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Merge Records
Vocalist Alasdair MacLean's singing on this album is fairly desolate sounding. I don't get much feeling from the way he sings, it's more like he's singing like that because by convention that's how a singer in such a song should sound. The Clientele rely too heavily on sounding like bands such as The Byrds and Bob Dylan that they don't sound like themselves. I’m all for paying homage to your influences once you put an original spin on your music. A few times I had to check the sleeve notes to see if they were playing a cover, for example on “Losing Haringey” I was convinced they were covering a Tindersticks song but it turned out to be an original.
The songs themselves are technically well put together. The sound is good and everyone is playing the right note at the right time. It sounds too right though, just like MacLean’s singing there is little passion in the music. There’s also little variation, for instance the same tremolo effect is on the guitar for the entire album. Yes it’s a nice sound but it gets boring after a few songs. Even when they try and freak out they sound like they’re just going through the motions. On “E.M.P.T.Y.” there is what sounds like an aborted guitar solo. It might have had more of an effect if it wasn’t pushed so far back in the mix that it sounds like it’s coming from next door. It's odd because the rest of Strange Geometry is mixed fairly well but to put something that sounded good out of the way seems like madness to me.
The Clientele obviously have talent, they know their instruments and how to get the sounds they want from them. However there is something lacking from the music, they remind me more of a tribute band or an obscure band from back in the day that didn't quite make the big time than a recent band. Strange Geometry does very little for me, it is too bland and sounds like too many albums that I already own.
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Like last year’s Mirages, Harmony is further refinement of the charred, static airscape that’s been in steady unveiling since Hecker’s first under his own name. An album of suites, it’s still all the same stuff: a grand-scale drift along the broken strands and injections of melody stretched through a globe’s worth of radio interference and churning chaos-drone. Whereas before the artist disrupted the sweep of his work with pop culture jabs (My Love Is Rotten) or more direct appeals to ambient or field sounds (Haunt Me), his last two records go straight for the head, kept still, buoyant, but in a suffocation of pinging dronal overtones and unending static tide.
Calm is available in the suspension of droning constants, and in the degree of body separation necessary to appreciate music this reliant on suggestions of spectral energy fields or global transference. But there is nothing inside to lull or comfort. The album title illustrates: a beauteous collision of empty atmosphere shot through with invisible or imagined presences, forgotten surveillance and the remote, mechanical dread of a world locked on "scend." The cover photo, a political memorial dissolving in sepia, establishes the tone well. Track titles like "Stags, Aircraft, Kings and Secretaries," "Radio Spiricom" and "Dungeoneering" emphasize cryptic fusings of interior desolation and loss with atrocities and failed attempts in the public sphere. A tragic world of misdirected melancholy emerges; lonely souls are finding their dead on a radio dial, rapt in code.
Hecker’s goal could be a simultaneous exploration and dismantling of this kind of machine romance. (A previous record, probably my favorite until this, was called Radio Amor.) His technique is certainly one to draw out the minor, thudding melodies from under a static loop, to emphasize the grand cathedral-spaces between shifting panes of white noise. Though not quite comforting, his records do offer a form of mental therapy if only in the way they seem to integrate chaotic, mechanical and modern environmental energies. Like Mirages though, Harmony feels like a tipping point into further interference, alienation from this kind of romance, and an increased emphasis on the paranoia and emptiness in its wake. No soothing microsound, no glitch intricacies or tonal dissections occur here that couldn’t also arrive as quakes to the system; no, Hecker’s music might be better termed "macrosound," a fragment of calm in the glazed, all-seeing eye of something too big to fathom.
Samples can be found here.
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On Songs From Before, Max Richter utilizes sources between half a decade and three centuries old—some as inspiration, some appearing to be submerged reworkings of his own material, and others are well placed shortwave fragments of morse code, chatter, music, and static. The addition of spoken word to this collage could have resulted in a mess. Luckily, Richter is nothing short of an alchemist, in that, while we admire his genuinely heartbreaking music, the literary content and the pristine production, we can still engage emotionally with the end result. The cello, violin and viola, along with Richter's piano, mixing and producing are deft and evocative. Louisa Fuller, Natalia Bonner, Rick Costa, John Metcalfe, Chris Worsey, and Ian Burdge, assist in creating the equivalent of a blank canvas of taut melancholy, onto which the listener may transpose whatever the mind unearths or the heart exhumes.
The chill processional calm of "Song" begins the album strongly with minimal strings, hollow keys, and sporadic depth-charge percussion. Eventually a wave of understated static heralds a change and we are into "Flowers For Yulia" featuring a voice reading from the work of Haruki Murakami. This is a brilliant choice. The balance of accessiblity and complexity in Murakami's work has been noted, and the same is true of Richter. The choice of reader for the few passages of text is probably the biggest risk on this record. Robert Wyatt's voice has always naturally combined a matter-of-fact sadness with a quizical sense of isolation and cheery humanity. For me, this matches, but doesn't overwhelm the power, ambiguity, or meaning of the verse. I hope the recognition factor of Wyatt's presence won't distract other listeners, and when set against clouds of intricate static, the chance is lessened.
"Fragment" features a liquid-into-crystal piano style that recalls Vladamir Costa's romantic soundtrack for the cult film Diva, and as with any object of obsessive desire, is gone all too suddenly. "Harmonium" begins with static that sounds like rain and more verse. That succumbs to a throbbing, meandering, sense of darkness, illuminated by glistening stalactites of shimmering sound-as-light. More deceptively simple orchestral beauty follows (like that's a piss-easy thing to put in the middle of your album) until "Time Passing" blooms into muted and contrasting percussive explosions combined with shortwave chatter. Later, the discussion of sky in the ultra-short "Lullaby" brings to mind Peter Carey's short story The Puzzling Nature Of Blue.
The tracks I mention aren't highlights. When a disc is as consistently satisfying as this one, there's no such thing. Others may say that Songs From Before is too short, too lush, or not difficult enough. Yet each time I listen to this record I feel I enter a secret place, an attic, cave, or well, and either leave something for safe keeping or discover something of value. Of all Richter's recordings, this one may features the least number of notes, but what notes they are! As Rumpole said, "It's the quality of life, Hilda." Rather affirmingly, a Murakami quote which surfaced in a recent brainwashed review of Guitar Realtime Processing is heard here, on "Time Passing", but the quote I'd perhaps use in reference to this record isn't:
"Haven't sensed the sweet breath of summer for long. The sweetness of the waves. The faraway steam whistle. the touch of girl' skin. the lemon smell of hair conditioner. the evening wind. Faint hope. Summer dream... all disperse bit by bit like the bygone days."
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As a household name for anyone who knows his or her electronic music, it’s a surprise that its taken this long for Andrew Weatherall’s to drop his first solo record. Aside from a few remixes and mix records, he’s always been a team player in projects like Sabres of Paradise and Two Lone Swordsmen. Always seen as more of an ideas man than a knob twiddler, this five track EP reveals again his skill for crossing the genre gaps and keeping his vision as eclectic as ever, but this time on his own.
Normally from LP to LP you can rely on Weatherall’s perfidy, his progressions from style-to-style ditching conquered musical territories in his wake. This EP is more of a career roundup than a forward-looking release, but it’s a great spot to spark up a solo discography. Touching on key identifiable points of his past projects (see the silky techno beats on Two Lone Swordsmen sound-alike "Edie 11"), each track here could be a prime cut ready for a best of compilation. But as with all Weatherall projects he’s never yet taken the obvious / easy route. Even the most commercial cut here, a surly track "You Can't do Disco Without a Strat", features an incredibly odd girl group sing-along of the title that sounds utterly out of place and sarcastic. Matched with his half sneer vocals and a melody that wobbles in and out of dancefloor focus, this shows he’s still got that leftfield lean. The bonus remix of this track by UK’s Repeat/Repeat duo takes a minor glitch route through the same track, keeping the moody quotient well in the red. Everything here has that gaping switchblade stab wound twist that seperates Weatherall from just another melodic electronica pioneer.
Sounding like a shinier exploration of mid-career Sabres territory, "La Sirena" is a stilted and sometimes squelchy enormous electro monster. Plucked rockabilly guitar notes ride shotgun alongside a doom dub bass; a compulsory head nodder. It’s instantly Weatherall, bringing back memories of Sabresonic’s urban murk. The nearest touchstone on the opening "Feathers" is a less frenetic New Order, the scratchy guitar, live drums and a big fat Hooky bassline.
After a brief off-radar break it looks like the man is back to claim his spot, not that anyone could ever take it.
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Most of the album is excellent with Christie somewhere between a mysterious and sexy Nancy Sinatra character and a more worldly, truthful Janis Joplin. Her backing band is great: they combine elements of folk and country with psychedelica and funk. Christie’s performance on the first half of the album is spotless. Her voice is beautiful and strong, it commands total attention. On the country standard “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” not only does she give a soulful rendition of the song but her voice is doubled up with an echo added to her words. It is a simple but very effective technique which adds an ethereal quality to the song.
Mid-way through the album is “Yesterday, Where’s my Mind?,” which is easily the weak point of the album. More specifically the first chunk of the song is turgid. The backing band are great, slowly building up a powerful groove but Christie’s spoken word vocals are atrocious flower child waffle about going on acid. However, when she starts repeating the phrase “God, where is my mind?” and snarling like a proto-Jarboe the song is saved. It quickly changes style into a country-tinged rock song. The electric guitar buzzes and growls as Christie unleashes her voice properly. As much as I dislike the intro I’m more than happy to sit through it to get to this.
One word of warning about this album: because of the nature of the source recording the sound gets a bit ropey at some points. In 1970, only three copies of the album were pressed and, although not stated in the press release, I’m guessing the master tapes were lost. This reissue was made from one of the three vinyl copies and in a few places the vinyl is worse for wear. Some of the songs have a lot of scratching on them which at times kill the mood. Still, beggars can’t be choosers.
I’m not a rabid rarity collector, I don’t think that a rare psychedelic album from the '70s or a black metal demo limited to five cassettes is any better than something that gets a huge pressing and fan base. However, I do often wonder how many classic albums have been lost to society. A better Velvet Underground could be in a vault somewhere waiting for someone to stumble across or to be accidentally destroyed. Susan Christie may not be up there with VU but making her music available at long last was worthwhile. Paint a Lady isn’t life changing or ahead of its time but it is a cracking album. A lot of albums that should never have been made have been given proper releases so it’s nice to hear some form of musical justice by getting an album like this released. Paint a Lady is something I will be returning to again and again.
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B-Music
Vannier is best known as the man behind the music on Gainsbourg’s classic Histoire de Melody Nelson. That album is rightly regarded as a masterpiece and very little else of what Gainsbourg recorded reached that level of perfection (although his other works are by no means imperfect). As such, I was surprised upon hearing L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches that it was just as good as Histoire…. This Vannier album could very easily have been included with Histoire… as a double album. The only thing missing from L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches is Gainsbourg’s voice; it always feels like the vocals are just about to kick in but they never do. However, the music alone more than stand up to Gainsbourg’s legacy.
A unexpectedly restrained start with what sounds like a field recording in a sleepy French town on “L’Enfant la Mouche et les Allumettes” gives way to a mighty Krautrock groove; so far, so good. The music never stays the same for long; Vannier makes the music of Fantômas sound positively static. It takes a few listens to get into the feeling of the disc as it seems a bit disjointed at first. He blends styles and instrumentation like no one else; funk rhythms sit comfortably with a choir while what sounds like someone jamming on their guitar to King Crimson playing alongside it all. All this can change suddenly to something completely different like pompous French pop, jazz or all out noise (sometimes all at once). The best part is that with repeated listens small patterns and motifs become apparent that were lost in the chaos previously. It is more adventurous than Histoire… as Vannier is free to do what he wants as opposed to create songs.
As the track titles suggest, L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches is a concept album. Each piece depicts a different scene and it seems to me that the different segments of music within the various pieces represent the cast of the story. Gainsbourg’s contribution to this album is a short summary in the sleeve notes of the action as he imagines it. Vannier changes the mood and setting masterfully, the eastern tinged strings and rhythms of “Le Roi des Mouches et la Confiture de Rouse” capture the sights, sounds and smells of a flamboyant regal feast; Vannier makes music for all the senses. Later the action of “Les Garde Volent au Secours du Roi” provides a dramatic, psychedelic contrast to the earlier party atmosphere. The overblown, epic music isn’t the soundtrack I’d imagine for a child killing flies but it certainly works well.
In addition to the album there are also a couple of bonus tracks in the form of two versions of “Je m’appelle Geraldine” which are superfluous but a nice addition nonetheless. Also included is a video of a live performance of the album’s opening piece recorded for a fashion slot for French television. It’s fantastic to see Vannier’s orchestra play this stuff with a model parading down a catwalk in various costumes, it all fits together beautifully.
Albums like L’Enfant Assassin des Mouches just aren’t made anymore. It sounds firmly rooted in its time and place but it has withstood the tests of time remarkably. It is an inspiring listen that gets more interesting each time I hit play, quelle disque!
samples:
- L'Enfant la Mouche et les Allumettes
- Le Roi des Mouches et la Confiture de Rouse
- Je m'appelle Geraldine (Mid-tempo)
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In the face of diminishing returns from his midtempo/ downtempo releases for Warp, Ninja Tune, and Planet Mu, Luke Vibert's latest for Rephlex showcases his boldest material this century, suggesting that there may yet be some more good ideas up this maturing musician's rumpled sleeve.
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Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Dressed in Wires (aka Simon Earp) continues his one-man mission to inject digital hardcore with his own special brand of I-don’t-really-get-it humour. This cassette’s title track may begin as a one trick assault on the John Williams theme, but thankfully soon reveals much more going on.
The hacksaw job on the E.T. theme turning it into a grinning digital grind soon leads into a full-blown case of descending pixelated rot. A climbing obstreperous clanker of a beat (something between breakcore and leftover Ikea parts shaken in a jar) hauls up to chest height a dread fuelled face punched electronic piece. Reminiscent of a '80s synth soundtrack, this melodic centrepiece of the 12 minute A side shows Dressed in Wires doesn’t really want to crap on his own dinner plate. Even the expected finale of a disassembled through degradation piece of possible euro-pop doesn’t harm.
The flipside, “Miscarriage, Where Were you”, appears to take another screwdriver to the Spielberg / Williams partnership. A much briefer piece, this stuttering scratchy shambles sees high end feedback carving a melody out of rubbish like Merzbow doing the Close Encounters theme. As ever, Dressed in Wires is thoroughly entertaining.
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LTM
The reissue of On a Warm Summer Night (Tous mes Caprices) is a chore to listen to. All of the music sounds like it was programmed by someone who hates music. It is a blend of easy listening jazz and Latin rhythms, now sounds extremely dated. I can just imagine a bunch of yuppies from a Bret Easton Ellis novel sitting in an expensive French restaurant with this drivel playing in the background. Horrible bongos and cheesy bass lines mix with hideous guitars like vomit in a cesspool. It sounds disgusting and forced. There’s absolutely no emotion anywhere on the album. Antena herself sounds cold, more like a session singer who doesn’t like what she’s singing but doing it because the money’s good. “Eclat de Nuit” is a slow number that is meant to sound slinky and sexy but Antena ends up dead and asexual. Before the album hits the halfway mark I’m feeling like death would be a sweet release. Killing myself to escape from listening to this album wouldn’t be suicide, it would be euthanasia.
However it keeps going and I keep listening. I find out later in the disc that Antena isn’t happy making bland music of her own, she has to bland up other artists’ music too. Included on this disc is her reworking of Frank Zappa’s “Village of the Sun.” It sounds dreadful. I’m not a fan of Zappa to begin with but no one deserves this sort of treatment. Antena sounds even more bored singing this than she does with her own songs. As if it wasn’t enough of a treat to have all this music reissued, there are bonus live tracks. A number of tracks from On a Warm Summer Night appear again, along with a couple of other songs. From the sounds of things, Antena is even less exciting live as she is in the studio. She sounds flat and dreary on all of the songs. Every time she tries to sound passionate she sounds even more dismal.
Obviously there is a huge jazz influence on her writing but jazz is supposed to be full of fire and passion. Even listening to a great jazz musician playing standards is heaven. However, Antena is jazz purgatory. Her music is jazz reduced to something that is more suited to being background music in a department store than something people should be expected to pay money for. I get a mental image of her band and it’s a bunch of session musicians with big, waxy grins and permed hair in obnoxious shirts. Someone should have drowned them at birth.
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L’Alphabet du Plaisir is a best of collection covering the years 1982 to 2005. It shows that Antena hasn’t always been so cheesy. The first two pieces are sensual, synthesiser-led songs that do a much better job of mixing the Latin rhythms with contemporary pop. “Camino del Sol” in particular being a wonderful little song, the synths and drum machine sound some of Aphex Twin’s calmer output. It is difficult to imagine the same person who inflicted On a Warm Summer Night on us could be so far ahead at one stage.
As the album progresses it is possible to hear Antena’s descent into mediocrity. For the mid- '80s material I can see some merit to them. “Be-Pop” sounds horribly old-fashioned to my young ears but it’s not all bad. “Le Poisson des Mers du Sud” is as much influenced by the Mediterranean as it is by French pop. It wouldn’t be the sort of music I’d normally like but it is one of the more enjoyable parts of the album. However, she then starts pandering to the safer side of the jazz market. Any of the sensuality present in the songs from her early recording career disappears. All that’s left is a collection of hollow tunes, more suited to being played in a lift than on a stereo.
One of the biggest crimes on L’Alphabet du Plaisir is her murder of Serge Gainsbourg (well not literally but I wouldn’t put it past her). Her version of “Ce Mortel Ennui” is appalling, never have I heard such a dreary rendition of Gainsbourg’s work. Worse again, she embraces the songwriting “talent” of Barry Manilow. This is perversion at its most base level and I can be no part of it. Anyone who sinks to covering Barry Manilow needs to banned from entering a recording studio for the rest of their lives, no exceptions.
This is music for people in their middle ages (or possibly in their dark ages) who think they’re cosmopolitan by listening to French pop. They’re the same people I imagine who buy those compilations of contemporary songs being played on pan pipe advertised on TV in the middle of the night. The vast majority of the songs sound contrived and Antena sounds like she would rather be somewhere else. I know I’d rather be somewhere else. In saying that, at least the best of has pointed me to her early work which I intend to investigate further. The rest of her work can gather dust as far as I’m concerned.
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