Hypothetical mixtape: July 2012

There are months where you just can't find what you're looking for. Or maybe you were just in a cranky mood when playing back the stuff you were able to find. Or maybe, even, you just had the winter blues. We are talking here about what I was able to find, on my regular internet trawls, in July of last year. Which is not to say that everything that follows is a stinky dud; just that the culling process wasn't as agonising as it often is. First world problems. On with the show.

"The Shadow Of Your Smile", by Jack McDuff. The stereo separation on this is so extreme that your brain will tell you the Hammond is coming from one corner of the room and the guitar from the opposite corner, some way from where your speakers are actually parked. Hammond jazz as a genre, done well, I find irresistible. This is done well.

"128 Harps (Anthony Naples Remix)", by Four Tet. I have a mental list of people whose work I will jump on when it comes out, reviews be damned. It isn't a huge list, but nor is it made up exclusively of old fogeys. Kieren Hebden is on that list. Here is a track from his last album, "Pink", something of a tentative, explorative step towards the dancefloor (at least that's one way of reading it), remixed. We went through that last time.

"Comenius Garden", by The Field. Free music! On the internet! (Last year!) Man, I love this place.

"House of Jealous Lovers", by The Rapture. It's interesting to listen to this after the wave has subsided. This really, in many senses, was where DFA records came in. The opening bass line is straight off "Metal Box", the guitars are pure No Wave distortion. Cowbells and disco cymbals are obviously of importance. The bass changes up to New Wave propulsion (am I thinking Liquid Liquid here? I'm not quite sure) and the guitars that come in are within a lawsuit's distance of Gang of Four's "Entertainment".

"Is Your Love Big Enough?", by Lianne La Havas. Okay, so this is more or less standard 21st century soul singing (you can hear elements of both Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, should you choose to do so) but the song itself is way catchy, and the guitar carries with it the faintest scent of African sands. Do African sands have a scent? What does that even mean?

"Fineshrine", by Purity Ring. This rather sounds like R'n'B with its insides pulled out. I can't say I entirely understand its musical language, but I like it. Maybe you will, too. (I have no idea what is going on in this video. I will probably have bad dreams now.)

"Only In My Dreams", by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. I had an idea that Ariel Pink was some kind of postmodern pop-music faker, or, uh, "artiste". I don't know where I got that from. If I have ever heard a more perfect pop song that this IN MY ENTIRE LIFE I don't know what it would be. As that ad says, it's got everything you could possibly want. And a little bit more.

"Oh! Tengo Suerte", by Masayoshi Takanaka. Spellbinding. Kind of as if Manuel Gottsching got stranded on a Pacific Island with only his guitars and a box of effects pedals, and something to crack open the coconuts. Bonus: album cover of the month.

"Robots In Heat", by Lem. There is, or at least there used to be, a blog of that name that posted rare and/or unusual tracks at a rate of one per day: perfect source material for someone like me. I take this opportunity to thank them. This is early '80s angsty-and-angular, herky-jerky electronic pop (you know the one) of the highest order. Oh. It's actually from 1977. It all gets a bit hazy from this distance (and at this age!) but that seems surprisingly early to me. Well done them. Brief pause: this actually reminds me, a little bit, of Tiga. Weird.

"Choreography", by Modern Eon. Similarly, this 1979 business sounds like it could have come from a couple of years later. (Although on the other hand it would have fit in quite well with "A Forest"; and also with "Vienna" and "Fade To Grey" (both 1981 -- I get so confused!).) Check it; it's a lovely song.

"Space", by Magic Wands. This on the other hand, although it is a 2012 production, might as well be a lost chart hit from 1981. Is it just "A Forest" with different vocals? Would it even matter if it was? Listen to it and try to stop your arms from pinwheeling.

"Brolene", by Welcome Stranger". Being a re-edit of, of all things, "Jolene", by Olivia Newton-John. When your old dad sits you down and says, "What's a re-edit, son?", you say, "Well, dad, that's when some tech-head with musical instincts pulls apart an existing recording and puts it back together leaving intact just the punctum (not a word your old dad would have used) and none of the padding. It either works or it doesn't, depending on the coincidence of your own taste and the taste of the dude doing the re-editing". And he will probably just nod his head and smile. Or you could just play him this, at which he will say something like, "I remember this song, but I don't remember it being anywhere near this good; or, really, any good at all". Which, in a nutshell, is the mark of a successful re-edit.

"Dancer", by KZA. Another re-edit. Same principle; different source material. Solid result.

"Inaccessible Mystery", by Jack White. Proof, if proof were needed, that Jack White's B-sides are better than your A-sides.

"Smoke Rings", by David Wiffen. Seems like we come to this point near the end of every damn playlist: a lost country-tinged gem that either sounds like it came from LA in the early seventies or, in fact, did. This one came from Canada in 1973. Which is close enough. Will have you crying in your maple syrup.

"Crystals", by Thom Janusz. Funky electric-piano-based "jazz" number from 1975. From an album called "Ronn Forella ... Moves". Who is Ronn Forella, and why does he "move", will have to be left for another day.  

Japanese commercials of the day

First we watched this one:



And then we watched this one:



At which point we were in danger of culture-shock overload. So we stopped.

(Links courtesy of our in-house student of Japanese. I have a sneaking suspicion this is what they "study" at school.)

Song of the day

"Reach for the Dead", by Boards of Canada.

When they are good, they are very, very, very good.

And they have always been, and continue to be, good.

Daft Punk is playing at my house

Sasha Frere-Jones writes at length about "Random Access Memories", while veering into various sub-topics of a broader cultural nature, on the New Yorker blogs. He casts some doubts on the negative portrayal of the effect of album leakage on record sales. He echoes what I wrote on these very pages about "Get Lucky" not so long ago. (Him: you can play it eight billion times without tiring of it. Me: even when you have heard it so many times that you never want to hear it again, you want to hear it again. Personally, I think I like mine better; but then I would say that. I wrote it.)

He also owns up to writing his New Yorker column on the album after having listened to it one time. I'm not sure how I feel about that. One expects New Yorker criticism to be actual reasoned criticism, not first impressions. (Is the magazine so caught up in the endless, blog-driven new-release rollercoaster? I wouldn't have thought so, and I certainly hope not.) Nevertheless, it is also surprising how well he dealt with it after such brief exposure, and how closely his conclusions, doubts, and confusions, mirror my own.

Also worth noting is how well the old dear (the New Yorker, that is) has, after a shaky start, come to grips with the new world of the Internet and how it might be used to enhance, rather than cannibalise, the paper-and-ink magazine. Apparently this is being reflected in overall subscription numbers (especially international; makes me proud), which is pleasing to those of us with a recurring wake-in-fright nightmare that any issue could be the last. Sasha's blog post, which largely explains, builds upon and to some extent questions what is cast in stone in the magazine itself, is a good example.

Well, kids, I think it's time to listen to "Get Lucky" for the eight-billion-and-first time. (Contains some of the smoothest moves you will ever see.)

Song of the day

"Masters of War", by Mark Arm.

Monday marked the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan's second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan", the album on which Bob found his own voice and, essentially, became "Bob Dylan", for better or, as Bob himself might have argued afterwards, for worse. (The entry for this album is one of the more informative Wikipedia pages I have stumbled upon.)

Listening to its fifty minutes through, it seems much easier, even now, to attach it to what came after rather than what came before, even though in form, at least, it drew heavily on the music of its own past. It, "With The Beatles", and the first couple of singles by the Rolling Stones tell you that 1963 was a pivotal year for popular music; a year when the past was left behind and the future opened up, with infinite possibilities and infinite hope. (That future, at a generalised and simplistic level and with plenty of hindsight, proceeded to play itself out magnificently over the rest of that decade, until things took a dark turn around 1969.)

All of which is to say, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" is an album that stands up well fifty years later. This may be in some part because it only really contains a couple of Dylan's best-known songs, notably "Blowin' In The Wind", and therefore is not entirely caught in a time capsule. It does, though, also include perhaps my favourite song of his, "Masters of War". I can't really articulate what it is that I like about it; I think it is the structure of the song as much as, if not more than, the words themselves. Nick Cave may have learned something about the art of songwriting from this song. The chord sequence at the end of each stanza is a key to what propels the song, even if you have to listen closely to hear it.

That chord sequence is accentuated by Mark Arm in his brutal rendering of the song, which appeared as the a-side of a 1990 Sub Pop single cleverly titled "The Freewheelin' Mark Arm" (the single's cover is a nice take on the original, too; it can be seen at the start of the YouTube clip). He turns the song, as it begs to be, into a Velvet Underground rave-up. It is compelling in the way that rapidly approaching headlights are compelling to a bunny rabbit.

As for Mark Arm's voice, well, perhaps the best we can say is that he doesn't upstage Bob Dylan on that score.

Hypothetical Mixtape, June 2012 (yes, that's "2012")

At some point in the very near future I am going to be 12 months behind in my listening. That will be embarrassing. At that point I am going to give up. Or start again. Or something. Until then, as YMO once intoned, "Here we go again."

"Hung Up On My Baby", by Isaac Hayes. I could happily spend the rest of my life listening to a loop of the guitar line with which this song starts. It can't get better than this, one thinks to oneself. But it can. And it does. First, a gorgeous, watery wah-wah guitar kicks in, followed, shortly thereafter, by a third, deeper electric guitar. The groove settles in and breathes for a minute and a half. Then the horns come in. Then more horns come in. Then the fucking strings start up. You might know him only as the chef from "South Park", but Isaac Hayes was much, much more than that. On this track he doesn't even feel the need to sing. Actually, you know what? Listen to it for yourself. (You can make yourself woozy by staring at the record spinning for six and a half minutes if you like; or you can shut your eyes.)

"Brazil Express", by Liza. From the sublime to the faintly ridiculous, maybe, but I have always had a thing for records from the sixties/seventies featuring a swingin' Latin beat and a Hammond organ. Especially when they hail from Denmark! And when they round the song out with some blistering electric guitar.

"La Do Da Da", by The Blue Things. Kansas mid-sixties garage rockers. Has a slight minor-key lilt that is very affecting. It puts me in mind of the song "Matelot", by The Renegades, as featured in Aki Kaurismaki's film "Le Havre". Which, as you know, is high praise.

"Respect", by Kukumbas. The gap from Kansas garages to the garages of Lagos, Nigeria seems to have been a remarkably small one, when you imagine how hard it must have been in those days for news to travel from one to the other. Garage rock really is the universal language.

"It's A Dream", by Little Ed & The Soundmasters. I think this song contains the most subtly malevolent harmonica in all recorded music. The drumming is really something, too: not the least because the drummer was, according to the publicity surrounding this Numero Group reissue, eight years old.

"Almost Cut My Hair", by Ori Naftaly. Israeli cover of the David Crosby the-day-I-nearly-joined-The-Man reverie. Everything about this song is perfect. Hammond! David Gilmour circa "Dark Side Of The Moon" guitar histrionics! Harmonica! Bagels!

"Good Old Germany", by Einzelganger. Surprise! It's Giorgio Moroder, this time coming to you from the middle 1970s and constructing a highly listenable piece of music that will fit right in next time you mix together some Cluster / Harmonia / Eno-Roedelius-Moebius / Neu tracks for your friends.

"Oh Yeah", by Yello. As heard in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". Did I mention I got a "Save Ferris" t-shirt for my birthday this year? "Oh yeah."

"Hong Kong Garden", by Siouxsie and the Banshees. My working knowledge of Siouxsie and the Banshees is far below what it should be. In fact, it almost starts and ends with this. I must try harder. This song is in my all-time top 50, regardless. Post-punk-era guitar never sounded better.

"Hidden", by Erika Spring. AKA Erika from Au Revoire Simone. They have been ominously quiet for the past couple of years so this was a nice surprise. You might say it sounds like the product of someone who has been listening to Beach House; but that should not be perceived as a problem. And it's a song that goes places Beach House haven't gone.

"Hidden (Jensen Sportag remix)", by Erika Spring. So, when your old dad pulls you up and asks "Son, what is a remix?", you could do worse than play the preceding track followed immediately by this one. Or you could take a longer route. Words change. A bootleg was once an unauthorised recording, generally outtakes or concerts, pressed onto vinyl and hunted down by obsessive fans. "Time's Up", by The Buzzcocks, perhaps, or the early recordings of Warsaw, or live Richard Thompson or Kraftwerk. At some point a bootleg became another kind of unauthorised release, this time featuring bits of a legitimate recording squashed in together with bits of another legitimate recording, hopefully creating a unique third thing, also known as the mash-up. You know about those. A remix, back in the 1980s, was a seven-inch single extended out to 12-inch length by way of, usually, adding length to the start, middle or end of the song, and beefing up the doof doof and the cymbals for added dancefloor pleasure. Nowadays a "remix" usually involves, as here, the original recording being broken apart and/or stripped down, by another artist (the "remixer"), who adds additional parts, of their own creation, to construct a (sometimes radically) different version of the song. No, it's not a cover version, dad. That's a different thing again. No more questions.

"Why? (extended version)", by Carly Simon. It might be more accurate to label this song "Chic, with Carly Simon singing". You need this in your life, even if, like me, the words "Carly Simon" make you break out in hives. Doctor Nile Rogers and crew provide a sure antidote. (See also a certain Daft Punk song from 2013.)

"There But For The Grace Of God Go I", by Machine. Ladies and gentlemen, Mister August Darnell!

"Girls Can't Do What The Guys Do", by Betty Wright. In which Betty Wright imparts some sound advice: girls, you can't do what the guys do and still be a lady. Ugh. Guys.

"The Ones You Love", by Jeremy Benson. Sometimes the best songs are the ones where it's just a guy with a resonant voice and an acoustic guitar, singing about how you would do well to look after yourself better than he has, and where a multitracked female voice sneaks in from somewhere that sounds a lot like Heaven to harmonise on the chorus. This is that song.

"Future Games", by Fleetwood Mac. You might say there were three Fleetwood Macs. The ones you know are the Peter Green-era British blues-rock upstarts ("Albatross", "Black Magic Woman"), which ended with Green's departure at the end of the sixties, and the LA coke-soaked mega-megastars ("Rumours"), which began with the recruitment of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks around 1975. But there are also a bunch of Fleetwood Mac albums that you would only vaguely recognise, released in the first half of the 1970s, where they were neither one nor the other. That era coincides with Bob Welch's stint as guitarist. He died last year. This song, all eight minutes of it, is the title track of the first Welch-era album. He also wrote it. He plays a lot of guitar on it. You might as well say it's his song. (Although a lineup that included Mick Fleetwood and John and Christine McVie is hardly to be sneezed at.) I would say they were at this point, or at least in this song, trading in the blues influence for something that nods, ever so gently, in the direction of what Joe Boyd was bringing in to the British music scene at the start of the seventies. Also, with two electric guitarists working off each other over the length of the song (the other being Danny Kirwan), does it perhaps suggest a gentler West Coast progenitor of Television? (Probably not.)

"Expanded Dimension", by Lunar Miasma. There is a website called Dream Chimney, one corner of which, "Track of the Day", is devoted to drawing attention to individual songs. (As the name suggests.) Possibly the best part about this is the "categories" that are used. My favourite is "New age without shame". This lengthy synth instrumental, which floats on white puffy clouds made of something or other, squarely fits that description. New Age music was widely, and often for good reason, pilloried in the 1980s, but like anything that contains traces of something more substantial (in the case of New Age, that would boil down largely to Eno's landmark "ambient" releases), it was just waiting for the right time to get picked up by Brooklyn hipsters and reinvented. That time, people, is now. Enjoy the New Age Revival while it lasts, then pretend it never happened.

Song of the day

"Some Dandruff On Your Shoulder", by Jens Lekman.

Jens Lekman's most recent album, "I Know What Love Isn't", has slowly crept up on me. I wasn't sure about it at first. It contains a shift in the frame of reference of Jens' songs, in the sense that he is no longer singing about using his one telephone call from the police station to call up a radio station to dedicate a song to a girl. You might drag the word "maturity" into the picture, perhaps, but he is still ultimately singing songs about love, and he still has a wonderful power of observation. The latter is enhanced, for this listener, by the fact that much of the album is drawn from Jens' experiences living in Melbourne, the city from which we drove away, we thought temporarily, 14 years ago. I suppose that makes us "expats", although The Age remains the only newspaper we still buy on a regular basis.

Jens was there through the bushfires. We weren't, and I felt awful for finding it difficult to engage with the terrible events of that day, particularly given that I had lived through bushfire seasons on the farm in the past, and even though we had experienced our own in Canberra only a few years earlier. But it only took the first sixty seconds of "The World Moves On" to reduce me to tears. And it isn't even "about" the bushfires.

But that's a song for another day.

"Some Dandruff On Your Shoulder" is what we are here for now. It is a typical, deceptively easy-listening Jens Lekman song, right from the opening reference, presumably intentional, to The Carpenters. I'm sure that if you are a girl it will make you instantly fall in love with him. If you already are in love with him, I'm sure it will make you fall in love with him all over again. But there's plenty in it for the boys as well. You might call what he does charity-shop soul music: Jens Lekman takes other people's discards and works them into songs that are entirely his own. I don't know how he does it, but I will always be grateful that he does.

Maybe it is for softies only. But I don't really think that's true.

Song of the day AND OF THE YEAR

"Get Lucky", by Daft Punk.

This song is the most self-evident Song of the Year since "Crazy" (and, before that, "Brimful of Asha"). Even when you have heard it so many times that you never want to year it again, you want to hear it again. How did they do that?

Mark my words: in decades to come, you will see balding, slightly paunchy middle-aged MBA upper-middle-manager types dancing (badly) to this song on Friday nights at the Royal South Yarra Tennis Club and other establishments of the Establishment, and you will not even feel any resentment (perhaps the slightest amount of pity) towards them for doing so. If the Berlin Wall were still standing, this would be the song to bring it down [with apologies to Ed Kuepper, who claimed that feat for "Everything I've Got Belongs To You"].

2013 is not 1962: thank goodness

If a picture tells a thousand words, what happens when you add a caption to it?

Ad found in the New Yorker, some time in 1962.

Hypothetical mixtape: May 2012

Hot, or at least lukewarm, on the heels of the last one, here is our hypothetical mixtape, inna May 2012 stylee.

"I Only Have Eyes For You", by Oneohtrix Point Never. Last month it was Beck's turn. This month it's the guy with the partly unpronounceable moniker. He so totally deconstructs the song that it almost stays deconstructed. And yet tiny filaments of the original flicker ever so fleetingly that it ends up not disappearing up its own edifice. Although the risk was certainly there.

"I Call On One's Muse", by Rob Jo Star Band. Nice try with the English usage there, Rob, but I don't think you've quite nailed it. One calls on one's muse, perhaps. Or I call on my muse. But the two don't tend to play well if mixed together. Unless, that is, you meant "One" in the "Prisoner" sense. Yes, that could work. Cool song, by the way. I particularly like the seemingly random synthesiser farts that unexpectedly appear at various points. "What does this button do?"

"My Ancestors", by Chris Zebby Tembo & Ngozi Family. Some fine African psychedelic music has been unearthed over the last few years. Is the well running dry? It would appear not.

"Right Where You Ought To Be", by Mr Elevator & The Brain Hotel. Quite. Mr Elevator & The Brain Hotel exist in the present, but sound like they have been brought up on a diet of nothing but "Nuggets". As a scientific experiment it proves the soundness and immutability of the theory that if you put four boys in a room with two guitars, a bass, drums, and a microphone, they will sound like sixties garage rock no matter what time period they happen to be living in. As a song, well, it is nothing you haven't heard before but just fine nevertheless.

"Tell Me What's On Your Mind", by The Allah-Las. As for the last song, only -- if this is even possible -- more so.

"Tattoo On Her Shoulder", by Capital Grey. Capital Grey take it out of the garage and into, let's say, Abbey Road. "Nuggets" after the drugs have kicked in, perhaps. This and Mr Elevator & The Brain Hotel were introduced to us by the ever reliable "Clifton's Corner" segment over at Aquarium Drunkard. Shout out!

"Up The Hill And Down The Slope", by The Loft. From '66 to '86, perhaps; C86 to be precise. And the distance is not as far as you might think. If this song had a fault it would probably be that it goes for about a minute too long. But that might only be because all other songs of the era cut out after two minutes, which is hardly The Loft's fault.

"Supermarket", by Supermarket. Perhaps the least Googleable song EVAH. Basically Lawrence, from Felt, with a vocoder and some keyboards. How you respond to the song will depend on how you responded to that last sentence.

"Here To Stay", by New Order. Ah, New Order. Always the same dodgy lead vocals. Always the same naff lyrics. In short, always the same. And yet always frakkin' brilliant. No, I don't get it, either.

"This Is Not The End (Gui Boratto 2012 Mix)", by Gui Boratto. From the "pop" corner of Kompakt's repertoire (and a happy 20th birthday to you, too), and clearly indebted to N*w Ord*r. In fact, you can almost sing along to "Here To Stay" while this is playing. So do you "need" both? Only you know the answer to that.

"Exercise 5 (September)", by CFCF. One of David Sylvian's finest moments, reworked, sublimated, recombined, reimagined, tweaked, reinvented, deconstructed. Some or all of the above. Or none. I should hate this, precisely because it's not "September", by David Sylvian, but strangely I don't. I'm not sure exactly what I should do with it, mind you, but that's another question.

"Belle Tristesse", by Miharu Koshi. Evidently, this little sweetie is from a Christmas compilation circa 1983 and featuring various members of Yellow Magic Orchestra. 1983 was at the height of my love affair with YMO so I can only explain my ignorance of its existence by pointing out that the Internet only came along later. That's my excuse, anyway. Astute readers will note the tenuous link between this and the previous song, being Sylvian's sometime involvement with Ryuichi Sakamoto (including on the "Secrets of the Beehive" album, from which "September" comes). Yes, we are not averse to clutching at straws here.

"Maybe Tonight (Morgan Geist Vocal Edit)", by Lovelock. The opening combination of acoustic and electric piano is the real winner here. Morgan Geist's vocals are the icing. Once again, ten minutes proves to be barely enough. Lovelock, in case you didn't know, is one of many handles of Mr Steve Moore, who has proved himself capable of doing a large number of things, not all of them sounding remotely like this but all of them worth a listen (or ten).

"Sweetness In Her Spark", by Lightships. What we have here, in essence, is a Classic Pop Song. It will remind you of the gentler corners of the Flying Nun roster, it will remind you of The Clientele, it will remind you of some band from Sweden whose name you can never recall. One day other songs will remind you of this. The wheel turns, and it will turn again.

"Equal Mind", by Beach House. Proof that a Beach House b-side is better than most bands' a-sides.

"Happy Pills", by Norah Jones. I hipped to Ms Jones through the agency of Danger Mouse, and in particular his paean to Italian soundtrack music of the sixties, "Rome", wherein she goes mano a mano (or should that be mano a birdo?) with Jack White and comes out with her dignity more than intact. Here, she is working with Danger Mouse again. They seem to be a good combination. (Note to self: maybe I need to spend more time with that last Belle & Sebastian album.)

"Blind Alley", by The Emotions. Sometimes it's better just to let the song speak for itself:

"Sister Brother", by FJ McMahon. From an album with the curious title of "Spirit of the Golden Juice". This song, together with many others like it, operates as a signal from another era, reflected out into deep space in the early 1970s and bounced back to earth only now, as the seemingly endless quantity of "lost" private-press albums, made for pleasure rather than profit and produced in tiny quantities, and bearing names you have never heard of, are discovered afresh and reissued for an inquisitive, and unexpected, new audience. Or at least an audience that might have sung its praises first time around if they had been given the chance. Well, Adrienne likes it, anyway.

2013 is not 1946; or vice versa

Cover version of the day

"My Generation", by Atom(TM).

In which Uwe Schmidt tackles The Who head-on, demonstrating that he is either very brave or very foolish.

The danger with this kind of thing is that it can seem like a brilliant idea at first but, after a minute or so, the listener says, well, I get the idea but I'm bored now, and then goes straight back to the original, which is, in this case, let's face it, unimpeachable.

And yet.

For the final minute, Schmidt gives us a Keith Moon-style freakout which, if Keith Moon were a tangled pile of electronic circuitry, you imagine that he would sound exactly like this.

Song of the day

"Buddy", by Snapper.

And speaking, as we were, of Peter Gutteridge, I learn from Pitchfork that the self-titled four-song twelve-inch from his long-running Snapper project, originally released on Flying Nun in 1988, is being reissued for Record Store Day. If you only buy one piece of vinyl this year, it should probably be this one. I went to pull my own dog-eared copy off the shelf this morning, only to find that it was gone. Insert sad face here. As fond as I am of Gutteridge's solo XPressway cassette, "Pure", this might be the one essential Peter Gutteridge release. These four songs pretty much express the entire range of his talents; he has, over the years (albeit hindered by ongoing heroin, uh, "issues"), refined and developed them, but hasn't really, to my ears, taken them anywhere that is discernibly "better" than the songs on "Snapper".

This is not meant as a criticism; it is meant as, You need this record in your life. The surprising thing, listening to these four tracks in 2013, is how far their influence has spread in the interim: from Stereolab to Wooden Shjips. The other surprising thing, if you haven't listened to it for 20 years, is just how bloody good this record is.

"Buddy".



(By the way, if anybody out there can set me up with a zeros-and-ones copy of "Gentle Hour", a Snapper B-side that has been covered by both The Clean (perhaps not surprising, as it includes David Kilgour on guitar) and Yo La Tengo, and which also appeared on the "Where In The World Is Wendy Broccoli?" compilation, I would be very grateful. Consider it as payment for how much I have enriched your life, heh heh, over the years. Email at right.)

Song of the day

"Disco Pope", by The Prats.

Everything about this song -- the running time, the format (four-song seven-inch "EP" in a black-and-white paper sleeve), the searing but also endearing amateurishness of the performance, the herky-jerk rhythm, the what I call (possibly inaccurately) "Mi-Sex" lettering, the name of the band, the catalogue number (RT042) -- is so redolent of that brief moment in time when everyone else noticed that the doorway that punk had crashed through was still open and that there was room for all of them squeeze inside and make music, glorious music, that you can almost smell it. (In fact, if you had an original vinyl copy you most probably could actually smell it.)

Oh, and with the papal appointment of a South American, there is no better moment than right now for a song called "Disco Pope".

Stand Down Margaret

Between the years 1979 and 1982 I absorbed every word of every issue of the NME. In those days the NME was not just about music. It introduced me to the films I needed to know about (but at that point in my life would have no hope of ever seeing), the writers who would mean the most to me for a very long time (Amis, McEwan). One other thing I absorbed from its pages was a kind of long-distance hatred of Margaret Thatcher. "Thatcher" was more of a name and a concept to me than a flesh and blood human being (although she did appear with some regularity on the ABC News), but I was able to grasp what she stood for and I had some sympathy for the victims of her "reforms", at least as they were conveyed in the pages of Britain's premier music weekly. (I also came to understand, somehow, through those same printed pages that it was best pronounced "Fatcha".) In fact, I think it is probably fair to say that my political belief structure was framed more by my vicarious involvement in the anti-Thatcher campaign waged by the NME than by anything that was happening in my own country. There is probably something fundamentally wrong with that, now that I think of it. But what can you do?

Much has been written over the last few days of Thatcher's impact on the UK music scene of the time. There's not much more to say, really. If you followed it at the time, you already know. If you didn't, it's not really going to mean that much to you in this day and age. I'm not, and never have been, a fan of overly political songs and/or "statements", but I also don't think Thatcher's influence was limited to knee-jerk reactions or musical middle-finger gestures. Put it this way: I don't think the fact that an enormous (new) wave of exciting, original music came out of Britain during the Thatcher years, particularly the early years, was mere coincidence.

But that's a university thesis for someone else to write. For now, here are a couple of songs that took a slightly different tack: neither is overtly "political", but in turning her voice, and her words, into part of the fabric of the song they found a way to let the Iron Lady speak for herself, and for all time. (And it don't 'alf set yer teeth on edge, innit?)

"No Alternative (But To Fight)", by Dub Syndicate featuring Doctor Pablo:



"Maggie's Last Party", by V.I.M.:



I particularly like this last one, as it has a timeless absurdist streak to it that would have appealed to, for example, the Bonzo Dog Band back in the pre-punk era, or even the Dada collagists (like I would know). It also reminds me of this fine piece of, um, "art" that fell out of the pages of RAW Magazine, which utilises, in a not sympathetic but also not polemical way, the spoken words of her old friend Ron:

Song of the day

"Turn of the Century", by Beat Rhythm Fashion.

Back when I first became obsessed with the music of Dunedin, both through regular (but infrequent) visits to Exposure Records in Cotham Road, Kew, and irregular (but frequent) deliveries of XPressway tapes into the letter box courtesy of Bruce Russell, I adopted (at least subconsciously) the view that the mere fact, let alone the quality, of the Dunedin scene was so exceptional and unlikely that it had to be singular. Hence, it seemed to me that if something out of New Zealand wasn't from Dunedin and/or on Flying Nun, it probably wasn't worth my time.

Beat Rhythm Fashion were from Wellington. They weren't on Flying Nun. They remained undiscovered (by me) until a few weeks ago, when this emotional rollercoaster of a song appeared on a FACT mix by Matthew Mondanile (whom I wrote about recently in connection with Dunedin rock royalty). I suppose you could say that it inhabits a space where a nascent New Order sit down and play nicely with early Cure, but that disregards the ineffable power of the chorus, which acts as the parting of the clouds to reveal a sunny, hope-filled new day. And couldn't we all use one of those.

(Guest mixes, it seems to me, are the new radio. They are one of the few places now where I can, if only occasionally, hear something that stops me in my tracks and demands that I track it down. (And like radio, it can also be less than easy to work out what it was that I had been listening to. Thanks, Denis, for finding what I needed.))

Smackdown of the day

"What Goes On": The Velvet Underground vs The Feelies.

Which version is better?

You be the judge*.



or



* The correct answer, of course, is: they both are.

Although what you really want is for the closing rave-up in the Velvets version to go on, like, forever. Which it more or less does, here:

Hypothetical mixtape: April 2012

I listen to stuff. I think about it. Briefly. I type some words. April 2012 wasn't a year ago. Yet.

"Are You Gonna Waste My Time?", by Zeus. If you believed this song was the product of 2012, well, you would believe anything. And yet it's true! A totally unexpected breath of fresh air that squarely hits that unlikely mid-point between Matthew Sweet and Queen. Not to mention a band name that suggests late 1960s Greek prog rock.

"Compare and Contrast", by Matt LeMay. And speaking of Matthew Sweet, there must be something in the ether, because if you had snuck this power-pop gem onto Sweet's "Time Capsule" album while nobody was looking, you would probably have gotten away with it. Which, in nobody's language, is a bad thing.

"How Deep Is Your Love", by The Rapture. This one-sided 12" from 2011 is not quite "Happy House", but it's in the ballpark. It makes me feel the way I felt when I first played the second, crucial DFA "Compilation" set: that here are a bunch of hipsters who have been listening to, and distilling into their own sound, something not unlike my own ideal record collection.

"Night And Day (Daphni Mix)", by Hot Chip. I'm not that much of a fan of Hot Chip. They do one type of song really well (viz., "Over and Over") but they also do a lot of other songs. Man of the moment Daphni takes one such and flips it on its ear. It ends with a minute of free-jazz-style skronk of a kind that you wouldn't expect to hear on a Hot Chip record. The preceding six minutes are pretty surprising, and, in fact, exciting, too.

"Rained the Whole Time (Nicolas Jaar Remix)", by Shlohmo. In the absence of anything new from Jaar himself, it's nice to be able to hear him add his distinctive electro/acoustic tinkerings to someone else's music. I haven't heard the original of this, but there isn't much here that doesn't sound like the work of Jaar. What's not to like?

"Soul Vibrations", by Dorothy Ashby. Not a song that can easily be translated into words. Check it.

"Never Let It Go", by Dolly Mixture. There is a particular type of honesty, of not being afraid to expose your own frailties, that makes much of the music recorded in the aftermath of the "punk rock" eruption a joy to listen to even 32 years later. That, and a knack for an irresistible melody. That particular, brief moment, linked in my own mind with smudged copies of the NME as it was before colour printing allowed them to better affix the text to the page, didn't last long. It probably couldn't have. See also The Marine Girls. *Sigh*.

"Angie La La", by Nora Dean. It is on the Treasure Isle label, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to what your or I would immediately call "reggae". It is certainly exotic -- including, but not only, in the Martin Denny sense. Released, evidently, on the back of a U-Roy seven-inch. Insane! (In an odd kind of way it puts me in mind of Broadcast.)

"There's A Reward", by Joe Higgs. Whereas this is reggae through and through. (Although you don't actually find that out until about 15 seconds in. Wait for it. And while you're at it could somebody please construct a song out of a loop or loops from those first 15 seconds? Thanks.)

"Clouds", by Deep Time. And thus we are thrust back into the present day. I don't mean to be unfair here by latching on to the observation that the singer can't help but be compared to Laetitia Sadier. There is much more to the song than a lazy comparison like that. But hey, it's Saturday afternoon.

"Call Me Maybe", by Carly Rae Jepson. The trouble with being behind in your writing by a year is that a song that you, maybe, recognised as something special while it was still in its embryonic phase, is that, well, by the time you finally get around to putting pen to paper it has been all over everywhere and back again. So that even you probably don't entirely want to hear it again. (At least one of your children threatens to kill you if you don't turn it off.) And yet here it is, and you are surprised, and yet also not, to discover that it can still give you goosebumps. What's with that?

"I'll Be Your Man", by Anna Calvi. We also, sometimes, like a nice twang in our guitar. This would be one of those times. It would appear that Anna Calvi did the twanging herself. Impressive. There is a certain earnestness here, or seriousness of intent, perhaps, that makes me think, "Nineties". There may well be an essay to be written about the lyrics, too. But since when have I taken any notice of lyrics?

"Girl You Need A Change Of Mind", by Eddie Kendricks. It's not only the weirdness quotient, or the ubiquity, of a song that makes it impossible to write about. A song as absolutely perfect in every way as this one resists all efforts to wax lyrical. Again: check it. (Consumer advisory: the full 7.5-minute version is even better.)

"Distillation", by H. Tical. Once upon a time, and I think it was mostly in Europe and to a lesser extent the UK, a bunch of musicians would get together in a studio and spend what by today's standards would be unfeasibly extravagant budgets recording short pieces of music in the hope that some of them would be picked up for use in film or television. Small runs of vinyl albums would be released, not for commercial sales purposes but because, well, it wouldn't make much sense to make these recording and have no way of getting the right people to hear them. Then the world forgot all about them, and these recordings, now known as "library music", grew dusty in a corner somewhere, as movies and television shows came to be populated by music specially written by one of a handful of essentially rote composers (obviously not a blanket statement; you're not going to find me dissing Morricone, for example, or Nino Rota, or Bernard Herrmann, or to be specific Jonny Greenwood's score for "There Will Be Blood" -- oh boy, now there's a doozy), or by pop songs chosen by what seem to be called "music consultants". (That's a gig I wouldn't mind.) Today, as with everything else, people collect these records and share them via the internet. They can be fun to listen to, and the record covers tend to be pretty groovy in a sixties design kind of way, and without their influence Stereolab and Broadcast, to name just a few, would sound (and look) quite different from the way either of them turned out. This is one of those tracks. It has some spirited electric guitar.

"I Only Have Eyes For You", by Beck. Evidently this was generated for an artist's installation project. If, like me, you have been lamenting the recent paucity of recorded Beck, this will remind you of what you have been missing. You might say it is doo-wop filtered through the fevered mindscape of a David Lynch movie. Or you might not.

"I Am Not Waiting Anymore", by Field Report. It may put you in mind of Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore". (The name might be the only reason for this. On the other hand it might not be.) It also puts me in mind of the underheralded Peter Case, which is kind of a nice surprise.

"Mirrorball", by Nisennenmondai. One is inclined to think that if Can had hailed from Japan in the early 21st century they might have sounded something like this. (Perhaps Manuel Gottsching has wandered in to contribute some guitar.) It also builds in a way that suggests they have been listening to LCD Soundsystem, masters of that particular form. After a minute or so you might find yourself screaming "Make it stop!" Five minutes later you will have lost all track of time. And there are still six more minutes to go. Who would ever have thought three Japanese chicks could make such a racket. What's that? Oh. You're right. "Shonen Knife."

Song of the day

"Planet Phrom", by Peter Gutteridge.

On the subject of Dunedin.

It may turn out that one of the reasons I am so fond of the music of Real Estate is that it contains within its crevices the latent influence of the golden age of music from Dunedin. Matt Mondanile plays guitar for Real Estate. Real Estate are not from Dunedin. They are not even from New Zealand. They are from New Jersey, which is not the same thing at all. Mondanile also has his own band/project, entitled Ducktails. Ducktails have just released a new album, called "The Flower Lane". It includes a song called "Planet Phrom". This may or may not ring bells with you. "Planet Phrom" is a song from Peter Gutteridge's Xpressway cassette, "Pure", from 1989.

Peter Gutteridge is from Dunedin. He may not be a household name anywhere, possibly even Dunedin, but his name crops up in a surprising number of places, if you were obsessed by the "DN scene" in the mid- to late-eighties. (As I was.) He appears on assorted tracks by The Chills (of which, in the early days, he was a member), The Clean (ditto), and The Verlaines, all of which are household names somewhere, if only in my own household. He was a member of short-lived almost-supergroup Snapper. He plays keyboards on The Alpaca Brothers' sublime "Legless" EP. (What's that you say? Never heard of it? Where have you been?)

He co-wrote "Point That Thing Somewhere Else". And there aren't many people on this earth who can say that.

When I first heard Peter Gutteridge the file-card system inside my head positioned him somewhere between Suicide and Spacemen 3. In fact he sounds nothing like either of them but the resonances of both are there, if not so much on "Planet Phrom."

Alan Haig plays drums on this track. There is another Pete Frame-type family tree for Alan Haig, perhaps at least as complex as the one sketched out above for Peter Gutteridge. Which is, in any event, far from complete. (Sandra Bell, anyone?)

Song of the day

"Christopher Columbus", by David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights.

A new David Kilgour song! Free! On the internet! Man, I love this place.

Visit http://archhillrecordings.bandcamp.com/track/christopher-columbus.

It also turns up three minutes into this clip. (So it's not a completely new song.)



The guys really should try to keep their guitar strings under control.