You could certainly argue that John Carpenter has never been given enough credit as a composer, even when his status as a filmmaker was at its highest in the 1980s. Indeed, some may not even realise that the man who directed classic horror films like The Fog, Halloween, and The Thing also composed the music for most of his films. Some might point to Carpenter’s efforts as the workaday contributions of a man known for taking on “too many” roles on his films, but French electronic duo Zombie Zombie have sought to rescue Carpenter from this kind of thinking. In re-recording some of Carpenter’s best-known pieces for this EP, they have not only taken a good opportunity to remind us of the director’s musical strengths, but also to interpret his pieces in interesting (if largely faithful) ways.

What Zombie Zombie clearly have on their side is the basic, inherent quality of Carpenter’s compositions. Anyone who has seen Carpenter’s phenomenal Rio Bravo homage Assault on Precinct 13 can testify to the incredibly powerful effect of its score, not only when combined with the film proper, but even with its sparse title sequence. Like the other four pieces re-interpreted here, the main theme from Assault is a profoundly unnerving piece of music, a property which Zombie Zombie have managed not only to preserve, but amplify.

With the exception of the frostily yawning chasm that is the main theme from The Thing, these pieces make for pretty propulsive stuff which means that they’re far more suited to re-interpretation and for casual listening than the work of most composers. Zombie Zombie don’t fundamentally alter any of these works, but they bring them up to modern recording quality standards whilst still retaining their retro late 1970s/early 1980s appeal and handling their nuances effectively. In “The Bank Robbery”, a key theme from Escape From New York, a technique as simple as removing and then reinstating the sure-footed, pounding beats is turned into an almost indescribably efficient factory for tension.

Naturally Zombie Zombie Plays John Carpenter will be of most interest and value to those who are established fans of the great man’s work both cinematically and musically. What Zombie Zombie deserve credit for is their feat of having made a record which, while brief, can appeal beyond Carpenter’s fans, as it is a strong work in its own right.

“…an album should be a document of what a band has been doing over a certain period of time. And almost everything should be included. Like it or not.” So said Gary McClure of Working for a Nuclear Free City in a memorable quote that has been doing the rounds recently. The eclectic Manchester band has taken this mantra to heart on their third album, the inclusion of “almost everything” resulting in Jojo Burger Tempest clocking in barely under the length of a football match – mercifully minus half time. But that does not mean that the record is a messy affair. It has meant a sprawl across two discs, however, the second of which WFANFC have used to enclose a single 33-minute electro-symphony of dubious merit. But we’ll get to that.

WFANFC’s last outing was a double too, an exhausting hour-and-three-quarters tour of myriad disparate styles which was robbed of listenability by the bizarre decision to shuffle new material with previous work included for the benefit of new listeners, especially in the US. This time around the five-piece have included solely new material which if we leave the epic title track aside for a moment leaves us with a much more manageable 55-minute album to enjoy. Stylistically this new material is a little more cohesive than last time around, but this can still be a dizzying journey; acoustic and electric guitars duel with bleepy synths on ‘Inokashira Park’, while pretty piano dances over hushed beats on ‘A Black Square With Four Yellow Stars’.

As before, much of the album is instrumental. Perhaps the best of these pieces is ‘B.A.R.R.Y.’, on which a shredded confetti of glockenspiel falls on a floor of pulsating drums as heavenly strings look on. It is the sound of something breaking through the clouds to the sun beyond; it is as much a highlight of this album as the 70s car-chase-soundtrack of ‘Innocence’ was a highlight of the band’s debut. The sheer vast difference in style between the two tracks underlines the fact that that was then, this is now – the gulf in style between ‘B.A.R.R.Y.’ and most other tracks on this album underscores the fact that one thing which has not changed for WFANFC is their willingness to try just about anything.

When vocals do get a look-in, they are generally hushed and relatively unobtrusive, as on the jovial and relaxed ‘Little Lenin’. McClure’s lyrics are often pretty repetitious, furthering the impression that these are collective trances rather than songs in the conventional sense. Generally they lull, calm, soothe – they are far from what Greg Kot calls rock n’ roll’s “amplified personality”, one of many reasons why “post-rock” is a deeply unsatisfactory term for the band’s music; indeed, on much of Jojo Burger Tempest they have shed rock aesthetic altogether – they are a kind of experimental electronica-dominated collective.

At first glance one glaring rock trope remains. That 33-minute closing title track on the second disc superficially recalls similar efforts to create side-long symphonies on albums by the likes of Yes, Jethro Tull, and Emerson, Lake and Palmer in the 70s. However, WFANFC have been quick to point out that the work is really more of a mix, more indebted to DJ sessions, and that it compiles miscellaneous abortive song fragments. Unfortunately WFANFC are no Beatles, and this technique leaves the track an aimless self-indulgence, something of an anchor appended to the end of an otherwise consistently interesting, if inconsistently brilliant, album.

A regular in the Toronto improv scene, John Kameel Farah is currently in the UK for a handful of dates in support of most recent album “Unfolding”. Having studied classical piano at University of Toronto, Farah took private studies with revered minamilist Terry Riley. His work brings his classical chops, elements of Arabic sounds,free-jazz, and electro-acoustic improv together with fearsome, twisting electronics.

28 July 2010 The Others, London
29 July 2010 The Cellar, Oxford
31 July 2010 Resonance 104.4 FM ‘Disorder At The Border’ London,
7 August 2010 Brecknock Museum & Art Gallery, Brecon Fringe Festival, Brecon, Powys
8 August 2010 Je-Thames London, London
10 August 2010 Ten Feet Tall, Cardiff, Wales
14 August 2010 The Spice of Life, Soho, London

John Kameel Farah: ‘Augury’

John also features on the forthcoming Oh! Canada 12 compilation.

Photo by Eoin Harris

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Over the last few years, a growing number of bands have begun to challenge certain music release norms. Radiohead allowed fans to pay what they wanted for an album, Nine Inch Nails simply gave away an album for free. Northern Irish rock veterans Ash, though, seek to challenge the whole concept of the album, just as Led Zeppelin challenged the single in the 1970s; and they’ve succeeded.

They have succeeded in a sense that Vol. 1 demonstrates that in releasing a single every fortnight, you can maintain a high level of consistent quality, and when you collect those singles (or the first half of them, in this case) you can create a record as impressive, if not moreso, than a lot of conventional rock albums recorded on the now-normal two-year cycle. Even if this experiment on Ash’s part is an effort to get them back into public attention more effectively than an album would – and I suspect that’s part of their motivation – it’s still an experiment which has produced some mightily impressive musical results.

There’s definitely a real joy in hearing new, bespoke singles back to back. The lulls in quality you expect of the vast bulk of albums are largely excised on Vol. 1, a record which arguably contains as many gloriously uplifting tunes as any rock record of the last few years. Take ‘Arcadia’ for example. Released as single “C” in November, this brilliantly conceived song fuses Ash’s more traditional rock side with their more recent electronic bent, wrapping synths and raucous guitars around verses and choruses which wrestle for the right to be the most wonderfully bombastic and soaring part of the song. February’s ‘Neon’ has a darker, more Muse-esque feel, the lyrics mentioning the sudden alignment of conspiring forces. The chorus aims again at the life-affirming though, and achieves it in a slightly more restrained way than the likes of ‘Arcadia’.

Throughout the first 13 of Ash’s 26 scheduled singles, Ash have sounded almost uniformly positive. Even on the recent ‘War With Me’, in which Tim Wheeler sings of feeling slighted by a lover he has stood faithfully by, the whole drive of the song, especially the piano, seem to hint at happier times to come. The largely upbeat tone of Vol. 1, both in terms of pace and subject, combined with the sheer quality of these songs, makes Vol. 1 a potentially hugely addictive listen. So what if this a ploy to get Ash back into the public mind again? It’s also a powerful document of exactly why Ash deserve to be there.

After years in which they followed their own twisted logical path further and further away from their relatively warm and linear “IDM” beginnings, Autechre‘s 2005 LP Untilted ended with a sixteen minute ball of rhythmic knot entitled ‘Sublimit’, its beats wrapping furious trails around each other faster than the mind could follow. Where would they go next? Well, 2008′s Quaristice didn’t seek so much to unpick the complexity of their previous work it as to cleave it into tiny pieces. With hindsight it is easy to see that twenty track album as a transitional work (albeit a fascinating one), enabling more focused exploration of a number of ideas – and not all of them rhythmic. Ideas of texture, and – for the first time in ages – overt melody seemed to be things they weren’t averse to trying out. Could Oversteps take these shards and fuse them into something new?

That question, where they go next, means that new Autechre albums are – increasingly – highly anticipated events. The release of Oversteps was preceded by them dropping a hip-hop heavy FACT mix, a twelve hour radio show which managed to mix some of their own classics by tracks from Tangerine Dream, The Fall and Herb Alpert, and some gigs in which they played nothing but filthy low-end rhythms; all of these were scoured for clues. A fake “leak” of the album even found its way all over the internet, its qualities being thoroughly dissected before it was pronounced – with a heavy sigh – to be of non-Ae origin. Perhaps inevitably, nothing in any of this would have given you any indication as to what Oversteps actually sounds like.

After Quaristice‘s slow fade into empty silence, two years later Oversteps‘s equally gradual rise back up from the void quickens the heart. Even more excitingly, that opening track ‘R Ess’ sounds like nothing else they have done. Synths fizz and roar in a huge echoing well, while the beats, much to the fore in their later work, are far less prominent, some scratchy two-step crawling into the gaps in the brickwork. Indeed for much of Oversteps, beats are entirely absent, with Autechre opting to explore a set of landscapes suggested perhaps by some of the short textural pieces on Quaristice, as well as some other very specific reference points, and ones which I certainly wouldn’t have expected. The gleaming surfaces, exotic-sounding keyboard lines and haunting minimal feel bring to mind David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto, from Japan’s Tin Drum through Yellow Magic Orchestra to their collaborative efforts on Sylvian’s early solo work.

This mood pervades through much of the record, from the metallic shimmer of ‘Pt2ph8′ (as you can tell by now, there has been no change in the impenetrability of the titles) to the disarmingly gentle ‘KrYlon’, and results in a real curator’s item – an Ae piece that you can just about whistle. Over the Eastern-sounding keyboard melodies of the superb ‘Known(1)’ floats an alien vocal line, an unintelligible high-pitched smear – well, I say alien, it could easily be replaced by a Liz Fraser part. This shouldn’t be mistaken for any sort of retrenchment to their early sound; the attention to detail, the layering of subtle elements, is far more developed than it ever has been. So fascinating is it all that when they do unleash a flurry of interlocking rhythms, and the likes of ‘Ilanders’ and ‘Qplay’ scatter them like only they can, I’m almost, almost, disappointed. The electronic whip-cracks of the latter sound almost too familiar in contrast to the freshness of the rest of the album, like they are there just to show that they can still do it when the need arises.

No doubt some devotees will be scratching their heads at the seemingly straightforward nature of Oversteps, confused even by the lack of confusion. But by shifting their unmatched focus on rhythm(s) to other sonic aspects, it seems to me that Autechre are emerging perhaps into a third creative era, and one that could be their most rewarding yet. Oversteps exceeds all expectations.

If the words “German electronica” conjure images of austere-looking men standing motionless behind synths in mono-coloured suits, or the “nihilist” baddies in The Big Lebowski, To Rococo Rot might help you abandon the stereotype. Stefan Schneider and brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok are a Berlin-based electronica and post-rock trio who have been blending digital and acoustic elements for almost 15 years. Speculation, their sixth full-length, is their warmest, most human album yet. Made in a secluded rural area of southern Germany with a simple studio set-up that enabled recording ”like a band playing a live show”, the bucolic surroundings and more freeform dynamic are evident in the results.

The band’s MySpace featues some interesting notes: “A record that celebrates uncertainty” may be a bit strong claim for an album which pleasures rather than challenges the ear, but I can see what they mean. The tracks are largely brief, and are cyclic rather than linear - simmering instead of evolving, “in a midpoint between propulsion and letting go”. They often fizzle out much the way they began, fittingly for band whose moniker is itself a palindrome (i.e., its reads the same forwards as backwards).

Some tracks - like the understated opener ’Away’, with its rumbling post-punk bass loop augmented by jazzy flutters of high end guitar - have an air of live improvisation about them. There is a delicate hesitancy to this live instrumentation which makes a nice counterpoint to the metronomic insistence of the beats. The jazziness deepens with the looser percussion of ‘Seele’, punctuated by deep piano chords and lush atmospherics, and ‘Horses’ which ripples under the auspices of some teasingly funky bass. The latter bleeds nicely into the sunlit chimes of ‘Forwardness’, which certainly wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Four Tet’s latest.

Elsewhere, there is a hint of Andrew Wetherall (early Two Lone Swordsmen or even Sabres of Paradise) on the cinematic ‘Place It’, while there’s a hint of motorik – naturally – on the funkier climbs of ’Working Against Time’.  While  sonically experimental, ‘Speculation’ is not willfully cerebral or esoteric like the – now admittedly less fashionable – glitch end of IDM.  Don’t be intimidated by the German electronica tag, this is immediate stuff – few tracks outstay their welcome except for the cavernous ambient of closer ‘Friday’, which perculates in the background for 11-odd minutes. Speculation might please fans of more expansive but easy-on-the-ear recent albums by Field and Four Tet, but it may not reward the deeper listening encouraged by those albums.

Hot Chip, of course, are probably most well known for that indie dance floor filler favourite. The monkey with the miniature cymbal, the repetition, it wasn’t exactly rocket science but by jove did it do the job. They arrived just at the right time when geek chic was becoming all the rage, had amazing videos and pushed all the right buttons.

Since then they’ve release two albums, but Hot Chip always seemed to have very much a singles of band. They show flashes of potential, but when it comes to listening to a whole album they’ve never quite managed to sustain, leaving people reaching for the skip button to jump to the track that reminded them of nights at New Slang.

But with One Life Stand there seems to be something different going on in the Hot Chip camp. Instead of displaying their know-twiddling prowess, it’s the vocals, melodies, and genre mashing that takes centre stage. We all knew they were clever boys when it came to machines and geekery, but what happens when you give them a set of steel pans?

The result of this branching out is a slightly more subdued, reflective feel to the album, letting the subtleties do the talking.  Rather than the ‘you must dance to this now’ riffs, it’s a more mellowed down, day after euphoria that the band are peddling. Tracks like ‘Alley Cat’ and ”Keep Quiet showcase it best, combining ambient electronic noodlings with tender vocals and a lazy Sunday morning attitude.

However, ‘Slush’ leads things astray. A gospel-inspired vocal led track, it sounds so far removed from Hot Chip’s earlier sounds you’d be hard pressed to tell it’s them. As it descends into pop ballad territory, it’s all a bit bewildering, and an experiment that really should’ve been left on the cutting room floor.

One Life Stand shows a band keen to progress and develop, which can only be commended. But for the listener it’s a bit of a disconcerting experience, lurching about from sound to sound like being drunk on a waltzer. Kudos to Hot Chip for not playing it safe and knocking out another mediocre album of party time tracks, but they need to refine these new ideas to make that killer album they’ve got in them.

Buy the album on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/one-life-stand/id346537988?uo=4" title="Hot_Chip-One_Life_Stand_(Bonus_Track_Version)_(Album)" text="iTunes"]

James Yuill released Turning Down Water For Air a little over a year ago. It was a clever mix of  elements of electronica and acoustic sounds, with a cutesy love story running through it.  His live shows were rather excellently executed, flitting between knob-twiddling and out and out guitar-led singalongs.  He’s been all over the world since then, but there’s been little in the way of new material.

But, lo and behold, he’s returned! Well sort of.

Earth & Fire EP is essentially an ‘alternate’ version of his original album. A remix album, if you will, but remixed by James Yuill. Proving just what a malleable, versatile chap he is, and exploring the ways that music can be manipulated, he’s flipped Turning Down Water For Air– turning the programmed, harder, dance led tracks into laid-back acoustic numbers, and vice versa. The results are certainly interesting, challenging interpretations of the original tracks, and create two completely contrasting moods from the original album.

The Earth EP opens with ‘Left Handed Girl’, which uses an accordion to mimic the seeping sound of the vocals perfectly, with soft percussion in the background, setting up the mood perfectly. ‘No Pins Allowed’ is given a free reign, wandering from a bluesy guitar breakdown to a traditional acoustic number, and finished with a reggae flourish.

‘This Sweet Love’, undoubtedly James’ most well-known tune, is given a glorious glockenspiel makeover (well, xylophone actually, but then it wouldn’t be alliteration), sounding like a dance track recreated on ‘proper’ instruments – stabbing bass notes on a piano, synth loop on a xylophone, and layered vocals for background sounds. It’s clever, but the charm of the song is somewhat lost, with perhaps just one too many instruments overpowering it.

A couple of tracks later, the acoustic stylings are beginning to wear a bit thin. Luckily, it’s all change, as ‘Breathing In’ segues from acoustic ambience to electronic ambience, as we head downbeat, and floaty with sonic sounds overhead. Occasionally we stray into rave territory – particularly in ‘Head Over Heals’, with lyrics about cups of tea and yawning contrast brilliantly with the intense, face-paced synth sounds.

All in all, and interesting and brave idea – the way James Yuill views his work as constantly transforming ideas that can be given many different moods and sounds is something no doubt many musicians would be too precious to try. As a stand-alone collection of songs though, it’s on an even keel with Turning Down Water for Air – it’s only when heard one after they other that this format can really be appreciated.

Buy the EP on Amazon | [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/no-surprise-earth-version/id339724048?uo=4" title="James_Yuill-Turning_Down_Water_for_Air_(Fire_Earth_Version)_(Album)" text="iTunes"]

Electropop is a curious beast. The oddest thing about it is the phenomenon whereby certain practitioners of it are lauded by the indie schmindie critic crowd, a faction of music listeners usually thought of as being disdainful of such genres. There’s two ways of looking at that – one is that the indie music press takes certain artists under its wing because they display some credentials of independence and some artistic scruples and objectives over and above the accumulation of sales. The less charitable view is that critics and writers actively look for electropoppers unclaimed by the mainstream media and tactically make them their own.

Whatever the truth, Annie is one of the artists around whom this phenomenon plays out – she’s even been proclaimed “the Kylie it’s cool to like”. But things haven’t all been perfectly pop princess-like for this Norwegian singer. The death of her partner and collaborator Tore Kroknes nearly sank her music career before it got off the ground, and despite the eventual success of her debut record Anniemal, this follow-up has long been stuck in a bureaucratic record label nightmare, delaying its release and forcing it to go through multiple iterations.

The wait for a final version was worth it, however. Don’t Stop is a damn fine example of a quality slick pop record for the 21st century. It’s not revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, laden as it is with songs structured exactly as you’d expected, driven by hooks exactly as you’d expected, and adorned with synths and smooth beats, exactly as you’d expect. And yet there’s still something about Annie – her clean, glassy, even ethereal vocals lend the songs a bit of much-needed distinctiveness, and there’s a nice variety of songs, all largely lacking the vacuous and self-absorbed nature of much of today’s pop.

Generally Annie’s at her best when she’s at her most strident, as on ‘I Don’t Like Your Band’, which even the odd clumsy lyric can’t dull. ‘Songs Remind Me of You’ is another of the album’s highlights, largely because of its quite charmingly delivered chorus – “how does it feel to hear your songs on the radio / and does it hurt to hear your songs on the radio?” Annie and her collaborators aren’t interested in changing the world, but merely making it a bit more of a fun place. Imperfect but frequently arrestingly exciting and undeniably cool, this is a solid album which is at least on a par with recent efforts by the likes of fellow Scandinavian starlets like Lykke Li and Robyn.

Annie on MySpace

There’s more music around than ever these days. Possibly one of the most over-subscribed styles is electronica, given the (let’s face it) increased ease of music making, myriad of styles, and large club, radio and home audiences. The situation means that brilliant music is created, as ever, but that it is perhaps increasingly hemmed in by barely-adequate filler music looking for an entry point into success. In this atmosphere, Lemonade is most definitely not in the top flight of quality. The Brooklyn-based outfit have put together a set of six long tracks in a fashion which is reminiscent of the dire new GusGus record. Admittedly, though, Lemonade’s album is far superior to the Icelandic effort. There are flashes of great sounds here, some distinctive flourishes that too many dance records lack.

Take, for example, the gorgeous piano riff on closer ‘Bliss Out’. It’s a microcosm of the songs as a whole. That riff is a great, striking sound, but it’s mired in an otherwise uninspiring track and is criminally underused. There are several other musical features across these tracks which are stuck in a similar situation, and it makes this music a frustrating listen – the good ideas are buried under too much mediocrity. Lyrics and vocals add little to nothing to the songs, so generic are they. All that makes the lyrics distinctive is the annoying sub-Walrus “zany” string of phrases that make up “Real Slime”, for example.

There are moments on Lemonade when some parallels to Animal Collective show up (especially given the Collective’s being based in New York, too) but these merely underline Lemonade’s inferiority. Trapped by their own ill-formed ideas, like the half-baked faux-Arabic stylings of “Nasifon”, Lemonade look increasingly outgunned by their rivals of recent times, from Memory Tapes to Röyksopp, who have made far more dynamic and listenable records this year. At the end of the album, various voices repeat “we’re all having a good time” like a mantra, as if we need to be convinced of it. The truth is that for most listeners, that phrase will be more of an irony than a confirmation of our feelings.

Lemonade on MySpace

Not Fit For Love is a minor watershed moment for Metronomy, as this EP is the first release from Metronomy HQ since band member Gabriel Stebbing left to concentrate on Your Twenties – even though Joseph Mount remains the core of the outfit. Listeners of the last record, the rather good Nights Out from last year, will be looking to see if this EP can build on the album’s successes, too.

In that sense, Not Fit For Love takes a slightly odd, and slightly schizophrenic new direction. Not schizophrenic in the sense of Nights Out, which went a little that way vocally on a couple of songs – but in terms of mood. By way of explanation – there are nine tracks here, three of which are new ones in a more lo-fi and morose style than before, and six of which are much louder and more frenetic remixes of those tracks. It’s easiest to get the remixes out of the way first – they’re not the focus of this EP, even if they take up most of its length. They sound like an add-on, a bonus – which they aren’t really, as they’re largely a total waste of time. Arbitrarily clubbed-up and drawn out into incoherence, they break the melancholic feel of the tracks in a twisted effort to shoehorn them onto the dancefloor. The Leo Zero remix of the title track in particular is a spectacularly complete waste of more than eleven minutes.

The actual tracks themselves though, are more interesting. Far from going for a bigger and better verion of Nights Out‘s approach, Mount and co have chosen to go in a slightly different, more minimalist approach. The lyrics are as romantically uneasy and confused as the titles suggest – “What Do I Do Now?” and “Do The Right Thing” particularly. Accordingly, the vocals, synths and beats are all more restrained than pretty much anything on Nights Out. Whilst this small collection of songs lacks a “Heartbreaker” or a “A Thing For Me” it does display a mode  Metronomy haven’t really displayed before. That mode might not get pulses racing as much as anything else Mount and comrades have done (hence, presumably, the largely misguided remixes), but come the next album it could provide a refreshing counterpoint.

Metronomy on MySpace

This compilation from Because Music (home to Metronomy, among others) documents, as its title suggests, the French electronic music scene as of our fine year of 2009. Through 16 “rare or exclusive” tracks, we’re introduced to a host of presumably very hip producers “tipped for great things in 2009″. Ostensibly, these are supposed to be artists who have refused to be pigeonholed; they’ve supposedly rejected confinement to both the dancefloor and the home, to both floor-filling and intelligence. That’s not really the feeling you get from the music here though – whilst you might reasonably expect a wide spectrum of material from out-and-out club music to a smattering of more oblique IDM, for example, that’s not really the case. Whilst still admittedly varied, this a compilation which broadly speaking, is squarely aimed for club dancefloors. There’s not a great deal of electronic subtlety in evidence – this is all throbbing beats and colourful synths, which is all very well – but it’s not quite the broad cross-section of French electronica it might paint itself as being.

Nevertheless, this is a generous helping of enjoyable dance music. At a touch over an hour, there’s quite a lot to listen to here. Highlights will be different for everyone, depending on how much vocals mean to you. One of the most overtly songful tracks is Anoraak’s ‘Make it Better’, which fits nicely into the 1980s revival we seem to be having. Closer to the other end of the spectrum is Danger’s rather daftly-titled ’88:88 – Stage 3 “The Club” (Danger Edit)’ with its interlocking, staggered beats and synths, and the minimal techno of Spitzer’s ‘Odessa (Spring Version)’. The compilation’s opening pairing of Breakbot’s ‘Penelope Pitstop’ and Donovan’s (no, not that one) ‘Wonderland’ is one of its best moments, especially the heavily processed, yearning vocals of the latter, bouyant song.

Not everything is good though. Standout duffer is probably Djedotronic’s ‘James’, a schizophrenic mess of aimless synth fragments and irritatingly manic vocals. Together with StereoHeroes’ ‘Lamborghini Lungz’, another track with borrowed hip hop vocals, it contributes to the compilation’s less interesting and more frustrating aspect, especially given the latter track’s jarring vocal hook of “fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em, we just like ‘em, we don’t love ‘em.” Quite.

In all honesty, although Edges is generally good, I’m a little confused as to who would seek this out. Yes there are lots of people who like this kind of music – but is French electronica really that distinctive, or worth buying compilations of? Edges only goes a certain way towards convincing me of this, but if you’re in the market for a French electro compilation, you could (probably) do worse than this.
71%

Because Music on MySpace

With the likes of The Bug making bedroom, lo-fi, self-produced music cool again (I’m looking at you Daniel Beddingfield, for ruining the prospects of thousands) Gold Panda has immerged as a perveyor of quality low-tech techno. Now, that might be doing him a dis-service, but playing the forthcoming EP Back Home (released via Various Production’s label) it grab me by the throat more instantly than The Field’s latest. And, with this EP, it’s The Field that it most resembles. Its clipped, crackling beats and repetitive electronica breathes life into your head – it’s an organic blend of electronica that has a human heart to its processed exterior.

In an attempt to find out a bit more about the creative juices of the man behind Gold Panda, we fired off some questions to find that he’s obsessed by VHS tapes, twitter and he’s scarred by working in a hospital car park…

For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
1.They might like my music
2.They might not like my music.
3. see 1 and 2 again.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
It was a gradual thing. Music was always there but it wasn’t until recently that I started realizing how important it is to me to make music, probably when my friend passed away. It is kind of cathartic. The actual process of building tracks with samplers and stuff. Sampling records, drinking tea, making sounds. I read somewhere once that the finished product should be more important than the process, I disagree, both as an artist and as a listener.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
Sometimes I’ll find a nice sample and loop it or make a nice sound and build everything around that. Dreams play a big part I guess, trying to make something sound like an image you remember from a dream.

Name your Top 5 records.
I just can’t. 5? No way. A Michael Jackson album. Err, Oh I don’t know, can I pass on this one? It changes every day anyway.

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
I think it was as “NoGutsKik” with my friends. It was in Borough, London with Si-begg, Tubejerk and Subhead. I triggered a sampler and I think my friend played some synth, maybe we used an Atari or an imac, ah, was it an Amiga? Anyway, yeah, Si Begg said he liked it and the crowd were dancing so I guess it was a success. It was kind of funny because we were also mc’ing over the top saying stuff like “phowar look at those tits!”. I think I’d sampled a porno or something too.

What one piece of criticism has stuck in your mind and was it justified?
I wanted to study Japanese so I went to this open day at a University. This one lecturer who looked like he’d been up all night doing lines out of rent boys’ arse cracks gets up and decides to give a speech on what they are looking for in application statements and shit and says “It really isn’t enough to just say that you want to study Japanese because you like the language, you wont get accepted, you really need some other interests in Japan.” You know, you find something you like about something, study it, and through that you find out something new. This guy is pretty much saying “If you want to come here to learn forget it, you need to know it all already, like me, innit, ‘cos I’m a big headed cunt.” Also when I was doing GCSE art all I wanted to do was draw manga characters and the art teacher says to me “That isn’t art.”

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
The internet. Twitter mainly. If I didn’t have the internet I could make 10 times as more music instead of checking my emails every 5 fucking minutes. Then again I always find nice new music software to download. There is so much good freeware stuff now. I spend a lot of time tidying my room, moving stuff around, drinking tea. Looking for vhs tapes on ebay.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
Looking for vhs tapes on ebay.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
Maybe it was working in a hospital car park. Shit that was bad. Some poor sod comes in cos his mum is dying, parks without thinking, his mum dies, he comes out to get some fresh air, sees me giving him a ticket and explodes. I just couldnt bring myself to do that job properly, giving people tickets, I felt so bad, plus the parking fee was like “£1.25 for 49 minutes EXACT CHANGE ONLY, so I just sat in the office. I found an old tv, a hoover and a fan. I used to watch citv while putting biscuits through the fan and then hoovering up the crumbs. Oh wait, working at Stansted was pretty bad. I used to have to help people get on buses to ferry them to and from the car park to the terminal. The buses get full cos everyone comes back from Magaluf at once and is mad tired and pissed off and wants to be in their car straight away. You are the first point of contact and they go fucking nuts at you for having to wait 10 minutes for the bus.

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
Theme : Jobs
1.”We Don’t Need To Work, We’re In A Trendy London Band” by Rich Dad
2.”Mr. Jobsworth” by MC Militant Traffic Warden
3.”Grande Latte Promotion” by Brown Nose and The Clerks
4.”Reprographics Blow Job (Photoshop Mix)” by The Desktops
5.”Jobcentre Dub” by P45

Gold Panda on Myspace

There couldn’t really be a more fitting name for Thieves Like Us’ debut album than Play Music. No two words could better encapsulate the utter banality of the 11 tracks that make up this 45-minute LP. Play Music sounds like it was made only to satisfy a need to fill space, as if listening to music is simply human nature’s answer to silence.

Play Music slops together flat slabs of electronic, each track seemingly trying to out-fox the last by using the same drum sequence but with an ever-so-slightly-different vocal slathered on the top. At no point during the album  does the tempo change or the musical style get varied. This is faceless, soulless, heartless synthetics in its prime as this Parisian trio pursue only what they know, and care nothing for what they don’t.
Perhaps the most revealing facet of this album’s mediocrity is its best track; ‘Drugs In My Body’. A sensation when it was released way back in 2005, the sheer exuberance of this debut single is at a loss almost 3 years later in amongst its album counterparts, riddled with sludgy beats and such minimal production as to leave even the most hopeful listener cold.

Play Music is kind of like the musical equivalent of instant mashed potato; a lazy filler, a substitute for something of real substance, and most worryingly, numbingly mundane and instantly forgettable.
30%

Thieves Like Us on Myspace

It’s been a long time since Brian Molko and co started their journey as Placebo, in that time they have earned something of a reputation as a band which, more than most, divides people into different camps – there is the dedicated fanbase and the similarly dedicated anti-Molko naysayers, put off by the man’s infamous androgyny and vocal mannerisms. But there’s a third group, as there is with any band – those who, like myself, have mostly been passed by the band’s five albums up to now. When it comes to Battle for the Sun, the first group will buy it, the second will not. But what about the third, the floating voters, so to speak? Will the much-touted diverse instrumentation and new direction of this album draw them into the fold?

Personally, I seriously doubt it. It’s not because of Molko – the average man in the street has embraced figures far odder than him in the past, and it’s not as though he’s new on the block – but just because under all its faux-drama and bluster, Battle for the Sun is ultimately a very ordinary electro-tinged rock album, hamstrung by a severe lack of ideas and decidedly uninteresting lyrics. Take ‘Ashtray Heart’ for example – the converted will be satisfactorily preached to by its reference to the band’s original name, but the song’s repititious nature and uninspiring riffage won’t help the band accumulate new fans. Only the hardcore (or music reviewers) will enjoy Molko’s insistence on singing the last word of every line multiple times on the title track, even if it does overcome its dirge of an opening to coalesce into something a little more interesting eventually, Molko singing about a “dream brother” – a Jeff Buckley reference perchance?

All too often, this all feels like pretty wrapping paper around an empty box, to borrow an expression. A lot of the album’s problems are well demonstrated by ‘For What It’s Worth’, which has that diverse instrumentation – a trumpet – making a fig-leaf contribution, a toy piano shoehorned in in the most startlingly incongruous way, and one of the record’s worst lyrical passages. When these songs are over, it’s a struggle to remember any lines from them, to replay any of the riffs or synth lines in your mind, such is the artificiality and theatricality of all the attempts at drama and an epic, cathartic feel. Alas, in the end Battle for the Sun will sound to many less like a battle and more like a trial. There are just far too many superior albums out there for this to be a credible contender.
40%

Placebo on MySpace

Almost an exercise in redundancy, A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island is scarcely psychedelic at all, but what it is is a “soundtrack” to accompany the works of artist and cartoonist Pete Fowler, known for his work with Super Furry Animals. Assembling  a variety of presumably hip and largely underground musicians (but also including SFA’s own Gruff Rhys) is all very well, but when the compositions sound so similar and you could never distinguish which is by whom, that reduncancy begins to become apparent, and that’s on top of the simple fact that most people don’t know anything at all about Fowler’s Monsterism Island concept anyway.

This instrumental compilation approaches a wide range of genres, including jazz, electronica, and 70-esque rock of a CCR B-side quality, but there’s almost nothing of any interest here at all. There are a few tracks where pleasant sounds catch the attention briefly, as on “Final Froog”, but nothing every resolves, ever goes anywhere, ever becomes a worthwhile track in its own right. For the vast bulk of the listening time, this is frustratingly inoffensive background music, rarely worthy of any real attention.

All this is linked together with a number of aptly titled “links” in which a gravelly-voiced creature-beast introduces us to new areas of the “island” which ostensibly give some shred of logic to this nonsensical, scattershot, and tedious collection of sounds. This is the worst kind of muzak – it’s elevator drivel audaciously but poorly disguised as real music and linked into a farcical faux-concept record. The only people I could concieve of that might want to possess or hear this are SFA die-hards or major fans of Fowler’s – A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island is to music what Ricky Gervais’ Flanimals is to literature  – a cartoonish joke, diverting for a few moments, but nothing more.
15%

Will electronica make a comeback at the end of the decade? It seems that having gone organic in the 00s with folktronica, many electronica artists have been second-guessed recently by folk artists (from Bon Iver to Iron & Wine) augmenting their music with pro-tooled trickery. With the likes of Grizzly Bear being signed to Warp it seemed that these artists had the critical and commercial edge: vocal-led music, however abstract, was having more traction with listeners and reviewers – underpinning their haunted mood pieces with harmonies and (albeit fragmented) song structures. Meanwhile the likes of Animal Collective, who had been long lumped with the freak folk set – despite apparently seeing themselves as sonic collagists as opposed to a ‘proper’ band – have had an impact on electronica. Caribou, once of Manitoba fame, found a wider audience with his ‘Andorra’ album, which embraced the infectious, polychromatic psychedelics and West Coast harmonies of Panda Bear and Avery Tare.

Four Tet (aka Kieren Hebden) – one of the most influential figures in electronica over the last ten years – suggested a buck in the trend with his 2008 Ringer EP, the title track of which harked back to the computer-generated symphonies of Orbital, presumably to shrug off the folktronica pigeonhole. However, Hebden has since reverted to earthier textures with jazz drummer Steve Reid on their fine NYC collaboration. Boards of Canada – the other, much-imitated custodians of the electronica scene – imported a lot of added cassette-distorted folksiness to their last album Campfire Headphase. What will they do next?

But just because the mainstream music press hasn’t picked up on notionally ‘purer’ electronic music doesn’t mean it is not being made or even that it’s not good, of course, and there are some signs of a renaissance. Having flirted with classical, jazz and more recently folk – it seems that electronica may start flirting with itself again, with old school electro textures prevalent. However, recent successes such as Field’s From Here We Go Sublime and The Knife’s Silent Shout derived as much from variant forms of techno as electronica per se.

worriedaboutsatan - aka Gavin Miller and Thomas Ragsdale – are a refreshing reminder of the possibilities of more orthodox electronic music and while not a great leap forward, their debut album Arrivals is a highly engaging and atmospheric listen. Though not characterised by the polyrhythmic mechanical textures of, say, Autechre – there are post-rock guitars lurking throughout Arrivals – worriedaboutsatan’s sound-scapes are unabashedly computer-generated, with an emphasis on unearthly atmosphere. Arrivals is mostly hushed and spectral, with cathedral-sized atmospherics and a Space Odyssey-esque mood of isolation and menace. There is a palpable sense of space, a vertiginous emptiness underpinned by minimal percussive constructs that build from pitter-pattering ticks into metronomic 4/4 rhythms. While the album reminds me of other artists such as Murcof and James Holden, Arrivals is an accomplished work in its own right.

‘I’m A Crooked Man’ flickers into life with a loop of reverbed ringing and cavernous drones, before some crackly, mildly jazzy chords usher in some bass-driven propulsion. It evolves into a somnambulant nocturnal groove (best enjoyed over the headphones of course) and ends in a finale of deep, grinding guitar dissonance that would please fans of Jim O’Rourke as much as those of Richard D. James. ‘Pissing Abotu’ (I hope I have this right and it’s not a typo!) is a less than evocative title but is equally engaging. Beginning with a stuttering, high-pitch metallic noise, other textures – abrasive drones, and ghostlier, less definite shapes – gradually combine into a hypnotic pulse.

‘History is Made at Night’ begins with some Kid A-style, faux-naive keyboards before a hesitant little synth pattern and metronomic beats slowly evolve into a ghostly pulse. Even a little funereal in its downcast aesthetic, the fine drizzle of effects is undermined by a radiant yet menacing drone that slowly insists itself and subsumes the track. ‘You’re In My Thought’s begins with what sounds like shimmering, high-end guitar work, layering post-rock textures onto crunchier beats, twinkling but jagged IDM shards and chopped up vocal fragments in a way reminds me pleasingly of Boards of Canada’s ‘Telephasic Workshop’. This is contrasted nicely by ‘All Things But You Are Silent’, a cinematic maelstrom of deep drones, hissing interference and quaking, smouldering ominousness. The title track is initially becalming after the darkness and paranoia of the track that preceded it, all whispering voices, shimmering synths and lilting ambience. Finally the spell is broken by some enormous low-end guitars which herald a stunning climax to the album.

If I have one minor quibble with Arrivals it’s that worriedaboutsatan revert too often to a default mood of extraterrestrial spookiness. Some of the disembodied voices – and I’m normally a sucker for this conceit – with their “eight, one, zero, five” transmissions from the satellite heart (to steal from The Flaming Lips), are a little old hat. Luckily they are mostly confined to intermissions – this is one of the best electronica albums I have heard in years.
84%

worriedaboutsatan on MySpace

Download the track ‘You’re In My Thoughts’ here.

The situation regarding this re-release is a little confusing, as I alluded to in my review of Kleerup’s new EP Hello Holla not long ago – but suffice it to saythat if you’re interested in getting hold of Kleerup’s stuff, this is the release to be getting your hands on. In fact, this release is quite substantially different in tracklisting to the previous version of the album, so even if you have the old one you might want to consider rebuying, even in these cash-strapped times in which we live.

Because at the end of the day, even Andreas Kleerup’s lesser work is always entertaining. Here is an electronica/pop icon and producer who by now sounds as though he can pull pop gems almost effortlessly out of some creative orifice the rest of us just don’t possess, and the man’s capable of pleasing just about anyone whose musical affections lie in that territory. As evidence for his mainstream appeal and talent for crafting glassy pop gems we (still) have “With Every Heartbeat”, which may by now be getting overfamiliar, but still remains superbly shiny.

Most of the other accomplished works from the original version of the album are still present and correct here, from the midtempo,  darkly digital Lykke Li outing “Until We Bleed” to the rather more heavenly-sounding pop of “Longing For Lullabies”, featuring a vocal contribution from Swedish pop singer Titiyo. The songs featuring these guest vocalists may unsurprisingly garner more immediate attention and evoke more immediate appeal, but the songs without them are often every bit as strong. New to this version of the album are tracks like “Ain’t No Stopping”, which makes hefty use of arpeggio, echo, and heavy vocoding, as well as the rather plodding “Iris”. Whether Kleerup fans will want to buy this version of the album to acquire these new tracks is going to be a question of how completist they are.

There’s no doubting Kleerup’s talents and at 14 tracks and 55 minutes, this extended edition of  Kleerup is the best single document of that talent that has so far been released – ultimately it’s a great electronica record, despite its familiarity, and almost up with Röyksopp’s Junior among the best electronica albums of 2009 so far.
79%

Kleerup on MySpace

Been keeping up with Mexico City’s emerging electronica scene? No, me neither. Apparently Camilo Lara is one of its lynchpins, and you can well believe that upon hearing this album. Instituto Mexicano del Sonido, as they are known in their homeland, are founded on his interest in scratchy electro beats as well as his towering and oft-referenced collection of vinyl records. Those are presumably the source of some of the sounds, especially on tracks like opener “Cumbia” that are heard on this, MIS’ third album to date. I’m not sure what the significance of the title is, given that “soy” means “I am”, accordingly to my admittedly fairly weak grasp on Spanish…

There’s an inherent thrill in hearing music from a place as exotic and far removed from the conventional musical landscape as Mexico, and that thrill is only enhanced if  you get a kick out listening to Spanish-language music, as I do. On the wordier songs here, like “Alocatel” you can just roll with it, easily imagine that spectacularly cool things are being sung about, made easier still by the brassy accompaniment and staggered “al-o-ca-tel…” repeating backing vocals. Also picking out the odd apparently recognisable phrase, like “Pink Floyd” and “Dick van Dyke” is a joy in itself. The fusion of old and new sounds is an engaging one, but the trouble is that Soy Sauce is just dangerously patchy. There’s too much filler here, like the surprisingly tiresome closer “Chiflideur” and the bizarre flop of a cover of “Bittersweet Symphony” (no, seriously) called “Sinfonia Agridulce”. But there’s some quality stuff too, where that exotic flavour shines through, and the music has enough focus and immediacy.

Many of the stronger tracks are stacked up in the first half  – “Yo Digo Baila” is a highlight, with some of the album’s best vocals, putting it alongside the duets “Jalale” and “White Stripes” which are possibly the album’s strongest efforts. The latter is the grittiest thing here, with jangling bells over its beats, English vocals, and the confession “I’m too drunk too dance, and my head is kind of spinning.” Such are the kind of parties Camilo Lara holds, presumably. Soy Sauce could do with being considerably more concise, with four or five tracks arguably begging for being excised to make a leaner, more dynamic, and more consistent record. Nevertheless, there is much to like here and that joy of hearing something from a musically out-of-the-way place, especially somewhere with the dualism and hazy allure of Mexico, remains. With any luck, MIS will continue to pave the way to Mexican music being a bigger player on the world scene.
72%

Mexican Institute of Sound on MySpace

Continuing the long tradition of confusing the hell out of people by including non-English characters in their band name, The Dø have also produced probably the weirdest album I’ve heard in a long time, which takes the form of A Mouthful. Given that the album takes in quite a wide range of styles, and feels quite exhaustive by the end of its 52 minute length, it’s rather an apt title, and it’s fair to say that unless you’re a seasoned explorer of eclectic, left-field music, this will prove a little tough to swallow. That said, there are still at least one or two gems here even for the most straight-and-narrow potential listeners – this partnership of Frenchman Dan Levy and Finn Olivia Bouyssou Merilahti have their fingers in multiple pies, but there’s something for everyone even if the whole selection can be a bit sickly if absorbed together.

Although the album’s second half is home to the highest concentration of oddness, opener ‘Playground Hustle’ is still quite arrestingly strange. As its title implies, it’s a quietly riotous plea from tribes of kids to be able to choose the toys they play with – from there, there are a string of much more conventional songs, like the triumphant sugary pop of ‘At Last!’ and the more frustrated but string-laden ‘On My Shoulders’. These songs are a little formulaic but they display Merilahti’s wonderfully rich voice, which has a great deal of versatility. Possibly the best of the more straightforward songs is ‘Stay (Just A Little Bit More)’, which has a wonderful chorus and a laid-back, almost tropical feel. Not even a couple of bizarre lines, like “in the desert of the bed I tried to find an oasis / but all I found was a dead camel in pieces” and “I knew for sure / he would never be the satisfying shag I needed”. Eyebrow-raising indeed, but this girl could tell you she’d shot your gran and you’d let her off, given how sweet she sounds.

That track is equalled by the following ‘Unissassi Laulelet’, which is presumably in Finnish (it ain’t in English, that’s for sure) and comes with a lovely tribal drum shuffle and a gradually building tempo. It’s a brief but major standout moment on the album, and almost marks where things are about to plunge headfirst into the weirder stuff. Soon afterwards we get the frankly bizarre ‘Queen Dot Kong’ which is a thoroughly surreal slice of what you might call alternative hip hop. If you ever wanted to hear a Finnish woman rap, here’s your chance. If you were expecting this album to continue where it left off though, you’re likely to find yourself skipping this and its sequel ‘Coda’.

All in all the second half of the album isn’t a patch on the first. ‘Searching Gold’ is a thoroughly dull, slow excursion, which more or less sets the tone for the remainder of the album’s songs (incidentally, look out for the striking similarity between ‘Travel Light’ and the vocals from ‘I Am The Walrus’). Some more quality control would have far improved this, and it would have been stronger if it had been a a oddball pop record through and through, as it had begun to be. But that’s never what The Dø set out to do, and you may well applaud them – especially if you’re one of the very few people who are likely to fully appreciate the many diverse styles here. The Dø – jacks of all trades, masters of none.
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The Dø on MySpace

When I read that five-piece rocktronica band VETO were “the biggest thing to come out of Denmark since Hans Christian Andersen”, I immediatelyd dropped the great man’s complete works and hastily shoved Crushing Digits into my PC’s disc drive. Given that the last piece of Danish music I heard was the excellent triple-EP set by Tina Dico, the prospect of hearing something new from that part of the world – even something so clearly different – was enticing.

Opener “Blackout” quickly dispelled any hope of finding any evidence for the album supposedly being influenced by progressive rock, instead displaying a penchant for pulsing synthesizers, mid-tempo beats and mildly melodramatic, slightly echoed vocals. The album continues more or less in this vein, but it doesn’t get as old as quickly as you might assume. Instead, VETO display quite a knack for starting with a basic template for their songs and gradually bulding on it with additional background percussion, increasingly frantic vocals and the odd digital beeps and blips to furnish the sound. Also, rather than just letting this cycle go on and on, they are willing to slow things down and mix things up before returning to a song’s main theme. This is brash, propulsive electronica built sturdily upon tried-and-tested rock songwriting templates.

The lyrics are never hugely inspiring but “You Say Yes, I Say Yes” contains some interesting lines (“what’s the point of a soul / when all I am being is / a faulty copy of myself”) and the closer, “Duck Hush and Be Still” seems to be a commentary of sorts on the “surveillance state” we – and presumably the Danes – seem to be living in. The standout song is possibly “Unite” which really nails the sound VETO seem to be aiming for and has a nice “power to the people” sort of faux-political vibe going on as well.

For those who find comparisons appealing, VETO could be said to be a little like Bloc Party in their more electronic moments, but you know, without the stinging slap in the face of a rock band who bizarrely decided to turn into some odd bastardised electronica outfit. No, VETO are somehow more logical in their direction, and their music consistently enjoyable if never spectacular or inspiring. Crushing Digits is a solid, engaging album which will definitely have something to offer for anyone interested in the rock/electronica axis.
75%

VETO on MySpace

Rone

The shorter tracks are usually lighter in tone, but they are out-weighed by the longer ones, which tend to more complex progressions and themes, and feel much more like the meat of what Castex is trying to achieve. ‘Belleville’ is up-tempo and busy, with bubbly taps and clicks working in a 4/4 flurry. As so often happens in the album, a bass lies underneath everything and generates the main thrust of melody, leaving a psychedelic synth to litter the rest of the track. ‘Aya Ama’ is a Balearic track that sounds like it’s being played down the other end of the beach. A comforting central thud of percussion leads you through the track, which has an up-lifting melody generated by keyboard/synth effects and the distorted, mechanized bass, it plays like a vocal-less sister to Gui Boratto’s ‘Beautiful Life’.

Although I wouldn’t call the first half of the album lightweight, there is a decidedly more serious turn with the second half. ‘Poisson Pilote’ sounds like it’s being played into an abandoned warehouse for an illegal rave, a siren fades in the background and we get a more overtly mechanical percussion sound, all precise woodblock and processed blips and blops. Big reverby bass and chopped and screwed with vocal samples create an unsettling scene. A slight Science Fiction theme creeps in, starting with ‘Bora Vocal (Alain Damasio Vocal)’, where Damasio (a Science Fiction author) recites some of his work in French. The track consists of delayed sequencer, synth washes that remind me of spaceships taking off, and eventually some harder-edged techno percussion. That last element is continued into next track ‘Tasty City’, after some sort of field recording of a ship yard or something, we get that hard techno moving in a thick mid-tempo. Interestingly a choral melody slowly rises in the background, with synthy accompaniment, and sounds nothing so much as a little snippet of a piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but maybe that’s just a passing fancy of mine. Anyway, this half of the album is definitely darker and mechanical, and there are less hand-holds for the average pop-leaning listener.

It can be an uneasy concoction, soft poppy electronica with that deeper monochrome beat oriented stuff, but most of the time Castex creates an enjoyable symbiosis.
75%

Rone on MySpace

This first EP from Swedish electronica posterboy Andreas Kleerup is a little baffling. Not because of the music it comprises, but because of the timing of its release. Kleerup’s self-titled debut album was released in Sweden last year, and a new version of it with an altered tracklisting is being released elsewhere, including in the UK, in May. Hello Holla includes one track which is available on both versions of the album (‘Tower of Trellick’), one which will be available only on the new version (‘Iris’), one which is a new altered and instrumental version of a track which is on both album versions (’3AM’) and another track which isn’t available anywhere except on this EP – and that’s your lot.

So the only thing that has any potential for real interest here is the title track, which whilst enjoyable enough, is the kind of mid-tempo, glassy electronica which Kleerup could more or less produce in his sleep. It’s not up there with his best tracks, and so this EP as a whole begs the question – who really needs this? Owners of Kleerup’s original version will only gain ‘Hello Holla’ and two other adequate instrumentals; those who plan on buying the new album version will gain even less of interest. And to anyone just beginning to investigate Kleerup’s music, this EP provides only a vaguely representative account of the man’s work up to this point. Not only is Hello Holla almost redundant as it is, it will only get more redundant six weeks on from its release.

And that’s why this EP is extremely hard to recommend. Anyone who likes the prospect of the immaculate beats and synths on display here would be far better directing their attentions to the forthcoming new version of Kleerup’s album. The man behind “With Every Heartbeat” has a lot of ability, but very little of it is on show here.
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Kleerup on MySpace

When I eventually got through to Svein Berge, one half of Norwegian electronica titans Röyksopp, he informed me that he was standing in his house in Norway, looking at the snow out of the window, and eating a chocolate bar. “Can’t complain about that?” I asked; he concurred. About to release their rather excellent third full-length album Junior, things are looking good for Röyksopp. I talked to Svein about the themes behind the album, about the duo’s female vocal and lyrical collaborators, very specific percentages and about what they’re up to next.

A few of us at The Line of Best Fit have heard the new Röyksopp album, Junior, and we’re big fans, we like it a lot… how pleased are you and Torbjorn with the album?
Yeah… you have balance between being humble, and being confident, I think. We are very pleased with the outcome – it’s as simple as that, we are very pleased.

Do you think it’s something different, a step on from what you’ve done before?
I hope so – again, referring to balance, we want to maintain what we consider to be uniquely Röyksopp in terms of the atmospheres and the soundscapes that we create. You have to try to move forward in some way… not neccesarily forwards but sideways, diagonally or sideways is where we want to go. We think we’re on the right direction with this album.

Another thing that’s quite interesting about the album is the guest vocalists on the tracks, how do you go about matching the singer to the song?
Maintaining what uniquely identifies us as Röyksopp, namely the sounds, we try to make the sounds interesting and fresh and when we’re looking for collaborators in terms of vocals we’re always trying to find vocalists that are unique and can fit well with the song. For instance the female vocalists we have on this album are quite diverse, in our heads, in terms of vocal abilties. You have on one track Lykke Li, who has a sensual, girlish, whispery, secretive voice. It’s very percussive as well… it’s not those long, wailing Christina Aguilera notes, she’s doing it short and snappy. That almost naïve approach to at least the way she sings on “Miss It So Much” which is very much a track romanticising the old, we wanted it to have a certain naivety, and that sits very well with her whispery, secretive voice. It’s a very delicate voice… it’s the kind of voice you’d like to wake up and have whispering in your ear.

“Miss It So Much” is quite nostalgic, isn’t it?
It’s very nostalgic, to us in terms of harmonies there’s a fling with sort of 50s to it for some reason, and again with the lyrical content, saying something about missing makes it even more nostalgic. The soundscape that’s created is supposed to sound warm and old.

Lykke Li and others on the album are Swedish, of course – do you think there’s a strong connection between Swedish artists and Norwegian artists?
Traditionally I wouldn’t say… I know I’m not mistaken if I say that Swedes are culturally superior to Norway, especially in terms of music and dealing with pop music, especially since Abba. They’ve been way stronger and more confident in producing music compared to Norway, at least. In this day and age, I’d say things have slightly changed. In Scandinavia, not only Norway or Sweden but also Denmark, there’s a lot of interesting things popping up, especially in elecronic music, and the crossover to pop.

Two countries that seem to be on the rise are Norway and Denmark – do you think that Norway is on the rise as a music scene at the moment?
It’s hard to predict but I think that after lying dormant for twenty years, it’s about time… there’s hasn’t been anything since A-Ha in about 1985, and then it went quiet. There has been the occasional artist here and there, but in the last few years it has been evident that it’s possible to live in Norway with today’s technology [...] for a guy to sit in a flat with his guitar and his keyboard and his laptop and produce something that sounds quite professional. It’s all about having the confidence and the ability to just play around – it seems there’s a lot more people who’ve understood this and broken this code for achieving something musically.

Some might say that Röyksopp have been around for a long time, and that it’s odd that Junior is just your third album. Is that because you’re a perfectionist organisation, or is it just that you’ve been busy touring and working on other things?
It’s a combination of the two… we work hard when we work hard, but it’s not as if we get up at 7 in the morning every day and spend 8, 9, 10 hours in the studio. We have periods where we just muck about and go partying and go hiking in the mountains or whatever for a week, and then you get a creative boost which drives you into the studio. And then we eat and sleep and make something. When we’re in that mold, we’re very perfectionist – we play close attention to the details in the music. We don’t call it perfectionism, we call it autism, because we can’t control it. It just becomes that way.

How does the creative relationship between you and Torbjorn work?How do you work together as a partnership?
We sit side by side, with our keyboards circling around us, and with the computers in front of us. We sit and stare out the window, and we might just start with a sound we like and start spinning on that, and you think of imagery and try to recreate that. Or, you just work in an improvisation, starting with the basics and building around it. There’s lots of different ways to build a song. Sometimes we just sit around and think “wouldn’t it be fun to make a song about a robot and a girl”, and you can start writing a few words and take it from there.

I think “The Girl and the Robot” is another highlight of the album, where did that come from?
We had the chords and the melody in place, and we really wanted to get Robyn on board, who has that great strong voice charged with energy, and she has a sort of sexiness to her voice as well as strong emotion. In addition she’s a very creative person – all the women we’ve worked with on the album have written for it, they’re not just given a song and told, “here sing this”. So we wanted to get her onboard as early as possible, and we wrote the lyrics together. We had this idea about writing a love song and together we shaped the idea of a relationship between a girl and a robot which can either be interpreted literally or it can be about lack of communication and trying to cope in a relationship.

Another interesting piece is “Röyksopp Forever” – the title is quite interesting, is that a track that’s about Röyksopp in a way?
Very much so, it’s borderline cheesy which we like, it’s epic and there’s a lot of compression which are all things about how we want Röyksopp to be. We like to bring an element of humour into what we do – it’s meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek and the title suggests that. If anything it’s a homage to the 70s, some of that electronic pioneers of the 70s, the likes of Vangelis and these people, and Krautrock, like Tangerine Dream and even Pink Floyd and King Crimson, all of those rolled into one. It’s a big thing which we called “Röyksopp Forever” and it scratches the surface of what we’re about. We have a tendency to just build and build until there’s no room left… we’re not really that pompous but sometimes it just comes out that way!

We’ve talked a bit about a few of the songs and what’s behind them, do you think there’s a theme behind the album, any big inspirations for the two of you?
If there’s a theme it’s a paradox if anything. We feel that the album is, to us at least, cohesive, there’s definitely a diversity. It’s kept together by a hidden factor, an X factor if you will, which I’m not able to pinpoint, but whenever I play it to friends they identify the tracks as Röyksopp although they are quite different. The three songs we’ve just mentioned – “The Girl and the Robot”, “Miss It So Much” and “Röyksopp Forever” – there are quite different in terms of production and themes and the emotion of it. I think what we wanted to bring to this album was a cohesive diversity, if that’s possible. We wanted the listener to listen through the album, and to use a cheap and cheesy word on it, we want the listener to experience a journey. Taking the listener from the happy side to the sad track, there’s the emotional track, the track with a dark side, anxiety, a paranoid thing… we wanted it to be a mix, but at the same time you want it to be kept together somehow and I hope we’ve succeeded in that.

Apparently Junior‘s only really the first half of the story and that there will be a follow-up album, is that true?
That is true, that’s what you get for crying wolf because we tend to amuse ourselves by elaborating every now and again in media but when it comes to Senior, that’s 99.7% finished and we hope to release it later this year, autumn or winter. At least during 2009 – Senior‘s the flipside to Junior, it’s all about atmospheres. Junior has quite a heavy emphasis on vocals and the rhythm and it’s quite direct, whereas Senior is more withdrawn and introspective and create an atmosphere and an ambience, to sit down and if you don’t need constant loud information all the time that’s what Senior is all about.

Lastly, what are you or Torbjorn listening to at the moment, do you have any recommendations for TLOBF’s readers?
I listen to everything…[Svein looks at what he was listening to before the interview...] There’s MGMT, I like them a lot… really like the video to “Time to Pretend” and obviously “Kids”. I don’t think we have any secret names that people don’t know, in terms of contemporary music, it’s all down to the occasional 12″ that you like… you get these names like Justice and so on [...] there’s Kleerup, who has been working with Robyn, as on the track “With Every Heartbeat”, just to mention that… there’s Datasette, he just did a remix of our single “Happy Up Here” and I’m very fond of his production and programming, I believe the future holds a lot for him. Anything, everything… I don’t stick to one genre, I can listen to Led Zeppelin just as much as Al Green, or whatever.

You were talking about interesting futures, I think Röyksopp has one of those, so thank you very much to talking to us!
Thank you for having me!

Official Royskopp website

I’d just finished mildly mocking Bon Iver’s Auto-Tune ballad ‘In the Woods’ from his recent Blood Bank EP, when Fever Ray’s Vocoder-heavy debut album landed in my inbox with a mechanical clunk. Fever Ray is Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of Sweden’s much admir’d avant-electro outfit The Knife, whose Silent Shout topped many a 2006 end-of-year list including the likes of Pitchfork. 

But The Knife are no picnic, adopting an occasionally abrasive textural orthodoxy: the use of vocoders for almost all vocals and a highly artificial sonic pallette (pure Vangelis synths, few samples) that is more post-techno than electronica. Robots singing can make for a poignant, secluded voice, as Radiohead famously employed to deliberately dehumanising effect on Kid A – but to my mind Add N to X’s haunting robot duet ‘BP Perino’ has never been bettered (maybe).

Like The Knife, Dreijer Andersson is committed to the application of Auto-Tune for the greater part of her Fever Ray debut. But rather than serving as a synthetic mask, it adds an expressionistic and textural range to her caterwauling vocals – think Bjork in a hair pulling ambush on Gang Gang Dance’s Lizzi Bougatsos - otherwise beyond her means: from (paranoid) android and androgynous, to wheezy and ill-sounding (on ‘Dry and Dusty’), to deep and husky (’Concrete Walls’). It’s an unusual approach since Fever Ray’s lyrical threads are less sinister than those on Silent Shout: more intimate, less conceptual. Lyrics about dishwasher tablets are either mind-numbingly prosaic or charmingly offbeat, depending on how you look at it, but you can’t deny the odd little fission sparked by distorting these wistful musings with a such distortional device. Moreover, Andersson’s unshowy melodic gifts and pop sensibility radiate through the dissonance.

Whereas texturally Fever Ray is very much in the same territory as The Knife, it’s less busy sonically: there is no virulent dancefloor electro or jet engine bass frequencies. Slow-motion synth pop from start to finish, Andersson’s solo work is most indebted to Vangelis’ symphonic approach to electronic music: the uncluttered chords and deceptively simple arrangements. On a number of tracks (’Seven’ and ‘Triangle Walls’ for example) there are Far Eastern inflections which again recall Bladerunner’s reimagined Tokyo and the dystopian electro of Warp pioneers Black Dog Productions. Often opening with buzzing drones, the tracks morph and pulse gently around a central theme, with only subtle adjustments of tension.

Unashamedly cinematic, almost stately, Fever Ray will be compared to Kate Bush – particularly when Andersson’s voice is left untreated (’Keep the Streets Empty For Me’) – but the songwriting here is much less histrionic, far more economic than that. It’s a much-used cliché but this really is headphone music, to appreciate the stealthily immersive layering of synths, and the unfussy (i.e. glitch free) but thoughtful drum patterns (check out the way the Ping Pong percussion slowly insists itself on ‘I’m Not Done’). Icy but intimate, experimental but quietly infectious, Fever Ray’s debut deserves to garner the same admiration as The Knife, if not more.
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Fever Ray on MySpace

I find myself unable to look at the name Avrocar without wishing to reach for a glass of creamy yellow Advocat goodness. In Tesco’s the other day I nearly bought a bottle of the phlegm like intoxicant, such is the subliminal power of their name. Google it though and you actually get a more thrilling appellation – a Canadian flying saucer designed during the Cold War, a genius name for this band. The music fits the name, a wonderful blend of textured, electronic pieces that would make an ideal soundtrack as you buzzed in your saucer, shoving anal probes up a farmer’s backside and meaty chunks out of his herd of cows.

Avrocar have been around for years – in fact, back at the release of Kid A Radiohead cited them as a major influence, paying homage to them in interviews. As an album it is best heard whilst participating in life – the sort of music that enlivens a boring bus journey or stroll up a High Street. Enjoyed on headphones it can make any mundane activity evocative and mysterious, either with an icy tumble of swirling electronics or the repetitive strum of effects laden guitars. It will make people you encounter seem more interesting. It will make the bloke sitting opposite you on public transport seem beguiling and threatening. These are soundtracks for life best enjoyed in a natural environment, where you wish to be insulated from the world as you walk through it.

Highlights include “Illustrate A Way To Survive”, a song that sounds recorded in a Monastry kitchen, a row of kettles whistling whilst in the distance you can just make out the sound of a roomful of chanting monks. “IAC” is also good, repetitive but never boring, an upbeat version of “Spanish Castles in Space” from the first album by The Orb. “Ultra Bronte” rises gently with its ambient charms, as does “Near Water”. “Forst Zinna” is threatening and oppressive, whilst closing track “From an ADJacent Field” opens with a sound very similar to my old Spectrum loading Jet Pac before humming and chiming to a satisfying conclusion. This is an excellent collection of thoughts and musical ideas, an album that somehow manages to make you, and whatever you are engaged in, feel more interesting.
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Avrocar on MySpace

The Marches plural are a gang often featuring vocals courtesy of Briana Nadeau but revolving around the singular Richard Conti. A Chicagoan transplanted to Los Angeles, his classical training is much in evidence with quality sax and piano work – something he feels the need to stress in the liner notes as “NOT sampled”. What they/he have/has cooked up is a genre-bending and without doubt innovative mix of poppy electronic stylings and dark jazzy soul. It takes in everything from Air style dreamy harmonies via Motown rhythms to swinging speakeasy blow-outs. Flaring brass and crunching synths alternate – in verse/chorus within as well as between tracks.

However, a pervading disjointed middle ground impression lingers – as that of the house band from the bar room scene in Star Wars. Unkind perhaps, but cemented by the mid-album vocoder drudgery that is the track ‘Bobby Brown’ (the name says it all really), which itself follows an extremely annoying minute and a half of studio outtake ‘fun and frolics’. At their most deliberately jokey and/or antiseptically impersonal, many tracks fail to connect and fade away as forgettable Teflon electronica: ‘Wish You Were Here’ sounds like an American Violet Elizabeth Bott straining over a power chord riff. Whilst some if not all this hopefully tongue-in-cheek playfulness and admirable inventiveness should be welcomed, I somehow found it generally unsettling to the overall experience. The upbeat numbers are not spontaneously good enough to get me jumping and jiving, c.f. the sadly sanitised Motown groove present on ‘So Ill’, and only serve to be disruptive to any smoother continuity possible from other more soulful tracks, including the sultry sax instrumental of ‘Ghost Of A Chance’.

The best of those tracks are the more straight ahead r’n'b variations of the brooding drum’n'bass backed ‘Need Me Back’, the funky pumped up beats of ‘Cold Hands Warm Heart’, and the piano heavy ‘Sometimes Sex Isn’t About the Money’ (complete with classical maestro flourishes). All showcase and are really made by Nadeau’s silky voice. The middle one of that trio is the only song on the album to substantially break the three minute barrier. At least the next tune is never far away if the current one is wearing thin. And unfortunately most do. Maybe I’m in the midst of a particularly grumpy or apathetic post Christmas phase, but I can’t see myself reaching for this album again. Err, ever. It’s not so much that its plain terrible, it just doesn’t seem to conjure up or satisfy any kind of musical desire after repeated listens. Richard Conti seems to have interesting and laudable views on DIY music making and managed to get this together recording with completely borrowed (and cheap) equipment at various friends’ houses, but his talent hasn’t found their mark with this listener. File under ‘Clever Dick’.
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The Marches on MySpace

renfro are an experimental electronica outfit with a peculiar style all to themselves – their sound is of electronics and systems breaking down, populated as it is by throbbing repetitions and crispy pops and clicks as if produced by still-connected circuit boards and children’s toys liberally doused in fuel and set aflame. The pace is often languid, the songs often long and meandering, framing quiet, introspective and even slightly effeminate vocals – and yet somehow this is all deeply affecting and engaging. With so much music, we seem to find ourselves waiting and idling on a moneyshot chorus moment in songs that hang determinedly from their hooks. renfro (not uniquely, of course) reject this kind of songwriting and, consequently, we find ourselves listening intently despite, or even because of, the fact that we know there will not be a conclusive epiphany moment. Such is life.Perhaps the best showcase for the musical style on this full length, Mathematics, is the second track “Broken Little Pieces”. Those pops-as-percussion are present and correct, the cryptic truisms in the lyrics lined up (“just looking at the ice won’t make it melt / swimming in the river won’t reach the sea”). In some ways it represents the album in microcosm, but one of my criticisms is that it’s only a little better at doing that than the other tracks, because Mathematics is very samey. In terms of arrangements the album ranges only from “sparse” to “very sparse” and in theme, the album rarely strays outside a narrow remit that encapsulates introspection, confusion, and thoughtfulness. How appealing the album is as a whole is going to depend on how interesting you find this mode. If you find enjoyment in intelligently relaxing electronica, then there is much to be enjoyed here.

“Terrain” makes the theme of systemic collapse and decay explicit, explaining that “there’s a bug in this machine”. Even the album’s title hints at the logical, machine-like approach to sound that renfro display, but there’s something inherently human not only about the vocals and lyrics but also about how they gel with the album’s crackly, melancholic landscapes. Perhaps we are but machines of a sort ourselves.
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renfro on MySpace

Your Ear Knows Future is the sophomore effort from Baikonour – aka Brighton’s French-born Jean-Emmanuel Kreiger – a veritable one-man band whose debut For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was a heady blend of space rock and electronica. Where that first record was indebted to prog and Krautrock, Your Ear Knows Future’s only noticeable change in direction is the additional demployment of 80s indie textures. After a rumbling, would-be ominous ‘Intro’, the opener ‘Shikarettes & Khukuris’ bursts into life with a reverbed guitar strum that recalls prototype shoegazers A.R. Kane (the band for whom the term ‘Oceanic’ was coined) quickly subsumed by Baikonour’s familiar take on psychedelia. Most of the tracks are underpinned by this New Order/Jesus & Mary Chain jangle but all revert to a default prog vacuity: all Celestial Synths (TM), steady crescendos and other cod-mystical devices.‘Chiru’ oscillates between cock-rocking riffs and instrumental passages that suggest 12-inch versions of Cure songs circa ‘Disintegration’ or Mary Chain derivatives like The Cranes. Bridging the expanse between these two styles are some New Age atmospherics, and while the transitions are made with a fluidity and dynamism the track still strikes me as rather unsubtle in its showy eclecticism. While the quickie ‘Double Happiness Wholesale’ vaguely resembles M83’s synthesized shoegaze, ‘Ye Ama Piaooo!’ meanders through several passages of meaningful moodiness – warped chimes, more ominous bass - before introducing some thundering Hawkwind-esque one-chord guitars and Krautrock percussion courtesy of Lee Adams from Fujiya & Miyagi. Things peak and dip, swirl and chug like this for a good five minutes – and it’s very nice but totally unsurprising. The beginning of ‘Summer Grass/Winter Warm’ is almost redolent of Boards of Canada’s cassette warped nostalgic dissonance, but glossier, texturally facile, and quickly drowned in sub-Vangelis synths. I have no problem listening to an album entirely comprising instrumentals but it says a lot to me that some of the tracks feel as if they are missing vocals. The very fact that the word ‘instrumental’ comes to my head when listening to Baikonour – as opposed to, say, ‘track’ – seems to suggest an absence or incompleteness.

Baikonour is certainly not the first electronica act to dabble with post-rock, prog, Krautrock or 80s indie – and while he may one of few to try them all at once – Your Ear Knows Future never feels like more than a sum of its constituent parts. While he renders his influences with obvious skill he employs the textures with a one-dimensional predictability. The layering of atmospherics is entirely underwhelming, chugging along with an unfulfilled sense of purposefulness; without enough rough edges to counter the consummate smoothness of the production. I can imagine some of this being knocked up in a BBC workshop under the remit: “make something really cosmic and dramatic sounding by Friday, please”. It’s all very professional sounding, but there are no new ideas here – just the conviction that disparate music styles from the past  automatically sound fresh when blended together. They may have done when For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos was released, but they don’t anymore. If Your Ear Knows Future – it isn’t Baikonour.
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Baikonour on MySpace

Chairlift may have the coolest creation story ever. Yes, even better than all that seven days stuff. Formed in 2005, the band originally got together to make background music for haunted houses, which sounds like a pretty good agenda to work to.

Does You Inspire You isn’t exactly like the soundtrack to a ride on the Ghost Train, but it isn’t far off. Less scare, more ambience, but still with the odd freaky scream thrown in. And the lyrics are more educational than frightening – “Our intercourse was well protected we made love with each others’ eyes“- perhaps a good message for any teenagers heading for the Tunnel of Love later.

As with cheesy fun fair rides, Chairlift’s music reeks of the 80s – Grace Jones and the Pet Shop Boys must definitely be proud that their synth riffs and Clavinova sounds are still resonating 20 years on. ‘Bruises’ is undoubtedly a contender for cutesy love song of the year, one look at the lyrics – “I tried to do handstands for you/But every time I fell for you” - laid over synth chords, a looped bass and some general twinkly sounds will have you seducing your sweetheart in no time.

The album has a wonderfully laid back, slightly melancholic feel, much like when you’re on a chairlift and you get so high up there’s no annoying ski-related chatter, just glorious white mountains. It’s tailor made for Sunday evenings, but still as effective on Monday morning,  to ease you into the week.

Caroline Polachek’s vocal style makes it sound as though she means every damn word, and labours over it intensly. It’s a strong deep voice that’s in no danger of getting lost in the synths, and reminiscent of Kate Bush.

‘Territory’, slotted in half way through the album, develops into a huge landscape of sound, less of an accompnaiemnt to a haunted house, and more like something you’d expect to hear when people are walking on the moon.

Chairlift stick firmly to their blend of synths and electronics, but utilise them to create many a different mood, from forobding warnings to adorable pop with even a bit of dirty rock and roll and  and bluegrass squeezed into the middle.

Does You Inspire You at first glance, is an homage to the 80s. But it’s also an incredible incorporation of many genres with cracking vocals, well written lyrics and an amazing knob twiddling skills that would be wasted in a haunted house.
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Chairlift on MySpace

James Yuill hails from London and blends folk, electronica and pop into a rather beautiful landscape of sound. There’s plenty of artists currently ploughing this furrow, but Yuill makes it seem a more joyful world to live in. Apart from an identity crisis, he tells us a bit about how it all started…

For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
Because I’ve had four number ones, my 1986 album ‘Slippery When Wet’ sold in excess of 26 million copies and it set the record for the most weeks for a hard rock album at #1 on the Billboard 200… oh no… wait that’s Bon Jovi… there’s no reason why people should have heard of me.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
I think it was when I heard Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ for the first time… I knew I wanted to play rock guitar! My aspirations have changed slightly as I’ve grown up.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
I’m not really sure where they come from… my subconscious I guess. I just sit down and sing whatever comes into my head… the first verse done, I then try and work out what I’m on about then steer/force the rest along a similar path.

Name your Top 5 records.
Difficult, but it would have to be…
Nick Drake – Pink Moon
Radiohead – Hail to the Thief
4hero – Creating Patterns
Tasmin Archer – Great Expectations
Jackson and his Computer Band – Smash

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
The first gig in public was at the tunbridge wells forum with my school band. it was a success…but success isn’t always easy on the ear, as we proved.

What one piece of criticism has stuck in your mind and was it justified?
That I have a weedy voice (courtesy of Time Out). I think it was justified.

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
Waiting for MySpace to load/sort it’s problems out.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
Audio forensics… long story.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I once spent a night loading lorries at a factory in North West London. It was a long night shift and apart from an hour break in the middle there was no let up. The parcels would come down this conveyer belt directly into the back of the lorry and if you weren’t fast enough they would build up jam the main package artery. Eventually the break came, but the canteen wasn’t serving food, so all i could have was a Sprite and then back to work. It was also deafening so after one night I never went back. I didn’t even get paid for that night!

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
The theme is people who died too young:
Nick Drake – Time has Told me
Jim Morrison – People are Strange
Jimi Hendrix – Little Wings
Janis Joplin – Move Over
Jeff Buckley – Dream Brother

James Yuill on Myspace

Moshi Moshi are well known for putting out great music created by great bands. Their singles label reached trendsetter status a long time ago, and their album catalog is equally strong. This release from James Yuill, entitled ‘Turning Down Water For Air’ goes a long way to re-enforce the previous statement, itself containing 12 tracks of heartfelt electronica that is very easily accessible and produced to an incredibly high standard.

Think of James Yuill as a traditional songwriter in the mould of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie), when he was working with Jimmy Tamborello in his side escapade, The Postal Service. However, to just cast Mr Yuill off as a clone would be to bypass many of the positives of ‘Turning Down Water For Air’. In songs like ‘No Pins Allowed’, James manages to create something of a club banger, sounding more like late 90s house then anything else. Rewound claps pair off with a sledgehammer bass drum, while dirty bass lines fight toe to toe with delicate guitar work. It’s a track containing many contrasts, but it all works perfectly. The junky guitar and heavy delays that flutter through ‘Head Over Heels’ add a strong sense of the melancholy, but the lyrics sound optimistic, the confidence of the main hook overpowering any sense that this is a sad or otherwise depressing track. Again, the contrasts are there, but its all packaged together so well that it isn’t really noticeable.

The production on this album is of the highest order. Each element in every single track has clearly been thought about in detail, and placed in the musical jigsaw in such a way as that it fits perfectly. Everything is well balanced, in each of the 12 songs there is nothing that commands your attention as much as the piece as a whole. That’s not to say that this album is without any negatives. At times, James’ voice can come across as a bit bland, the vocal melodies doing nothing to show off his range or talent. Some of the lyrics as well feel a bit forced together for the sake of rhyme alone. ‘The Ghost’ is a good example of this, with the lines ‘when will I see my children lying in my arms, and hear the sound of echoes echoing my charms?’ sounding clunky and overwrought. Another criticism is that the music sometimes relies a bit too much on the floor filling dance beat rather then focusing on the other strengths in the music. ‘She Said In Jest’ is a beautiful track, but after a while the four-to-the-floor grates a bit. Maybe an acoustic version in the future will do that particular song more favours.

All in all, ‘Turning Down Water For Air’ is a strong showcase of James Yuill’s individual talents. After doing remixes for just about everyone, James has stepped out into the limelight and given us an album of soulful electro-acoustic humbuggery, a prominently American genre delivered with a British twist.

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James Yuill On Myspace

NYC is Kieran Hebden‘s (aka Four Tet) fourth collaboration with veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid and while I won’t pretend that I have heard the other three, the word in the blogosphere is that this is the most equal of their partnerships, with Hebden given much more license to stamp his mark on the record. Certainly fans of Fridge and Four Tet would be foolish to overlook this, a beautiful and intensely atmospheric mini-album. Although I didn’t have the cover artwork to hand at the time of writing it is impossible to listen to NYC and not picture a seething, rain-lashed megatropolis. It’s a murky, cavernous record easily redolent of old Scorcese films: steam rising from man hole covers, pimps lurking in shadows, dealers dealin’ (to borrow from Bobby Gillespie). The percussive energy and gently building tensions and atmospherics make it less wilfully difficult than such jazz-electronica collaborations might lead you to expect.

It is interesting to note that while Four Tet’s most recent EP Ringer sidestepped into more synthetic soundscapes, NYC is very much in line with the textures that made Hebden’s name: scuffed, jazzy rhythms; heavily-reverbed splices of acoustic guitar and piano; and a mulchy organic quality that once inspired the horror pigeonhole ‘folktronica’. But folk this isn’t, this is tranced-out bebop – rollicking, sweaty jazz augmented with synths and echo effects. It’s the kind of fuggy cinematic brew that should entice fans of David Holmes circa Let’s Get Killed, early DJ Shadow and DJ Krush (minus the hip hop esoterica), Amon Tobin, and Four Tet disciples from Pedro to Nostalgia 77.

The murky opener ‘Lyman Place’ is a bit of a red herring, as it’s probably the most abrasive track on the album – a pressure cooker of grinding bass loops and rusted-metal percussion. It’s a mood revisited on the dank, clunking ’25th Street’, which sounds like a network of subterranean pipes rattling and hissing into life, evolving into a lolloping groove. ’1st & 1st’ sounds like a gritty 70s cop show theme tune pulled apart and doodled over with freestyle drumming and lots of electronic, dubby ephemera. ‘Arrival’, the album centrepiece, is a meditative, awakening but somehow urban piece, augmented by shimmering synths, vibrating drones and Reid’s scattershot percussive improvisations. This stunning high is sustained into the bustling ‘Between B & C’ in which Hebden showers sparkling, sped-up synth fragments over a gorgeous piano groove. ‘Departure’ is Four Tet all over: loops of chime-like textures which simmer and subside while Reid grooves sporadically over the top, and occasional beams of pure Bladerunner synth shoot out from the speakers. It’s wonderful, heady, spectral stuff that gets better and better, both throughout its recording time and with each listen – an unexpected delight.
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Kieran Hebden on MySpace

By now we all should know the genius that is Tom Jenkinson, aka pusher of squares, and by now it has become almost a given that whatever he releases is going to be taking music in a new direction such is his unrivalled ability (have you seen that man play bass! It’s beyond comprehension), and his determination to make music that shifts the map. Along with Aphex Twin, Squarepusher is definitely one of the pioneering forces behind electronic music in the last 10-15 years.

‘Just a Souvenir’ is, as expected, a mish mash of styles that all seem to gel into a twisted cohesion. “This album started as a daydream about watching a crazy, beautiful rock band play an ultra-gig” explains Jenkinson on a quote from his official website. Noticeably he has gone more in an experimental rock direction, but rock as you’ve never heard it. Take Delta V, a lesson in how to riff out on bass, it is a very immediate and in your face. It seems as if Tom is having a jam session, on another planet. The album opens with ‘Star Time 2′; a song that sounds like I’ve landed on Planet Zelda and Sonics spinning the rings. Its as if ‘Red Hot Car’ has morphed into something altogether more funky.

Often Jenkinsons music has suffered from being cold and, at times, too mechanical, chopped and patched together with precision but sometimes lacking soul or trying too hard to be experimental or progressive. Just a Souvenir breaks that tradition with a far more colourful soundscape, leaning to something Daft Punk esque. There are more elements of electro and acid funk, along with his affection for Jazz breaks and a far more heavy rock sound. But as ever there really isn’t a way of describing what Squarepusher does. He defies explanation, logic, and expectation. He has definitely gone for a more melodic sound, even if melodic, in Squarepusher universe, is still some mutant hybrid of a thousand different styles. He’s doing for bass guitar what Hendrix did for guitar. Obviously there’s a massive time difference, but if we juxtapose the innovation of each artist there is a definite path between the two. The groove is definitely there.

Nothing sums up Squarepushers eccentricity more than ‘A Real Woman‘, a track that sounds almost comical; the strange vocal effects are something that Jenkinson has always loved to noodle with, and it makes for an odd listen. It has a child like playfulness to it. This is candy for extreme candy poppers. With every record the square man puts out he dives into new territory and comes out on top, owning and completely realizing new rhythms and vibrations.  Taking on from his last effort Hello Everything but more psychedelic than anything he’s done before I’m wondering how this would work with a head full of hallucinogens – I know I’d be listening to ‘Planet Gear’ over and over. As for ‘The Glass Road’: dark mystical genius. Not only is he a bass terrorist, but he’s a sweet jazz soliloquist. Just have a listen to his classical guitar on album closer ‘Yes – Sequitur’! Yeah we knew he could play guitar, but it’s always nice to mention his skills off the bass.

When I listen to this record first thing I think is where do his ideas come from? How did that rhythm come into being, where is this man from. Middle England or the centre of the universe! There isn’t anybody coming close to doing what Tom Jenkinson does, not only on the bass, but his whole pallet of musical textures, his direction and commitment to experimentation. Just a Souvenir proves that he is top of whatever game he chooses to be in, and he’s so far out of sight that you’ll be blinded.
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Squarepusher on Myspace

Victoria and Jacob played, as far as I’m aware, at TLOBF’s very first gig at the Portland Arms in Cambridge the other day. I wasn’t there, and listening to this EP, I wonder how they are as a live act – it’s an intriguing thought which I’m sure several TLOBF staffers could now enlighten me on.

V&J’s sound is a twinkling, light, but affecting one – “Clash” is slightly disappointing in a sense that it isn’t about a seminal punk outfit, but satisfies in every other respect. Victoria’s voice soars over a simplistic synthetic beat and a insistent drone, with glockenspiel, odd rattling sounds and acoustic guitar taking turns to add their own contributions. “It’s not about apologies”, we hear, “it’s about understanding.” It seems to be a song about inevitability and sealing yourself off from the world when things get tough, but what the hell do I know? At the end, there’s a sound which makes me think of the death throes of a toy robot, which is nice.

Victoria sounds at her most spectacularly childish and naïve (in a good way) on “Lion Hunting”. The playful sound of the vocals makes a nice contrast with the anxious lyrics, which talk of suppressed energies, screwing heads on, and generally trying to sort your life out – “I can’t stay here anymore.” Maybe the most worrying thing is the intangible, contradictory nature of the problem at hand – “I will find you lion” and yet, “this mission is never-ending.” The song becomes increasingly insectoid towards its conclusion, sounding like it was recorded in a dry field of increasingly pissed-off crickets.

“Baram”, the third and final track on this very short EP, seems to continue the theme of mental anguish, as we’re welcomed to the titular “Baram”, whatever that is… it’s not too enthusiastic a welcome though, so I’m not entirely sure I want to go there. Here, the synthesizers are often stronger and more central to the music than before, and the whole thing rides along on a variety of dissonant wails and layered electronic percussion. Not wanting to be left without a weird ending, this song concludes with a guitar fadeout joined by football commentary – “West Bromwich Albion… have reclaimed their place… in the Barclay’s Premier League!”

Super Computer is a very modest offering, but a very pleasant, if not breathtaking, one. Victoria and Jacob don’t plan on setting the world alight – that’s not their style – instead, they hope that their fuzzy warmth, quirky energy and twinkling melodies will light a few fires in peoples’ hearts. I think they’ve a good chance.
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mp3:> Victoria and Jacob: ‘Clash’

Victoria and Jacob on MySpace

Smile Down Upon Us is a collaboration between London based music makers Keiron Phelan and David Sheppard and Tokyo based vocalist MoomLooo. It was a collaboration born through the internet as Phelan Sheppard found Moomlooo through myspace and, after exchanging messages of mutual admiration, a collaboration was born.

Their debut record is one of organic colour, sprouting with twee sounds that lend themselves to folk and electronic music. Listening to this reminds me of a band like Broadcast or Four Tet, it sounds fresh and new, and really sparkles with a sense of ornate magic.

Opener ‘Girl of a Skin-coloured Blanket No2′ introduces MoomLooos delicate soaring vocals as she effortlessly blends with the sounds of the birds around her. From here on out the enchantment simply flows through you. Songs like ‘Childs Walk’ remind me a little of Psapp, whilst ‘My Body Continents’ sounds like 60′s psychedelia from another planet. There really is a feast of delights in every song on this record. ‘Rayla No Lullaby‘ sounds like being on some sort of music box choo choo train. I’ve actually reverted back to being a child, imagining all the sounds to be animals and magic places. Music that does that to you surely has to be great.

Despite never having met each other at any point during the making of this record there is a definite understanding between each of them of their direction. And the rewards are ripe for our listening pleasure. Ukeleles, Banjos, Glockenspiel, Chimes, Mandolin, Recorder, Tin Whistle, Flute, there are a plethora of musical instruments used to create this world. And you can almost step into it, a world where only you, your imagination and nature exist. The magic of bringing two musical cultures together in such an unrefined and natural way really works and despite boundaries as great as this one, nothing can really stop creation. Heading almost blindly there must be a certain fear that it won’t work but this record simply blossoms.
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Smile Down Upon Us on Myspace

Much was made of Jeremey Warmsley’s first outing ‘The Art of Fiction’, and justly so. Warmsley came across as a fresh face with some wonderful melodies and harmonies to share, building layers upon layers to make his highly crafted electronic-pop.  If there was a hint of pretension or  pomposity at  times, it could be given as youthful over eagerness. The success of the record saw him tour with the likes of Regina Spektor, The Shins and Daniel Johnston in the following months. In the meantime his contemporaries such as the Mystery Jets, Laura Marling and Noah and the Whale have gone on to bigger and better things. With ‘How We Became’ Warmsley attempts to follow that path of growth, pulling in Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire/ Bjork) on production duties.

Sadly, where once Warmsley’s needy ‘folktronica’ was charming, here it begins to wear thin. Lead track and single ‘Lose My Cool’ struggles with it’s charmless clunking synth and drum lines, and the fact that when Warmsley sings ‘ cool’ during the verses he sounds like Eric Cartman from South Park. The chorus lifts things a little, but still falls short of the slightness of hand and melodic interplay of his previous work.

All to frequently on ‘How We Became’ the processed beats comes on like a bargain basement Patrick Wolf. The beats throughout the record just sound cheap and tacky, and Warmsleys voice and lyrics are no match for his fellow londoner. Don’t even get me started on the production horrors of ‘Pressure’, which lyrically at least is an album highlight. In the hands of The Wave Pictures it could be something special, but the treatment given to it here, all bleeping synths and keyboards means it meanders aimlessly to a conclusion with little effect. This is one of the few highlights however, as frequently this maudlin look back at a wasted youth calls to mind Morrissey at his most self pitying lyrically. Imagine a Weezer album made up of songs that all sound like ‘Butterfly’ and you might start to get the idea.
Vocally Warmsley struggles at times with his falsetto, particularly on the album’s title track. The Bontempi beats of ‘Waiting Room’ further exposes his vocal frailties, as he occasionally yelps breathily, as if impersonating Beirut or David Byrne. ‘Dancing With The Enemy’ sounds like it could be a future single, with its simple keyboard lines and horn section, but it never really rings true and doesn’t particularly fit with the rest of the album.

Having promised so much from his debut album, ‘How We Became’ is an extremely disappointing follow up from the clearly talented Warmsley.
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Jeremy Warmsley on Myspace

Juana Molina is an former television actress from Argentina with an unlikely passion for making a kind of cut and paste folk-tinged electronica (look, I managed to do that without saying ‘folktronica’). Molina’s latest album for Domino comprises eight lengthy, carefully assembled pieces with a focus on layered grooves: tightly coiled constructions of looped acoustic guitar, vocal cooing and harmonies, chimes, drones and occasionally the kitchen sink. After the rollicking, revelrous opening title track, Un Dia is sometimes sunny, sometimes sultry and occasionally bleakly nocturnal. Molina’s lo-fi collages are not always immediately arresting, building and subsiding with an unhurried lightness of touch. The likes of ‘Quien? (Suite)’ wake up as gently as a spring morning, dreamy vocal splices interlocking and dovetailing over a persistent almost-house bassline. By contrast ‘Lo Dejamos’ and ‘Los Hongos De Marosa’ are oblique, all murmers and shadowy bass squelches.

There are shades of Herbert’s organic house (to coin a term) but Un Dia is not peppy enough for dancefloors, often drifting out of focus when seemingly primed for a big 4/4 booty shaker to kick in. Well, leave that to the remixers, ‘Un Dia’ is more an album to put on in the background (and I don’t mean this unkindly) and gradually work its way into your consciousness (and normally back out again). The theme is definitely stretched thin over the course of the album, and Juan Molina straddles a fine line between an orthodoxy of approach and being a one-trick pony. At its best the hypnotic layering of sounds – particularly the joyous opener – gets blissfully dissonant, almost psychedelic; while at its worst it limps and meanders off-course. For instance ‘Vive Solo’, starts like some bonged out reworking of the Sesame Street theme-tune, relocated to Buenos Aires, but persistently peters out.

The pro-tooled assembly of individual parts can also be stiflingly unspontaneous. Despite the tribal, Dionysian undertones of the likes of ‘Dar’, it never quite freaks out as seductively suggested. One can’t help wanting an Animal Collective-esque headfuck on the scale of their tribal harmonies on, say, Leaf House. I also found myself wishing Molina could reign in some of the expansiveness and deliver the kind of abstract dance pop of Feist’s ‘Sealion Woman’, which parts of Un Dia resemble. There are few jaw-droppingly off-kilter moments, although there are some extremely lovely ones: the fragments of guitar notes sprinkled onto the heady ‘No Llama’ tickled some not normally stimulated part of my ears. Fans of Herbert and his muse Dani Siciliano’s solo work should fine plenty to enjoy here, as well as fans of folk-tinged cut and pastery (see, I still haven’t said ‘folktronica’) as diverse as The Books and Four Tet.
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Juana Molinas on MySpace

I was thwarted in my initial attempts to listen to Fujiya & Miyagi’s (F&M) Lightbulbs. Their previous album, 2006′s Transparent Things, was something of a sleeper hit with me and also, initially at least, avoided my cunning aural attempts. That was an album that fused a whole host of influences into something funky and completely out of tune with what else was coming out of their home town of Brighton. But anyway, back to Lightbulbs. It seems as though in this age of internet leaks and the like, labels are starting to make it difficult for reviewers to actually LISTEN to the music. Put the promo into your computer to rip it for your mp3 player of choice and it crashes. Nice. Stick it in my car to listen to, the stereo goes a bit funny and tells me I’m listening to a CD-ROM. Double nice. So, finally, I’ve had to set time to listen to it on my stereo at home. And now, after a number of afternoons and evenings with a variety of refreshments, I can write something about it…

Not much has changed since 2006 in the world of F&M. Their Krautrock and electronica inspired music is still here, perhaps with the guitars toned down a touch. David Best seems to be a little happier with his vocals as well, his half-singing / half-spoken lyrics touching all bases from ice-cream to chess. It’s in these lyrics where the real hidden gems are to be found. Taking in a huge variety of cultural references, it’s like watching an episode of Spaced, spotting all the little nods and winks in each song. From the semi-rap of album opener ‘Knickerbocker’ with the chants of ice-cream flavours and Hans Christian Andersen to the BBQ drawl of ‘Goosebumps’ with the very British summertime line of “Stella Artois mixed with beef burgers“.

Even though their musical direction hasn’t changed that much, there’s still some great moments that lift this out of carbon copy territory. The drum beat and underlying rhythm of ‘Pterodactyl’ smacks of Amerie’s ‘One Thing’, whilst the clipped keyboards of ‘Pickpocket’ sounds like the Knight Rider theme tune. And there’s plenty more, these two just jump out everytime I listen to it.

So, what we have here is a very European influenced British album that sounds like the previous one, but actually sounds different. Right… In the end though, I think it’s this conundrum of sound and influences that makes Fujiya & Miyagi such an intriguing and enjoyable listen; you never quite know what you’re going to get.
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Fujiya & Miyagi on Myspace

Metronomy is Joseph Mount, and in live form, it also includes Gabriel Stebbing and Oscar Cash as support musicians. According to Mount, who has long been a very in-demand remixer, Nights Out, his second album, had its genesis as “a half-arsed concept album about going out and having a crap time”. It’s not entirely clear how much of that concept remains in this finished product – especially given that only half of the tracks have vocals to tell us what they’re about – but perhaps that reference to concept albums is a signal of the intelligent, varied and consistently interesting set of tracks that Nights Out consists of.

The album is sequenced as though it has a concept behind it – “Nights Intro” and “Nights Outro” bookend everything else, and “Back On The Motorway” is titled like a reprise of “On The Motorway”. Curiously, these pairs of tracks actually have very little in common, but despite that the sequencing and titling decisions clearly weren’t accidental. The 7^th of the twelve tracks is even called “Side 2″, and is draped in vinyl-esque crackling and hiss.

Although some of these tracks initially seem a bit formulaic, they also often seem designed to invert a few dance and electronica tropes. “Radio Ladio” isn’t quite the predictable dance love song it first appears to be, and the lyrics to “Heartbreaker” help it escape the deeply unoriginal piece it could have been by making it intriguingly schizophrenic in style. In the same vein, “Back On The Motorway” is a song with an unexpected narrative twist mid way through. There are also lots of different voices heard on the album, each playing different roles – Mount’s is that of the straight-man, whereas others are female characters in these little club scenes or sound like unhinged voices from the psyche.

Musically, Mount has tried to inject as much unpredictability as possible into Nights Out. One of his main objectives seems to have been to avoid repetition – even the corker of a chorus in “A Thing For Me” doesn’t appear very often, as Mount refuses to over-milk his creative cows. This restraint is evident throughout the album, and helps it sound more coherent and rounded, as opposed to a hammering, self-referential monotony. Probably the most repetitive track is “On The Motorway” which is also, tellingly, the shortest one on the album. There are also a lot of very distinct sounds here – the beats can be regimented or erratic, and consist of anything from handclaps to militaristic marching band drums. Often one synth is doing a straightforward cyclic thing while another is given freedom to move, snaking around unpredictably in the background.

The strongest tracks are probably those with vocals – “Radio Ladio” is a hugely fun slow-builder, “Heart Rate Rapid” is a vibrant, pacey thrill, and perhaps best of all is “A Thing For Me” which is a superb mix of male and female voices, an interesting little story, and an ingeniously catchy chorus.

Nights Out pretty much does what electronic music is meant to do – sound futuristic and exciting, without resorting to mind-numbing repetition or a dumb lack of ambition. It is varied and inherently engaging album which deserves to be heard, even by those would normally write this off on principle.
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Metronomy on MySpace

I saw Bloc Party live at the O2 Arena in February. It wasn’t really their gig – in fact I’d mostly gone to see Manic Street Preachers, who had won NME’s Godlike Geniuses award and were being supported by Kele Okereke’s men, among others. Despite their third billing at the gig, Bloc Party rose to the occasion and put on a superb performance which helped really kick things off after a disappointing earlier performance by The Cribs. They seemed like a band on top of their game – they had all their best songs from both Silent Alarm and A Weekend In The City in their arsenal, and even the slightly odd one-off single “Flux” sounded awesome in live form. The future seemed to belong to them.

What was odd about “Flux” upon its release in November 2007 was that it was far more electronic than anything the band had previously released. Guitars were abandoned in favour of layered synths, in what was at the time quite a controversial decision among fans. Just as A Weekend In The City and “Flux” did before it, Intimacy continues the band’s progression from a spiky guitar-driven sound to a more synthetic, dance-influenced one – the question was always going to be, especially given the album’s very sudden and unexpected release, will the songs withstand this large (if not unexpected) change of direction and remain of a high standard?

On both of their previous albums, Bloc Party made an effort to have an explosive opening track, and Intimacy is no exception. Ares” is named after the Greek god of bloodlust; unfortunately, “Ares” is also completely all over the shop, with Okereke going on in an uncharacteristically inane way about “war, war, war, war!” Hmm. There’s weird, aimless electronic fuzz behind totally OTT drums for no discernible reason, and all this is incongruously bolted to a oddly lo-fi section. It’s a baffling and disappointing start to the album, lacking the cohesion and thrill of “Like Eating Glass” or “Song For Clay (Disappear Here)”.

“Mercury” is worth mentioning both because it was the album’s first single and because it showcases a lot of the hallmarks of Bloc Party’s new sound. Okereke’s vocals are more cut up than a William S. Burroughs novel, and mostly consist of the song’s title said over and over again – this repetition represents a poor and substitute for real depth, and appears elsewhere on the album. “Mercury”‘s drums are, again, so constant and insistent as to be almost redundant, and the guitars are absent, replaced by unimaginative throbbing synths. Thankfully the loud, expertly wielded guitars we expect of Bloc Party do appear on the album, and yet those guitars are far less interesting than ever before – aimless and ordinary, they don’t save the songs which they are allowed to dominate. “Halo” is a classic lust song – “the spark of desire at every point out bodies meet”. It’s much closer in style to moments on A Weekend In The City than much of this album, but lacks the pace and fury of tracks from said album like the venomous “Uniform”. “Trojan Horse” also fits into that category, a song about a relationship rapidly turning sour which is damaged by a curious and daft decision to drown out the vocals at the point of a crucial hook. Some of the album’s best lyrics appear here though, such as when Kele harks back to when “our earthquake, it was just cracks” and finds himself “forever trying to find you on the lips of someone else.”

Worryingly and surprisingly though, Intimacy is full of lyrical clangers, mostly consisting of a stark, clanging lack of subtlety. Mentioning cancer and seeming talking to a suffering person in “Biko”, Kele repeatedly tells them to “toughen up” – great bedside manner there…

The move away from the band’s core instruments has not quite proven a catastrophe – in fact the resolutely guitar-and-drumless “Signs” is a quiet, jingling highlight of the album – but it hasn’t helped. What has really damaged Intimacy is a lack of quality control. It’s a curious release – only ten tracks long, and about seven minutes shorter than any other Bloc Party album, you’d think this would be taut and tight album, but it simply isn’t – it doesn’t flow logically, crudely putting dead quiet and frankly dull tracks like “Biko” next to loud but half-baked ones like “Trojan Horse.” Bearing this in mind, the suddenness of Intimacy‘s release is beginning to feel less like a pleasant, exciting surprise and more like a cynical, sinister move to slip a sub-par album under the radar – after all, this album has arrived significantly earlier than anyone would really reasonably have suspected.

More crushingly ordinary than out-and-out bad, Intimacy is a surprisingly disappointing effort from a band who seemed to know no direction but up. On this album, Bloc Party fail to exude the cool and excitement they did on stage at the O2 Arena. That perhaps isn’t surprising – but what is surprising is how little an impression Intimacy makes on you. Coming from such a talented band, this album is a bafflingly bungled effort which never even glimpses the creative heights we know the band are capable of and points to a troubled future for Bloc Party – once the gloss of newness on this album fades, fans are likely to be turning to past glories more frequently than this new material.
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Bloc Party on MySpace

It’s a crazy world this business we call music; we’ve had the Radiohead pay what you want, the Prince stick it on a newspaper, the NIN give it away and even the Cliff Richard bid-up.tv model and now make way for the most honest way of releasing a record in the world…

The “price at what the artist thinks it’s worth” – the ‘Minotaur Shock’!

Minotaur Shock, aka Bristolian David Edwards, purveyor of electronic tunes, has painstakingly rated each track on his third album Amateur Dramatics and you pay what he reckons each track is worth – measured on technical difficulty, musical difficulty, extra musicians, computer crashing and other considerations.

You can pick and choose from tracks ranging from 33p to 75p, or even buy the whole thing for (the accumulative) £6.41.

It’s all here: www.minotaurshock.com

And there’s an extensive and rib-tickling run-down through each tracks rating…

While you can buy direct from www.minotaurshock.com, the album is also available from iTunes and Boomkat.com (who sell high quality MP3s (320kbps) and FLAC/lossless files).

Interestingly-named Manchester band Working For A Nuclear Free City haven’t produced a conventional double album here. What Businessmen & Ghosts really consists of is the entirety of the band’s self-titled début album, the majority of the Rocket EP, and also new material. At a whopping 29 tracks and almost an hour and 45 minutes long, this is a comprehensive rather than bite-sized introduction to the band’s music.

Like the vaguely similar project that was Use Your Illusion, the 1991 kind-of double album by Guns N’ Roses, Businessmen & Ghosts is very much a mixed bag rather than a coherent, focused album. In fact, this lack of focus and inconsistency in terms of style and quality is the main gripe that emerges from the album. When WFANFC are at their best though, they’re very good. At times “Innocence” sounds like the soundtrack to a hip 70s muscle car or blaxploitation film – all cool beats and funky wicky-wah guitars. This is a band that can convey such cool, when they set their mind to it.

When looking for those high points, the second disc is where you’re most like to have success. The band’s hazy, heavily synthesized sound works best when the vocals aren’t too overbearing and when the tracks are energetic enough to get the blood pumping. Tracks like “Eighty Eight”, “Donkey” and “Innocence” are largely instrumental pieces which gradually build to thrilling, propulsive climaxes – they’re a world away from some of the first disc’s pointless excesses, like the tedious opening track “224^th Day” (yes, another self-indulgent instrumental opener – just what the world needs right now) and the turgid “Dead Fingers Talking”. Then again, excess is what we tend to expect from double albums, and WFANFC don’t disappoint. Or rather, they do – besides “224^th Day” there are other largely redundant tracks like “Pretty Police State” and “The Tree”. If some of these were culled, this could be a much more streamlined album that would be easier to listen to and would have a much more consistently high quality. As it is, Businessmen & Ghosts is a curiously patchwork affair – for every pulsing barnstormer there is a half-baked ambient piece or stodgy filler-esque contribution.

For the more exciting of its tracks, this is an album definitely worth hearing – but be prepared to feel inclined to skip at least several of the songs here.
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Links
Working For A Nuclear Free City [myspace] [official site]