 98 and 99 - and they can all fit on one CD, brevity fans), then I'll be really excited. And hopefully they can return to England, as I had to go to Iran on the day they played Sheffield. Serendipity, I know. Tech-brutality, and I love it. I need to hear the Psyopus album a few more times, but I love Coalesce, so this is my pick to round out the 10. I'd like to have fit L'Acephale, sunnO))) and Tobacco (as well as a bunch of others), but that's maths for you. 10 = 10.

***

So what's to look forward to in 2010? Hard to say, especially when we've already had great albums from Shining, Jaga Jazzist and Ke$ha. Let's just say, though, that I'll be surprised if at least one of Dillinger Escape Plan, Captain Ahab and Pig Destroyer fail to make it into the hallowed dectet on 31 December this year (I promise!). Then we have the people that I think are doing new albums but I'm not sure: Gridlink, Genghis Tron, Swans (SWANS!), Aphex Twin... Rye Wolves? Akimbo?! LIFT TO EXPERIENCE?!?!?

Okay. Obviously not Lift To Experience. A girl can dream, though, right?

House of 1000 Corpses

2010-02-01T20:53:00.008Z

Dir: Rob Zombie, 2003

I don't know why it took me so long to watch this one. I had wanted to do so ever since it first came out. And, it turns out, it's very easy to watch. Not in the sense that the events therein are of a pleasant or relaxing nature. Quite the opposite, in fact: the events therein are of a most grizzly and sadistic nature. But the pacing, which wastes barely a second; and the direction, which is rather inventive; move it along at such a decent clip that its hour and 25 minutes pass by in a flash of kaleidoscope horror.

Part of the reason why the film flies along with buttery ease is because we've already seen it. Well, most of it, in other films. The four smarmy middle class kids are a staple of these films. The ones in this film (featuring some great casting: Rainn Wilson, from American Office; Chris Hardwick, of mid-90s Singled Out err... 'fame'. Still, he worked with Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra) are a satisfying combination of sarcastic enough that you want them to die, but still sufficiently innocent that there are pangs of guilt when they do get dealt with. Especially when you see quite how they get forced off the mortal coil.

Other genre hallmarks include the southern-states hick family (The Hills Have Eyes), who are both physically and psychologically monstrous; masked giants abound (The Texas chainsaw Massacre); there is a cute blonde in the family (...The Munsters?); the know-it-all victims are attracted to their ultimate doom by a local legend (The Blair Witch Project).

So it's derivative. But it is all put together with aplomb. I checked the wiki, and apparently the critics didn't like it. This is to be expected: it's not a film for the critics. It's not low-fi enough to be truly gritty, nor is it smart enough to be satire, according to a person at filmcritic.com. But that's not really a weakness, as far as I'm concerned. Genuinely low budget attempts in this post-Blair Witch world tend to be overburdened with high concepts in an attempt to distract from the lack of means.

Take Session 9, a film whose good idea was extinguished by a concept that didn't know whether it was a psycho-thriller or a supernatural spookfest. It just didn't make any sense, and that line is too fine for many films to tread. Similarly, I think/hope we're past the ironic/satirical stuff at this point. What the market really needed was a well-done traditional horror film. The first Saw film was great, but didn't see release until the year after this one finally emerged, blinking, into the light of day (lest we forget, House of 1000 Corpses was completed in 2000).

You can tell that Rob Zombie loves horror, and that he doesn't just have a funny name. By the time his rock band, White Zombie*, gave up the ghost, he had created an effective aesthetic for them. His art was really good, their brand of shlock-metal with a hint of industrial has aged surprisingly well, and they were just cool. They had the darkness of a Marilyn Manson, but without the self-importance, and the slacker post-grunge look, but without the self-loathing. Anyway, they were a 90s Misfits when it came to the fun horror rock (and then the Misfits themselves returned just as WZ were ebbing away. Synergy!).

What this means for the film is that everything is done well. Yes, it's the horror equivalent of a Tarantino film in the way it borrows aspects of classics to create its own (Frankenstein's) monster. I find it strange that when a director takes great ideas and makes something of them that is quality in its own right, they are considered plagiarists, while musical artists like DJ Shadow and The Avalanches have received plaudits from all corners for essentially doing the same thing. Well, House of 1000 Corpses is Since I Left You with the zany nonsense replaced by viscera and tons of style. Yet another reason why the pacing just feels so right is because the film proper is regularly juxtaposed with grainy, illustrative asides, that tend to last only a few seconds at a time. Some may consider them too on-the-nose, or an affront to naturalism, but really the film is a cinematic equivalent of Captain Spaulding's ghost train, and they drive it along perfectly.

The weak point of the film (as long as you're fine with gore for gore's sake and a quite intentional lack of originality, as I am), is the plot itself. It's fine to begin with, and the victims' descent into the Firefly family's demented depravity is handled perfectly well. But, in the third act, they get taken to see Doctor Satan (he of aforementioned local legend), and it all goes a bit screwy. We get introduced to a subterranean (un)civilisation, a collection of catacombs that might make sense in a video game (ludology over narratology, innit) and, for some reason, a workshop in which Doctor Satan - coincidentally estranged patriarch of the Firefly family - experiments on people. And there are monsters and stuff. All in the space of a few minutes. But it ends well, at least.

You get thrown by one or two effective twists: you start the film thinking the clown-faced Spaulding from the (UK) posters is the source of evil, and that his domain is the eponymous House. But it turns out that he runs a relatively innocent establishment (when he's not getting stuck up by some goons), and the really horrible homestead is a little way down the road. And then it turns out, in an ending more than a little reminiscent of Friday the 13th, when he picks up the hitching survivor in his nice car, Brother Otis pops up from the back seat! He's in cahoots with the baddies all along. D'oh! But the lesson is: everyone in the country is weird, and make sure you don't offend them while they're doing burlesque karaoke.

The bonus about having watched this film is that, now, I am ready to watch sequel The Devil's Rejects. I hear that's really dark. I shall save that one for Valentine's day; build up to it with [rec], Dead Man's Shoes, Inland Empire, and whatever else I can lay my hands on. Probably not Storytelling, though. Did you know that Solondz is this year releasing a sequel to Happiness? A proper one, with the same characters? It will most likely be harrowing.

* 'Coincidentally', Rob's wife Sheri Moon looks not unlike former WZ (then Famous Monsters) bass player Sean Yseult. Is it just me?

Shining - Blackjazz

2010-01-31T21:49:00.005Z

Indie Recordings (2010)

Recent Shining single 'Fisheye' was initially showcased on Norwegian TV, and seemed uncharacteristically violent for the Oslo band. Granted, they changed completely from the reasonably polite sax-led jazz of Sweet Shanghai Devil (2003) to the epic, soundtrack-inspired In the Kingdom of Kitsch You Will Be A Monster in just two years. But there was still jazz, if viewed through a Tortoise-shaped kaleidoscope, at the heart of both that and Grindstone (2007). Even shouted vocals were performed in a playful group manner, and no ill was meant by heavy rock passages. 'Fisheye', though, was different. Here was hewn-from-granite groove riffing, FX-drenched snarls, and blast sections. It was exhilarating and brutal. And a mere hint of what the new record, Blackjazz, has in store.

Grindstone hinted at heavy metal thunder in places, but that metamorphosis seems to have completed in convincing fashion on Blackjazz. As the title implies, the musical freedom, technical acumen (and sax) of the band's jazz past remain, but the sound has been fortified infinitely with the sheen of an effortlessly futuristic form of metal. This isn't the knowing wink of a Fucking Champs or The Sword: it's an honest, revitalising take on the genre from a band who understands both its past and its possibilities. Beginning as it means to go on, Blackjazz opens with 'The Madness and the Damage Done', bearing little overt reseblance to Neil Young, as it races out of the traps with the confident power that characterised Slayer's 'Angel of Death' (1986), or Soundgarden's 'Rusty Cage' (1991).

Following 'Fisheye' is a brace of songs called 'Exit Sun'; one a semi-epic death race along a track designed by M.C. Escher, the other a brief coda. The former, once it hits full throttle, rewrites 'Army of Me' as if Björk were a group of leather-clad Norwegians, before slipping with ease into the kind of shifting, false-footing riff-as-riddle on which Meshuggah have built a career. 'HEALTER SKELTER' takes the bare-bones sax sketch of Kingdom of Kitch...'s 'REDRUM' into this dark new world, symbolising the journey the band has taken in the last few years. The melody grows, as the band has, quite comfortably into its current aesthetic. During songs like this, the riffs are so catchy that they recall prime White Zombie; they're just nestled within far more complex arrangement.

'The Madness and the Damage Done' returns, midway through the album, with a violin sample so disquieting it could have been on Venetian Snares' Rossz Csillag Alatt Született opus. The theme of growth, of evolution, continues with this track, as the violin is replaced by the full band, still faithful to that initial melody. Revelling in the sound, the noise grows: as its crescendo tops out, you get the feeling the structure of the song couldn't handle its own intensity. As the sound of electromechanical malfunction sputters into the mix, visions of cabling lashing out like PCP-addled cobras, spitting sparks like venom, we are aware the song was consumed from within by what is to follow, overwhelmed by the focal point of the record.

'Blackjazz Deathtrance' is an eleven-minute mindfuck of the highest degree. A song of massive dimensions, it takes nearly three minutes to even get going, barrel-rolling drum fills doing their best to jump-start guitars, idling menacingly. With a scream, it begins. Future-world vikings tear strips off each other as a sampled audiences loses its collective mind in a reality show bloodlust frenzy. It's The Running Man 2K10, with fittingly frantic music backing the violence. But the shred isn't coming from guitars. It's coming from... distorted bass? Satan's synth? While countless bands have married rock with electronics, few have done so sufficiently seamlessly that it doesn't matter to the listener from where the sounds emanate. The mix is so dense, so armed with weapons of sonic warfare, that it - like the preceding song - eventually can't take the strain. The malfunction takes hold once more; the song bides its time as it readies its return unto the breach. It begins again, with more velocity than before, taking in rave melody lines, blast beats and noise, building cyclically into an orgy of noise before consuming itself

A brief passage of silence represents the cut-off point of the excess. Considering not much could follow 'Deathtrance', Shining opt to use 'Omen', if it is a portent, retroactively; a reflection on what has passed. The tempo drops sharply, with the metallic sonatas still fresh in the memory. This is where the Sin City soundtrack-sax of old returns, roaming safe in the knowledge that the brutality has exited, leaving only charred remains. 'Omen's a fittingly elegiac counterpoint to the frenzy that preceded, rather like Jane Doe's title track, or Strife's untitled conclusion to In This Defiance. This is the real denouement, though we do get an epilogue King Crimson cover, '21st Century Schizoid Man'. It's a fantastic rendition, re-writing the classic in Shining's dehumanised image, while paying due respect. But, after the overdose of original, impeccably modern music, its inclusion may be considered a step too far. Especially considering how well 'Omen' ostensibly finished things.

That display of musical opulence aside, Blackjazz is a pretty vital piece of work. Though some quarters of the metal audience may balk at the absence of 20-minute drone-backed monologues, and the presence of no small amount of testosterone, it's been a long time since a metal album sounded so of its time. At points its gleaming, reflective surfaces may reflect other artists, though taken as a whole it sounds like nothing else. The shape of metal to come? Don't count on it. We should just be thankful Blackjazz exists in the here and now. If Tool or Trent Reznor were capable of this kind of thing in 2010, it would sell hand over fist. As it is, Blackjazz may just have to settle for cult classic status.

Warpaint - Exquisite Corpse

2010-01-10T22:25:00.003Z

Manimal (2009)
See it pon de posh new FACT site ere.

There is lush 'n' longing, and then there is Warpaint. You remember on Beavis and Butthead, when our brace of budding reviewers used to assume Pantera was just the singer, and not the band?* Warpaint is a quartet from Los Angeles, but on the basis of this record's bold personality and unity, could well be a single girl. And on Exquisite Corpse, our girl is in a club, eager to impress her potential bloke. As all three original members sing, this approach is probably for the best. The skeleton of the record is formed from fluttering guitar arpeggio, like eyelashes batted at you across a Minty Mudshake, though the songs are filled out with silky layers that never feel as though they're making the arrangement too busy.

After making a good first impression with 'Stars' and 'Elephants', the third song is fantastic, and also the most baffling on here. Named 'Billie Holiday', the chorus features just breathy spelling-out of the chanteuse's name. It's Faith No More's 'Be Aggressive' re-imagined by a distaff Great Lake Swimmers, all close-mic'd vocals and that muggy atmospheric humidity of nothingness, while Warpaint softly quotes Mary Wells at us in the verses: 'nothing you can say can tear me away from my guy...' It's vaguely insane, but performed with such aplomb and delicate touch that it almost reaches the heights of Hanne Hukkelberg's spine-chilling cover of The Pixies' 'Break My Body', from a couple of years back. And it has a false finish!

But for every ethereal slice of gently yawning loveliness such as 'Billie Holiday', or the opening 'Stars', comes something with more bite, like 'Elephants' or 'Beetles'. Having the songs alternate between Cocteaus-style opium dream sequence and near-Riot Grrl racket could have gone horrendously awry, but Warpaint walks that particular line with ease. The dynamics never threaten to tear the record apart. There is a definite progression here, as 'Beetles' sees Warpaint become agitated since earlier on in the record, bringing on the Sleater-Kinney nostalgia.

The end of the evening arrives in the form of 'Krimson'. Warpaint has grown tired, and more than a tad intoxicated. It's been a long one, she's all danced out, and has grown too impatient for any pretence at subtlety. So she hurls herself at the object of her affections, accompanied by a disco bassline. 'Hold me closer and don't ever let me go', Warpaint pleads, before having a little scream. Not sure what she wants any more, Warpaint complains 'I need a little room to sway / you hold me anyway'. It's getting late, and the bombastic declarations are coming thick and fast: 'I want you more than anyone ever wanted anyone before'. We're flattered, but it's probably time for a taxi...

Harmonies that are simultaneously tight and airy; melodies that largely couldn't be mistaken for anyone else. Sweet, sweet music that never gets cloying. Way more sophisticated than the (charmingly) messy Vivian Girls, but displaying that same knack for articulating the slow-death heartbreak of yearning. Without wanting to stir up controversy through positive comparison with anyone's album of 2009, this is nevertheless a perfect match for the lovely xx record.

* 'Damnit Pantera, this beer's warm! Get me another one!'

Emika - Drop the Other

2010-01-07T22:58:00.004Z

Ninja Tune (2010)

Listen to the songs here.

With little more than a modest piano motif to announce its arrival, 'Drop the Other' is quite the eerily seductive gem from Ninja Tune debutante Emika. It's one of those songs that reminds you of something, but you're not sure exactly what. And the thought process that triggers embeds the song in your head. Listening again, and again, as you attempt to pinpoint the source of familiarity - too clear and crisp for Portishead, too emotionally involving for 'King of My Castle' - is less something you don't mind than it is a pure pleasure. You get drawn into its world of deceit and self-doubt.

There is certainly an air of cool melancholy pervading this one, as increasingly numerous clipped minor-key melodies spiral downward among isolated bass stabs like so many coptering seeds helplessly plummeting from a monochrome sycamore tree. Her vocals are interesting: I'm not sure whether Berliner Emika is not that comfortable singing in English, or if this is a conscious aesthetic decision, but there's an endearing mumble to her delivery that adds tons to the rather demure emoting that goes on. Even the beat starts off unsure of itself, nestling next to the melody as though it's not really supposed to be there. It's 'The Book Group', but set in one of Distance's album cover tower blocks; paranoid and winter-bleached: '[you] assured me that everything I need was waiting / I'm so stupid...'

Scuba's 'Vulpine' remix of the track may improve on the original. Its woodblock-echo grandfather clock beat and cooling tower-didgeridoo melody transmute the ennui into cold menace while automatons inhale through their teeth, Hannibal Lecter-like, in the shadows. Somewhat interestingly, there is a brief rising sound halfway through, unconscious symbolism of the greater confidence exuded by Emika on the remix. She's dropped into the K-hole, disembodied and reverberating through fractal-filled tunnels, an extra life in Scuba's game of Rez. 'If you've really got faith, then I know you'll invest''s ultimatum is more serious this time, born of being free from the emotional ties rooting her into reality in the original mix's fear of letting go. If Emika was trapped in an unhealthy relationship in her own song, Scuba has released her, even if it is into overdosed denial. A fantastic one-two.

Super!

2010-01-06T22:25:00.003Z

So I still haven't played SFIV. I don't even have a console to play it on. But that doesn't stop me from being very excited about this. It's like that, but more, apparently. Good enough for me. I think, after waiting too long (I had initially tested myself to see if I could last throughout 2006 - or was it 2007? - without buying a new home console), that 2010 will be the year I finally join this gaming generation. And you can bet your butt that I'll be getting this in as soon as I do.

I dread to think how many versions of Streetfighter I have bought since 1993. Lots...

Blackjazz

2010-01-04T22:36:00.009Z

So I was sent the new Shining album last night, and I listened to it on the way home today. Well, most of it. It was a lovely experience: increasingly rarely as I age do I get the chance to indulge in that exciting first listen to a album for which I've waited. And I have waited for this one for three years. I first heard their last one, Grindstone (2007), back when I was a big downloader, in January '07. (As it was such an early album for that year, I have to admit it suffered when it came to the end-of-year festivities. Recency innit! Not sure where it should have been, mind. Higher) And so I hear this new one in January of this year. Obviously. Shining are a cool band. They're probably the coolest rock band going, and they probably have been for a few years now. This new one is a hell of a lot more metal than their past couple of efforts, which straddled jazz and massive, soundtracky, rock rather smartly. It's nice to see them nail their colours to one flagpole, if that's the right metaphor.

The main difference is the vocals, of which there are loads on this new one. They tend to be of the growly, effects-drenched variety, and seem effective. I have rather a bad habit of making loads of comparisons in my reviews, so I'm gonna attempt to get that out of my system somewhat in this post. So: the singing is a bit reminiscent of Steve Austin's (not that one) late 1990s work in Today Is The Day. Austin used to pretty much stuff a microphone in his mouth when singing, which made it sound really noisy and high-pitched as load of feedback happened. Nick Terry, then-editor of Terrorizer, compared the sound he made to a giant, buzzing insect. And that's bang on the money. Rather less on the money was Terry's assertion that TITD's Temple of the Morning Star (1997) was as though Neurosis' Through Silver in Blood had been chopped into bite-sized chunks, when that most definitely was not the case. TITD's record was a more calculated attempt to shock than the Oakland sextet's force-of-nature delivery. I think he was just trying so see the best in their record, as he made similar comparisons when reviewing Bloodlet's The Seraphim Fall*, the next year. I don't blame him: we all wanted something as good as TSiB to emerge. It just never actually did. Plus, I kind of have to let him off because he was a bloody fantastic reviewer. Anyway, the combination of rasping, effected vocals and epic music reminds me also of Samael, but I have less to say about them, so let's move on.

There is a definite awareness here. I don't want to accuse primary composer and main man Jørgen Munkeby of being a copyist with these comparisons, as that is clearly not the case. However, Munkeby is a very intelligent writer and evidently a student of the heavy metal game. So it comes as little surprise to spot various Scandinavian metal reference points. The mix of throaty roar and brutal music is a tad reminiscent of the awesome early Haunted stuff, albeit slowed from the Swedish band's uptempo thrash and with added charisma. The crisp production and off-kilter riffing put me in mind, in places, of Meshuggah's often mesmerising polyrhythmic assault, only a heck of a lot more varied. I think there were some more, but I'm being a bit silly. I'm not sure many other people would think the album sounds at all like The Haunted, Samael or Meshuggah, any more than it would Misery Loves Co. or Entombed. But I think there is a loose unifying thread running through the dark, often monstrously powerful, brand of Scandinavian metal. Are Samael even Scandinavian? *looks* Nope, Swiss. Well there you are.

So Shining are a lot more metal than they were. There were hints of it on their older records, in the atmsphere, the wild dynamic swings, the sense of revelling in how they harnessed musical power, even the font. But it's not in a retro, kitsch, sense, like Mastodon, Kylesa, Melvins, even sunnO))). Though they're hoary old rockers with a doomy background, I don't include Harvey Milk, as you can tell a lot of method lies in their ostensibly redneck madness. Which is in stark contrast to the Melvins, whose last two albums (2006, 2008) sound not dissimilar to their 1993 and 1994 efforts. Shining, like the 'Milk, learn from metal's past rather than merely repeating it. But they are way more modern in their approach, and not just aesthetically. It's in the crisp production as compared to the sludge of Harvey Milk (which admittedly does work for them). And, yes, the jazz influence does help in that, as it does Dillinger Escape Plan, who are as technically impressive, aesthetically sussed and genuinely exciting. Except the advantage Shining enjoy over DEP is that Munkeby is comfortably more charming than DEP's sometimes overbearingly jockish Greg Puciato. I am super-looking forward to their new album too, though, due in March.

Pretend I said something about sunnO))) being really great, but not so great that I stop thinking they're being just a tiny bit cynical in their super-super-metal aesthetic. And about Genghis Tron being beloved by me, but their combination of electronica and heavy metal not sitting as well with each other as they do on Shining's record. But that's kinda the point with GT; the juxtaposition of Plone/AFX-ish electronica melodies with the all-out cybergrind onslaught, with no half-measures. And, I must admit, it did work incredibly well on the obscenely exciting Dead Mountain Mouth (2006). (Believe me, if I did an 'albums in the year 2006' post, like I should have done, DMM would have been top 5. Easy.) Follow-up, Board Up the House, was very satisfying in its own right, but felt somewhat like a halfway - err - house between the binary metal of DMM and the all-out eclecticism you feel they eventually want to achieve.** Anyway, I'm off to bed, so I'll just say Blackjazz rocks. Some people might be disappointed that it's not superficially as eclectic as the last couple of records, but I think it might really reveal itself to be after a few listens. But I'm just guessing here. What it certainly does have is a bunch of great, brutal riffs. And it's damn cool. There, random stream of thoughts out of the way. I guess it's as good a way to introduce 2010 as any...

* I think it was he who reviewed that one, though I might very well be mistaken.
** And I think they're due another album sometime soon, now their surfeit of remix EPs has concluded.

Tom Waits – Glitter and Doom Live

2009-12-31T19:12:00.004Z

I had hoped to have my traditional year-end post up by now, but I have been more long-winded than usual, and will have to up it in the next day or so. Apols! In the meantime, here's some Tom Waits for y'all. See you in the one-oh!

ANTI- (2009)

(FACT)

If I didn't know better, I'd sense that something was winding down a tad. Glitter and Doom, as the title implies, is a live album, three years after triple-disc closet-cleaning collection, Orphans. He has released two albums of all-new music in the last decade. Rather than suggesting any kind of mercenary, contractual-obligation fulfilling, behaviour, this seems more to be putting a career's affairs in order. Tom Waits isn't getting any younger. So it stands to reason that he'd want to cross the 'T's and dot the 'I's of a career that justifies such careful housekeeping. A ghoulish thought, admittedly, but a logical one nonetheless.

As Waits grows older – estimates suggest he is now over ten thousand years of age – he sounds more and more like an incredibly charismatic death metal vocalist. Take 'Get Behind the Mule', introduced as a song 'about the very first vehicle': the music sounds rather like the bins in Tin Pan Alley receiving a kicking, and Waits expels demonic noises like he's about to join prime Obituary. It's a fantastic performance, and but one of many dimensions to Waits. What is also clear from this song is Waits' rare ability, as a white man, to invoke the blues and not have it sound infinitely smug.

Indeed, Waits seems intent on discovering whether it is possible to have too much of a good thing: Glitter and Doom Live is long. Not necessarily longer than a great many records in the CD age, but it involves a level of investment; whether emotion, intellect or just sheer attention; that can fatigue. Whether too long or not, this record is most definitely a good thing. Waits is one of those performers both sufficiently compelling and veteran to be able to omit some real classics and not suffer.

We have plenty of gold to mine. In the first batch of songs, the curmudgeonly, bludgeoning, 'Singapore' and the battered, stoical melancholy of 'Dirt in the Ground'. Later on, the delightful 'I'll Shoot the Moon', a song whose magnificence remains unbesmirched as your reviewer has not heard the Scarlett Johansson cover. Not much in the way of singles” Rod Stewart fans will have to do without 'Downtown Train'; likewise, The Wire fans and 'Down in the Hole'. A personal absence is 1983's utterly masterful 'In the Neighbourhood', a song whose lyrical and musical depth would qualify it for American national anthem, in a perfect alternate reality.

In actual reality, we are distracted by the carny likes of Heath Ledger's Joker starring in an aural Tim Burton film, in 'Circus'. Or the ennui-drenched warning of 'Fannin Street'. Having not heard the Alice or Blood Money albums, 'The Part You Throw Away' was a pleasant surprise as it lurched out of the speakers like a misunderstood vagabond. And I suppose that's the beauty of Tom Waits: there is always something of his that you haven't heard, and it takes a collection such as this to shed some light on those unlit corners of his nocturnal world.

As if to press home the point that loose ends are being tied up, Glitter and Doom contains a bonus disc of Waits' on-stage banter, anecdotes and digressions. It's a diverting enough way to spend one's time, though no more essential than the similar Fugazi mp3 that's currently doing the rounds, and certainly not on the level of, say, the infamous Buddy Rich tapes. The whole is the point, though. This is a snapshot of a truly one-of-a-kind performer in full swing. It's hard to imagine anyone really disliking the man; while he's been doing this for decades, his act never gets old.

Animal Collective – Fall Be Kind

2009-12-30T16:59:00.006Z

Domino Recording Co. (2009)

(A FACT presentation)

Here's an EP from low-key Maryland beat combo, the Animal Collective. They released a fine little album way back at the start of this year, Merriweather Post Pavilion, that could really have done with a bit more publicity. Perhaps it was just released at the wrong time: AC had written it as a summer album, whose modern-day Beach Boys primary-colour harmonies could have danced and pranced in verdant fields, drenched in the balmy golden sun of the season of love and picnics. As it was, the record lurched into the shops during an especially bleak January: a shame, as songs like 'My Girls' could really have developed a following, under the right circumstances.

Animal Collective are all too aware of seasonal context, so they have been careful to ensure Fall Be Kind (a pun on the daylight savings 'spring ahead, fall behind' mantra) comes out as close to Autumn, or 'fall', as is allowed by the vagaries of 'release windows' and 'schedules'. It is somewhat amusing that such a summery band is releasing all of its recent new music during the time of perpetual gloaming, but here we are. It brings a ray of light into our murky lives, at least.

Prominently featuring what sound suspiciously like pan-pipes is opener 'Graze'. While jarring, they're no more wacky than the tadpole chorus of MPP's equivalent, 'In the Flowers', so it's all good. Besides, the slight irritation of these hectic pipes is more than offset by the incredibly strong vocal melody. Simon Reynolds mentioned this year that Animal Collective are a 'middlebrow' act; accessible enough to blow up, but sufficiently experimental to retain their alternative cache (to admittedly CliffsNotes Reynolds' theory a tad). This writer doesn't entirely agree: MPP was indeed intelligently produced and arranged, but the vocal dominance on that record suggested pure, wonderful, pop.

Fall Be Kind is massively poppy once more, but again treads a theoretical tightrope. 'Graze's aforementioned lead vocal performance is narrative, with short phrasing, before soaring in spots, almost as though it was on Broadway. It is this kind of detail that suggests not just a fondness, but an intellectual approach, toward pop music craft that recalls Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson's 1982 albums, Imperial Bedroom and Night and Day. But then you get a song like the serene, life-affirming, 'What Would I Want? Sky'. It's a song of two halves, as the sweet opium fog of the opening couple of minutes clears, leaving a vocal hook-as-sample, which runs for the duration, while seemingly everything goes on around it. And not for the first time this year, AC remind your reviewer of Taja Sevelle on 'Love is Contagious'. I think it's the exuberant way the vocals pelt out any high notes, allied with that super-American enunciation.

It's probable, though, that mine are ears used to music that deviated from the norm, that 'poppy' does not necessarily equate to 'pop'. From the title to the subdued first half, 'What Would I Want? Sky' would realistically be described as weird by anyone outside the bubble of the internet music fan, a situation compounded by the next song. 'Bleed' is similar in mood and pace to the previous track's opening, but without the ecstatic pay-off. It's the equivalent to MPP's interval track, 'Daily Routine'. It's unclear whether Fall Be Kind is intended to represent a microcosm of the album, perhaps in response to the criticism that MPP was akin to a sugar overdose, but the parallel is there.

The difference comes in the closing brace of songs. 'On a Highway' and 'I Think I Can', rather than provide the shot of adrenaline of tribal-Underworld 'Lion in a Coma' or 'Brother Sport's anthemic car alarm rush, maintain the contemplative mood. But they're perfectly fine songs, and better to reflect the sombre tone of another year's death, than a big, thrilling, finale would achieve. This EP represents a firming-up of Animal Collective's position on their career trajectory. The mess of unfocused ideas that characterised their past is now more distant a memory; strength of song, streamlined in delivery, seems now to be the modus operandi. They still throw curveballs for the existing fans who wonder how tribal introspection sits, theoretically, with nods to Rihanna's 'Umbrella', during the record's semi-epic conclusion. But then, maybe they're not curveballs. Maybe neither the nod to Rihanna nor the curious structure are calculated: it's just Animal Collective doing what they do. If that is the case, it will be interesting to see where they go now something resembling a concrete aesthetic, and a respectable level of media attention, have been attained. How they would handle either an emergence into the pop light or retreat into the comfortable wilderness would be intriguing; one just hopes this notoriously eclectic group haven't reached a plateau.

Iron Man

2009-12-29T19:51:00.010Z

Dir: Jon Favreau, 2008

So it turns out there is now a trailer for Iron Man II, due in Summer 2010. Here it is! Exciting innit. The Wrestler's in it and everything. Given how wall-hurlingly thrilling the trailer was, while watching it I temporarily forgot one small detail: I hadn't seen the original!

So I watched the original this avo.

And eeeh. I've heard people say it's variously the best Marvel film ever, the best comic book film ever, better than The Dark Knight (which the second point would kinda imply, but give me a break. I've just got back from holiday) etc. Stakes, as De La Soul would say, was high. Have to admit before I go any further that I was a tad sceptical, largely due to aforementioned hype. I know it goes against intellectual thinking, but I really liked The Dark Knight. Saw it at IMAX and the lot. Anyway, Downey and Favreau are a decent combination, so why not. Swingers was great, for a film that wasn't really about anything.

Iron Man though. Good film, I have to admit. And it actually gave me some food for thought. But for now, let's look at the comic book/action film stuff. I'm not in any way a veteran of the Iron Man comics (I did like the cartoon a lot though. Waiting for Hypnotia to feature in IM III), so I don't know how true-to-print the origin story was. Probably not very, as this one involved an oh-so zeitgeist-capturing Middle Eastern terrrst organisation being all hard to pin down, releasing videos of hostages and hunkering down in complex cave systems. Sadly no Bin Laden beards, but I suppose that would have been too on the nose. Or chin. Sorry. Downey Jr. was charming and charismatic as the titular Man, and put over the peril of the various situations in which he found himself. The bloke who saved his life in the caves was a bit of a sad loss, but he was only a plot device anyway. And besides, he looked vaguely Middle Eastern so was obviously more concerned about the afterlife than the present life. Obviously.

This actually got me to thinking. Once Stark becomes Iron Man (and with no Ghostface Killah on the soundtrack, to my memory, and my disappointment), he's shook at the knowledge of his company's weapons being used on innocents, and heads over to a fictional war-torn city to intervene. A young family is in hysteric tears as their father/husband is about to be executed by the no-goodniks. Just in time, Iron Man makes the save, annihilating the terrorists and saving all innocents. He goes about it in massively cathartic style, and it's actually a lovely scene. Made me wish there was someone to intervene in such a way in numerous countries today. But then, in the context of this film, that wouldn't happen. He'd be fine for knacking your Talibans, Basij and various independent organisations, but the most damage this decade has been meted out by the war machine (hmmm) that was brought into being by the Western world. And Tony Stark, who the film tells us over and over again is a supermassive patriot, would not be all that likely to raise a finger to stop the kind of astonishing violence that razed Kabul and Baghdad. Wonder where he'd stand on the Israeli use of white phosphorus on Palestinian civilians at the start of this year. Maybe the sequel will answer questions like this. Right?

Anyway, once Stark becomes Iron Man, it turns out the enemy was within, all along! Yes, cuddly Jeff Bridges - The Dude, Duder, El Duderino - shaved his head, grew a big grey beard and went nasty. He actually makes for a decent villain, mainly because he's largely unrecognisable. He cons the terrorists a little too easily for my liking, but he presents a decent threat. He's intelligent enough to cause massive issues for our hero, but not so clever that Stark can't outsmart him. Plus, he professionally delivers the two key arch-enemy speeches: the exposition one, wherein he calmly lets everyone know his motivations for everything ever, while the hero is otherwise incapacitated (aural paralysis pen-drive thing, in this case); and the grand finale 'how ironic! You sought to [INSERT NOBLE INTENTION], when really you [UNWITTINGLY HELPED THE VILLAIN]' monologue.

As a whole it was fine, though far from the best anything. Terrence Howard was perfunctory as Rhodes, though his financial demand-based absence in the sequel shouldn't be anything to shed tears over. The fight between Iron Man and Mecha Dude was entertaining... and visually clear. In fact, it was pretty much everything the messy Transformers fights were not. You could follow the action, differentiate the combatants and everything! Tell me about it. I was planning on writing up Transformers 2 ('Revenge of the Fallen' being one of the lamer subtitles in the history of recorded nomenclature), but the less said about that mockery of cinema the better, really. Michael Bay, please die. Actually, that's a tad harsh. He has done one thing of note in the last few years... But back to the matter at hand. The SHIELD reveal was nice, and got me a little excited, but not as excited as the post-credits Samuel L. Jackson cameo. That was schmart, and a satisfying slap in the face to those dimwits who leave cinemas as soon as the credits start to roll. Paltrow was her usual annoying self, but she didn't bring the film down to any great degree. We got 'Iron Man' the song. The flying sensation, and RDJ's reaction to it, were great and very satisfying. It didn't go on too long. All in all a good film, and I look forward to the sequel.

Fact: decades

2009-12-19T09:18:00.005Z

So I was asked to write a couple of blurbs for FACT's albums of the decade thing. I was happy to, and intrigued as to what the order of the alums would be. It was nice to both be involved and also just an audience member for the list itself. It wasn't a perfect list, but it was one of the better ones out there. I had meant to write a bunch about it, and maybe I still will. But it'll have to wait til I get back off my hols.

Radiohead – Kid A
(EMI/Parlophone, 2000)

In a move that some considered well weird, Radiohead began the decade by ditching the indie rock albatross for which they had been backslapped by all and sundry, and coming out with something a bit leftfield. Much had been made of the band holing up in a manor house while Thom Yorke divided his time betwixt an ideas blackboard and the Warp Records back-catalogue.

The result was a thrilling journey into the world of a band both big and imaginative enough to do whatever they wanted. ‘Everything In Its Right Place’, essentially Joe Jackson’s ‘Steppin’ Out’ re-imagined as a blissed-out slab of electronica, nestled next to the super-Plone return to childhood that was the title track. Elsewhere, you’d find the agit-pop breakbeat brickbat ‘Idioteque’, Krautrock party piece ‘The National Anthem’ and the Björk-level serenity-in-discomfort of ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’. Throughout, you’d find post-rock interludes, ambient epilogues and no wasted moments. It got some stick for not being really avant-garde, but the point was to open the ears of Radiohead’s myriad mainstream fans.

It was supposed to be the dawn of a new era: no more singles; the band would release whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted; no more 2-3 year album hype cycle. Compromise was inevitable, as they returned to singles and the multi-year wait. But, for a short while, Britain's biggest band was also its most intriguing. And that's not something you can say very often.

sunnO))) & Boris – Altar
(Southern Lord, 2006)

Rather than a lame 'versus' collaboration, the two coolest names in modern heavy metal actually collaborated to create this thrilling album. Altar could have just been Pink + Black 1, and people would have eaten it up. Being the artists they are, though, from the murk and gloom of this Southern Lord supergroup came the spine-chilling slo-mo ballad 'The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep)'; the enormo-fuck, synth-assisted mind annihilation of 'Akuma no Kuma'; the sinister hypnagogic assault of 'Fried Eagle Mind'. The suffocating atmosphere and low frequency overload meant Altar could be as palatable to Hyperdub fans as Relapse ones; perhaps more so.

Not just the five full-time members of the two bands, the record enlisted the likes of Jesse Sykes, Earth's Dylan Carlson and Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, but it sounds like the work of a single entity. So complete is the vision on Altar that there is a 28-minute 'prelude': Her Lips Were Wet With Venom (SatanOscillateMyMetallicSonatas)' boasts a palindromic arrangement to match its subtitle. While post-metal may largely be a damp squib, this record alone justifies the sub-genre's existence.

The Ghost Of A Thousand: 'Knees, Toes, Teeth'

2009-12-18T22:44:00.003Z

Hailing from punk rock hotbed, err, Brighton, TGOAT don't let their hometown's lack of gritty intensity hinder them. They're angry young men, presumably about all the party conferences going on in their neck of the woods, but you can’t really make out the words anyway. They realise their simmering angst in a catchy fashion that marries bang-yer-head riffs with swathes of frenetic melody, mixed in with howling screams and Iggy Pop snarls. But mainly the screams.

This is proper rock music, with mouthy guitars and testosterone flying all over the place (women possessing testosterone too, feminist rock fans). And it's pretty desperately required in a British music scene that has in recent times been so softened and greyed-out that any waster with a guitar is automatically described as 'rock'. The clue's in the name: if you do not rock, you probably are not rock.*

'This is our religion', TGOAT roar during the chorus. Based on the enthusiasm and fire on display here, you believe them. Can't vouch for the rest of the lyric, due to the aforementioned RAAR-iness of their delivery. There may be something in there about not liking New Romantics, but it could just as easily have been 'onomatopoeic'. The vocals do get clearer on the rest of the album, New Hopes, New Demonstrations, but this song's sub-three minute detonation is to that album as Deftones' explosive 'Elite' was to White Pony. It's the short, sharp shock of the record, and if Top of the Pops was still going, the kind of thing you'd want incongruously featured on there, like you'd get the Almighty doing back in the day.

* Indeed, recently unearthed parchment suggests this last sentiment was Descartes' planned sequel to cogito ergo sum.

Dead Confederate – Wrecking Ball

2009-12-17T23:14:00.005Z

Wrecking Ball is good, old-fashioned rock music. Dead Confed being from the state of Georgia (in America, as opposed to the former Soviet republic), the traditionally exaggerated rawk twang doesn't come across at all exaggerated. The pleasure that comes from listening to opener 'Heavy Petting' or single 'The Rat' (the latter complete with super-pronounced 'bang-bueeerrrnng') is awesomely free from guilt. It's also devoid of the if-it's-not-ironic-it-should-be air that hangs over the likes of Wolfmother, Jet or Black Mountain.

A detail worth mentioning is Hardy Morris' eerie vocal similarity to the late Kurt Cobain: that combination of pure, angelic, voice drowned in anguished grit and growl is far more compelling than the feeble attempts of Bush and early Silverchair, back in the dim and distant mid-1990s. You get the feeling this is not totally coincidental, either, as 'Goner' features that near-doom pace, swinging-axe riffing and wolf-trapped-in-snare howl of 'School's cry of 'no recess!' It's the kind of song you can see yourself happily listening to, years from now.

Some have compared Dead Confed to Radiohead. Such comparison is not entirely without merit, especially when listening to the widescreen, resigned, languor of 'Yer Circus', which aims at a spot near the end of OK Computer, but would fit more comfortably on the cynical, beaten-down Hail to the Thief. Thankfully, though comparisons could be made to Radiohead, Nirvana or even Cave In's delightful, spacious Jupiter, there is enough Dead Confederate on show here to suggest this is a band that is more than a grab-bag of influences. 'Start Me Laughing's melodic rage might remind a tad of Pearl Jam, but when was the last time that band had this level of urgency? It was a lifetime ago, and this is where the album pays dividends. It's essentially a (bizarrely southern) Grunge album at a time when most of that scene's main players are either dead or redundant.

Not only is this album a teensy-weensy bit derivative, but when the band slows proceeds down a notch, as on the lengthy 'The News Underneath', the quality dips. Live by the blues-tinged southern rock sword, die by the southern blues-rock ballad, it seems. 'Flesh Colored Canvas' is marginally better – it's aiming more for 'epic' than 'long ballad', even if it doesn't quite work – but even longer than the other one. Together they combine for 19 minutes, but it may as well be 19 hours. Or 19 months. 'Dry County', by Bon Jovi is a straight-up better long southern ballad (and from a northern band). And that's without getting into the actually really good stuff, like 'Tuesday's Gone', by Lynyrd Skynyrd, or Ted Nugent's 'Stranglehold'.

Luckily, this seemingly contractually obliged balladry is confined to two of the album's ten tracks; the rest of the record ambles on at a decent pace, with a respectable amount of intensity. This isn't, as press shots might indicate, the rawest, hungriest sound in rock. Compare it to golden oldies like Zeke, The Cramps, Harvey Milk or early Mondo Generator, and Wrecking Ball's pop sensibilities are suddenly evident. It'll come as little surprise, then, to learn that Dead Confederate were 'discovered' by Gary Gersh, the man what brung Nirvana to Geffen Records. Take this record for what is is – a nearly-great collection of well-performed southern rock songs with just enough bark and bite – and you'll find a real grower. Wrecking Ball rewards repeated listens, and bodes well for the future, especially if they take any inspiration from one-time tour-mates, and fellow Georgians, the Black Lips.

Flyleaf – Memento Mori

2009-11-22T11:46:00.003Z

Polydor (2009)

There is something to be said for second chances. Upon first hearing Memento Mori, second album from Texan major label melodic metal crew Flyleaf, it didn't make much of an impression. Or, to be more precise, it made a very poor impression. Their first album, 2005's self-titled effort, was quite the concise display of the genre. While it was unlikely to challenge the classics of recent mass-appeal metal – such as Incubus' Make Yourself or, perhaps more pertinently, Paramore's Riot! - it was a fun way to pass your time.

Memento Mori, initially at least, was less fun. Its 43 minutes (when we discount the international mix of 'Again') were rather a drag, and it didn't sound like it was a bold step on from the debut, as one might expect from a sophomore album. The guitar, especially, was – as they might say in Texas – mealy-mouthed. Further listens reveal an album more full-blooded than originally suggested. 'Beautiful Bride' is a fantastic tune, chugging groove riffs intertwined with a strong, individual, vocal performance. It's anthemic and dynamic: a vibrant start to the album. The pacing, guitar tone and vocal melodies are reminiscent of the ethereal debut album by A Perfect Circle.*

'Something's missing in me', Lacey Mosley sings in 'Missing'. While the song-strength holds out at least to the point of this song (admittedly only four tracks in), it's nevertheless a portent of things to come. As strong as the first half of the album is – somewhere between the first and second Paramore album, (f)emo fans – the second sees the band stagnate somewhat. There are one or two ballads here ('Set Apart This Dream', 'Tiny Heart'), but the prevailing sense of sluggishness is more due to a lack of real inspiration. 'In the Dark' brings faster riffing in parts, but it seems a bit too contrived. 'Now for the faster song', you can almost hear them yawn. Perhaps this is overly harsh judgement of what is ostensibly smart pacing, but the problem lies in the failure of such pacing to be felt over the course of the album. If you mix speed and ballads in with your mid-paced rockers, the overall effect shouldn't seem so one-dimensional.

At this point we should broach the subject of Christian rock. As an entity, I don't mind it as much as many other observers seem to. Bob Dylan's late-1970s conversion led to his best music of that (post-Desire) period. Chicago doomsters, and noted God botherers, Trouble (they had a record called Psalm 9) were one of the finer metal bands of the 1980s. The greatest album of this decade was about how 'Texas is the centre of Jerusalem', and contains comic discussions between God and his devoted, though self-aware, subject. Flyleaf, at this point in their career, are nowhere near that level. Nor are they Stryper. They're more a kin to POD, whose similarly accessible brand of metal could be listened to without once turning your thoughts to the spiritual.

So is the case with this. Debates over the point(lessness) of religion to one side for the purpose of this review, religion has a centuries-long history of inspiring art. Rather than being defined by, or even inspired by, the religion that precedes Flyleaf (let's face it: rarely does a band find itself described as agnostic rock, so why the focus on Christianity?), this is a chart rock album like most others. Maybe I'm not listening sufficiently closely. The album's title is, of course, a reference to divine judgement; the ever-present spectre of death's possibility. The cover art depicts imminent mortality, and its observation thereof by an implacable, regal, figure. The songs do little to communicate this.

One would imagine, if one were to meditate on a religious rock band, possessed by a fanatical fervour, wondering about the razor's edge on which we reside; that mortal coil off which we could soon shuffle all too easily... that such music would be imbued with an urgency to justify its faith. Judgement is looming; that point in time we face up to cold evaluation in the harshest light of day. What have you done? What are you doing? What change are you effecting, either within yourself or others? If, at such point the Rapture occurs, how inspired are your listeners? For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

Or are you simply retreading the musical footsteps taken by Lacuna Coil, The Gathering, Paramore and Evanescence? Using religious imagery, the sounds of sanitised emo-core, guts and viscera hidden away by over-production, and the blind faith of the Christian rock market, to lead you to the everlasting light of the pay window? To create largely agreeable pop-rock is one thing. It's a fine skill, for which many bands are suitably rewarded. Memento Mori is certainly no worse than the most recent Incubus or Deftones albums. But to dress it up in religious imagery, in mock-heroic robes, and hope titular association with a historical artistic movement is enough to raise it on angels' wings, is a leap of faith too far.

* A Perfect Circle were, of course, rather opposite in their belief to Flyleaf. 'How your saviour has abandoned you / Fuck your god, your lord, your Christ / He did this / Took all you had and left you this way / Still you pray' makes you wonder if there is any intentional influence.

Converge – Axe to Fall

2009-11-10T23:09:00.007Z

Epitaph (2009)

Massachusetts-based Converge offer a convincing case for best metal band of the decade. Consistently brutal, intense, intelligent and aesthetically astute, they effectively put a lid on the 90s noisecore subgenre with their epoch-defining Jane Doe, in 2001. Essentially a concept album about a relationship gone horribly wrong, it was followed up three years later by the bleak You Fail Me, itself a drained husk after the 'Bitter and Then Some' Jane Doe. The more straightforward (save for the exceptional centrepiece 'Grim Heart / Black Rose') No Heroes followed in 2006. Though less inspired, it was effective in consolidating the Converge legend.

Now, and not without expectation, comes Axe to Fall. The band's status has been reflected in the guests on here: Steve Von Till from Neurosis; three quarters of Cave In; all of Genghis Tron, among others. Thankfully, the Converge identity is sufficiently strong to assimilate, rather than be defined by, these guests. You wouldn't know Cave In play on 'Effigy' if someone didn't tell you. Ditto former Entombed guitarist Uffe Cederlund on 'Wishing Well'. Thankfully, the songs benefit, whether you notice the personnel or not.

In a reductive sense, it could be argued that Axe to Fall is Converge's thrash album, after their noisecore (2001), hardcore (2004) and metalcore (2006) records. That would obviously sell their sounds short, but the increase in Kurt Ballou's staccato riffing and Ben Koller's new-found fondness for pasting the double bass drum like he's Dave Lombardo or Gene Hoglan is rather noticeable. First song 'Dark Horse' explodes into action, roaring and flexing like Iron Maiden's Lucozade ad song ('Phantom of the Opera', in case you didn't know) re-written for the UFC era. Indeed, a good portion of the songs on here are brief, violent, attacks on the ears and mind: guitars and drums squalling, spinning and flying off in all directions. Jacob Bannon – sounding incrementally more human through the course of this decade – rants and howls throughout, of revenge, anxiety and dread: 'I'll do anything that I can do / To lock the window beasts are climbing through'.

There is counterpoint to the rage and bluster. As with past records, these moments contextualise, as well as break up, the frenzy. 'Damages' chips and gnaws away at you, angle-grinding post-noise; a virtuoso Wolf Eyes, by way of Discharge's 'Protest and Survive'. Steve Von Till's grizzled, veteran, Lanegan-esque tones bring melody and variety to the closing stages of album. Like a Neurosis song, 'Cruel Bloom' offers the extremes of calm and punishment. Though you know it will kick in with some force, the song does so in a way that maintains the sense of melody and space that makes the track so delightfully ominous.

Concluding 'Wretched World' begins with the insistent clicking harmonic of a clock tick-tocking. Mookie Singerman, of New York techno-grindcore band Genghis Tron, sings on this one, and it continues the paradoxically bruising melancholy of that band's last album, Board up the House. Singerman intones, with far more confidence than in the past, of 'a broke life's shattered art'; two bands holding fire for a beautiful finale that at once caps off another brilliant Converge record and whets the appetite for 'Tron album number three. While the news that this album would feature a host of guests suggested a mess of sounds, and perhaps even career desperation after seemingly exhausting the avenues of hardcore/noisecore/metalcore, it has paid off. Certainly, on this last pair of songs, the guests bring their own sound and identity to the mix, while never detracting from the cohesion of the record. It's a tribute to a band that keeps developing their sound while never appearing repetitive. In a world of lo-fi and shoegazers, this is rock music in HD.

***

POSTSCRIPT: Yeah, that was a cheesy last line, but I needed a convenient way to finish the review for Fact. Otherwise, I'd have banged on forever about the album. See, I review a fair few things, but rarely do I get asked to write up a band of whom I have been a fan for years. And I know a couple of their albums really intimately, so the temptation was to go super-in depth on the little differences, and what the album means in the grand Converge narrative. Of course, Fact is a very cool publication, whose readers are more interested in minimal house and dubstep. So I have to be careful not to completely alienate them. I mean, if I was writing for Terrorizer or someone, I might be able to do that dorky stuff, but this game's about trying to read your audience innit. If you can't read them, they won't read you. And other cliches. So I'll probably do the in-depth dork-out stuff when I get with the albums-in-2009 post.

But before I finish, 'Damages' really is a classic Converge song. Up there with 'The High Cost Of Playing God', 'You Fail Me' or 'Grim Heart / Black Rose'. Seriously good, in other words. And you think this post is nerdy? Just wait for the next one...

Cold Cave: 'Death Comes Close'

2009-11-08T23:40:00.001Z

Cold Cave follow their acclaimed recent album with an EP for Matador. Main tune, and album cut, 'Love Comes Close' comes close to being really good. But there's something missing. Our man Wes Eisold used to be in screamy hardcore band Give Up The Ghost. Really good, it was. But times change, and Wes is to be applauded for the stylistic leap he has taken for the Cold Cave project. Only problem is it's a bit by-numbers (as much as a Michael Gira-fronting-New Order deal could ever be). It's catchy, and well-made, but a bit karaoke, and lacks that steely inhumanity that characterises the best synth pop. It’s 'Goodbye Horses', by way of Flight Of The Conchords’ David Bowie impression.

The other tracks on the EP are far more successful. Killer electro-pop sounds either like robots making music with heart-warming humanity (Kraftwerk, Perrey-Kingsley, Yello) or humans making music with heartless efficiency (everyone else). R&B songstress Cassie got this right on her ‘Me&U’ single, as Eisold does on ‘Double Lives in Single Beds’. Opening like a pop take on Burial's ghost-bleeps haunting housing estates, its vibrant, broad, synth brush strokes give it a sound of its own.

'Theme From Tomorrowland' sees androids dreaming of electric romance in fibre-optic bedsits. There's even a hint of Springsteen's escapist fantasy, albeit updated for a digitally nihilistic age, our protagonists singing 'I don't know where I'm coming to / And I don't care if I never ever get there.' Final track, 'Now That I'm In The Future', is the musically darkest song, threatening to suffocate the listener in the shifting sands of cyberpunk excess.

The overall experience is emotionally hollow, but with a strange feeling of science fiction satisfaction, like getting pick-pocketed by a replicant in metallic leggings. 'The future comes when the past decays', Eisold observes. Whether this is a reference to his falling out of love with hardcore punk, or to the current trend for faux-naive synth-popsters springing up like so many silicon shrooms, is unknown.

Lightning Bolt – Hypermagic Mountain

2009-11-07T11:27:00.008Z

Load Records (2005)

Hey! Remember the 2005 project? Well, I put the kibosh on it because, well, I didn't get my act together quickly enough and, let's face it, nobody wants to know what your top 50 of one year is. I like to think it was endearingly quixotic. Anyway, there were some write-ups that I completed that didn't end up on here at the time. And, seeing as I just wrote about the new Lightning Bolt album, I figured why not publish my thoughts on the record directly preceding it? So here we are. This does not mean I will suddenly stick all those completed reviews on the blog right now. That's because I have an even more 'endearingly quixotic' project in the works, of which this album is most likely not a part. Can you guess what it is?! Ooh, exciting innit.

[As this is old, and part of the 2005 project, there will probably be references to that. And recent events that are now dim and distant. Please excuse these. I'm not editing them out, as I like the historical artifactitude of it all. At which number would this have been, pop-pickers? Funnily enough, it'd likely only have been one or two places above this one, the last post made while 2005 project was still alive. How weird! Anyway, here we go.]

***

I want to stick this album higher than I have done, but there is a flaw preventing me from doing so. Before that, I would like to focus on the many positive attributes Lightning Bolt brought to the table in the oh-five.

For those who don’t know, Lightning Bolt are an incredibly energetic power duo from Providence, Rhode Island, and signed to Load Records, home to many energetic American power- bands. The unifying theme of the label essentially consists of DIY-sounding, angry (but in a fun, rather than angsty, way), noise-rock bands with a definite punk rock sensibility. Check it out for it is, along with Crucial Blast (Genghis Tron [they're now on Relapse - me, in 2009], Skullflower, Geisha etc), where it’s at for modern noise rock at the moment.

Hypermagic Mountain is the fourth album from this fuzzed-out rhythm section, and it is epic. But when I say ‘rhythm section’, this is not a detail easy to infer from listening to the music, for it is intensity in Ten City. The bass is distorted almost beyond recognition, and sounds very high, almost like a normal electric guitar. This, coupled with Brian Gibson’s virtuosity on the bass – able to hit rhythm, riff and solo like he was ringing a bell – legitimately remind me of the late Cliff Burton, Metallica’s second, and pretty definitely most well-loved, bass player.

The drumming is equally fantastic. Like Gibson, skinsman Brian Chippendale plays like everything is a solo, but with such rhythmic precision and visceral impact that the listener is never left resenting such a display of technical skill. It is this combination of immense technical acuity with punk attitude and compositional skill that has led them to be described as both punk rock and prog rock, a laurel few bands can boast.

The ‘punk’ aspect is evident in the rough and ready delivery of the music, as well as their frenetic live shows and overall aggressive sound. The prog aspect, though I would not use the term to describe them, is more justifiable now than ever before. The crazy time signatures and song construction sounds like it has more in common with the improvisation of free jazz than the planned-out prog, but that depends on how the Brians write their songs. So that angle is possible, though debatable, even with the recent more towards ten-minute songs (‘Dead Cowboy’ and ‘Mohawk Windmill’ take a bow). More compelling is the nomenclature they give their music: albums called Ride the Skies and Hypermagic Mountain, as well as songs like ‘Infinity Farm’, Dracula Mountain’ and the excellently-monikered ‘Crown of Storms’ suggest a penchant for fantasy/flights of imagination in keeping with a lot of prog.

Anyway, this album is pretty brilliant. ‘Magic Mountain’ is especially notable for its almost unbearable rising motif: the bass slowly, jaggedly, crunches up the gears as though it was a particularly testy Mitsubishi GTO, while the drums punctuate each grind, as the music rises and rises. Up, and up, new gear; up and up… there is brief catharsis in rock-out, but soon the duo is back to the building, building, tightening that elastic band til you think it’s gonna snap. It goes higher and higher, with a drone now in the background, building and building, and it explodes again with a minute left in the song! But it’s still building. Then the bass-line gets stuck in a circular pattern, as though their car was stuck in mud. Now it’s upper register bass loops as the GTO struggles with all its might to get out of the mud. The bass/engine is whining in the upper register, sounding like a guitar, and the tensile strength of the tune is being taken to its very limits. And then – it stops.

Sadly there comes a point, admittedly on track nine (of twelve) where the flaw hits you: there is just too much. My idea of great punk/hardcore/Noisecore albums is that short sharp shock effect. The best Dillinger Escape Plan release is less than eight minutes long. My favourite album of 1999, the Coalesce swansong [not a swansong any more! - me again], is twenty-three minutes. The problem with a release of this type being so long is that, rather than being shocking and awesome, just becomes slightly fatiguing. Worse, you get desensitised to it. When you’ve had eight tracks of this excellence, a ten-minute song is not what the doctor ordered – unless it is a complete change of pace.

So that is the issue with what is otherwise an absolutely scintillating album. It’s a shame, because the album directly prior, Wonderful Rainbow, was shorter and didn’t get old, so you can infer how awesome this could have been. I really want to tell everyone to rush out and get this, so buy …Rainbow instead; you’ll get the idea.

Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

2009-11-05T23:02:00.005Z

Load Records (2009)

Lighting Bolt are a tough one to review. They have always been off in a world of their own. It's a world of sky-riding, wonderful rainbows and hyper-magic mountains. A world where cover artwork is rendered lovingly, and innocently, to brilliantly detailed effect. Seriously, their sleeve art is clearly the portfolio of someone who has the hand of a savant and the mind of a brilliant six year old. Their albums are just as vivid and innocent: two-instruments (bass and drum, though you'd never believe it, listening to them) battle and collude to confuse and edify their listeners. It's like nothing else. Only now, in bands like That Fucking Tank, is anyone approaching their laser-like, chaotic minimalism. That's pretty much the definition of 'original'.

But how original can it remain, a decade on? Two musicians, playing complex rock music, can only go so far, right? Wonderful Rainbow (2003) was arguably a pinnacle for the duo; vibrant aural colours splashed all over the place, crashed like waves against psychedelic cliffs. A tag-team beatdown, blows raining down on you as the pair seemed to alchemise constant fills and virtuosity into a noise bordering on pop music. The epic Hypermagic Mountain (2005) bordered on prog: an hour spent in their world of 'Mega Ghosts' and 'Infinity Farms' bordered on too much. Songs up to ten minutes long led to the sonic equivalent of barfing after consuming too much sugar and spinning around.

Four years later, the philosophical change is clear. The simple exuberance of old has been replaced by a more fuzzed, Gang Gang Dance/Black Dice aesthetic. The vocals, in as much as they were ever present, are still here. They sound as much like a giant wasp screaming through a megaphone into a tin bucket filled with tracing paper as they ever did: akin to Zen Guerilla covering Kyuss' 'Mondo Generator'. They fit the new lo-fi sound very well, even if the lazy swagger introducing 'Colossus' makes you think Buzz Osborne is about to sneer his way into the mix, such is its recollection of early 90s Melvins slacker-chic. 'Flooded Chamber' is a theoretical step in the right direction, too, as the LB bring chaos and constantly-changing sounds to the fore. Problem is, it's a bit too random, like the finely tuned, controlled chaos that defined their earlier work has now bubbled over. It'd be exciting if it wasn't so desensitising.

Conservative as this sounds, and as much as we like bands to push themselves as far as possible, the best material on here is actually that which sounds most like their back catalogue. 'Funny Farm' is a perfect case in point: straight-up punk rock pummelling, mixed with that perfect combination of addictive hooks and technical ecstasy. It's such a frazzled blast of high energy sound-spikes that you find yourself going all Super Hans as you proclaim the crack to be rather moreish. Change works superbly on 'Rain on the Lake I'm Swimming In', a blissful vignette that articulates perfectly the cartoon idyll in which the pair seem to reside. 'S.O.S.', too, is a new side of Lightning Bolt that work really well. Where usually their heaviness and intensity are filled with fun and colour, the directness and effected shouting suggest, if not actual aggression, something in that area. It's a thrilling change of mood.

And that's what's perhaps most interesting about Earthly Delights. Where most bands still front-load their records (on account of the fear that you'll hit Shuffle as soon as something displeases, like a bedsit record company exec), the 'Bolt seem to ease you in before really testing you. The first few songs are like a recap of where they've been, combined with an abstract of what they intend to do for us over the next 50 minutes. It's only once we're settled in that the fireworks fly. It's a bit of a shame that only half the album is both novel and exciting (by the ridiculous standards they have set for themselves), but this is objectively one hell of a journey. If you're new to the band, there may be no better place to begin than here.

Seeland: 'Call the Incredible (Advisory Circle mix)'

2009-11-03T23:20:00.002Z

Heroes of electro-nostalgic reassurance-core, Seeland, get fiddled with by The Advisory Circle, in an unsettlingly relaxing track. It's rather a subtle remix, TAC stripping the backing vocals and general sonic bric-a-brac from the cyber-Richard Hawley original (the B-side of 'Library'), and replace it with the feeling that our imagined Hawley has slipped some Rohypnol in your drink in the back room of a pub on the outskirts of Sheffield. Which is better than the vague aftertaste of Jethro Tull that the original leaves you with, admittedly.

It all gets a bit woozy, with a Boards Of Canada melody line wandering into the mix to replace the chiming futuristic cityscape synth, and you're left feeling maybe too comfortable. 'It's up to you', actual singer Tim Felton gently intones into your shell-like, as the minimalist plucked strings ebb and echo in the back of your skull. He makes it seem like the choice is yours tonight, but you're too far gone. He's feeling up your thigh, and you know it's not right... but his hand is warm and strong. Damn it, Seeland, no means no!

Evangelista packaging fetish

2009-11-02T17:39:00.005Z

Yep, I got a new camera. And, with it, the glorious return of Packaging Fetish! Yay!

Evangelista – Prince of Truth

2009-11-01T13:36:00.003Z

Constellation Records (2009)

Former Geraldine Fibbers vocalist Carla Bozulich released a fantastic album in 2006: Evangelista. It was evidently so good (along with the fact that she now had a band) that she released her next album, Hello, Voyager, under the Evangelista alias. That was one of the finest records of last year. Prince of Truth is the second Evangelista album – can it continue the run of excellence?

Short answer: yes. Bozulich is an otherworldly talent, and the players she has been working with for the last few years complement her perfectly. Hello, Voyager was a record of vast emotional diversity; it touched on the rain-spattered melancholy of Evangelista, but juxtaposed it with exuberant exhortation to the listener, defying categorisation. It translated, with seemingly matchless intensity, to the live setting. She pulls you into her personal underworld, strips herself and the audience emotionally naked, and makes you love it.

Prince of Truth is less extravagant, in the PT Barnum, big top, sense, but absolutely destroys on other levels. 'You Are Jaguar', for example, stirs up a bewildering whirlwind of intricate, lovely, noise. Unlike traditional noise-music, this isn't a brew of distortion, drone and feedback, but an instrumental arrangement that brings to mind the best of Godspeed You! Black Emperor condensed into four minutes. This shouldn't be too surprising: the album was recorded at Hotel 2 Tango in Montreal, with players including various Quebec post-rockers. But where, say, Silver Mt. Zion settles for so-so singing, the likes of Nadia Moss and Thierry Amar – as well as Tzadik collaborator Shahzad Ismaily – get to work with one of the finest vocalists around.

This is most obvious on the desolately exquisite 'I Lay There In Front Of Me Covered In Ice'. There is organ, percussion, guitar and more, but it's all merely aural mise-en-scène for Carla's gentle duet with herself. While she can channel Hades through her body and out of her mouth in quite frightening fashion, she can also sing as gently, touchingly, as anyone. She sets a forbidding scene as vivid as the Bad Seeds' 'Weeping Song': “go tell your momma there's a dead man in the bathwater / Or go tell your father that the town's lost another daughter”.

That's not to say she doesn't bring the fury and vocal brimstone when necessary, as on the aforementioned 'You Are Jaguar'. Prince of Truth sees Bozulich bring everything, as she usually does, at the right time. I could mention the wonderfully sparse string arrangement on 'Iris Didn't Spell', the surreal film noir of 'Tremble Dragonfly' or the epic, pitch black concluding lullaby of 'On the Captain's Side'. But it's all so consistently good that this review would stretch into the thousands, rather than hundreds, of words.

Carla Bozulich should be an icon at this point: Nick Cave without the horrid recent cabaret-and-'tache phase; a more prolific Scott Walker; a sexier Blixa Bargeld; an infinitely better version of pretty much any post-rock this decade. And yet, not post-rock at all. Not alternative country, nor near-industrial, nor no-wave. A personnel list on Bob Mould's self-titled 1996 album simply read “Bob Mould is Bob Mould”. In that case, the only justified point of description would be to declare, admittedly obviously, that Carla Bozulich is Carla Bozulich.

***

You can also read this review over at Fact Magazine. And it's one of their Recommended Albums, as well it should be. I'd also like to mention how tough it is to review Carla. I was going to review her live show from last summer, but Fact declined. She apparently wasn't sufficiently cool, though thankfully, they are now on board with her awesomeness. Sometimes 'cool' isn't directly related to how dubsteppy it is. But I digress. She's tough to review. In a way, I was quite relieved I didn't have to review that gig, because it was such an emotionally intense, personally moving, experience, that it would have been hard to express to the reader. I know that's the coward's way out; reviewing isn't supposed to be easy. And it is supposed to be about articulating the intangible; expressing quite why a particular experience or work of art is worthy of someone's time.

So I'm glad I got to do this. Carla's records are never easy, either to listen to or to explain. This one went okay though - I'm quite happy with it. And the gig? Hopefully I will be sufficiently motivated, in the near future, to put together a list of my favourite gigs this decade. Rest assured it will be high on that list.

Flood Of Red – Leaving Everything Behind

2009-10-31T15:13:00.004Z

Scottish sextet Flood Of Red bring their own brand of emo urgency on this debut full-length, though not without mis-steps like the wrong-footed, ill-advised introductory track. But once the soppy 'The Edge of the World (Prelude)' falls by the wayside, the band's natural pace comes to the fore. For the most part, this is reasonably busy melodic punk rock, with distinctly late-nineties lead guitar melodies. Not a bad thing, for those who recall the glory days of Gameface and Sense Field.

Speaking of Sense Field, the vocals are intriguing: they contain enough personality to engage, but there is a high-register softness to them that sits rather uncomfortably with the angst they're aiming for. Such juxtaposition is perhaps the intent, and sometimes works effectively as a council-estate Mars Volta. But over the course of fifty-odd minutes, they can grate. What presumably aims for intense lyrical poignancy misses the mark somewhat, as song after song features lines like 'I'm so scared of everything' and 'I have never been so scared'. The words are clearly shortcuts to emotion, but they ring hollow.

There is the occasional electronic beat or stab of synth, but such events are throwaway details. Blink, and you will miss what are effectively novelty, an obliged concession to modernity, rather than a desire to push things forward. There are times when the dynamic range extends beyond medium to up-tempo rock: 'Electricity' is a brief interlude of sonic introspection, which leads seamlessly into the more substantial 'I Will Not Change'. While it's no 'Parabol'/'Parabola', it's a decent stab at injecting some art into their well-trodden template.

What is here is competent. The lead guitar flutters freely through melody and riff, though the rhythm guitar is a tad slushy. Combined with the singer's soft timbre, the mix runs the risk of collapsing into liquid homogeneity. One suspects the band has missed a trick here: they could potentially make a virtue of this aural coalescence by upping the reverb and stretching out in a My Bloody Valentine/Serena Maneesh-style dreampop reverie. Concluding track 'The Edge of the World' actually hints at this kind of sound. Conversely, if they want to bring the rock, they could aim for a producer like GGGarth for their next record, a man who brought fellow Celts Kerbdog and Biffy Clyro into brutally effective clarity.

In terms of modern emo, Flood Of Red are more comparable to the softer, sensitive (remember when 'emo' was an abbreviation for 'emotional', rather than a pejorative for kids in eyeliner?) Thursday than the epically melodramatic My Chemical Romance or 30 Seconds To Mars. I want to like this more than I do. The band has no small amount of talent and the occasional spark of imagination. It's just that such sparks are too rare, and their songs get lost in among each other, in a near hour-long slog of driving riffs and soft singing. Flood Of Red have potential, but Leaving Everything Behind presents too large a lump of music for the ideas on display. Tightening up the sound for the next album, as well as finding their own identity, should pay dividends for them.

***

POSTSCRIPT: This is my first review for The Music Magazine. Check 'em out!

Akron/Family: ‘River’

2009-10-29T20:48:00.004Z

Taken from lovely current album Set ‘em Wild, Set ‘em Free, 'River' is rather more joyous than one would expect from a group of Young God alumni. It’s the kind of thing one might compare to The Flaming Lips, if only Wayne Coyne’s travelling circus had released anything decent this decade. Opening with a more organic take on that wonderfully sinister Massive Attack 'Angel' beat – albeit with some shaker thing going on - ‘River’ builds fantastically.

The singer has that super-American nasality to his voice, not unlike your man from They Might Be Giants, though perhaps a tad warmer. This tune is thankfully less wacky than, well, pretty much anything by TMBG (although 'Birdhouse in Your Soul' is forever a pop classic), with gorgeously busy arrangement. In fact, when 'River' does kick in, the vocal melody does recall the playfully innocent, heartening, verses of 'Birdhouse...'

The words don't seem to make too much sense, but they sound nice when placed in close proximity to each other, which is really all you could ask for from this sort of band. The whole shebang has that great-outdoors party feel that we associate with Animal Collective in the oh-nine. But where the Maryland sometime-quartet bring the neo-Beta Band synth-shine, this is organic as fuck. The good kind of organic, like Alasdair Roberts or Earth. Not the bad kind, like Newton Faulkner or Dent May. Just get the album, as this isn't even the best song on it. And I don't even have much time for Americana.

Download it here.

Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall

2009-10-03T16:51:00.008Z

Matador (2009)

Internet punk rock darling Reatard is back with his second Matador album (let's face it: Singles '08 was an album on staggered – and ridiculously diminishing – release). But does this new record see the rock world ready to live in his shadow, or is he fading all away?

Whether Jay is heading down the dread road of 'maturity' is as yet unclear. He's less overtly aggressive, that's for sure. Gone is the energising comedy-horror intensity of Blood Visions. In its place is a more subdued, though arguably no less disconcerting, mood. 'I'm Watching You' (presumably the same song that was missing from review copies of Singles '08), rather than breathlessly ripping through frantic chords, is positively jolly in its hazy 60s, via Inspiral Carpets' organ-indie, pastiche. This just makes his singing 'I'm watching you, and everything you do' that bit weirder.

Watch Me Fall is approximately half the tempo of Blood Visions. Despite that, there is the occasional 'Hang Them All' which captures the brutalist pop charm of a 'See/Saw' with ease. The mid-way switch in the song is a lovely surprise, too. Overall, though, the guitars are lighter, Reatard opting for indie jangle. This sound admittedly fits the relative aesthetic levity of the songs, and his singing is now oddly reminiscent of Suede's fey frontman Brett Anderson (especially on the aforementioned 'I'm Watching You' and 'Can't Do it Anymore'). If this is a conscious effort to distance himself from the rapidly expanding throng of lo-fi trust fund punx, Jay is to be commended. He's certainly more imaginative than the fuzz-drenched muppets he's leaving in his wake.

'Rotten Mind' is a striking pop gem, and its juxtaposition with the sinister introduction of 'Nothing Now' (the evil twin of Terrorvision's 'Alice, What's the Matter?') displays a sense of dynamic structure that would justify this evolution in the Reatard sound. But there's something missing. While Reatard does not need to bludgeon in order to be good, you do get the sense there's a bit of an identity crisis going on. Like Andrew WK, you're happy for him to leave the mosh pit, but his first steps out of there are slightly shaky.

As a portent of things to come, Watch Me Fall is heartening. It's more varied than any of his past single albums, and hits spots both familiar and new for him. It's just not quite the killer release for which Matador may have been hoping. Early Mondo Generator did this kind of thing better, and Reatard himself has hit greater heights, with Blood Visions and Lost Sounds. Look away from the hype, though, and this is a solid rock album.

Clutch – Strange Cousins From the West

2009-10-01T21:45:00.007Z

Weathermaker (2009)

Clutch, those grizzled Maryland rock veterans, have been kicking out various forms of jam since the early 90s. Their sound has taken in post-hardcore, aggro-stoner and retro boogie rock. Which makes us wonder: which Clutch will turn up this time?

It’s pretty impossible to dislike Clutch, unless you dislike rock itself. Firm cult favourites from their debut (‘A Shogun Named Marcus’ is an underground anthem) and even before (Legendary label Earache released the ‘Impetus’ EP), they brought the mid-90s stoner/space rock as magnificently as Kyuss and Monster Magnet. And, as lynchpin of the former, Josh Homme, has carved out a second career in QOTSA, Clutch, like the sea, seem eternal in their restless power.

After nearly losing it at the end of the 1990s, with the unfocused Jam Room, 2001’s self-explanatory Pure Rock Fury saw them fired up once more. Strange Cousins From the West is their fourth since then; the latest in a run of consistent quality. And, while the quintet (since 2004) have consistently evolved – within their blues-hardcore template – this latest one sounds oddly familiar.

Rarely does a post-Nirvana band release nine albums, discounting the weekly releases from various distortion-pedal crews. So it should be unsurprising when the songs on said ninth album are reminiscent of past glories. Especially when those glories are worth revisiting. Yes, those snaking, catchy-yet-complex riffs, recent-historical urban mythologising and vintage sound point to one thing: career-high The Elephant Riders (1998).

Of course, if Strange Cousins… were as good as that, this would be an automatic 9. That it isn’t is no shame, as it would also mean it was superior to any QOTSA album after 2000. Or any Black Mountain album at all.

Clutch spoil us from the outset with, as Westwood might say, hit after heavy hit. ‘Motherless Child’ rolls in on one of the heaviest bouncing riffs since Entombed redefined ‘death’n’roll’ over a decade ago. If ‘Struck Down’s riff isn’t instantly lodged in your head like a psychotic lumberjack’s axe, then your dope-smoking has affected your short-term memory. ’50,000 Unstoppable Watts’ looks on paper like a song Dr. Brown might write, but he’d never have been this good at fusing science with Hendrix riffs.

Album highlight is the frankly bizarre ‘Abraham Lincoln’. As if Akimbo’s shark attack concept album last year wasn’t surreally elegiac enough, Neil Fallon and co. bring a gross-years-tardy tribute on a slow, martial beat and ever-awesome matching guitar and vocal melody. This isn’t wacky stuff, though: these boys mean it when they tell his assassin: ‘no grave for you’. Even odder is the fact that this is ostensibly a call-back to 1995 song ‘I have the body of John Wilkes Booth’. Talk about setting a president. Sorry.

The musicologist in me is ever-uncomfortable about white men bringing the blues-rock. And looking backward for inspiration. It’s also frustrating that the band insists on such a clean guitar sound. While it’s undeniably accessible to the curious, the playing suggests a heavier sound would be infinitely more satisfying. Like, say Andy Sneap’s work with Iron Monkey, or Steve Feldman’s with Unida.

However, this isn’t the dull Black Keys. And Strange Cousins… is sufficiently imaginative to work. The heaviness? It’s still more energising than Wolfmother, Kasabian, the Enemy, or whatever passes for big rock these days. If you like the riffs and weirdness, get this listened.

Om – God is Good

2009-09-30T16:34:00.006Z

Drag City (2009)

How minimalist can a band get? On its second album recorded by bare bones engineer Steve Albini, the hip-sludge veteran band find its duo halving, in an apparent attempt to find out. But ex-Sleep man Al Cisneros does have a little help from his friends.

Om made their name after the death of stoner doom legends Sleep by doing what they do best: heavy riffs, and lots of them. Self aware if nothing else, their debut was named Variations on a Theme. But post-metal, like any chrono-centric sub-genre, ages rapidly, and what was once cool can soon find itself sounding hackneyed. Just ask Jesu.

Om is aware of this pitfall. The sludgy, repetitive riffing of the earlier albums has fallen by the wayside, seemingly sloughed off as a butterfly might forget its past as a caterpillar. That's not to say this is as bright or beautiful as such description might evoke. In fact this is more of a moth: refusing to draw attention to itself; at home in the must and dusk of the dimmest recesses.

As with your average moth, there is subtle variety and intrigue in current Om's earth-tone and darkness. The songs are shorter than they were on the first pair of Billy Anderson-produced records. Where once was no small amount of trepidation at slogging through another twenty minutes of riffs, there is now a healthy curiosity as to where Om will take us.

That is not to say Anderson is not a great producer (he's sorted Melvins, Neurosis and 7 Year Bitch at their peaks). It's also not to say there is no twenty-minute song on here. Unlike recent albums from Emeralds and James Blackshaw, the epic on this album is not the best. 'Thebes' has a repetitive charm, but its faux-mystical lyrics and vocal reliance on the root note mean it grates if you don't play its game.

The record really picks up on the other three songs. They are a combined fifteen minutes, and the journey on which they take us is far more satisfying. The middle-eastern themes on here, while preferable to High On Fire's Middle Earth aesthetic, are sonically fine while never threatening authenticity. The music generally is fantastic.

Mostly sounding only like Om, and like no Om in the past, there are some nods elsewhere. There is philosophical similarity to recent Earth, in that both bands have sacrificed bludgeon for trance-through-clarity. The sound on God is Good is clean, with a deep mix full of interesting instrumentation. There are even pipe-based moments that could have featured on Ghost's fabulous Hypnotic Underworld, from 2004.

As this decade ends, hopefully more bands take a leaf out of the books of Om and Earth. SunnO))) are certainly carving their own path, but there are too many me-too bands, making like an albatross round the neck of once inventive metal. Noisecore imploded at its peak, like a dying star, a decade ago. Can the post-metal masses please get their coats and shuffle out the door while a shred of dignity remains?

Future Islands and Ear Pwr

2009-09-29T22:25:00.006Z

Royal Park Cellar, 13 September 2009

It was just another low-energy Sunday evening in the half-local, half-student Royal Park pub. Few engaged with the balding pool tables, and the karaoke machine thankfully held a dignified silence. But, in the pub's cellar, a number of creative characters were setting about lighting up the evening's too-early dusk with performances that were engaging and inspiring.

After a respectable local opening band (a guitar and cello pairing whose name must have disappeared into the ether), the stage was set for Ear Pwr, based in Baltimore. At odds with its common perception, from The Wire, of a metropolis populated entirely by pushers, users and bent government officials, are a loose crew of exciting poppy noisemakers. Chief among these would be band of the winter Animal Collective, but just bubbling under are Ponytail and – yep! - Ear Pwr.

While the stage may have been set for this pair, they rarely actually stood on it. Setting up their table of machinery and gubbins, Devin and Sarah opted to set the noises, beats and loops running, before dancing, meandering and staggering about the room. It was a creditable performance: there may only have been ten people in the room, but if their energy was in any way diminished, it certainly didn't show. Main vocalist Sarah bounced around while singing her electro-nursery rhymes from their brilliant album, about beams of light, title track's Super Animal Bros. And, err, 'future eyes' – though sadly not the addictively exuberant 'Sparkly Sweater'.

Devin, when he wasn't setting his musical plates spinning, was wrapping the microphone cord around himself, wrapping it around Sarah, providing on-and-off vocal assistance to Sarah, and writhing about on the cellar's rather unpleasant floor. They departed after a brief, and rather thrilling, set (not only were Ear Pwr the support act, but their summer highlight album is only half an hour long), but promised to return in November. At that point, their new EP – and new drummer – should be in place.

Having never heard Greenville, North Carolina's Future Islands (now also based in Maryland) before this evening, I was in for a scintillating surprise. After the childlike, if drug addled, glee of Ear Pwr, trepidation met the headlining trio of thick-set men with synths. By the end of the opening song, your reviewer was an enthusiastic convert.

Future Islands' album, 2008's Wave Like Home, is an intriguing blend of well-written synth songs and super-camp vocals. While it's a solid album in its own right, it gives little indication as to the ferocious talent of singer Samuel Herring. Looking for all the world like Jack Black's stunt double, he also sounds superficially like the camp-heroic Tenacious D frontman. It soon becomes clear, though, that Herring is a singular talent. He rips his own songs a new arse, a combination of Tom Waits' gruff personality, Mike Patton's ever-present air of pastiche, and Henry Rollins' aggression and brilliant shape-throwing.

While self-effacing about his talking prowess, Herring makes for a charismatic frontman, winning the now-full room over with his chat and singing alike. He worked up a furious sweat early, and it's not hard to see why: he sings hard. He reaches deep down within himself, and pulls out a level of vocal intensity not seen since Carla Bozulich brought her inimitable brand of beautiful, guttural fire and brimstone to a Leeds church last year. When he prefaces 'Little Dreamer' with the words 'this was a happy story... but now it's a sad story', you believe him. Especially as he leaves his still-beating heart throbbing away on the floor, for all to see.

Whether the song was 'Beach Foam' from the album, or 'The Happiness of Being Twice', from this year's 'Feathers & Hallways' single, Future Islands never stopped entertaining. The bassist was occasionally inspired in his playing, but both he and the synth player were essentially there to ably back Herring's cabaret emoting.

Future Islands are currently working on their new album. Though both they and Ear Pwr give off an air of piss-take at times, the new material should be interesting, at least. If Ear Pwr can flesh out the faux-naive charm of Super Animal Brothers III, and Future Islands somehow manage to harness the power of their force-of-nature singer in the studio, the next year should belong to Baltimore.

Ear Pwr

2009-09-13T00:01:00.006Z

I'm off to see this lot tomorrow. Technically today, in the calendar sense, but really tomorrow. In the sleeps sense. I had meant to review the Ear Pwr album for Fact, but unfortunately didn't get round to it after returning from Iran. Anyway, their album has the same name as this song, and is brilliant, in that high-energy, funfunfun AWK/Captain Ahab/Be Your Own PET kinda way. And it's quite a short album. 16 tracks (some segues) in just over half an hour means you can listen to it before dinner without spoiling your appetite. Boomkat tends to have it cheap, so get it bought.

I found out on Friday that they're playing my town on Sunday. They're only the support act, but it should be an enjoyable occasion. Watch this video to get an idea of what they're about. My only source of trepidation comes from the fact that they appear to be a couple of ironic, cooly-cool coolsters. The kind of people who'd be more at home playing the Faversham, that home of the faux-cool in Leeds. And it'd be a shame if they were super-ironic 80s bandwagon jumpers, as that's totally not the idea I get from their album.

The music is sweet and energetic, and not at all 1980s. It's dance music that rocks, and the singer (called Sarah?) sings with a naive enthusiasm that's really catchy and joyous. So I'd rather the latter description to be the case than the ironic one, but I'm not sure it's possible to be in a band nowadays and not be taking the piss to some extent. Maybe I'm cynical, I don't know. They're from the same area as Ponytail and Animal Collective, so maybe that means something. They're relatively unironic for the kind of music they do. Anyway, hoping to enjoy the gig; hoping the headliner is good; hoping to write it all up at some point. Suspense!

Oskar – LP:2

2009-09-11T21:33:00.006Z

Incarnation (2009)

(Another Fact review!)

There is something about that title that doesn’t sit well with me. While Oskar aren’t the first band to name a record as such – let’s face it, we’ve had similar from the likes of Led Zep, Autechre and Dungen – that colon suggests rather too much self awareness. If, indeed, a band can be too self-aware. The cover tips you off, though, of the trio awkwardly positioned on a bleak allotment, bearing instruments fashioned from gardening implements.

This is a sense that remains throughout LP:2. Oskar, featuring a member of Collapsed Lung (of ‘Eat My Goal’ ‘fame’), seems to be a group of crafty industry veterans, keen to show us how good they are at lots of different stuff. LP:2 boasts a range of moods, from wry amusement, through parody, to melancholy. But even melancholy seems to be performed here with an eyebrow so raised it threatens to catapult off their collective face.

And it’s a shame, because there is some real brilliance on here. ‘Paper Cuts’ and ‘Printer Tzara’ offer intelligent calls back to the turn of the century electronica-infused songwriting of the Beta Band, Laika or Anjali. ‘Eden’ is believable in its piano loneliness. ‘Richenbach Falls’, though, sounds for all its good intentions like a ham-fisted approximation of how Carla Bozulich may have sounded, had she been narcotised, bundled in the boot of a car and taken to David Lynch’s club Silencio.

Oskar tread a tightrope, and your writer faces a dilemma. Oskar’s competence at evoking a variety of moods, of composing in many forms of popular music, of performing in numerous languages, should be applauded. There is, however, a subtle, yet inescapable cloud of smugness hanging over proceedings. While it’s an intangible sense, it’s nagging, hindering enjoyment of the album. It’s hard to commit to loving ‘Hi-Beam Blue’, which occupies that space between OK Computer and Kid A, as it’s just another turn on what sounds like a showcase record. I guess now I know why certain folk feel prevented from loving Squarepusher or Aphex.

With the above in mind, then, it’s surprising that the highlights of the album are the most theatrical, high-minded, Newsnight Review, nudging, winking songs of the lot. ‘Some Song’: the very title sends fear shooting through my marrow. But it’s great. The vocal is a monologue performed by actress Sharon Smith, of Max Factory, and it’s funny, convincing and endearing. Similarly, the most conceptually out-there song is ‘Sanatorio’, inspired by Nick Powell’s experience with aged psychiatric patients in Madrid. And it’s lovely. So while the album is nearly torn apart by its eclecticism, that trait bore its greatest fruits.

James Blackshaw – The Glass Bead Game

2009-09-08T22:08:00.005Z

Young God (2009)

(Another Fact review!)

Blackshaw, though he looks young, must have been at this for decades. There is some flavour of crossroad meeting, or memo to Mephistopheles, at work on The Glass Bead Game, because it’s otherwise difficult to accept the quality of playing on this record. Blackshaw has taken time to get really, really good at his instrument. I’m sure you’ll have seen some news piece or other mentioning the fact he used to be in punk rock bands. But, phew, he grew out of that juvenile noise.

The knock-on effect of ostensibly growing up is running the risk of blandness. First song ‘Cross’ is a case in point. Lavish in its complex arrangement, a magnificently controlled wordless vocal pipes up that is at once beautiful and disconcertingly reminiscent of that Lloyds TSB ad. Fortunately, the musical whole is so well-constructed that such thoughts are kept far from your mind.

Three of the five (lengthy) songs on here are guitar-led, as you might imagine. They are, as you might also imagine, really rather good. You might, like I did, feel sceptical about such movements as the alleged folk renaissance. Especially if you first hear of a musician between stories about fallen MPs and white phosphorus attacks on Radio 4’s Today programme. But you lose yourself easily in the intricate tapestry of guitar, vocal, violin and cello on ‘Cross’ and ‘Bled’.

Less convincing is relatively brief piano piece ‘Fix’. It sounds rather like one of Richard James’ treated piano sketches on Drukqs, stretched out to nearly six minutes. It’s fair, and strings eventually flesh it out, but the mind too easily wanders during its duration. ‘Key’ is similar in length, but it sees Blackshaw return to the guitar. With the songs getting shorter, and the quality beginning to slightly dip, you may wonder whether that’s it for the album.

Thankfully, that’s not it, by a long shot. ‘Arc’ is the grand statement of the album, and is one of the grand musical statements of this year so far. Like ‘Bled’, ‘Arc’ features an introductory motif that eventually gives way to a largely unrelated song-body. Like ‘Bled’, it works wonders, but on an epic scale. ‘Fix’ was no warning for this stunning, piano-centred, piece. As it builds so subtly, you almost fail to realise the depth of the layers and drones locking in place, intertwining and undulating before your ears. It’s a hypnotic, 19-minute, rush. It’s like vomiting gold, rainbows and unicorns out of every orifice in your head. In a good way.

DOA – Dead Or Alive

2009-09-05T17:02:00.006Z

Dir: Cory Yuen, 2006

I was warned about this one. When I mentioned to one friend that I had borrowed the Dead Or Alive film, he solemnly told me it is one of the worst films he has ever seen. And he spends a lot of time watching bad films. He has seen many classics, but also more all-out bad films than a sane human should ever subject themselves to. He likes Old School.

But I knew I was in for a bad film. I have a film rental subscription of the type that gives you better value for money the more films you see. So, in among the Korean revenge cinema and edifying documentaries, I add the occasional guilty pleasure. The two main points in this paragraph are dependent ones: just because one watches a film does not mean one has experienced value; just because a film causes feelings of guilt does not mean it will provide pleasure.

So we have DOA. It's a cheap, cheap film based on a video game. Its cast includes a pro-wrestler, a supermodel and an Australian soap star-cum-telephone huckster. When your resident thesp is someone from My Name is Earl, you know you're in for a rough ride. But who cares, as long as it passes the time, right?

I don't even know where to begin, so let's focus on the good points. There are lots of pretty men and women on show: it is a feast for those who like skimpiness and ripped-ness. The aforementioned pro-wrestler is none other than former WWF champ and old, old man Kevin Nash. It doesn't hurt that he's probably the most self-aware fake fighter out there, has a killer sense of humour and is actually rather a decent actor. As far as wrestlers go, anyway.

There is the occasional snippet of actual cinematic competence, too. Yes, the more eagle-eyed DOA viewer may detect a fleeting good angle here and there. A couple of the fights are well choreographed. We're not talking Yuen Wo-Ping here, but the forest fight and the brawl with the henchmen (and hench-ladies) are both rather good. The scenery, too, is occasionally eye-catching and pleasant. I mean, no more so than, say, a modern videogame, or Sandals ad, but nice is nice. The funniest line is 'thanks, Wellington'. I suppose you had to be there.

I think that's it for good points. Generally, it's a ham-fisted grotesquerie whose lingering butt- and leg-shots give gratuitousness a bad name. The premise of the film is an international fighting tournament, to which only the best fighters are invited. Their invitations appear as soon as they've done an impressive bit of knacking, perplexingly. But DOA admittedly provides many a perplexing moment. But more on that in a bit.

Yeah, the plot is nothing you haven't seen before, as long as you've encountered either a film or a game that involved people beating each other up. It's essentially the world's worst Enter the Dragon. Or the world's worst Best of the Best II. At least, it's the worst example of the form I have seen. And I don't even suggest Enter the Dragon was in any way a classic of the cinema. What it was, though, was a good film that made some sense and featured some fantastic choreographed fights.

There are no fights in DOA that are a patch on any fight in ETD. In fact, for sheer fight quality, you'd be wiser to watch Bolo vs. Those Unfortunate Scrotes on a loop for 80 minutes than this delight. And Kevin Nash, cool as he is, isn't much of a charisma challenge for Bruce Lee. Or the dude with the afro. Or the white dude. But Jaime Pressley does have a nice set of abs. More than Bruce Lee, DOA bites relatively recent flicks Hero and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. There is plenty of (mediocre) wire work in settings such as epic palace exteriors, lush forests and... giant Buddha heads. It's obviously an insignificant speck when compared to the Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou classics.

The biggest crime the film commits is not entirely DOA's fault. The idea of a film in which people get together from around the world to kick each other's faces off is an archaic one. It was fine in the 1970s, and the 80s. It was eve fine when the Streetfighter II game came out. Now, though, we live in an era of mixed martial arts. Since 1993 the Ultimate Fighting Championship (and, for about a decade, the Japanese Pride Fighting Championship) has been pitting actual fighters from around the world against each other in hand to hand combat. So the idea of a ninja fighting a cocky American, or an old man with a white beard competing against a Chinese school girl, is a bit crap. Unless, that is, cinema can use its mysterious powers of 'scripting' and 'editing' to create the illusion of something believable and awesome.

So DOA may not have the best dialogue ever. Or good dialogue, for that matter. It may be cheesier than the Bee Gees... being the Bee Gees. It may even commit the heinous act of dragging – it's bloody 80 minutes – as it goes. But these are not cardinal sins for what the film is trying to achieve. In fact, stupidity should be encouraged in a film like this. No, the crime is to not be as entertaining as its real life equivalent. When you can switch on ESPN and see better, more varied fights, involving more engaging (and ridiculous) characters, your film's sole justification for existing (aside from cash, natch, o cynical reader) has vanished as quickly as DOA ninjas Hayabusa and Kasumi might do.

Still, I bet DOA's better than the new Dragonball live-action film. That one has me in a constant state of shudder.

Your Non-Weekly Daily Show Clip of the Week! #4: Healthcare!

2009-07-27T17:41:00.004Z

Okay, so this is the fourth 'weekly' TDS clip I have posted in the last 300 years or so, but what are you gonna do. No more excuses! I shall post as and when. About the Daily Show specifically: it's always good. However, sometimes nothing really stands out, meaning the COTW would be a tad arbitrary. Well, not last week, folks!

Last week we had a clear winner (from the three episodes I watched). But given that it's one of the funniest segments I've seen, the remaining one episode (screw the 'International Edition') likely had nothing that topped it. I was out when this aired; doing badly in a pub quiz. I'd rather have been watching this. Thank goodness, then, for 4OD and the internet.

Get it watched.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Back in Black - Health Care Reform

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Joke of the Day

THE WORD WAS "SENTENCES", DAMNIT!

My letterb-OX

2009-07-05T11:51:00.003Z

A few weeks ago, the mighty Coalesce hooked up with those fine people at iLike to offer a competition.Much like that Melvins one from a few months ago, applicants were asked to write about their favourite Coalesce song. What it is? Why is it? Etc. So I entered: the prioize was a copy of their new album, OX, on shiny black 180g vinyl. And I won! Here's what I said:

I chose 'What Happens On The Road Always Comes Home' at first. It was my initial taste of Coalesce ferocity. I'll never forget the moment, now a decade ago, when the restless, merciless, technical riffing gave way to the almost southern-rock groove melody. And back again. But then I realised my favourite is probably 'Sometimes Selling Out Is Waking Up'.

Beside what's possibly their best actual title, the lyrics scythe through sXe-nesters ("nothing is said no matter how angry or impassioned it may seem") with humour and venom. It's the evil twin to Botch's majestic 'C. Thomas Howell as "The Soul Man"', in that both songs artistically demolish years of hollow hardcore posturing. The music backs this up more than ably: the main riff is so complex as to sound like it changes aural direction numerous times before pratfalling down a set of stairs.

As though screwing our heads off with a sequence infinitely more twisted than any of the hardcore they're satirising [weren't enough], they up the ante with a three-chord chorus so satisfyingly heavy it sounds like 'Blitzkrieg Bop' spinning in reverse through the Earth's crust. Why is this song my favourite? Because in the space of a couple of minutes, it showcases the peaks of both musical complexity and simplicity, married to a lyrical raised eyebrow and Coalesce's always-pinpoint musicianship. It's a band - and a noisecore aesthetic - in a nutshell.

Finally got a chance to listen to it today - and it really cooks. They manage to walk that fine line between reminding us all why we love Coalesce in the first place, and offering new sounds and ideas to justify the decade-long lay-off. Not that they need to justify moving on, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, a proper write-up is on the way. Just one regret surrounding this Coalesce reunion: they were playing their first England gig in over a decade the day I flew out to Iran for ten days. So I missed out on my (seemingly once-in-a-lifetime) chance to see them. (Hopefully I'm wrong about that one...) It would also have been nice to interview them in person. Again, hopefully that opportunity arises in the not-too-distant future. Anyway, get it listened if you like heavy, smart music.

Transformers 2 hype

2009-06-28T18:33:00.006Z

So I suddenly really want to see the new Transformers film. I didn't like the first one, to say the least. However, a couple of things make me want to check out the sequel. Thing one: this review, written by a fellow internet person, makes it sound accidentally highbrow. I love things like that. You know, like Alanis Morissette's 'Ironic', to which you can apply numerous layers of analysis. Accidental genius. Far preferable to New Hollywood's penchant for attempting brilliance and achieving dog poo.

We also have Mark Kermode's concise evaluation, which is the first really good thing he's done since his Exorcist review. And that was over a decade ago. Something tells me old Mark is a Dapper Dan man.

Anyway. Me throughsilver want to see new film!

The Duke Spirit

2009-06-15T22:50:00.003Z

This was a thing I was writing for Fact's 'new talent' segment. It got kiboshed when it turned out they've been around for a few years. But, you know, I wrote it, and I love their last album, so it's going here. I might write more about them, when I stop forgetting what it is I'm supposed to be writing.

***

We at FACT love a nice bit of femme-fronted rock. We cried when Be Your Own Pet! split, and probably also when Sleater-Kinney did, too. We’re emotional like that. Thankfully, the Duke Spirit are here to return a bit of grit and weight to a musical not-scene that too often strays on the side of twee (Howling Bells and Ting Tings, we mean you). Not overly new, TDS released their second album, Neptune, early last year. Produced by Chris Goss, the man who gave Kyuss and QOTSA albums their sound, it’s dark and moody to an almost PJ Harvey or Mark Lanegan extent, and with ludicrously strong songwriting.

Breakthrough single ‘The Step and the Walk’ appeared on MTVs ‘The Hills’, which may turn off the elitists, but this is sonically miles away from that show’s usual Cali-emo soundtrackers. It kicks off like a sultry take on Tom Waits’ Wire-opening ‘Way Down in the Hole’, and blossoms into a king-sized chorus. Aside from the cult-cool colleagues, their secret weapon is singer Liela Moss. Specifically: she can sing, really well. It’s refreshing that Liela riffs around the basic melody of a given song with an aplomb and ferocity so lacking in an age where singers cling desperately to set notes like grim, Pro-Tools-programmed, death. Their current album is an individual, perfectly paced gem. Their next one should be a monster.

Tobacco – Fucked Up Friends

2009-06-06T22:52:00.006Z

Anticon (2009)

Not content with releasing Eating Us earlier this summer, Black Moth Super Rainbow mainman Tobacco goes weirdly prolific for a solo release on Californian label Anticon.

BMSR’s (those initials so make me think of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club despite, you know, being different) last album, Eating Us, was fairly good. Pretty much the definition of pastoral electronica, it presented a cleaner sound for the band, as they - presumably unintentionally - filled the Boards-shaped gap that has opened since 2006.

When I say Fucked Up Friends is also rather Boardsish, but far more convincing an album in its own right, it could seem confusing. Why, for instance, bother releasing two albums when one is so clearly superior to the other? The answer lies in the fact that, while Eating Us is efficiently shiny, albeit hollow, confection, Fucked Up Friends is rather more lairy beast. As its name implies. But this is thankfully no switch to the lagered-up, deluded ladrocktronica of, say, Kasabian.

No, FUF is lairy in a good way. It’s reminiscent of Boards Of Canada in thick synth and solid beats only. Unlike so many practitioners who think they can take us to a beautiful place in the country with some lazy boom-bap and analogue tones, Tobacco makes the aesthetic his own. Out of the window flies any pretence of hauntology or wack po-facedness. Instead, beats and fuzzed melody are the prime currency.

And it’s great. It’s punk rock electro, only without the stress of trying to keep up with a restless Kid606 or Phantomsmasher. This is pop music in full force, but without the usual condescension that accompanies such a description, or the lameness of a La Roux or Passion Pit. Pop-punk electro? Well it’s gone in 36 minutes and you’re left with a pure high, much like the imminent Ear Pwr record, so why not. It’s Anticon through and through, but without any emo hand-wringing or half-baked politics.

The revolutionary forces of long-play dubstep are massing on the autumnal horizon, with their thrilling brand of darkness and murk. Until then, we have the summer, both physically and musically. And while that hard rain may soon fall, here is a shot of aural vitamin C to help us make the most of the rising mercury.

Isis – Wavering Radiant

2009-06-05T22:40:00.006Z

Conspiracy Records (2009)

Doyens of the post-metal scene bring forth their fifth full-length album. Are Isis still bringing the celestial goods, or is their radiance wavering?

It takes a while to realise, but Wavering Radiant is a different Isis album. The last time this happened was 2002, when Aaron Turner’s full time job (apart from running Hydra Head, natch) transformed, butterfly style, from brutal sludge metal to something altogether more delicate. Celestial to Oceanic was one of the more eye-opening musical metamorphoses of the decade, which meant the conservative follows-up, Panopticon and In the Absence of Truth, greatly disappointed.

Nothing seemed to be going on with the last brace; the music gradually watered down until stagnant. Fans of metal’s more brutal side longed for a new Old Man Gloom album, which might at least give Turner a chance to let his musical hair down, away from the pressure of being post-metal standard-bearer.

Despite initial listens, Wavering Radiant brings the goods. Listening to it is an actual pleasure, rather than some grim rite of passage one must undergo in order to hold an opinion. The Isis sound, debuted proper on the 2002 album, is still present and correct, but only in as much as they are Isis. To diss them for that in itself would be akin to complaining if Dizzee Rascal raps on his next album. There are, after all, more pertinent reasons to criticise this album.

While the opening songs are fair enough, and the album is one of those that improve as they progress, the mood is much of a muchness. There is clean, skeletal, metal throughout, with change in neither pace nor demeanour. We get the obligatory quiet bits and loud bits, but that dynamic has now become a singular entity. It is expected, and we hope for more than this binary these days.

There are times when Isis subtly alter their mood, most interestingly when they take influence from outside. Tool’s Adam Jones apparently plays on two songs, though it’s unclear, to listen, which these are. However, the LA band’s influence permeates. The basslines on Wavering Radiant bounce and jolt with that familiar, elastic, property, while the riffs occasionally shift into rhythmic intensity. The seismic six-string shifts on songs like ‘Hand of the Host’ and ‘20 Minutes/40 Years’ are the sort not heard from this band in years. It is no coincidence that these are highlights.

Turner’s vocals are growing as well, sounding eerily like Steve Brodsky, from Isis’ peers Cave In. These journeys into melody are so successful (vocal harmonies, no less) that you wonder why Turner still bothers with the pseudo-death metal vocals at all. They add little to the music and must serve to turn off more potential fans than they attract.

A slow-burning success, Wavering Radiant should satisfy fans and those new to the band. But while subtle developments are all well and good, it would be nice to have one of these big name metal bands actually take a real chance with a new album. Modern metal needs a shift like ‘the black album’, Oceanic, or Cave In’s Jupiter, again. Such a move might threaten the current culture of packed gigs and vinyl release insta-sellouts, but we know what to expect from everybody at this stage of the game. Might the impending sunnO)) opus buck this trend of professional predictability?

Metric – Fantasies

2009-06-04T20:26:00.004Z

Metric (2009)

Broken Social scenester Emily Haines returns with another in a long line of power pop albums. But does it grow up and blow us away, or should we forget it? Err, in people?

Fantasies begins as well as you could hope; it anchors into your brain with pop hooks so strong that your ears bleed pure sucrose. Single ‘Help I’m Alive’ should probably be renamed ‘Beating Like a Hammer’ considering how catchy its bridge is.

‘Twilight Galaxy’ (the name of the next Nintendo hit?) exemplifies the light melancholic theme permeating this record. ‘Come on baby, I seen all the demons that you got’, vocalist Emily Haines sighs. The song is so sexually pent-up and yearning that it comes off like a femme synth-pop version of Greg Dulli, from Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers (hey, I spy a connection). And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Our Emily is a bit of a musical chameleon, though. Just as naturally as she recalls 1965 on one tune, she sounds like Sophie Ellis-Bextor (when Soph, is on point, and singing the mighty fine ‘Catch You’ a couple of years back) on the next.

When this record works, it seriously brings the brilliance. ‘Sick Muse’s chorus is ridiculously affecting: not just in the heartfelt rise and fall of the melody, or even the way Emily’s voice softens as it rises. The most emotionally connecting aspect of it is her enunciation. The ‘everybody’ that starts each line is delivered in a touching way that you’re sold on the rest of the chorus. It’s hard to say why it’s so touching, but all that matters in the moment is the fact that it is.

‘I’m not suicidal, I just can’t get out of bed’, from ‘Satellite Mind’ continues the blink-and-you-miss-them, pop-drenched expressions of pain. It’s emotional intensity dressed up as shallowness, which pretty much never fails. See also: Gnarls Barkley’s ‘it’s not just good / it’s great depression’ and Wilt’s ‘see me standing naked in the pain’. On paper none of these lines seem especially good, but it’s the delivery that makes them.

And that’s what makes Fantasies as a whole: the album falls prey to the power pop curse of inconsistency (even the much-loved Weezer debut is only half a classic album), but Haines’ strength of will holds it all together. While it doesn’t quite match the under-rated – in some circles – last Paramore album, Fantasies is compelling and charismatic.

Your Non-Weekly Daily Show Clip of the Week! #3: Sweden!

2009-04-27T22:05:00.003Z

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

Political Humor

I can't believe it has been a year and a half since my last Daily Show COTW.

The writers' strike of... 2008(?) hit my Daily Show viewing hard. I watched it four times a week. And, as such a regularly-made programme, it was affected by the strike quickly. As the strike went on, I slowly got used to not watching it. I'm sickened as I think back on those dark days.

Anyway, the strike ended and I was used to not watching it! I am only now on a mission to get back into the swing of things. It doesn't help that Virgin Media got rid of the 'More 4+1' channel. I don't think it's even available on demand. It's obviously on the Comedy Central website, but that's not quite the same.

Nevertheless, I am on a mission to get back into watching this amusing and informative show. To help myself back to work, as it were, I am resurrecting the too-ephemeral Daily Show Clip of the Week; it's not in its magnificent third instalment. I was planning on bringing it back a few weeks ago. I've had such a hard time blogging of late, as if you hadn't noticed. I was planning on doing ten posts a month. I was rushing to get it done in March, and failed to pull the trigger on two posts. They're still not finished: they would have been pretty bloody timely if I'd done them there and then. I had a week and two days off work! I do believe this is the pathetic second post of the month. What have I become?

So here is the Daily Show in Sweden. It's really funny or something. Excuse me, I have something in my eye...

2009-04-08T12:03:00.005Z

Seeing as I was linked as something of an online Morris news avenue when rumours of his latest projects started, I thought I'd post this item of delight. From the relevant FaceBook group:

--------------------
Subject: FUNDED

Hello

Due to this week’s final confirmation on our funding, your chance to be in the film has just become more real... no specifics yet but it might be worth getting yourself physically fit over the summer. We may need you to do some running on camera this autumn (to cut into our shots from the london marathon last year).

This last word on our financing means we can move from faith to reality and actually start putting together a full team over the next few months. Rewrites continue. There have been meetings about posters(this seems to be far more important than actually getting the film cast, written and shot). Location planning reports are good - we are currently focused on the Alps for Pakistan.

More news when the work kicks in. Meanwhile go and see In The Loop. Chris has been banging on about it since xmas & says it is "very funny" and had him laughing "in three different registers".

DS
--------------------

'DS' apparently being Deidre Steed. Good news indeed - can't wait to see some new Morris, and glad some proper satire is on its way. Quite fancy seeing 'In the Loop', even though Iannucci is currently in my bad books. 'Skin Deep', his alleged 'opera', was so feeble and joke-deprived that - even now - I have been unable to finish writing my piece on it. And I was at the world premiere!

One day...

Wolves In The Throne Room – Black Cascade

2009-03-29T00:31:00.006Z

Southern Lord (2009)

Even more FACT-age...

Wolves In The Throne Room. While overused nomenclature, Wolves, when used correctly, can evoke a certain snarling menace. The tepid likes of Wolfmother and Wolf Parade have certainly besmirched this signifier in recent years, but there has always been a Wolf Eyes or Rye Wolves to restore sufficiently brutal, flesh-ripping primevalism.

Wolves In The Throne Room scored another one for the good guys with their debut, Diadem of 12 Stars, in 2006. Its beautifully epic, dreamy, yet ominous, artwork was at once bewitching and appropriate. The music – four extensive examples of USBM (that’s the American form of black metal, for those not up on their kvlt abbreviations) – was dynamic and engrossing.

This was around the same time sunnO))) released their last ‘proper’ album, the all-conquering collaboration with Boris, Altar. Since then, sunnO))) have seen fit to tempt us with side projects, while Wolves released another album, an EP, and now this. Such proflicacy, combined with their allegiance to BM (as opposed to the vagaries of drone-, doom- or post-metals) has led to feverish support from discerning metal hordes.

Controversy struck when WITTR decided to change their logo to a Christophe Szpajdel design. He did the Emperor logo, see. This caused consternation among true believers, as the band’s identity was now irrevocably besmirched by legibility and mass production. Obviously, this means nothing. The debut LP didn’t even have the band’s name on the front or back covers. But I suppose it’s another emblem you’ll have to scrawl on your Twilight pencil case.

The logo means especially little in the light of the musical developments. After accusations that the last album, Two Hunters, was rather too similar-and-inferior to Diadems, WITTR started using old-school equipment with Randall (Earth, Grails) Dunn. Perhaps because some semblance of pesky individuality remained. Despite initial misgivings, this has paid off.

The dynamic BM-to-melodic swings of old have largely gone, replaced by more single-minded, unified sounds. The Burzum-inspired, buzz-saw, guitars of the past have been clawed back into the murk of the mix, adding to the accumulating musical miasma leaking out of your speakers. And it’s fucking epic. There are still the time changes one would hope for in quarter-hour songs, and shifts from quiet to loud, but it’s all presented in a synth-integrated, Gestalt-friendly whole, rather like Neurosis’ move back to nature with Times of Grace in 1999.

It’s not all forest-dwelling, subsistence-idyllic harmony though. Step outside the comfort zone, into the world of evil and strife, and you’ll find better recent BM. Like the immense last album from the bizarrely out-of-favour Leviathan. It’s confusing why so many are sleeping on Wrest’s Massive Conspiracy Against All Life, but they shouldn’t because it’s a work of art. And, unlike WITTR (and 90% of po-metal bands), it’s dripping with malicious intent.

Despite the gurning misanthropy that can sometimes be metal’s undoing, all the best examples of the genre – from Sabbath through Carcass, Neurosis and Converge – have managed to balance the outsider-friendly smarts and ideology with refined aggression and ill will. WITTR claim they want fans to ‘prostrate themselves on the floor and cry’. There is a certain melancholic intensity in the latter half of Black Cascade for sure, but if they want us to get that involved, they have to do their bit, and bring the pain.

Mono – Hymn to the Immortal Wind

2009-03-29T00:21:00.005Z

Conspiracy Records (2009)

More FACT-age...

Post rock’s dead, innit. What was an exciting, experimental avenue in the mid 1990s turned into an earnest search for glistening, actual-rock, perfection at the turn of the century. Both eras had their moments of greatness: Tortoise, the first Papa M album, Ui and Gastr del Sol. Kid A, Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heaven and the heartbreakingly perfect Lift To Experience.

But somewhere the bombast was turned up to twelve (modern compression techniques mean “two louder” now constitutes the extra push off the cliff), ‘post-rock’ became ‘indie’ and it all got a bit crap. I blame this decade’s output from Sigur Rós and Explosions In The Sky, as they smothered us in metric tonnes of cotton wool and candy floss; mile upon mile of cod-Romantic dross.

Japan is a bit different though their rockers have a habit of taking arguably stake genres and making something new and great out of them, like Guitar Vader (garage rock), Corrupted (sludge), Ghost (epic folk rock), Xinlisupreme (noise-pop) and Boris (all of the above). And, since 2000, Mono has been refining the art of post-rock.

Their last album, You Are There, was pretty much the peak of this generation of post-rock. Around this time, they blew Jesu off the stage when the two bands toured together. The band also collaborated with the mysterious and wonderful World’s End Girlfriend: has some of his (her? Its?) magic rubbed off?

Yes and no. this is still epic post rock as has become the norm in the last few years. It’s just been refined to the point of no return. Opener ‘Ashes in the Snow’ makes it clear that bigger is better in the eyes of Mono: post-rock is now pre-symphony, as the orchestra swells, the band apparently wooing Hollywood with their massive production.

This is post-rock as soundtrack. Mono’s music always had a visual edge to it, and for most of …Immortal Wind, you can imagine the equivalent of Dark Knight or The Fountain flickering on the silver screen. This is how big the music has become, and if it means I can stop hearing that Clint Mansell tune every time I go to the cinema or watch the football, then all the better.

The album’s peaks are the lengthy ‘Burial at Sea’ (sadly not a dubstep reimagining of Neil Young’s On the Beach) and surprisingly brief ‘Follow the Map’. Both are dynamic works of art; justifying the continued existence of post-rock in this post-everything climate.

That is not to say the music is original. To anyone familiar with the genre, the comparisons come thick and fast. ‘Everlasting Light’, lovely though it is, comes with a scratched-off ‘Godspeed’ label. ‘Pure as Snow (Trails of the Winter Storm)’ is an uninspired – and less subtle – retread of Mogwai’s genre-high ‘Ex-Cowboy’. ‘Silent Flight, Sleeping Dawn’ is promising, but too short to effectively use the Mono dynamic.

Hymn to the Immortal Wind is the definition of a genre piece. While executed with aplomb and much enthusiasm, one has to imagine this is it for this type of music. Whether Mono go on to soundtrack the next Chris Nolan film, or scenes of icebergs plunging into the sea for David Attenborough, the well of inspiration has apparently run dry.

Cut to: The horizon. Looming ominously, black cloud overhead, is a new Explosions In The Sky record.

Fade to black…

The Low Frequency In Stereo – Futuro

2009-03-29T00:12:00.007Z

Rune Grammofon (2009)

Getting some FACT-age up pon de blog...

Another couple of months, another great Rune Grammafon release. The label should hook up my bank account to their headquarters, intravenous-style, and constantly drip, drip, drip-feed their luscious black wax into my house. Kim Hiorthøy, I think I love you.

I don’t believe any member of Low Freq (as we have taken to calling them in the virtual FACT Towers) has been in Jaga Jazzist, which is probably a first in Norwegian non-black metal bands I have happened upon. I might be wrong. What is becoming commonplace with this current scene of bands is how consistently good they are.

Every song here is a self-contained gem, blessed with hooks and great sounding instruments. The enigmatic producer ‘Sir Duperman’, of Duper Studio, has much to be proud of. As with most things Grammafon, Futuro has a crystal clear mix, through which you can hear the varied sounds.

‘Geordie La Forge’ manages to stand out, not just due to its titular homage to the blind Star Trek character. Male vocalist (there is a man and a woman, though the sleeve notes credit the whole band with ‘voice’) Per Steinar’s delivery softens the edges of what would otherwise be quite a Queens Of The Stone Age song, replacing that band’s inherent ‘cool’ with more of a ‘cute’.

‘Starstruck’ marries latter-day Screaming Trees soft psychedelia with indie pop, hooks assailing your cerebral cortex. The band knows that effective melodic simplicity is key, so you quickly remember the rhymes of ‘Sparkle Drive’ with ‘45’. You’ll pause for thought, wondering exactly what that’s supposed to mean, but you will soon be swept away once more in the unabashed enthusiasm of the album.

On rare occasions the spell slips and you wonder quite what it is you’re listening to. ‘Texas Fox’, a sonically well constructed song, has absolutely horrible lyrics. You give a little leeway to bands whose first language isn’t English, but this is a ham-fisted attempt at surrealism that falls flat, regardless of good intentions. ‘Me and the farmer have to figure out the cow / The cow is the farmer, I really don’t know how’: it’s hard to be kind to that couplet.

Such stumbles are soon forgotten when you consider the relatively epic concluding song, the nine-minute ‘Solar System’. Its intro puts you in mind of the musical leg-stretching Kyuss would engage in when beginning their longer songs. But the mess of gleeful chaos and saxophone that unfolds is more reminiscent, again, of QOTSA, on ‘I Think I Lost My Headache’, or perhaps Radiohead’s ‘National Anthem’.

These aren’t lazy comparisons: this album, just like Kid A and Rated R, is a concise meditation on rock’s past and present seen through a very particular collection of eyes. It revels in generic hallmarks, but the band executes these with such personality and natural-feeling eclecticism that you forgive without a second thought.

Regardless of whether any of these players have worked with Horntveth, Munkeby or Qvenild, Low Freq have clearly established themselves as a band to be reckoned with. Futuro, while it nods blatantly to the past, is the place to be right now.

Mastodon: Crack the Skye initial thoughts

2009-03-27T21:24:00.005Z

After forgetting when it was coming out and then waiting for ‘Indigo Starfish’ to send my CD when I ordered from Amazon (what’s the deal with that?), my shiny new copy of the new Mastodon album arrived this very morning. I even splurged on the version with the DVD because I am a sucker for making-of DVDs.

After giving it a couple of listens, and the DVD one viewing, I can safely say hmmm. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I suppose people never say it in a particularly good way. I like it.

I have just never been the biggest Mastodon fan. They emerged when I was in a sulk with metal, and tried pretending that everything that came out wasn’t very good. Thankfully I saw the error of my ways, but the tons of praise being flung at this Atlanta quartet did seem a bit untoward.

They struck me as a very early 2000s heavy metal band, and nothing more. They took influence from the hyper-modern Noisecore subgenre that had ended just as they started, and mixed it with trad heavy metal sounds. It just struck me as a less-good Soilent Green, but with epic stuff added. It didn’t help that I originally knew of half the band as Steve Austin’s 1999 session musicians in Today Is The Day.

Over the years I have warmed to them, partly because Scott Kelly from Neurosis is a regular guest on their albums, and partly because they are pretty damn good. I think my fave album of theirs is Blood Mountain, where intricate metal arrangements mixed with strong hooks to great effect. It was even the official token metal album of 2006. Aww.

So I was quite excited about the new album, Crack the Skye. Just not hurling myself at the wall in anticipation or anything. My first listen was on headphones, and it’s clear they have settled into their major label status.

Apart from supporting Metallica a fair bit, they have switched producers for this one. Out went Matt Bayles, renowned producer of Noisecore bands like Isis and Botch, and in came Brendan O’Brien, who has produced… pretty much everybody. I know him mainly for producing (post)-grunge bands like Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden, and less grungey acts like Rage Against The Machine and some dude named Bruce Springsteen.

Fair enough, it’s all part of the leap into the mainstream. The band was also, bless their sweaty cotton socks, able to buy $3000 foot synths and other posh bits of equipment. Which is slightly moot considering O’Brien apparently owns every bit of equipment in the world.

The music itself is certainly fine, but nothing earth-shattering. Yesterday I had been listening to Static Tensions, the new album by fellow Georgians, the much more spikily named Kylesa. It was an entertaining way to spend three quarters of an hour: sorta stoner/sludge with impressively technical aspects and some oddly compelling hooks. ‘Unknown Awareness’, an ominous slab of darkness with sinewy lead guitar lines stretching over its surface, is the brilliant highlight. I imagined the new Mastodon would be a lot better. At least I hoped it would be.

It is certainly deeper, and you can tell which album had more cash lavished on it, had the star producer, and the relative luxury of time to make it. The first thing that struck me about Crack the Skye was just how melodic it is. Not really a surprise, as they were heading in this direction on Blood Mountain, but melody is clearly the watchword.

And if that’s the case, then prog is blatantly the back-up word. Not that this is a surprise, either, as the band has always been pretty proggy, and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t explore this avenue further. There are two epics on here, one of which features the prog hallmark of subtitles. Yes, ‘The Czar: i. Usurper ii. Escape iii. Martyr iv. Spiral’ is a ten-minute kinda epic with some nice keyboards, and it sounds rather like a certain Mars Volta.

More impressive, in that it bolsters the identity of Mastodon, is the album’s finale, ‘The Last Baron’. This features the most impressive vocals – more on this in a bit – and generally seems like it’s going to be the band’s status song. This one aside, the band generally seems more comfortable when they keep to more normal song lengths.

I reckon it will take a few more listens to really get to grips with this one. While the band claims it’s very ‘classic rock’ it is neither as simple nor as instantly memorable as the bigger hits of, say, Thin Lizzy or Mötörhead. The tones of the instruments, whether drum or guitar, have had the metallic edge stripped from them, in favour of a warmer sound. The bass is more full and satisfying. There is nothing as immediately hooking as the riffs of ‘The Wolf is Loose’ or ‘Colony of Birchmen’s chorus, both from the last album.

It’s compelling enough to stick with, though, and I see myself liking it more as time goes on. As for whether it’s that much better than the Kylesa, only time will tell.

As entertaining as the album is, I must admit I have gained more from the bonus making-of DVD. I have always loved seeing how a band goes about its business, and seeing the process of an album’s production, but mainly because we get to find out what the band’s thought process is.

And this was really enlightening. At first I thought the title 'Crack the Skye' was just the result of flicking a random prog name generator on and adding some olde worlde spelling. The truth is far more touching. It turns out Skye was the name of drummer Brann Dailor’s sister, who committed suicide when she was 14. I haven’t had much chance to read the lyric booklet, but a lot of this album’s lyrical content is apparently Dailor’s tribute to her.

Another emotionally affecting segment of the DVD concerns lead vocalist Brent Hinds, and the fight he got into at the MTV Video Music Awards, from which he received a broken nose and a brain haemorrhage. I had wondered why he wasn’t making any comments on the ‘Blood Mountain tour ends’ segment, and that’ll be because he was convalescing. He had months of labyrinthitis, and that experience apparently inspired his writing the music for this album. Talk about a cathartic record.

Aside from that, we get to see what went into the making of the album and – a part that I especially love – guitar and drum parts in isolation. I got more out of one Hinds solo on the DVD than I did on two plays of the album. I’m still not sure I’ve heard it on the album, in fact. And the sound he gets on the Flying V segment is gorgeous. I don’t know if he was always like that, or if it’s a result of the attack, but Brent is a brilliantly weird dude.

The DVD is also very funny. I won’t spoil it all for you, but highlights include Troy discussing what look they would be going for when marketing the album (complete with haircut chart), and Brann divulging the storyline of the record – while his lawnmower drowns him out. The scamp! And, I dunno, it’s just nice to see people who get paid handsomely for rocking out.

All in all, I’m happy with my purchase. They’re still not my favourite band or anything, but the DVD didn’t drag at all in its hour and a half. I’ve listened to the album twice today without getting the slightest bit bored of it, and I am confident the best of it is yet to come. Just one thing: they seriously need a lead singer. They’re like a football team with a great midfield and no striker. They need that finishing touch if they are really gonna be a premier league band.

Gig mithering

2009-03-23T19:22:00.007Z

Gigs, eh? I make a point of not really going to any. I'm not sure why: the best musical experiences of my life tend to be live performances. I just can't be bothered with it. What will the crowd be like? Will I be allowed to dance? Will the band play their best songs, or just the latest material I'm not that bothered about (speaking of which, I'm seeing Bob Dylan in a few weeks)? Will there be a cloakroom, or will I have to hold my jacket all night?

I'll admit these are mostly petty concerns, but they all add up, and when you combine them with insanely escalating ticket prices (I saw Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in May 2001 - when Blixa was still in the band - for £17.50. Try that now), they outweigh my desire to see most bands. I've seen bands not play what are clearly their best songs more often than not, but for different reasons. Mercury Rev not playing 'A Drop In Time' is probably because I am the only person in the world who thinks it their best song. Gameface didn't play 'Hey Radio' because they probably just couldn't be arsed. Pitchshifter refused to play 'Underachiever' because they were prissy idiots who seemed to think its fame was sufficiently comparable to 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' to warrant them invoking a similar self-censorship.

There are some bands I will see, even if they are not the bands I should be seeing. I really should, for, example, have seen the mighty Metallica. They are one of my favourite bands ever, I haven't seen them since 1996, and lots of my friends dig them. Despite my best intentions, though, the £50 face value must have put me off. I'm at that age, too, where time passes quickly enough that a gig comes and goes before I realise (hello last time Boris, Converge and Melt-Banana each played).

Anyway, I have a few gigs coming up. Asva, who are yet to overly impress me on vinyl, had a lot of potential, but sadly their travel to Europe fell through. The promoter expressed his hope to me that they will turn up in England soon enough. I am going to see Earth, who have overly impressed me on CD, vinyl, and the in-the-ether substance that Apple Lossless files are made of. As I missed them when they were touring HEX (supporting none other than sunnO))) ), I am desperate to see them. I'm gonna punk (rock) it up when I see NOFX and Propagandhi. Not together, which would be amazing. They don't seem to like each other very much.

Most imminently, though, I will see Animal Collective. I have blogged about them in the past, and meant to do a lor more blogging on them, but it's an inevitability of life that most of my blog posts won't come to fruition. I look forward to seeing them, not just because I'll capture the zeitgeist for once (and who'd have thought said zeitgeist would be located in a working men's club in Woodhouse?). It should be fun, is within walking distance, and their best song has just been released as a single. They have to play it; they just have to.

Years ago, I met a man who would prepare to attend a gig by listening to nothing but that band for the week preceding. I half really respected that, and half thought it was insane. BUt I often think that, hey, maybe I should do something like that. Get immersed in the back catalogue of one band, get in the mood for them to play, refamiliarise myself with the material. The gig itself would be a massively awesome slice of catharsis.

Just after I experienced my initial spurt of Animal Collective obsession, I did something I swore I would stop doing, and I illegally downloaded their back catalogue. The plan was to make friends with a history of music I had previously ignored, and to get ready for the gig. I never used to like them, but now was as good a time as any to change that. I would bung it all on the phone and hit 'artist shuffle'. It'd be great.

It was, in theory. Problem came when I actually tried it. The first song, coincidentally, was the only one of theirs I had been familiar with before this year - 2005 single 'Grass'. I didn't like it then and, try as I might, didn't like it during this walk home. I failed in my self-set challenge, and haven't gone back to it since. The urge to plunge into albums-worth of unfamiliar material is reduced from its already meagre level of enthusiasm by the fact that the current album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, is still sufficiently exciting to make me want to listen to it and nothing else by them. I managed to listen to Strawberry Jam the other day, though, so perhaps there's hope for me yet.

Then again, the gig is the day after tomorrow...

Postscript: Apologies for any typographical errors. I'm writing this on a laptop whose keys have so little travel I may as well be vaguely waving my hand a few inches over them, for all the tactile satisfaction I glean from typing.

More Faith, no?

2009-03-12T21:08:00.003Z

So Faith No More announced they were getting back together. I should be happy. I am happy, in a way, because it’s inherently good. However, like Chinese Democracy, it should never have happened in the first place. It’s always better as something to fantasise about than as something to have to face up to in real life.

On the Gn’R tip, it was a combination of the album’s massively prolonged gestation – with requisite Axl awesomeness – and the fact that it was always going to be rubbish. Even removing The Spaghetti Incident from the discussion, the Use Your Illusion albums were patchy and bloated, and they were 17 years closer to the band’s recorded peak than Chinese Democracy. There was nothing to look forward to.

In FNM’s case, it’s more about principle. While they were a fantastic band; the best thing any member was involved in; a reunion should never have been necessary. I suppose it still isn’t necessary. Anyway, Patton – the focal point since 1989, let’s face it – had a million other things on the go, and never seemed to look back.

Quite aside from another fantastic band that sadly folded, Mr. Bungle, Patton made great noises with Tomahawk, Fantômas, John Zorn, Kid606 and Melvins. Decent noises with Kaada, Peeping Tom, Dan the Automator, Björk and the X-Ecutioners. He did soundtracks of his own, and released compilations of Morricone’s. He was always looking at the next idea, and never back.

But I suppose it’s the fact that Patton always wanted to surprise people that meant such an unexpected move as this should come as no surprise. Why the hell not reunite one of the greatest bands of the last two decades? Perhaps Mike was gearing up to make the fourth Tomahawk album only to find his guitarist, Duane Denison, was busy rehearsing with his own past: Jesus Lizard.

FNM are apparently playing one date. Download Festival, at Donington Park. £160 for a ticket. £160 to see one band. The second-best band on a bill full of dinosaurs and nu-metal embarrassments is probably Def Leppard. And if I was bothered about seeing them, I’d have bought a ticket for their arena tour. So it’s a bit of a wash-out. Hopefully they’ll play more dates. That would make sense, but Faith No More was not a band for whom making sense was a priority.

There must be an upside to this though, right? Well yeah, of course there is. And it’s in the personnel. If this were purely a nostalgia trip, someone would have thrown enough money at the hirsute and homophobic pumpkin farmer – and original guitarist – Jim Martin. No, he doesn’t grow gay-hating fruit. Or does he?

I digress. The telling thing here is the fact that the line-up is the last one the band had before splitting: the 1997-98 band. Not the ‘classic’ line-up, nor the original one (Chuck Moseley, now there’s your ticket seller). Nor the one with Courtney Love singing, thank fuck.

This suggests to me, along with the band’s assertion that their music still sounds good after all these years – that the motivation for this reunion is actually to make music. What a novel concept. That would explain why Patton would be willing to take a step back in time, a step back in the musical complexity stakes. It would also explain the one announced date.

This is why I’m excited. While this summer will mark 12 years since the last Faith No More record, I am optimistic that this quintet is sufficiently good, un-ravaged by the process of time, and realistic, to deliver a good album. Their hitherto swansong, Album of the Year, is no older than Portishead’s self-titled album after all. It’s not like Third was rubbish, unless you attend Paul Morley’s avant-garde dinner parties.

I should also mention that the band was better without Jim Martin anyway. While they delivered some absolutely classic songs with Martin, in the shape of ‘The Real Thing’, ‘Surprise! You’re Dead’, ‘Midlife Crisis’ and ‘Caffeine’, dropping him was a wise move.

Jim Martin was a very creative heavy metal guitarist who pumped out many cool riffs. But Faith No More was about more than just heavy metal. Once the rest of the band were free of him, they were able to flex their considerable creative muscles and make music they’d arguably have been unable to with him on board.

Faith No More was always about strong personalities, but perhaps they need one straight man (between Martin and Hudson, they used Bungle man Trey Spruance – last seen in post-metal darlings Asva – on King for a Day… Fool for a Lifetime) to act as their glue. With that many personalities pulling in opposite directions, someone has to follow orders and allow the creativity to flow without either being hampered or imploding.

Eventually, of course, the band did implode. And in terms of ‘in it for the money’ accusations, it’s not as though Mike Bordin would make much more money drumming for Faith No More than he did with Korn and Ozzy Osbourne. If anything, this is him ‘selling in’. Hudson, bassist Bill Gould, and Bordin have been all too creatively quiet since FNM ended (Roddy Bottum has had his Imperial Teen outlet for years); maybe this is what they’ve been waiting for all along.

Or maybe the joke is on me.

Royal Trux reissues

2009-03-07T22:06:00.001Z

Without wanting to come on all Rock Family Trees, there was a band called Pussy Galore. In it were people who rocked, including men called Jon Spencer and Neil Hagerty. By the time Pussy Galore ended in a shower of recrimination and Spanish best-of parody art, new bands had already risen like pre-emptive phoenixes: Boss Hog, Blues Explosion and Royal Trux. While all are worth investigation, only one has had its first pair of albums re-released in the last few weeks.

Royal Trux burst onto 'the scene' in 1987 fully formed, and pretty much better than every other band out there. While it's dang near impossible to say the same about pretty much any band in the now, Trux changed rock music for the better in three short years. (They didn't go bad after that, they just made their mark in a hurry.)

They were the musical equivalent of Ren and Stimpy, and not just because both entities put you in mind of slacker garage rock. I’m serious.

Both Ren and Stimpy and Royal Trux were era-defining aberrations. Both were seemingly dysfunctional duos whose chemistry worked, well, til it stopped working. Ostensibly married to the past, but approximately a thousand years ahead of their time, both pairs were the epitome of cool: capturing the zeitgeist yet offering slightly surreal thrills whenever you happened upon them. And that's without even invoking the 1993 record Cats and Dogs.

Royal Trux visually surprises by following the Xerox-chic cover art with hazy orange cityscape sunset for the centre sticker. While minimal, it evokes so much: the sun metaphorically setting on the Reagan era, for one. The 1980s summer-rock epoch of convertibles and hot-pink string bikinis, of Dave Lee Roth solo albums and Sunset Strip decadence, was coming to an end. Like a dying star, its content was insufficient to justify its own mass.

So, straddling the attitude of peak Guns N' Roses and the experimentation of the Velvet Underground, Trux meant business. Like VU, this was the sound of a garage rock underground gone horribly right. 'Incineration' is almost a twenty-years-later sequel to 'Electricity'. From the 1967 debut record of another set of garage rock explorers, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, that song was wickedly disjointed. Especially considering how loved-up most major bands seemed to be that year. Both 'Incineration' and 'Electricity' have their titles used as weapons, sneered and smeared, with some sustain, almost at odds with the musical message.

It's almost as if Trux have sucked the youthful vigour out of garage rock at times. Like they have to kill it in order for it to live again. 'Esso Dame' bears the signifiers of the style, heart on its sleeve. Only Hagerty and Herrema have taken it literally and the ventricles and viscera are pumping away, bleeding down the short sleeved White Light, White Heat shirt. The loose drums, simple-but-catchy basslines and alternately sneering and drawled vocals are all there.

There’s something awry, though: our Doctors Frankenstein created a monster. Far be it from me to accuse anyone of heroin use but this is rocking as might happen, to borrow a turn of phrase from Poe, in the excitement of an opium dream.

At times, the record flirts with tradition. Hagerty's vocals on 'Gold Dust' recall the sound of mid-decade Gun Club or Replacements. But just as you think they're getting earnest, a completely loopy guitar line is drawn, like crayon on a newly-papered wall, all over the song.

As fresh as it was, Royal Trux did little to prepare listeners for Twin Infinitives (1990). Again, monochrome artwork hid an explosion of detail. The gatefold, this time, bears a great montage of drawings, photos and randomness, rather like the Carcass albums of that era, but with less dead people.

Like the design, the music at first seems random, carelessly thrown together. This is the real intelligence behind Royal Trux, that pervaded their entire career (and carries on still): they managed to make it look/sound like as though they weren't trying, like the music was effortless and un-thought out.

Really, the opposite is true. There are songs that sound thrown together, and may well have been. 'Solid Gold Tooth' features rambling, incoherent vocals, voices as bassline, while Autobots brawl it out with Decepticons above their heads, their laser fire criss-crossing the music.

The mix manages to sound sparse and bare, but when you focus deeply into the void, there are tons of details: subtle rhythmic samples, ambience, devilish details. 'Jet Pet' begins with a mouthwash-gargle tribute to the 'Voodoo Chile' intro, before Jennifer deconstructs rock and roll language: "YEAH YEAH YEAH, HEY HEY".

'(Edge of the) Ape Oven', sprawling across side three, is where Trux clue you in on the method behind the madness. The electro-percussion sounds for all the world like a avant-garde Terence Trent D'Arby, but the song soon launches itself towards the moon.

The guitar assumes many shapes on this track. There are noises and effects, jangle-chords, blues-influenced riffing and even metallic speed-picking. Always totally in control, the band know when to rein it in, and the last movement of the song's spent in hooksville. For all the criticisms of the album being too random, there are strong hooks; the dynamics are clearly thought-out.

That's what's so thrilling. There were other, similarly great, rock albums around this time, whether Slint's Spiderland, Jane's Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual, or Carcass’ Necroticism: Descanting the Insalubrious. Some were easier to get a handle on than others, such as the minimal Slint album. The Carcass album was a wonder of technical brutality, but death metal had been hinting at a record like that for some time. Twin Infinitives is a landmark in intelligence dressed up as glamorous trash, of massive ambition realised on the sly.

The Trux would enjoy more high-points before eventually burning out in acrimony. Accelerator and Pound for Pound were both fantastic, though relatively traditional, records in the latter days of the band. The former, especially, was a catchy fuzz-freak out. Its hooks and riffs were a signpost on the highway to the super-charger Heaven that Jennifer still seeks with current crew RTX.

RTX: the name itself is a throwback to a song on Twin Infinitives, as well as an icon the band used on the Thank You and Sweet Sixteen records. While Jennifer has clearly been on her own musical journey since starting the new band, its name is a constant link back to the legacy of Trux.

Musically, Herrema maintains the faux innocence to this day. The two most recent of RTX’s trilogy have been increasingly traditional in their hard rock/heavy metal sounds, but still there is a concept trying them together, of Jennifer as Pied Piper capturing rats (or 'RaTX').

Their 2004 debut, Transmaniacon, is vital. Working from a blueprint of Appetite for Destruction, RTX weave in myriad effects, from autotune abuse to P-Funk sampling. The result is an incredibly well written, psychedelically fucked up album.

Neil Hagerty, meanwhile, has been releasing records under his own name and the Howling Hex. No idea why this is yet another band whose name ends in 'x', but it clearly works.

Hagerty's output is often applauded for being ostensibly 'truer' to the sound of original Trux but, given the original band's propensity for change, the fact that they were all about ripping up the past and rearranging, rather than retreading it, I question the value of such praise. Still, the 'Hex provides an intriguingly organic redux of Perrey-Kingsley's swirling, intentionally perplexed polyphony.

Garage rock itself has been on a bit of a downward spiral since these records became history. Scandinavia briefly took the reins during an especially fecund period, The Hellacopters and Turbonegro, with related bands Backyard Babies and Super$hit 666, bringing the goods. However, as with any movement, the rot set in: the lasting impression is of adequate, but inferior, Hives and the White Stripes.

Thankfully, the Royal Trux influence carries on elsewhere. This level of experimentation-within-bounds can be heard in the best work from The Liars and The Hospitals. The later work of noise-rock supremos Skullflower even suggests something of a debt in terms of interpreting a genre aesthetic by delving inside and exploding it.

Recent news of Touch and Go scaling back its pressing and distribution operations – Royal Trux' home Drag City being a partner – is sobering. One hopes that the current financial climate, rather than scuppering the chances of another band like this coming along, would inspire musicians to make vital music in the face of institutions crashing down. To challenge falling sales and labels by making art vital again. Or at least DC can re-release Cats and Dogs on vinyl…

It would take a lot for anything to top these two records as rock reissues of 2009. But, with Touch and Go itself readying the Jesus Lizard back catalogue for release, it looks like one form of business is about to pick up.

Emeralds – What Happened

2009-03-01T18:36:00.005Z

More Fact-age!

***

No Fun Productions (2009)

I expected something different from Emeralds. The name suggests a music at once multi-faceted, brightly shimmering and hard to the core. But the image, of three neo-grunge dudes slumped anonymously over samplers and synths suggests something altogether sleazier; low-rent. Maybe a poor man’s Wolf Eyes. Or, dare we utter it, a bit like Sightings circa 2004?

Thankfully, the latter is not the case. Nor the former, though Wolf Eyes themselves are a fine combo. The album is split into five slices, two brief (in other words, under ten minutes) and three temporally solid entries.

‘Alive in the Sea of Information’ – a snip at eight minutes – opens What Happened in quite pleasant style. Jetson-futurist sparkles dance across the stereo image over black synth gurgle, while super-slow pitch-bend recalls the Plaid-in-molasses of ‘Kid A’.

Then a beast of a note invades the serenity, consuming all in its path. An uneasy equilibrium is reached, where neither side truly wins. It is at this point that a stretched-out human note joins the fray. The disembodied voice of god, taking no sides in this eternal struggle between light and shade.

This theme of ugly clashing with beautiful recurs throughout What Happened. ‘Damaged Kids’ spends an eternity bound in a chrysalis composed of oscillation and delay. Once it breaks through, it takes flight into the night on silken wings of effected guitar strings in a beautiful place out in the country. But beyond the Boards it treads, strumming, thrumming guitars bring the dread, turning out the stars like lights as their clattering volume increases.

After the brevity of ‘Up in the Air’, we get an electro take on Boris’ Flood, in the disarmingly named ‘Living Room’. Steady drip-drip guitar-picking slowly pools on the sonic floor as a fat synth-bass note lurks in the shadows. This fuzz tone builds and shapes, steadily, into an electronic scythe.

The scythe then slices clean through the skull of the mix. Pink flowers nervously blossom on the brain stem, their radiance refracting shards of light on the murky underworld of Kevin Drumm’s fantastic Imperial Distortion. The flowers flourish and tangle with the handle of the scythe, both competing and complementing in the kinetic melee. Then it ends, abruptly.

Final track ‘Disappearing Ink’ is a victory in motionless dynamics. Those pink flowers reverse-engineer into trees, while bees attempt to go about their nectar harvesting business even as amber hardens around their feet. This is music of paradox: slow waves of melody and texture swarm upward in spirals. Ghosts of song haunt, but are confined to one space, doomed to eternally repeat their one pattern. This is a restless catatonia, where it all happens while time stands still.

UFC 95

2009-02-22T21:05:00.009Z

I have started a lot of these UFC write-ups without finishing them. So I will try to keep this relatively brief in the hope that it will actually get finished and stuck on the blog. This was a British show, in whose suitably unimpressive main event lightweight debutant Diego Sanchez bested perennial plucky loser Joe Stevenson. But before I talk about that, there were some other fights!

Oddly enough – maybe I’ve been sleeping on the UK scene – British fighters won more fights than I’m used to. High on the bill was Nottingham punk Dan Hardy, who beat Rory Markham quite comfortably in a kickboxing match.

This was quite satisfying, actually. They were playing up the whole ‘UK vs. America’ combative fiction and, while I generally loathe jingoism dressed up as patriotism, I hate Markham’s face even more. He looked like a constipated cross between Matt Hughes and Sid Justice, and wore some god-awful Tapout-branded stars-and-stripes t-shirt.

I’m sure that he’ll have been fighting for Gawd and the troops, too, so I’m happy Hardy’s win spared me that speech, if nothing else. For his part, though Hardy was guilty of banging on about how Britain is always in his heart, he was also charismatic, and seemed handy enough. Good for him, that’s what I say.

Another, less charismatic, Brit was Terry Etim. He was on the prelims, but I can see him featuring on the upper reaches of future UK cards after he made quick work of Brian Cobb, replacing the staphed-up Justin Buchholz. I’m not going to lie to you, a lot of the fights last night blended into one in my memory, with their brevity and knock-outs.

This one was right at the start of the second round, though, as Etim pegged Cobb right in the jaw with a roundhouse toe, before sticking a couple of punches in on the floor. Etim’s lanky build is made for that kind of win and, as long as he doesn’t come up against any particularly strong wrestlers, he should be fine. The ground and pound was perfunctory, but at least avoided the cries of ‘early stoppage’.

Such cries were all over the first televised match, in which welterweight hottie (you were all thinking it) Josh Koscheck was knocked out by otherwise unheralded Paulo Thiago. Pre-fight, Koscheck emphasised that if he is to convince as a title challenger, he certainly has to beat ‘this guy’.

For most of the fight’s three minute life, he was doing that. Thiago, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu specialist, had no way of getting the superior wrestler to the ground, and Koscheck was happy out-striking him. Commentator Joe Rogan mentioned that the Brazilian was going to have to tighten his game when Koscheck, committed to a lunging punch, missed. Thiago capitalised with a short uppercut that floored the American.

Thiago rushed in to finish the fight with strikes on the floor, but the referee waved him off. Koscheck complained. Well he would, wouldn’t he. Josh argued that he was perfectly compos mentis, which he may well have been at that point. When the ref stopped the fight, though, he had been dropped and was limply flailing like a lobster left upside down on the surface of the moon.

More than that, Koscheck has only won three of his last six matches. The loss to GSP was fair enough: everyone loses to GSP nowadays. I hadn’t seen the Thiago Alves fight (or UFC 90 at all), but Kos lost a decision there. Again, that’s sorta understandable, and nothing to necessarily keep a fighter out of the top five.

Getting floored by a skinny BJJ specialist, though, is exactly the kind of loss Koscheck doesn’t need right now. If he was in line for a title shot, he has now been shunted to the back. On a personal level, Koscheck is one of the few American wrestlers that I particularly like, so I hope this loss doesn’t send him flying off the roster.

Another BJJ expert brought the pain on the next match, though in more traditional – and impressive – fashion. Demian Maia faced off against veteran Team Quest member Chael Sonnen for middleweight bragging rights. I don’t like Sonnen. I should, but I love Paolo Filho, and I can’t like anyone who feuds with Filho. Especially when he took Filho’s undefeated status away. Especially when I got told about it without even getting to see the show.

So I was concerned about this one, as Sonnen is a very good fighter from one of the historically great MMA camps (whose alumni/heads have included Randy Couture, Dan Henderson, Matt Lindland and Evan Tanner). A good wrestler with strong striking, he’s a tough combination for anyone at the weight.

Maia, though, is no fool. He also has a history of beating Team Quest members. He has bested Ed Herman and Nate Quarry, as well as erstwhile TQ-killer Jason MacDonald. He choked them all out, too, earning submission-of-the-night honours for all bar the Quarry.

The fight was tense through its brief duration, each competitor respecting the skills of the other. Only halfway through the opening round, Maia under-hooked Sonnen’s arms, falling backward before flipping on top of Sonnen. As he landed in mount, Maia already trapped an arm: a triangle in reverse.

From here, Maia allowed Sonnen to roll on top, as the Brazilian closed up a perfect triangle choke. Sonnen had nowhere to go, Maia pulled the head down, and the tap was forthcoming. It was not just a win for the good guys, but an island of beautiful grappling in the UFC mire of messy striking.

Nate Marquardt is another really good fighter I don’t like. I’m not even sure why. Perhaps it’s because of the beating he gave Dean Lister, one of my favourites, two years ago. Old grudges die hard. A painfully effective wrestler with good strikes and sub defence, he is perfect for hammering out ground and pound stoppages. (Apart from when he’s on the receiving end, natch.)

His opponent, Wilson Gouveia, decided that Nate was good at lots of things, but ‘great at nothing’. That did Gouveia little good. After a tight first round, Marquardt began to tire out the Brazilian. He was out-striking, defending any submission attempts that came, and scoring gradual, sapping, damage.

Late in the final round, with Gouveia sucking in air, Marquardt went for the kill in a fashion I haven’t seen from him since the destruction of Lister. While many of his strikes missed, the combination of punches, spinning backfists and knees brought the fight to a dramatic end.

Judging by the Maia and Marquardt performances, their styles of fighting, and the opponents they vanquished on this card, the two seem destined to meet in the summer. The winner will take on seemingly unstoppable Anderson Silva, if he gets past… Thales Leites? While I would want Maia to tap Marquardt out in their theoretical match, I sadly foresee the American holding Maia down and pounding him out.

Diego Sanchez is an intriguing character. Winner at middleweight of the first Ultimate Fighter contest, he was debuting in London at 155lbs. He came out to ‘We Will Rock You’, while shouting ‘YES!’ every few seconds. It was hilarious and slightly scary. He has a history of swarming his opponents and battering them, though was getting increasingly found out at welterweight.

His opponent, Joe ‘Daddy’ Stevenson, apart from bearing one of the stupidest ring-names on the planet, was also a little terror. Good at wrestling, he would pound away until a chance for a guillotine choke reared its head. Har.

He challenged the mighty BJ Penn for the belt in January 2008. Penn, as he does to other lightweights, demolished Stevenson. While Joe seemed to wither instantly under a storm of punches, he actually ended up lasting four minutes before Penn choked him from behind.

This past November, Stevenson again lost in dramatic fashion. I must have seen his fight against lightweight terror Kenny Florian, but I don’t particularly remember it. Stevenson does, though, as it apparently led to a re-evaluation of his life and work ethic. Heavy stuff.

I have repressed the events of this alleged (by the UFC) ‘fight of the night’. They do like their FOTNs to go to decision, don’t they. Quite why this was better than, well, anything else on the card is beyond me. Joe Rogan, while commentating, perfectly articulated what it was about.

Stevenson was boxing Sanchez and, I might add, in mediocre fashion. Sanchez, meanwhile, was doing just enough to win. Peppering Stevenson with slightly more varied strikes, and sufficiently reputed a wrestler as to discourage takedown attempts, the fight was Sanchez’ to lose. Seems he learned something from his decision loss to Josh Koscheck at UFC 69.

This continued for fifteen minutes. The judges decided that Sanchez won. They were correct. I woke up. Sanchez congratulated Stevenson on his ‘improved stand-up’, which must be carny for ‘you were crap, but as winner, I have the luxury of tossing an empty compliment your way’. This was boring, mediocre stuff, and I cannot wait for them both to lose in their next matches.

I would imagine Sanchez will have a rematch with Florian, which should result in swift, bloody vengeance for K-Flo, who lost that inaugural TUF finale. Stevenson, if still employed, can face – and lose to – any of the impressive lightweight division. I was going to suggest Sean Sherk, but I wouldn’t want to put myself through the ordeal of watching that fifteen-minute dry-hump.

Touch and Go is having a shake-up

2009-02-18T20:55:00.006Z

I know. I was supposed to write about the Asobi Seksu gig tonight, but new shit has come to light. Sorry. Touch and Go is having a shake-up, and I'm not a fan. For those who don't know, here's what T&G have to say:

It is with great sadness that we are reporting some major changes here at Touch and Go Records. Many of you may not be aware, but for nearly 2 decades, Touch and Go has provided manufacturing and distribution services for a select yet diverse group of other important independent record labels. Titles from these other labels populate the shelves of our warehouse alongside the titles on our own two labels, Touch and Go Records, and Quarterstick Records.

Unfortunately, as much as we love all of these labels, the current state of the economy has reached the point where we can no longer afford to continue this lesser known, yet important part of Touch and Go’s operations. Over the years, these labels have become part of our family, and it pains us to see them go. We wish them all the very best and we will be doing everything we can to help make the transition as easy as possible.

Touch and Go will be returning to its roots and focusing solely on being an independent record label. We’ll be busy for a few months working closely with the departing labels and scaling our company to an appropriate smaller size after their departure. It is the end of a grand chapter in Touch and Go’s history, but we also know that good things can come from new beginnings.

So they're not stopping the rock or owt, but are very much scaling it down. When I first heard the news I selfishly thought 'bloody hell, they were supposed to be re-releasing the Jesus Lizard albums this spring!'

I was somewhat relieved to learn they'd still be pushing back catalogue material, and re-releasing more old stuff. But that doesn't reflect well on me. I was always the person telling the canon to stuff itself, and forget the alleged classics. And here I am, unmoved by the inexorable changing of one of the key music labels of the last two decades because at least I can still get the old stuff in. It's pathetic, and I was wrong.

This is totally a bad thing to happen, because of the principle of it. It's not about how many T&G albums I liked in the last five years. It's the idea of such an independent stronghold being forced into compromise. It's that dread 'look back in anger' concert mis-idea transferred into real life. It's not one night only: it's forever.

Maybe I'm over-reacting. We are all experiencing a financial lull at the minute, and the fact that T&G is scaling its operation down means it can still exist when next we enter a boom period. Whenever that is. It's rather a shame, though, as the old musical adage hold that the most urgent music is created in those times of strife and society-wide ill health. We need an outlet.

And the saddest fact of all, for me, is that T&G is primarily scaling back its pressing and distribution arm. Again, selfishly, I don't much care for Merge (signers of the excellent Neutral Milk Hotel and utterly bogus Arcade Fire). But what of Kill Rock Stars? OK, they're apparently in the midst of affiliating with Secretly Canadian. T&G sorted out Drag City, which is my personal bummer.

Not only was DC the home of the legendary Royal Trux (more on them later), but they have since then housed Jim O'Rourke, Papa M, RTX, Weird War, Ghost, Joanna Newsom and tons more. Drag City, if I think about it, is probably my favourite label of the last five years. And in this Inspector Calls world in which we're living, that's what Touch and Go has done for me lately.

A scaled down T&G may well be lurking about, licking its wounds with the cockroaches in the post-credit crunch world, but will the labels affiliated with it? Will Atavist, Merge and DC survive? If not, who will be releasing the vital rock music of 2010? Of 2011? Who can be releasing it if relative powerhouses such as them are in danger of going under.

So I may indeed be getting my Jesus Lizard reissues this April. But at what cost?

The Bug packaging fetish

2009-02-17T22:47:00.004Z

Apologies for the clear laziness of this post, but I have to get something pon de blog tonight, as I missed out last night. I have a good reason: I was at a gig. And I plan on getting it written up tomorrow night. Exciting, right? Anyway, I saw Asobi Seksu. They were good, though two universal throughsilver gig truths held:

(i) Nobody dances; and
(ii) Encores suck.

But explanations can wait til tomorrow. For now, we have the latest instalment in my never-ending throughsilver vinyl fetish series.

I finally, finally got hold of the Bug album from last year, after everyone was banging on about it. It sold out at source very quickly, which led to yours truly searching, in a panic, for other copies. None in shops or the usual internet places. Wait, sounds familiar...

That's right. The same thing happened with the Earth album. Except The Bug was The Wire's album of the year. That made it even harder, and I didn't want to pay forty quid for it on Amazon. I thought I had it when I ordered it from Fa' Ci'y. Sadly they pulled a Rough Trade, and didn't actually have it, so on the wish list it went.

I figured that was the end of that chapter, until the aforementioned Ci'y sent me an e-mither about this item being back in stock. For 16 quid. But, I figured, if they have it then so must Ninja Tune, as it'll have been re-pressed. And they did! Nice one. And, in the interest of fairness, even though they refused to combine my orders last week, I will also mention those fine people at Norman Records. Hey, they give me sweets.

It's even been reduced in price at Amazon (but check the extortionate second hand price. £70? Who owned it previously?!) to an only slightly mad 22 quid.

Let this be a lesson to you: buy these records when the come out. Otherwise you may end up stuffed. I'm surprised I didn't get this one on release. Rather than being a Wire stan, I was waiting for this quite eagerly. Lea and I, a couple of years ago, were mad on this bloke. Everything we heard of his was gold (you could say he had the 'Midas' touch. Har), and we bought up the 12" singles with great excitement. But then the album came out and I wasn't excited any more. I blame Lea.

And, as per usual, I've not listened to it yet. It's on three discs, all right?! But I think this represents the last of the 2008 records that I needed to get. Especially as the Akimbo and Rye Wolves ones don't seem to have even been pressed yet. Neurot! Aurora Borealis! Get it sorted! Both AuroraB and the Wolves themselves have assured me that their wax is on the way but, when I asked Southern about the Akimbo, they quite literally told me not to hold my breath.

That doesn't bode well.