Hypothetical mixtape: November 2013

Back again for another month's worth of web trawling. As is the norm, almost 12 months out of date, but whatever. We're trying.

"Ochansensu-Su", by tricot. If Tortoise suddenly, and inexplicably, morphed into four Japanese (post) rock chicks, this is what they would sound like. Because Tortoise plus Japanese rock-chick vocals would be, like, hell yes.

"Far Away From You", by Sachiko Kanenobu. Also from Japan, this time from 1972, and, more precisely, the "sunshine pop" corner of the 1972 yard. Which possibly explains how it appeared as a reissue on Melbourne's own Chapter Records label, although even so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Produced by Harry Hosono, because what would one of these playlists be without at least one nod to YMO?

"I Like You", by Katy B. This song gets off to a slow start, such that you might not give it the time of day if you were a person of little patience. But stick with it: the chorus is an understated pop wonder. Well, I think so anyway.

"I Could Be Happy", by Altered Images. On the other hand, if you are going to hold someone like Katy B up against the might and majesty of Altered Images, she is going to be found wanting. That's just the way it is. This is the superior-in-every-way seven-inch version. It cuts to the chase.

"Running To The Sea", by Royksopp. Latest word on Royksopp is that they are packing it in. That's too bad: a couple of the songs on their recent collaboration EP with Robyn are right up there. In the meantime, this is one of a number of stray songs that they tossed into the atmosphere a while back. It sits on something of a goth tip, which, I have to say, suits them.

"Melody", by Blonde Redhead. There is a hint of the gothic, as well, in this mesmerising piece of mysterious pop from the always reliable Blonde Redhead, from a few years (and albums) ago. They happen to have a new album out, which was given the Pitchfork seal of harsh disapproval. But we all know, don't we, that a negative P4k review isn't always an accurate reflection of how things really are.

"How Long", by Lipps Inc. You probably know Lipps Inc for "Funky Town", but that is most likely the sum total of your knowledge. But -- surprise, surprise -- you also know this song. It was written by Paul Carrack, and was a hit for a band called Ace back in the mid-seventies. (I had thought, when I was hearing it on the radio back then, that, given the electric piano and the rich harmony vocals, I was listening to 10CC. Or maybe Little River Band.) It was covered, if memory serves, by an Australian group called Scandal, during the Countdown era (this is impossible to Google). Still, it was a surprise to me to learn that Lipps Inc did a version too, although upon hearing it I immediately recognised it as the backing track for an early Kompakt klassik, "Timecode", by Justus Kohncke. (Which, in turn, I learned about through hearing Marit Bergman singingthe Pet Shop Boys' "Rent" over the top of it. Layers. Upon layers. Upon layers.)

"Projektions (Gabe Gurney Factory Floor Remix)", by Girls Names. You could sneak this onto a compilation tape of Cabaret Voltaire songs circa "Just Fascination" and only the most attentive would ever notice the difference. A welcome nod to an underappreciated era of a significant band which also serves to underscore the continuing importance of Factory Floor. 

"Break My Love", by Nicolas Jaar. This is probably included here for the sake of completeness (there can never be enough Nicolas Jaar music in the world; this track snuck onto a compilation album put out by his label, but doesn't seem to be otherwise available). But I do love the way the track opens up after its first minute of hesitant synths. Is it my imagination or is this faster than most of Jaar's music?

"Black Savates", by DJ Steef. Otherwise known as "Planet Caravan", by Black Sabbath, given the re-edit treatment and turned into a lesson in beachside dance music bliss. (Like I would know.) DJ Steef is, apparently, a "mysterious Frenchman". As if there were any other kind. Note the distant echoes of the "Dirty Edit" of Sylvester's "I Dig You".

"Icct Hedral (Philip Glass Orchestration)", by Aphex Twin. "You are pulling my leg", I said. But you weren't. And it is. (It's pretty impressive, too. Maybe not the precise mid-point between "Koyaanisqatsi" and "Selected Ambient Works Volume II", but it sits somewhere along that line.)

"Song Of Bliss", by The Khalsa String Band. Trends in music can operate unfairly: some music that is created at a point in time when that style of music is out of fashion gets lost in the (bum's) rush. It is plausible that the only reason we don't all have this song on the mix tapes we have been making for our significant others over the past 40 years is because it can be easily dismissed as Hippie Music, and the world of 1973 had no place for such things. (If Marc Bolan had continued with Tyrannosaurus Rex beyond 1970, we may never have heard of him, either.) Whereas, detached from the world of 1973, this is quite simply a beautiful song, and there should always be room for one of those.

"You Can Do Magic", by America. We think of them as one hit wonders. (But what a hit.) If this is an example of what lies beneath "Horse With No Name", pass me a shovel: it's time to start digging.

"Lay Low Day", by Don Muro. It might be churlish to note that "More Than A Feeling" was a hit record the year before this song appeared. But you cannot help but recognise the former at both ends of "Lay Low Day". On the other hand, maybe that's what makes this such an appealing song. (And, to be fair, large parts of the rest of the song are from somewhere else entirely.) Credit, too, to Don Muro for, or so it would appear, playing all instruments in what sounds like a professional rock-band performance. Could one person really do all that? And, if so, why have we never heard of him?

"My Kind Of Woman", by Mac DeMarco. It's not from the 1970s, but doesn't at all feel out of place after a bunch of songs from that decade. The melody line is worth a thousand words.

"Clear The Air", by Jacco Gardner. Similarly, this cat is making the music of 20 years before he was born, and I'm darned if I can detect the seams. This is possibly the most gorgeous song of 2013. Or 1967.

"Black Roses", by Escondido. If you put Mazzy Star into a lead-lined box with Calexico and shook the bejeezus out of it, then inserted a small hole at one end, attaching a filter so that only the purest goodness could seep out, this is what you would find in the specimen jar. It's as close to magic as science will allow. (As recommended by known hipster David Lynch in Mojo some time back. Mojo may be a magazine largely populated by hacks and yesterday's rock writers, and it may be statute-bound to include The Rolling Stones, Dylan, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin on the cover at least once every two years, but it is still worth flicking through. You just never know.)

Song of the day

"This Evening So Soon", by Bob Dylan.

Dad died 25 years ago today. I've written about him, and about that day, before. I don't need to go over any of that ground again. But, being an only child, I do have to mark the occasion, because nobody else is going to.

How about we limit it to one memory: a memory that only recently worked its way up to the surface.

Dad and I were at the farm, working. I don't know what we were doing, probably something like digging post holes, repairing fences, or mucking about with water pipes or tanks. It was a still day. The blue sky stretched all the way from one horizon to the other. At some point we both thought we could hear, far off, what sounded like a lawn mower. This made no sense. The only house close enough for the sound of a lawn mower to carry to where we were was our own, and mum wasn't the one who mowed the lawn. We stopped what we were doing and concentrated on where the sound was coming from, until one of us noticed a tiny dot in the sky over to the east. As this tiny dot gradually increased in size, so the sound of the lawnmower gradually increased in volume. Time passed, and it continued to head in our direction, until eventually we could see what it was: a person flying an ultralight, quite literally a lawn mower with wings. We watched, stunned, as it buzzed its way over our heads and off to the west, where, eventually, we lost sight of it, and the sound faded away to nothing. I don't imagine either of us said anything. More likely, we just looked at each other and got on with the job at hand.

It's a good memory, because it involves just the two of us, working together out in the paddocks, which is how I like to remember the time I was able to spend with him.

Today's song, by Bob Dylan, has nothing to do with any of this. But it is about somebody called "Old Bill", and I think of dad whenever I listen to it. Dad, I don't think, would have thought much of Dylan. He was more of a Bing Crosby kind of guy: technically correct crooners who didn't do anything too fancy. (I doubt he would have thought much of Sinatra, either.)

Dylan being Dylan, the song cannot be found on either Soundcloud or YouTube, but you can listen to it on a page of Bob's official web site, if you can find the "play" icon. (Hint: it is not drawing any attention to itself.)


...


The other thing that I have been dwelling on is that I am now only 13 years younger than dad was when he died. I have been in my current job, and living in the same house, for 15 years now. It doesn't feel like a long time.

Song of the day

"Things Behind The Sun", by Dave Harrington Featuring Tamara.

If you only listen to one song today, make sure it's this one. (Yes, it is the Nick Drake song.) It first appeared earlier this year kicking off Darkside's Modcast mix. If you heard it there, it has haunted your dreams ever since. If this is the first time you hear it, it will haunt your future dreams. Let it.



[Editor's note: I'm sorry this clip cuts out early; it kind of spoils the effect. I am guessing this is the version taken from the Modcast, and that it cuts out in order to avoid the segue into the next track. It's available now, in its entirety (ie with an extra 20 seconds or so), on the new Other People compilation record, "Work".]

Now Play Long

Or, Fifty @ 50, Part Two.

(With apologies, vis-a-vis the title of this post, to Marcello Carlin via Fleetwood Mac. Or vice versa.)

"Closer", by Joy Division.

"Marquee Moon", by Television.

"Horses", by Patti Smith.

"Crazy Rhythms", by The Feelies.

"The African Man's Tomato", by The Cannanes.

"Fear of Music", by Talking Heads.

"Remain in Light", by Talking Heads.

"Another Green World", by Brian Eno.

"Before and After Science", by Brian Eno.

"The Correct Use of Soap", by Magazine.

"London Calling", by The Clash.

"The Return of The Durutti Column", by The Durutti Column.

"Colossal Youth", by Young Marble Giants.

"Up on the Sun", by Meat Puppets.

"Entertainment!", by Gang of Four.

"The Transfiguration of Vincent", by M Ward.

"Time (The Revelator)", by Gillian Welch.

"Imperial Bedroom", by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.

"Music for 18 Musicians", by Steve Reich.

"Second Edition", by Public Image Limited.

"Medicine Show", by The Dream Syndicate.

"Liege and Leif", by Fairport Convention.

"The Firstborn is Dead", by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

"Tindersticks", by Tindersticks (second album).

"For Your Pleasure", by Roxy Music.

"The Perfect Prescription", by Spacemen 3.

"World of Echo", by Arthur Russell.

"King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown", by Augustus Pablo.

"Quasimodo's Dream", by The Reels.

"Swordfishtrombones", by Tom Waits.

"Einstein on the Beach", by Philip Glass.

"My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", by David Byrne and Brian Eno.

"Daydream Nation", by Sonic Youth.

"Jamboree", by Beat Happening.

"Brilliant Trees", by David Sylvian.

"Hatful of Hollow", by The Smiths.

"Shoot Out the Lights", by Richard and Linda Thompson.

"Honey Steel's Gold", by Ed Kuepper.

"Moon Safari", by Air.

"Crocodiles", by Echo and the Bunnymen.

"Rattlesnakes", by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.

"Millions Now Living Will Never Die", by Tortoise.

"Low", by David Bowie.

"Hex Enduction Hour", by The Fall.

"Hounds of Love", by Kate Bush.

"A Walk Across the Rooftops", by The Blue Nile.

"Trans-Europe Express", by Kraftwerk.

"The Man-Machine", by Kraftwerk.

"Compilation", by The Clean.

"Before Hollywood", by The Go-Betweens.

Song of the day

"Wivenhoe Bells II", by The Cleaners From Venus.

I never claimed (well, I might have pretended) to know everything about everything. But, given my cloistered youth, spent with one ear glued to 2JJ and one eye glued to the NME, I thought I could reasonably claim to have a solid enough working knowledge of the staunchly independent, I-did-it-my-way corner of the United Kingdom music scene from the end of the seventies (and beyond), nowadays collectively labelled as "DIY".

And then along comes Jon Dale (hey, Jon, can you do the corresponding Melbourne scene next?) with a survey of 131 key exponents of the "DIY" genre, and on a quick count I can give name recognition to roughly one in four of the entities involved, with an even smaller number of boxes ticked for individual songs. (But a hale and hearty "YES!" to ... And The Native Hipsters, Fatal Microbes, and The Prats.) Jon's is at once a heroic achievement, and more than slightly humbling. (Also exciting, at the thought of all those stones yet unturned.) I highly recommend that you spend some quality time with it.

Also, it gives me an excuse to plug, once again, The Cleaners From Venus, down whose rabbit-hole I have been crawling for the last few months, sparked by Captured Tracks' admirable and impressive reissue programme. The Cleaners From Venus, The Brotherhood of Lizards, The Stray Trolleys: it's a rabbit-hole with many branches, but all of them lead back to Martin Newell, creator of a spectacular number of classical English pop songs, many of which could have been propelled to the upper region of the charts under the guiding hand of someone other than Newell, who was content to send his music out into the world by way of cassette tapes housed in hand-coloured covers. Jon's piece serves as a reminder that he wasn't alone, at that time, in operating in this way. Was there an entire generation of musicians fiercely intent on "sticking it to The Man"? Or was this the only way they could get their music heard?

Anyway, "Wivenhoe Bells": Jon opts for the second iteration of this song (Newell clearly knew a good thing when he heard it; some of his best songs were recorded more than once: see also "Marilyn on a Train"). I fell in love with the song via the original recording, from 1980's "Blow Away Your Troubles" cassette. It has taken me a while to come to terms with the (relative) slickness of the 1982 edition, but ultimately the quality of the song itself wins out, whichever version you listen to. And, you know, I'm starting to think that Jon's choice might be right.

Re-Broadcast

You probably know this already, but earlier in the week, to mark what would have been Trish Keenan's 46th birthday (so young ... so young ...), the Broadcast website posted demo versions of two songs from the "Tender Buttons" album.

In truth, they don't veer too far from the versions that were released on the album, but it's always nice to have an excuse (if any were needed) to listen to some Broadcast, and it's a treat, if still somewhat harrowing, to be able to hear that voice again.

Hypothetical mixtape: October 2013

October, 2013. Here are a few of the songs I found on the Internet. Filtered for your listening pleasure.

"Vibration (Parts 1 and 2)", by Joe Brown and the Soul Eldorados. When I was a kid, listening to ABC radio sport on a Saturday afternoon, every half an hour or so they would cut to a horse race, which would inevitably be called by Joe Brown. He was a Melbourne horse racing legend. This is not that Joe Brown. 

"Hey Joe", by Johnny Hallyday. Like The Beatles in England, Johnny Hallyday was so big in France that he didn't have to put his name on his record covers. Just the word "Johnny" and a photograph would suffice to project his records into the stratosphere. On the one hand, this is just another cover version of what must be one of the most covered songs in the history of the world. On the other hand, it's in French, which sets it apart and gives it just a hint of the exotic.

"No Fun", by Doctor Mix. So anyway, I don't profess to know everything there is to know about the UK music scene in the post-punk era, but I am nevertheless surprised when something comes up that I would have expected to have at least heard of, or read about. Especially if it was released as a Rough Trade seven-inch. And especially if it was a cover of a song by The Stooges. So here we go: Doctor Mix. Never heard of them. "No Fun", by Doctor Mix. On Rough Trade. Never heard of it. I wonder what else is out there, lurking in the historical shadows. (Also, the picture sleeve looks like the cover of a Stereolab record 20 years before the fact.)

"Screaming in the Darkness", by Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls. It must be something like 35 years since I last heard this song. The Invisible Girls were the banged-together studio band of producer Martin Hannett, who also provided the musical accompaniment for John Cooper Clarke's northern poetry. This song positively reeks of Manchester circa 1980. The credits disavow the idea that it is Barry Adamson on bass but, come on, nobody else plays the bass like that.

"Sportsman", by Haruomi Hosono. Electronic pop music from Japan, from the dawn of the 1980s. It is, I think, just far enough to the left of cheese to be embraceable by you, me, and everybody else.

"Curtains", by Yukihiro Takahashi. As above, except without so much of the cheese. Yuki was the pure-pop voice of YMO, I think, Hosono the larrikin experimentalist/comedian (YMO's Holger Czukay, perhaps) and Ryuichi Sakamoto the lush emotional heart. Together they were unbeatable, but individually each was strong enough to stand on his own two feet.

"Blowout", by Jah Wobble. Earlier, we mentioned Barry Adamson. Wobble was the other notable bass player of the era (well, we can't really not mention Peter Hook), responsible for the concrete-floor-crushing bottom end of Public Image Ltd. He went on to have a prolific, if largely unheralded, solo career (which continues). This twelve-inch from 1985 picks up where the "Snake Charmer" EP, from a year or so earlier, left off.

"I'm In Love With a German Film Star (Original Radio Edit)", by Sam Taylor-Wood produced by Pet Shop Boys. This is where it gets difficult. The original of this song, by The Passions, is so deeply embedded in the core of my, uh, being, that if the song itself somehow ceased to exist, I suspect that I would, too. So I am reluctant to delve too deeply into the reason for my connection with it, for fear that to do so would only end up destroying the bond. Fortunately, I don't have to: this version, essentially a tastefully Kompaktified take on the song, has all the charm and ineffable mystery of the original, and I can enjoy it guilt-free and without having to undergo therapy. Phew.

"International Smark", by Payfone. Where the hell has this come from? It seems to be, at fleeting moments, bursting straight out of the Propaganda playbook, but with clean lines that bring it up to date sonically, and with a delicate hint of, of all things, "yacht rock" guitar. Well, that's what I'm hearing. Any way you cut it, though, it is irresistible.

"Up and Down (Beep) (Special Disco Version)", by Moxie. AKA (allegedly, anyway) a James Murphy/Pat Mahoney "re-edit" from 2008 of an obscure late-seventies banger that might conveniently (if possibly misguidedly) be labelled italo/space disco. Listen to what it does around the 2.45 mark. And then what it does around the 3.45 mark. And at the 5.30 mark. Then there's what happens at 8.50. In fact, you might as well just sit back and enjoy the whole shebang. Warning: contains cowbells. Surprise!

"Down South", by Museum of Love. And speaking of Pat Mahoney, this is a recent project involving him. On DFA, naturally. If you ask me, it has a bit of an old-school John Foxx feel to it. Which is fine by me.

"Dancing With the Mentally Ill", by Club 8. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that these folk had been listening to the third Raincoats album before making this record. File under "tribal pop". (Note: YouTube clip below has gratuitous four minutes of silence at the end of the song. Enjoy!)

"Garden's Heart", by Natasha Khan and Jon Hopkins. You could take the high road with this one and say that it puts you in mind of Cocteau Twins. Or you could take the low road and say that it puts you in mind of Enya. Me, I'll take the high road, but the evidence might not be all one way.

"Living for Love", by Realities. File under "dream pop". I really don't know what else I can say.

"Gillie Amma, I Love You", by Four Tet. This drifts on a bed of benign synths, in a way that Four Tet's more recent releases haven't done. Pillowy voices float in and out of, and around, the music. It's a bit mysterious, and slightly unsettling (or ominous). It's like you spend most of its length waiting for the point, until eventually you realise that the absence of point is its point. And a point well made.

"Tahoultine", by Mdou Moctar. You heard Peter Frampton sing "I want you / To show me the way". So you tried to show him the way; but you gave him bad directions, and he ended up in the African desert. While there, he lost his "talking box". A wandering Tuareg found it, and decided to make a record. This is that record.

"Time", by Lambert & Nuttycombe. No, I've never heard of them either. But from the darkened corners of Herb Alpert's A&M Records they sprang forth with this small acoustic gem, in the style of, let's say, Phil Ochs' "Changes", which, in an alternative 1970, could have been huge.

Quality Assortment

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Although I have no idea which is which.

"Der Mussolini", by DAF.

After 1990, it was no longer a John Le Carre world. In the last couple of years, though, the world seems to have transformed itself, for better or worse, into a place in which Le Carre seems comfortable to inhabit. (If "comfortable" is the right idea.) We recently travelled to the cinema to watch "A Most Wanted Man", notable for three things: 1. The telling, in necessarily truncated form, of a classic Le Carre story. 2. The final sighting, in a major role, of Philip Seymour Hoffman. As if we needed to be reminded of what we have lost. 3. The unexpected appearance, in a scene shot in a Hamburg bar/nightclub, circa a year or two ago, of this song. Would bars in Hamburg be playing, at volume, a relatively obscure piece of German synth-pop from thirty-odd years previously? (I suppose the sound of cranky, overdriven analog synths has come back of late, through the likes of Factory Floor; but if you are going for old music in a Hamburg setting, wouldn't you have picked some early Beatles? Or maybe it's just a bauble placed there by the film's director, Anton Corbijn, rock photographer par excellence of the era from which this song hails.) Still, I'm not complaining; as you know, it is a song that got its claws into me at an early age.



"Games for Girls", by Say Lou Lou x Lindstrom.

In which Hans-Peter Lindstrom, perhaps best known as the creator of "I Feel Space", the pivotal, if not the best -- and I'm not saying it's not the best -- song of this century so far, tries his hand at a pop song for the masses, in company with the twin daughters of The Church's Steve Kilbey (you couldn't make this up). And it would be hard to say that it's not an instant winner. Just in time for the (southern) summer, too.



"All You Need Is Love", by Echo & The Bunnymen.

Around the time of "Ocean Rain", Echo & The Bunnymen appeared live on the telly to play a number of songs, in a stripped-down, laid-back style, with McCulloch sounding like he hadn't quite gotten warmed up yet. Here they pay homage to Lennon and McCartney. Stick around for the second half of the song, where McCulloch riffs on songs old and new, seemingly singing whatever comes into his head, from Teardrop Explodes to Dylan to James Brown.



"Julie Ocean", by The Undertones.

The thing that was repeated time and again after the death of John Peel, so often that it has been accepted as fact, was that "Teenage Kicks", by The Undertones, was his favourite song. Now, far be it from me to pick a fight with the ghost of the great man, but if you were to ask me, I would say that "Teenage Kicks", great and all as it is, is not the best song ever. It's not even the best Undertones song. That would be "Julie Ocean", seen here in its superior, seven-inch version. It gets me every time.

Genius

Buried amongst all of the variously bad, alarming, terrifying and plain old depressing news stories a couple of days ago was some unexpected and great news: Alison Bechdel has been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship "genius" grant. 

Bechdel writes and draws comic books. She has made two of them. They are both very, very good. In fact, they are shining examples of what the medium is capable of. They are pretty harrowing going in places, and "Are You My Mother?" loses me with its feminist/literary theory at times (here I concede I am as far from her presumed target audience as it is possible to be while still being human). But they are brilliantly executed, highly readable, and I dare say you can find both of them (as I have) at your local library.

It always amazes me when someone not only can both write and draw pictures, but can do both to such a high level that the comic book is their perfect medium of self-expression. It's a rare combination of gifts. 

Well done, you.

Song of the day

"Knock Knock Knock", by Spoon.

Every once in a while, you should go to an actual record store and buy an actual record*.

It's good for the soul, it helps you bond with the music contained within the physical product (as opposed to, y'know, fond memories of which computer you were sitting at when you went through some dodgy, ad-filled download site and waited for Record X to come through the pipe, which it eventually did but not before crashing a couple of times and anyway it turned out to have one corrupted song on it), and it might even help some poor, struggling music retailer stay in business for another week or so.

(Oh the times we live in.)

So anyway, for me it was the new Spoon album, "They Want My Soul". Spoon records take a while to sink in. Which is fine, because one only comes along every three or so years. I expect this one will be no different. It starts off with a couple of readily identifiable but perhaps not exactly jaw-dropping examples of Spoon songs. The third track, "Rainy Taxi", is where you say to yourself, This song is going to reveal itself as a Spoon classic. The fourth track, "Do You", is an instant earworm that will have you pinwheeling around the living room. 

But it is the fifth track, "Knock Knock Knock", that stops you in your tracks, stares into your eyes, unblinking, and says: Yes, I do remind you of your (but nobody else's) favourite Pink Floyd album, "Animals". You got a problem with that?

And guess what? I got no problem with that whatsoever. But I can't say I was expecting it.

(Consumer advisory: contains whistling.)

*When I say record, I mean, for myself, a CD: the trendy thing at the moment is to buy vinyl, but as someone who has shelves of vinyl from the first time around, and who was here at the birth of the Compact Disc Digital Audio (TM), I have no lingering nostalgia for the pops and clicks, the inevitable skips and unintended locked grooves, the fuzzy "s"s, of vinyl; they were an impediment to hearing the music then, and I can only assume that they are still an impediment to hearing the music. Still, if that's what you want ...

Song of the day

"These Shadows (Acoustic Version)", by Wooden Shjips.

This is a very stripped-back take on Wooden Shjips. I must admit, I prefer them in their more usual guise: soporific, stretched-out and sludgy. But this does have one (very) redeeming feature: it makes them sound like The Bats. Didn't see that coming, did you?

Point That Thing Somewhere Else

RIP Peter Gutteridge, lesser heralded mainstay of the Dunedin music scene. 

I've written about Gutteridge before on these pages. Right here, in fact. Oh, look, here too. There's nothing more to say right now.

Your homework is to watch the clips embedded in this Pitchfork report. They will at least give you a sense.

Damn.

Song of the day

"Higgs Boson Blues", by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

The best blues songs start off like this: "Well I woke up this morning."

The best of the best blues songs follow that with: "That was my first mistake."

So here goes.

Well, I woke up this morning. That was my first mistake. I walked out to the living room, whereupon I was unfairly and irrationally attacked by the cat. (To be honest, this is not such an unusual occurrence.) Then I opened the blinds and found myself face to face with a spider the size of a dinner plate. (You think I am exaggerating.) Then I got an eyelash trapped in my eye, and had to spend several uncomfortable minutes sticking my finger in my eye trying to extract it. And then the Internet was down.

But then things got better. Specifically, I went to Canberra's newest cinema, the Palace, to see the new Nick Cave film, "20000 Days on Earth". I'm not even going to attempt to make any critical observations about it. You should see it (obviously) if you have an interest in Nick Cave. Or if you have an interest in the creative process. Or if you have an interest in The Song. Or if you have an interest in Ed Kuepper (who makes an appearance with the Bad Seeds at the end of the film, when they are at the Opera House performing "Jubilee Street"). Does it feed the mythology? Or debunk it? Or lift the veil on it? Possibly some combination of the three; but, like most of the things Cave himself says, I suspect it is inherently untrustworthy. Untrustworthy but fascinating. My favourite part of the film, which contained a few potential favourite parts, was probably Nick Cave and Warren Ellis in Ellis's kitchen, with Ellis cooking up some eels for Cave (who leaves his plate to one side, seemingly untouched) while they talk about Nina Simone's performance at Meltdown.

After the film, I walked into Civic via London Circuit, which is kind of like the St Kilda Road of Canberra. It's a nice part of town, low-rise sixties/seventies office buildings with plenty of open space. Completely dead on a Saturday afternoon, of course, except for the hipster sanctuary that is The Cupping Room, which was doing very lively business. But I had a bus to catch (plus I'm no way a hipster) so I walked on past. A brief stop at JB Hi-Fi revealed a copy of Jim Jarmusch's Neil Young movie, "Year of the Horse", which I have been looking for for ages, at an irresistible price. Another win.

A couple of things I did take away from the Cave film: first, a renewed sense of how precious songs are. In the beginning there is nothing, then there is a spark of an idea, and then, perhaps much later, there is a song. We are inclined to take them for granted. That is wrong. The second thing was a realisation of how far the last Bad Seeds album, "Push The Sky Away", has seeped into my pores. It's a sneaky record, that one: many of its songs are masquerading as unformed ideas, still in the process of being teased out. But with familiarity, the album proves to be a brave (and successful) attempt to loosen up the process, to try out an idea, run with it for a while, and leave it like that. They may be songs (and this is something Cave talks about in the film) that haven't yet resolved into a comfortable form, but it is a sign of the band's confidence that the ideas, half-formed or not, were perceived to be strong enough to be let loose into the wild before they had reached a mature form. This may or may not be borne out by consideration of "Jubilee Street", which, by the time it reached the Opera House, had revealed itself to be a song with such a solid foundation that it was able to withstand the full might and power of the Bad Seeds, a children's choir, and an orchestral string section. Boom.

But, in keeping with the blues theme, here is the last song on the album, itself destined to become a Bad Seeds classic: with some songs, you can just tell.

Hypothetical mixtape: September 2013

If you were a lost soul wandering in the dangerous and murky backwaters of the internet in September last year, these are the songs you would have found. Actually, you would have found considerably more, but I have slowly filtered the list down to these essentials, so that you don't have to.

"Back to Nature", by Fad Gadget. Nothing to do with the very fine song by Magazine of the same name, but nevertheless notable in its own right, being both the first record by Mr Gadget, who went on to have a sterling career putting out electronic records on a Goth-industrial fringe, and also the second record released on Mute Records, also the first by someone other than label honcho Daniel Miller himself. (Although, this seems to be open to debate: the catalog number, MUTE 002, bears it out, but according to Wikipedia -- as of today(ish), anyway -- Silicon Teens' jaunty electropop take on Chuck Berry's "Memphis, Tennessee", another song I remember very fondly, came out first. It's all rather vexing, although, given that Silicon Teens turned out to be Daniel Miller in disguise anyway, ultimately not actually relevant to anything.)

"Tonight, We Fall (John Foxx and the Maths Remix)", by ADULT.. More fatback analog synths, although in this case we probably have to classify them as "retro", even though Foxx himself did sound like this back in 1979. Parts of this come across like a slowed-down version of DAF's "Der Mussolini", yet another fireside favourite. [Don't get too fancy -- Ed.] Elsewhere the synths are so huge you keep waiting for them to blow a fuse.

"All Night", by Icona Pop. This, on the other hand, is thoroughly modern. But a pop song, done right (as this one is), is timeless. I dare you not to jump around the room to this when it is played at high volume. Even if someone else is watching. How embarrassing.

"Jupiter", by Blackfield. Then we get the big, lachrymose strings, and the portentous piano, and it's like we're straight into Eric Carmen's "All By Myself", but this is not that song (mercifully) but another song, and it's not actually, once you get past the first 20 seconds, maudlin at all. (Well, I suppose it is, but within reasonable tolerances.) Mid-seventies pop-rock will never grow stale. What? This was made last year? Shoot me now. At least tell me they are from Canada. No? Damn.

"Mexico", by Firefall. Is it okay to hate The Eagles but to like music that sounds, largely, indistinguishable from The Eagles? Of course it is, nobody ever said I had to be consistent. The lead guitarist here may not be Joe Walsh, but he's no slouch. Bonus points for the mariachi interlude. (Postscript: it doesn't really sound that much like The Eagles, does it?)

"Summertime", by Booker T & The MGs. Oh that Hammond.

"Castles Made of Sand", by Four Tet. And old random stray Four Tet track, coming from his LateNightTales installment. You know the song. It's one of Jimi's. Whether you recognise it or not is an entirely different question.

"Tell Me What Is True Love", by Bert Jansch. Is Bert Jansch. Is good.

"Gnostic Serenade", by 3's a Crowd. Bands with both numerals and apostrophes in their name rarely make it big. (Now there's a challenge ...) That is the only possible reason for this mesmerising song being hitherto unknown. (Unknown to me, at least. Perhaps you knew better.)

"Sand", by Clear Light. You can be forgiven that thinking, after the first few seconds, that you were listening to "London Calling", by The Clash. You realise the error of your ways as the song rapidly morphs into what it actually is, a sixties guitar-driven garage smoulderer.

"Pink Dominos", by The Crescents. This is probably what The Beatles, or at least the kids who then turned to The Beatles, had been listening to just before The Beatles became a thing. You can hear them in it, but you can also be astounded at what they turned it into.

"Cocaine Blues", by Escort. There are other songs called "Cocaine Blues". This is not any of those. Escort have done their homework so well, there are no clues that I can spot that indicate that this wasn't made 35 years before it actually was. I hope they take that as a compliment.

"Hills of Katmandu (Patrick Cowley Mix)", by Tantra. Disco on steroids. And divers other substances, not necessarily all legal. Enter at own risk.

"Rainbow Circles (Beatless Version)", by Kaito. Whereas this is disco, or rather Kompakt-style techno, on, well, I don't know what: helium perhaps? All the bottom-end propulsion has been extracted from the track, leaving a residual pulse and an overall sensation akin to being lighter than air. Nice.

"Flares", by Land of Light. It's not every day you hear a piece of music that transports you back to David Sylvian's solo masterpiece, "Brilliant Trees", or the second disc of "Gone to Earth", but this does that trick in such a way that, even after 11 minutes, you don't really want it to end. Ah, so that is what the "Repeat" button is for.

Song of the day

"Lentil Nightmare", by Neil.

It seems to me that a parody of a particular genre of music, with the passage of time, becomes indistinguishable from the genre of music that is being parodied, as long as the musicians involved know what it is they are having fun with.

Here is the evidence. (In this example, and this may or may not be important, the genre concerned was already a few years past its moment in the sun when this was made. It's easier, perhaps, not to sound dated when the sounds you are making are, themselves, already dated. No, I don't understand what I'm saying either.)

The fun starts around one and a half minutes in. If you don't know The Young Ones then (a) this may make no sense at all and (b) I feel sorry for you. Don't forget, you are here for the music. And, I suppose, the vocal, uh, "stylings". (Bonus: listen out for the voice of Stephen Fry.)

2014 is not 1964

Volkswagen has had its share of negative publicity of late. But at least it no longer runs ads like this. (Actually, old VW ads are frequently surprisingly modern in tone and design, but this one seems to have been a victim of its times.) From the New Yorker, issue of 15 August 1964. You can open it in a new window by clicking on it. From there you can enlarge it, the better to read the offending message.

Song of the day

"The Dolphins", by Fred Neil.

Over the last couple of years we have been quick to recommend to anybody who will listen, and to many who won't, the Irish movie "The Guard". Now its director and lead actor, John Michael McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson respectively, have returned in a new, much darker, but still excellent film, "Calvary". It's a kind of riff on "High Noon", in its own way. You know from the outset that things are going to end up with some kind of a showdown (but on a beach rather than on the main street). The writing is perhaps not quite as crisp as it was in "The Guard", and it sometimes steers a bit close to cliche, but the wide cast of characters and the many stories they have to tell keep you interested. The Big Theme is what is the use of the Catholic church in Ireland in what has become, by and large, a godless society, and particularly in an environment where the church has been painted, and not without reason, as the bad guy. It's a large and weighty theme, and the comedy that is interspersed with the drama can sit a bit more awkwardly than it did in the earlier film. But, you know, it's a powerful picture, set in a bleakly stunning landscape, and Gleeson is extraordinary. Also of note is the appearance of Dylan Moran, cast somewhat against type as the nouveau riche Lord of the Manor. (Only slightly against type: he's still a bastard.)

"The Dolphins" appears early in the film. It's a good omen.

Song of the day

"Twin Oaks Pt 1", by Ryley Walker.

It seems like every few years there is a folk-rock revival. Either that or folk-rock never really goes away. It certainly adapts and mutates (the story, up until more or less the present day, is well told in Rob Young's massive book "Electric Eden"), as it did a brief while back through the insertion of electronic music, as heard to best effect in the work of Tunng. ("Bullets" is a fine, but not the only fine, example.) Young includes the output of the Ghost Box label in the tradition, but the link there, I reckon, is slightly tenuous -- the philosophy might be similar, though I can't quite hear it explicitly in the music.

What you also get is younger musicians coming through who are situating themselves squarely in the tradition, yet don't sound exactly like what has come before: the reason for that being that every generation leaves its distinctive marks and, in doing so, itself becomes part of the tradition. And so, what we find in the new recording by Ryley Walker, "All Kinds of You", are distinct echoes of a singularly modern band, Espers, who added their own (indefinable -- by me, anyway) incremental touches to what could be called the Pentangle school of British folk-rock. (And whose most recent album, "III", which is a few years old now, I still can't draw myself away from, assuming I would even want to.) (By the way, I don't even know for sure if "folk-rock" is the term I should be using here: I can hear purists' teeth being set on edge as I type.)

Whatever it is, though, "All Kinds of You" is a totally successful record on its own terms. Certainly it contains traces, sometimes strong traces, of other music. Espers, yes, for sure, you only have to listen to the first song, "West Wind"; Pentangle and Fairport Convention are there, too, and there is a clear connection to Bert Jansch in Walker's affectless/undemonstrative vocal style. There are also hints of Nick Drake (not least in the album cover photo) and of what I would term, in my uneducated manner, Appalachian music (which, again, I apologise if I am getting this wrong). Dude can play guitar, too.

The surprising reference, for me, at least, comes at the start of "Twin Oaks Pt 1", which sounds so much like the work of Ed Kuepper that you half expect old Uncle Ed to start singing "My horses they ain't hungry, they won't eat your hay" at any moment*. It is an instrumental, though, so he doesn't. He was probably busy elsewhere, anyway: reworking "Eternally Yours" for the seven thousandth time or some such.

You can stream the entire album below (go right ahead); "Twin Oaks Pt 1" is the third track.



*Coincidence upon coincidence: Kuepper's "Pretty Mary" is actually Ed's rewrite / homage to an American folk standard, "The Wagoner's Lad", which, as "The Waggoner's Lad", was also recorded by Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. There you go. (And it's not just me saying this: go here.)

Hypothetical mixtape: August 2013

Movin' right along …

"Bat Bi Hiru Lau", by William S Fischer. You could break this down into a list of its component parts, but that ain't never gonna convey the madness, or the intensity, of what all of those parts add up to. Is it early fusion? Lounge? Library? Psychedelic funk? All of the above? You decide.

"I Know You Got Soul", by Eric B and Rakim. You may appreciate the irony that a song that is built from samples of other songs was itself cannibalised so as to aid in the construction of "Pump Up the Volume". All together now: "You got it!"

"How We Gonna Make the Black Nation Rise?", by Brother D and the Collective Effort. We interrupt this frivolous playlist for a political message. A WELL FUNKY political message. All together now: "Agitate, educate, organise!"

"Three Sisters", by Affinity. You should never walk past any record that has on its front cover the famous Vertigo "swirl". It's as if these records, many of which sank without a trace on release, have been sitting buried in a time capsule for four decades waiting to be dug up and appreciated. If it includes Linda Hoyle on vocals, well, just pretend it's your birthday.

"O Caroline", by Matching Mole. Matching Mole were formed by Robert Wyatt (whose "Stalin Wasn't Stalling" was inexplicably left out of my recent "fifty at fifty" list) upon the demise of his previous band, The Soft Machine. They released two albums. Their reputation would place them squarely within the British progressive rock movement, but that would not tell the full story. There is nothing prog rock about this song. I suppose you might call it prog pop (but I would rather you didn't); Wyatt's opening lines might also align it with PoMo. But you might also relax for a minute, stop your anxious handwringing and enjoy it as the majestic pop song that it is.

"Drip Dry Eyes", by Yukihiro Takahashi. Speaking of pop songs, Yuki Takahashi, of YMO, has always had an ear for melody. It would be difficult to argue that this doesn't sound "of its time" (it being, on one reading, just another song evoking the sound of Roxy Music Mk II), but I don't care about that, cos somewhere deep inside of me it is always 1981.

"Alamein Train", by The Pete Best Beatles. A deeply personal song about Cheryl.

"Bitter Devotion (Ewan Pearson Extended Remix)", by Simone Fedi. The ghost of DFA Records hangs over this record. But fear not, it's a benevolent spirit, in this case, the afterimage of an old friend that's not quite here any more, but not quite entirely vanished, either. Whenever I see the words "Ewan Pearson Extended Remix", I cross my fingers for something as remarkable as his remix of Cortney Tidwell's "Don't Let the Stars Keep Us Tangled Up", and this isn't that, but it does have a similar lightness of touch. The house piano is a neat fit, as it was on The Juan Maclean's "Happy House", and I'm not just making that point in order to bolster an otherwise tenuous DFA reference. Because I would never do that.

"Anytime Soon", by Andy Stott. Free music. On the internet. Seriously. Here. (If you wanted to spend money, you could do worse than pick up his "Luxury Problems" album. It's a keeper.)

"Lida Lou", by Monomono. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that there is anything in particular to distinguish this particular song, except that we do love ourselves some seventies African vibe, which is what this is. (Nigeria, 1973.) And that's more than enough. Oh, plus, there's a wicked Hammond solo. At least I think it's a Hammond. It could be a Lowrey. Or a Farfisa. Who's to know?

"Azamane Tillade", by Bombino. Which brings us squarely to this month's Black Keys connection: African desert blues, as they say, produced by what's-his-name. I like that they've resurrected the old Nonesuch logo. Somebody knows what they are doing.

"Pink Dust", by SQÜRL. (Nice umlauts, yes?) You would think that Jim Jarmusch would be old enough to know better, but something seems to possess the white-maned enigma to indulge in a spot of noisy guitar sludge. You know what to expect if you have seen "Only Lovers Left Alive". And if you haven't seen it, what's keeping you?

"Spiritual", by Tom Verlaine. You can read about this here. Download it, too; the link's still good. Me, I'm lost for words.

It's just like Skype ...

... except it's basically useless unless you happen to live in New York, Chicago or Washington.

I found this ad in the New Yorker circa mid-1964. 

That Bell Telephone had this technology 50 years ago is surprising (to say the least). I guess the world wasn't ready.

Right-click etc for an enlargeable copy.

In ancient times

So, let me see. What, according to the "Goings On About Town" section of the New Yorker cover dated May 2, 1964, could I do in New York on the day I was born (Sunday, May 3, 1964)?

Well, I could go to the Village Vanguard to listen to Chet Baker. (Or I could wait a couple of days to catch the Miles Davis Quintet, on Tuesday, May 5.) Or maybe the "stalwart" Sonny Rollins, together with Roland Kirk's "foursome", at the Half Note. Hey, that's not a bad double bill. And Chico Hamilton is playing somewhere called the Gold Bug (85 W 3rd St).

On the other hand, I could always go to the movies. "Dr Strangelove" is playing. So is "From Russia With Love". Or I can be one jump ahead of the crowd by catching "The Pink Panther", which opens this week (although the New Yorker review isn't entirely favourable: "heavy-handed fun").

But what I am really interested in is E B White's unsigned editorial from the magazine, which, thanks to the miracles of the technology of the future, I am able to reproduce below (right-click etc for an enlargeable version). Taking the death of Rachel Carson ("Silent Spring") as his hook, White looks at the mistreatment of the natural world by America's corporations, specifically their use of chemicals, and despairs at its consequences and, more importantly, at the failure of government to do anything serious about it. ("The federal agencies concerned with the problem bicker among themselves" -- surely not!) It is a short, typically understated but brutal piece of writing.

Fifty years on, of course, the natural world may not exactly be thriving, but life hasn't died out (not yet); something was done (though never enough) about widespread unregulated use of chemicals; man, and many of those with whom we share the planet, lived to fight another day. In other words: we got out of that one.

And yet White's editorial continues to hit hard because, if you replaced "America's corporations" with "the countries of the world", and "use of chemicals" with "burning of fossil fuels", you could write much the same essay today.

I'm not sure how it is possible not to see climate change as a very serious threat to life on this planet. (Call me naive, but science, it seems to me, isn't something one can choose to believe or not believe depending on one's financial situation of political persuasion (the Pope may have put Galileo Galilei under house arrest, but the Earth still revolves around the Sun); science operates to demonstrate, as best scientists can with the tools at their disposal, that a thing is or that it isn't.) And yet the current discourse is against change, and the structural obstacles are so immense that the paradigm (or the "facts on the ground") would have to shift dramatically to galvanise the world into action. It is a lot easier to do nothing. My friend Alun thinks that this coming summer in Australia may well do the trick. I hope he's wrong (we have no air conditioning, and if Melbourne is hot, Canberra is usually hotter), but I also, thinking not only of myself, hope he's right.

Where am I going with this? Well, E B White's piece can work as a counter to such overwhelmingly negative thoughts. You can read it, you can reflect on the fact that over the intervening period we managed to put a man on the moon, and you can tell yourself that maybe, just maybe, we will find a way, despite our worst impulses, to get out of this one, too.

Song of the day

"The Price of Love", by Richard and Linda Thompson.

Tucked away, unannounced and unheralded, at the end of the second disc of the Rhino Handmade version of Richard and Linda Thompson's "Shoot Out the Lights" is a cover version of "The Price of Love", a song written by a couple of Everlys and taken to the top of the charts by Mr Bryan Ferry.

I have trawled through a lot of Richard Thompson recordings in my time, including several armfuls of covers, but I have never known him to do this song. Truth be told, it is not especially notable (more significant, in terms of the "canon", is the appearance of "I'll Keep It With Mine", delivered with feeling, and goodness knows what kind of subtext(s), by Richard and Linda), and the sound quality, unlike that of all of the other live tracks on disc two, is shocking, but it does contain a typically blistering, if brief, Thompson guitar solo. The appearance of Linda on this track is speculative.

I mention it at all, I guess, because Richard Thompson fans tend towards the obsessive, and because of the possibility that you may otherwise have missed it.

For a limited time, as long as nobody minds, you can listen to it here.

Song of the day

"DBF", by Eno - Hyde.

Or, Brian Eno 2014 = Neil Young 2012?

I had never made a particular connection between the careers of Bob Dylan, Richard Thompson, Neil Young and Brian Eno. But it is there: all of them (roll Ed Kuepper into the mix if you like, for some Australian content), in their own way, treat albums not so much as Major Artistic Statements as somewhat random and arbitrary snapshots of what they have been up to, or where their thoughts are at, or even how they are feeling on a particular day.

Eno perhaps less so, but, as the recent excellent overview by SFJ over at the New Yorker alludes to, Eno is a (non-)musician whose reason for continuing is the work itself, and an interest in seeing where a particular idea or collaboration might lead. Thus the fact that he might disappear (aside from his regular high-profile production jobs) for years at a time doesn't mean he is not working, only that nothing that he has created has, by whatever internal slide rule he uses, seemed to him fit for turning into an album.

When that moment strikes, though, there seems to be no stopping him. Whether his partnership with Warp has been conducive to his releasing albums on a regular schedule I cannot say, but after a decade or so in which Eno largely went missing from the record racks, he has, since 2010, been at the helm of five albums and an EP. These have, to my ears, been of varying quality, but "Lux", from 2012, is the magnificent pinnacle of his "ambient" work, and now we have "High Life", his second collaborative album in two months (not a typo) with Karl Hyde, whom you might know as a member of Underworld.

The first of those two albums, "Someday World", failed to hit its (or any) target. If the collaboration had ended there, it would have sunk without trace, a fleeting footnote in both of their biographies. "High Life", though, makes it work. (Hence the question raised at the start of this post. "Americana" was perhaps a slightly dodgy album in its own right (although I do love the way a sixties garage sensibility breathes life into such moribund entities as "Oh Susannah" and "Tom Dula"; plus, Neil Young's discography is not short of slightly dodgy albums) but as a warm-up lap for the enormity of "Psychedelic Pill" (an album about which I have significant reservations, but I think I can see what he was getting at; if nothing else, it just needed a bit more work -- and a sharpened butcher's knife to cut out the large amounts of fat) it at least makes some kind of sense.)

"High Life" is a wonderful record. It is dripping with a sense of the sheer joy of making music. Many of the tracks may be nothing more than sketchy ideas not fully resolved or developed, but they work just fine as they are, and these old guys are to be applauded for letting them go in this state. It is hard to see how they could have been improved. Eno's stamp, not surprisingly, is all over these tracks. (I am at this stage finding it difficult to isolate Hyde's influence, but even if it was no more than standing off to one side and encouraging Eno to follow his own instincts (which I'm sure is not the case) his time was hardly wasted, his joint credit hardly undeserved.)

What does it sound like? It sounds like David Byrne's guitar from "Remain in Light" together with that album's strangulated funk. It sounds like the backing tracks from "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". (Curiously (or not), it sounds more like my idea of what a Byrne and Eno album should be than the actual Byrne and Eno album that came out in 2008, "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today", which was in many ways the diagonal opposite of "Bush of Ghosts". This might say more about me than about the record. It might also suggest that Karl Hyde and I were listening to the same records at the start of the eighties and were drawing the same things from what we were listening to. This would make Karl Hyde the ultimate Fanboy Enabler. There are worse things.)

Nowhere does it sound more like these things than on "DBF". You know those outtakes / incomplete ideas that were included on the CD reissue of "Remain in Light"? You could slip this track in amongst them and nobody would even notice. "DBF" is one of the shorter tracks on the album. It's a bit like the Energiser Bunny: wind it up and watch it go.

Song of the day

"Nostalgia", by David Sylvian.

Thirty years ago I first bought "Brilliant Trees", David Sylvian's first solo album, which, incidentally, was released precisely 30 years and one week ago.

I now know that the feelings "Nostalgia" describes are my default emotional state: an aching nostalgia. Whether this is just a by-product of growing old(er), or whether I have always been predisposed to missing what I no longer have, or even, maybe, whether this very song, which was no doubt still seeping its way inwards five years later, when (a) my father died and (b, and not unrelated) the world I had known fell apart before my grasping hands, I cannot really say. But Sylvian's music has long had a profound effect on me, and I can't really say with any confidence that it (in general, or this song in particular) has had no impact on the type of person I turned out to be.

Which is a heavy burden for a musician to carry, and not necessarily an invited one. Sylvian, as the lead singer and beautiful poster boy of Japan, had felt the many and intense burdens of stardom before he wrote this song, and, in breaking up the band, he intentionally started down the one-way road of dismantling those bonds. This album was the second step along that road. It is clearly the product of a different time: gone are the days when a young but impressive artist, consciously distancing himself from the trappings of fame, could command enough respect, and financial backing, from a major record label to be able to pull together a group of musicians of this calibre: Danny Thompson. Mark Isham. Ryuichi Sakamoto. Jon Hassell. Holger Czukay. Kenny Wheeler. (Also on the album are Sylvian's brother, Steve Jansen, and Richard Barbieri, who were both in Japan. It is interesting, I think, that even though Sylvian might be argued to have torn up their money ticket, he has continued to work with these two, and also with the late Mick Karn, throughout his career; or, perhaps more to the point, it is interesting that they have been prepared to continue to work with him, as if to say, unusually in this business, "we respect your decision and we wish you well".) This was an album that was never going to trouble the charts. (Although its single, "Red Guitar", was something of a hit, and, even if that was largely on account of name recognition, to say that its success was a surprise was, and still is, an understatement.)

Sylvian, on this album and on all of his work since, alone and in collaboration, has demonstrated a serene confidence. If "Brilliant Trees" was a statement of intent, it turns out to have been almost novelistic in the way it acted as a place-holder for all of the different trajectories his solo career would take. You may no longer be taking notice, but he is still writing his own story in his own way. And it is still a cracking good read.

Song of the day

"Liminality", by Fennesz.

It might be my imagination, but it seems to me that there has not been such a flood of compelling albums released so far this year as was the case in 2013. Certainly, new albums by Beck, Real Estate and (though this jury is still out) Woods are more than welcome, but the standout so far, for me at least, is "Becs", by Fennesz.

Over the past 10 or so years, Christian Fennesz has conveyed the impression of digging his own furrow through the sonic possibilities of guitar and electronics, untainted by whatever musics might be going on around him, or out there in the wider world. He may not be blinkered, but he is unquestionably committed.

"Becs" continues from where "Black Sea" left off. Critics are reading much into his return to Editions Mego as a possibly slightly backward step, and they are also reading this album, as a consequence, as something of a retread of "Endless Summer". It is true that the sun is peeking through the clouds throughout the new album. But if you listen to these two albums, and the two that came out between them, in sequence, I think you can comfortably say they are as linear as they are circular. Which is to say, they are, at the one time, neither of those things, and both of them. (This makes sense to me.)

"Liminality", which forms the centre of "Becs", runs over 10 minutes. It comprises a relatively simple and straightforward sequence of notes and chords. And yet it is the most emotionally draining piece of music I have heard for some time. There are a small number of songs that I can only listen to when I am on my own, on account of the listening experience being intensely personal. I can add "Liminality" to that list. The guitar playing is as exposed as Fennesz has ever allowed it to be. Yes, it is partially encrusted with layers of sonic gunk, which, by the way, doesn't at all interfere with what he is doing, but each individual note, each chord, sends out with it the unmistakable echo of tears cascading off the strings.

(Bonus: Tony Buck contributes drums that are so Necks-like you assume he was given free reign. As with his work in The Necks, he plays in a way that doesn't draw attention to his immense gifts.)