(Who, by the way, would appear to be recording and touring again.)
First, we have the longest-ever Australian federal election campaign, which comes to an end next Saturday. It has been about as enlightening and inspiring as I expected (i.e. not even). The prime minister has demonstrated that whatever he might bring to the office he presently holds (which either is not a lot, or has been kept from view until now, for reasons best known to himself), he is not much chop as an oppositionist. (Which perhaps makes him the reverse of the person he replaced, except that we all know what he was like as prime minister.) Given that this country has not been effectively governed since 2007 (with the exception of Julia Gillard's prime ministership, which, against all odds, managed to push some important and/or worthwhile things through a minority parliament, some of which have even survived), and given the turbulent international waters that we find ourselves in, it is dispiriting (to say the least) how uninspiring our leaders and aspirants have continued to be. We are not those others over there / we are better than those others over there would appear to be an end in itself. (At least the Labor Party has made some attempt at policy development, but from where I sit (on my side of the bed, the cat curled up in the sun at my feet) it isn't getting much traction, and anyway the slogan "100 Positive Policies" is about as likely to engage the electorate as John Hewson's "Incentivation" (remember that?).)
Secondly, Brexit, in which it would appear, from this distance, that what may have happened is that enough people registered a perhaps well-meaning protest vote (although against what they were all protesting against may have been neither clear nor uniform) to bring about a result that either nobody wanted or, at least, nobody had really thought through the consequences of. Am I the only person who is beginning to think that there might be such a thing as too much democracy?
Thirdly, the bizarre (and increasingly alarming) prospect of a President Trump. See previous sentence.
There are things I really ought to be
getting on with. This is not one of them.
"White Clouds (Day's Rhodes More
Travelled Edit)", by Hiroshi Fukumura. So good.
"Dreams", by Beck. A one-off
single by the Beckster. It sounds like a reaction against "Morning
Phase". A lot of Beck's records sound like a reaction against the record
before. (See also: The Go-Betweens.)
"Spiral", by XTC. If you were
seeking evidence to back up the seemingly outlandish claim that XTC had pop
songs literally dripping off the ends of their fingers, consider this song. Most
bands would commit criminal acts to be able to write a song as poptastic as
this. XTC couldn't find a way to fit it onto either of their "Apple
Venus" albums, for which it seems to have been recorded.
"Is It Her?", by Smashing Time. This
song sits somewhere on the straight line that connects The Zombies' "She's
Not There" with "Nice Day", by Persephone's Bees. Which, if you are
chasing pop perfection, is not a bad place to sit. Warning: contains a flute
player running rampant. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) This would appear not to have been released at all,
other than on the compilation whose cover adorns the YT clip.
"Mississippi Mud", by
Smithstonian. The song title, combined with the neat pun in the band's name,
tells you where you are going with this. Nowhere. Slowly. Deliciously. (Also
released under the name of Black Blood and the Chocolate Pickles, with added vocals and with the piano replaced
by a Rhodes. Now that's quality.)
"Mar de la Tranquilidad", by Azul
y Negro. I have died a thousand times listening to the ache on the guitar. Why oh why did the
eighties have to end? (Bonus: album cover of the month.)
"Hopeless", by Against All Logic.
It's always worth keeping an ear out for what Nicolas Jaar is releasing on his
Other People label. This is why. It has that same ever-so-slightly woozy loping
gait that Jaar's own work tends towards. Plus, the recurring motif that starts
off the record wouldn't sound out of place on a Four Tet record.
"Digital Arpeggios", by
Percussion. Did somebody mention Four Tet? This be he, under a sneaky
pseudonym. This track is rather gorgeous; it has the clean lines you expect from
the best Kraftwerk tunes. If it's a homage, it's a mighty impressive homage.
When the beat kicks in, at the five-minute mark, it momentarily feels like it's
in the way; but only momentarily.
"Back2TheStart", by KH.
"KH" being, as you have probably already guessed, Kieran Hebden. Does that man exist purely to make records?
"Ability To Gain Access (Pye Corner
Audio Remix)", by Not Waving. Martin Jenkins is not a recently deceased
cricket commentator. He is a musician who often goes by the name Pye Corner
Audio. He tends to work in his own darkened corners, although in more recent
times he has been brought out, blinking, into the sunlight under the tutelage
of the estimable Ghost Box label. Here, he remixes a song.
"Loud Places (John Talabot's Loud
Synths Reconstruction)", by Jamie xx. The first half of this remix /
"reconstruction" is all about those three piano chords, which the
other components exist merely to frame. Then, in the last two minutes, things
get dank, via some very tasty high- and low-end arpeggiation. Now might be an
opportunity for me to plug John Talabot's very excellent "fIN" album, from a
couple of years back. Well, 2012. Time flies.
"Here In Iowa", by Korallreven.
This month's Swedish pop goodness is brought to you by the (now defunct, it
seems) Korallreven. I suppose this would go in the box marked
"Balearic", but there is actually quite a lot of pan-globalism going
on here. (Some parts of it remind me of Junior Boys. Shout out to the
Canadians.) Possibly the best thing about this song, though, is that it is only
physically available via a single-sided flexi-disc. Kids these days. (Also:
nice video.) (STOP PRESS: listen to Peaking Lights take the original and turn it inside out.)
"Jump Out Of The Train (Road Chief
Remix by Mark McGuire)", by CFCF. CFCF has been in the periphery of my
vision for some years now. My Apple Music subscription has allowed me to rest
my gaze more directly upon his works. I'm not sure I'm convinced yet, but I
suspect there is something there I'm not getting. Mark McGuire, on the other hand, I
have been absorbing like a sponge in the desert. (Does that even work?) When he
puts on his "Road Chief" hat, that usually sends you in the direction
of a yacht rock / high eighties sound. Such is the case here. Is nice.
"Hot Music (Jazz Mix)", by Soho.
Imagine what a "jazz mix" of a song called "Hot Music" might
sound like. Yep. I dare you to sit still. What was I listening to in 1990 when
I should have been listening to this?
"Sundowner", by Zachary Cale.
This has something of the feeling of enervated drift that you get from the best
of Beach House (which I would classify as their first album, in case you were
going to ask), though it is coming from a very different place. Cale has
existed below the (or at least "my") radar for several years, but
this album was released on No Quarter, a detail which, these days, makes me sit
up and take notice.
"No Comprende", by Low.
It's curious how a song can come at you from different angles at different times. Six months ago I wrote about this very same song, at which point the opening bars were sending me off on a riff about inversions of the dub reggae template.
Today, what I am hearing when the song starts is something that sounds like a Spoon song. Okay, a slightly slower than usual Spoon song, but a Spoon song nonetheless. You can try it at home. Just pretend you don't know what you are about to hear. Then press play and wait. The starkness of the guitars and drums. The suggestion that something is about to happen. Of course, when that something does happen you know it's not Spoon. But that doesn't amount to disappointment. Far from it.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Low's "Ones and Sixes" is how a band that has been around, like, forever can conjure up something fresh and, yes, exciting, while at the same time sounding like nothing outside of themselves. But wait there just a second. You can say exactly the same thing about Spoon. What's that you say about the death of indie rock?
Sure, it's audience footage; sure, the sound quality is some distance beneath high fidelity. But hey, it's The Chills, playing "Doledrums", in 2016.
That has to be worth watching, doesn't it?
Martin tosses out a couple of very nimble guitar curlicues as only he can, of course. But check that whippersnapper on the drums. Isn't he keen! He has the air of someone living out a childhood dream. Maybe he is! (Actually, if that's Todd Knudson, he has been The Chills' drummer since at least 2004. But it's been a very long road back onto the world stage for The Chills. Take a bow, son. You've earned it.)
Some years ago, I had the crazy stupid idea of writing about every album John Zorn released, kinda sorta as they appeared. So, I got to the end of 2011 and there things stalled. Given that he has released something in the vicinity of 50 albums under his own name since then, I think it is fair to say that that idea has well and truly flown the coop. (I suspect that, had I actually attempted to get back into it, the main stumbling block would have been the recordings of his ongoing tour of the world's church organs: four albums (and counting) of solo organ recitals a la John Zorn is quite possibly four more than I could handle.)
Nevertheless, I have, you will not be surprised to learn, been keeping a close eye on the continually evolving (and multiplying) "Book of Angels" series of recordings, the sequel to the magnificent klezmer-jazz fandango that went under the name of "Masada". Having, or so it would seem, retired the classic Masada jazz quartet, which has been responsible for some of the most exciting, adrenaline-rush playing ever to have appeared under Zorn's name (others may differ in this estimation; but "Live at Tonic" is the rare example of a live recording where you can actually feel the audience pushing the band to greater things and the band responding in kind: it's a hoot), with the Book of Angels he has taken a different approach, hand-picking from a wide variety of players and ensembles to conjure many and varied interpretations of some of the three hundred-plus pieces that make up the Book.
Old fuddy-duddy that I am, my own excitement levels have tended to increase with the appearance of Masada favourites like Marc Ribot, the Masada String Trio and the Dreamers ensemble, but there has been much to like amongst the many other releases (even if the big drawcard, Volume 20, with Pat Metheny at the helm, was (says me) rather disappointing).
I want to draw particular attention, right now, to Volume 27, a piano-trio setting that came out a couple of months ago. Not being especially into the contemporary jazz scene, I can't really comment on how this record fits into the output of the players involved, or even if they have worked together before, but, in a word, "Wow". The playing has a certain propulsion to it, like, well, I don't know like what. Maybe like hurtling down a very steep and long hill on a pair of roller skates without a sense that you will be stopping any time soon, or how you might even do that, picking up speed all the while. You just have to close your eyes and hope for the best. The pianist, Craig Taborn, can be as lyrical as all get-out but is also prone to flights of abstract expressionism. The drummer, Tyshawn Sorey, might be the Keith Moon of jazz, playing everywhere but on the beat (and at ten thousand miles per hour). All of which frequently leaves Christian McBride (whom you have probably heard of), on the upright bass, as the glue that holds everything else together. I discovered that it is possible to lock onto what McBride is doing and let everything else kind of flow around that. It's not the only way of listening, but it is a way. However you do it, it's a rewarding listen.
I was going to conclude by noting the possibility that this would be a good place to end the Book of Angels, given that the very first entry, eleven years ago now, was also a piano trio (featuring Jamie Saft). But, of course, in the five minutes since this record came out there has been another volume (with John Medeski on board). And so we beat on, boats against the current etc etc.
Zorn doesn't abide the streaming thing, which means you are going to have to buy his records. Consider this a recommendation.
"Alfonso Muskedunder", played live by Todd Terje & the Olsens.
Some weeks ago I said words to the effect that it is difficult to make something in 7/4 time sound funky. Difficult it may be, but not impossible, and another example was right there under my nose: "Alfonso Muskedunder", a song so frenetically funky that I had never even twigged to it being in an obscure time signature.
So witness how Todd Terje and his band of merry Swedes-with-beards tear the roof off the place at the P4K music festival. Be careful trying to dance to it, though; you will do yourself an injury. Take it from one who has tried.
"New Speedway Boogie", by Courtney Barnett.
I was speculating, the other day, how Courtney Barnett would handle the transition from painting on a small canvas to playing on a big stage. Seamlessly, as it turns out. This song, one of the 59 (count 'em) Grateful Dead covers on "Day of the Dead", is perfectly suited to her droll delivery style, while musically it carries its considerable weight effortlessly. There are some big-name players on this massive project, and Courtney, happily, sounds right at home.
"Medicine Map", by Chuck Johnson.
You may say that latter-day finger pickers who have drunk at the well of John
Fahey are a dime a dozen. Maybe so, but I won't be getting sick of listening to
their magical and mesmerising tones any time soon.
"Just Seventeen", by Raiders. The
lyrical content may be on the nose (and of its time) but this track by Raiders
(wither Paul Revere?) kicks hard and bounces high in a 1973 kind of way, although
it is actually the product of 1970 and therefore, perhaps, ahead of its time.
Nice use of brass, too.
"Can't Find My Way Home", by
Blind Faith. This proto-Led Zeppelin IV number is from the only album by Blind
Faith, aka Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood and, uh, the other guy. It
features a record cover that, if you came up with it today, you would be in
jail, my friend.
"She
Said, She Said", by Lone Star. One of the reasons I persist with this
meaningless trawl through the endless morass of other people's musical
recommendations is to find the occasional moment (there is usually one just
around the corner, or the corner after that, or ...) of WTF-ness. Here comes
one now: The Beatles torn to shreds by way of the kind of overblown
overstatement that could only have come from 1976. Enjoy.
(Editor's note: the following is a BBC
session, rather than the album version. It is 30 seconds shy of the album
version, and perhaps lacks a bit of the latter's variation in dynamics, but
heck, on the one hand it's entirely off the planet, on the other hand it's yet
another example of "why punk had to happen": bloody (Welsh) hippies.)
"Soul Coaxing", by Orchestral
Academy of Los Angeles. It may not even have any words, but this is such an
emotional rollercoaster of a song that I cry every time I hear it. Seriously.
You can come to my house some time and watch me. I might charge admission.
"Pictures (Quiet Village Remix)",
by Grandadbob. I really miss Quiet Village. This helps.
"High", by Ellen Allien. It's
been a couple of years since we had anything from Ellen Allien. You know how
you sometimes feel like there's an absence in your life but you can't quite
place what it is? Now I remember. There's only one word for this track: perky.
"Lucia (John Talabot's Sunset
Edit)", by Ishinohana. What this is is a tweak of some 1980s mellow guitar
noodling. Although it actually sounds way better than you would imagine. Trust
me.
"Breezin'", by Masayoshi Takanaka
and Kazumi Watanabe. Did somebody just mention 1980s mellow guitar noodling? I
think I've got some more around here somewhere. Ah, yes, here it is. Featuring Yukihiro Takahashi on
the drums. (Bonus: album cover of the month. Not just for the
"historical" World Trade Centre photo, but for the majesty of the
font in which the album title is styled. But look closely: "Fantasic"?)
(Note: this seems not to be readily
findable on ye olde internet, so for the time being you can hit the dropbox.)
"Hold On To It (Jonny Nash
Remix)", by B.J. Smith. "Jonny Nash". "B.J. Smith".
You expect to be in country-twang territory, or perhaps in the presence of a master of the pedal
steel. But no. (Guitar shimmer does appear throughout, albeit through what
sounds like an opiate haze.) B.J. Smith was fifty percent of Smith & Mudd,
whom you might remember. Another track, as it turns out, for those pining for Quiet
Village.
"The Rhythm Divine", by Yello.
Ah, those crazy Swiss. Enlist Shirley Bassey to sing her not insubstantial
heart out. Drop in some backing vocals by the one and only Billy Mackenzie.
(One: why would you pull one of the sainted voices of modern music into your
orbit and then bury it in the mix? Two: why would he have agreed to it?
(Presumably that's easy to answer: it's Shirley Bassey. (Also: he co-wrote the
song.)) Three: do you notice how, when she sings "in my
heaaaaaaaart", she does sound like Mackenzie? It's actually kind of a neat
trick. The word "meta" comes to mind, although there is clearly
nothing meta about the result. It kills.)
"No Justice", by Astronauts, etc.
The first 12 seconds will determine whether you need this song in your life or
not. I bit.
"Chant For You", by Prequel. Here
things get a bit murky. It sounds like bits of old records stuck together in
such a way as to create a brand new song, one that is both "exotic", and
funky as heck. Which is exactly what it is. If you remember the WTF moment you (read:
"I") had when you first heard DJ Shadow, or Four Tet's
"Rounds", you will go for this. (Also: Australian content. Well
done, son.)
And finally, Mr Sakamoto tinkles the
ivories. You remember this. But when you first (and probably last) heard it you
hadn't yet immersed yourself in the world of Studio Ghibli. So now you wonder
if this piece of music, long buried in the far recesses of your brain, is one
of the reasons those movies have always felt so strangely familiar, so
comforting. Or maybe that's just the genius of Hayao Miyazaki.
"Kodama", by Kikagaku Moyo.
Kikagaku Moyo came to me in a dream. Not true. They came to me via a review of their forthcoming fourth record in this month's "Uncut" magazine, followed by some extensive Apple Music revision. I like what I hear. Yes, they have released a split record with Moon Duo, and one can certainly hear the connection. But this song makes me think of Can jamming with Stereolab in relaxed mode. As they say in the classics, what's not to like?
This may be a somewhat heretical statement, but Prince, whom we lost this week, in what is turning out to be a train-wreck of a year, was not my Bowie. I have made several attempts, starting in the late eighties, to absorb the work that lies beyond the hits, but each time I have found myself starting to gaze absentmindedly out the window. I kept telling myself I would come back to it. I still can, but it's not quite the same when the artist (or in this case, "The Artist ...") is no longer with us.
Thus, and this is highly unusual for me, my favourite Prince album is the fairly ubiquitous "The Very Best Of Prince". As greatest-hits albums go, it is a humdinger. Because, let's face it, when Prince was good, he was very, very, very, very, very good. The best, perhaps, that ever there was. Think "Raspberry Beret". Think "Kiss". More recently, at a time when I think you had to be quite tenacious to continue to give Prince your everlasting support, think "Black Sweat" (you can imagine him just tossing that one off in an idle moment, like Picasso whipping up some sketch on a restaurant napkin and making a better sketch than anyone else would ever be able to do no matter how hard they tried).
What I have found very interesting, over the past few days, is the strength of the emotional outpouring from America. Was Prince America's Bowie? I didn't see that coming. Heck, even the New Yorker has a Prince-themed cover this week. (I didn't see that coming, either.) I don't know. It's just a thought. (There are clear similarities between Prince and Bowie. You don't need me to list them. Suffice to say, they both, numerous times, pushed the listening public in directions the listening public wouldn't otherwise have gone in, and in so doing pushed music into new places; places that music didn't know it needed to go and wouldn't necessarily otherwise have gone.)
Another thing Prince could do better than just about anybody was play the guitar. The following video has been doing the rounds quite a bit this week, and with good reason. If you are going to show off (because, in a sense, this is what Prince is doing here), you had better be good if you choose to do it in a room full of seriously good musicians while they are tackling one of The Beatles' finest moments. Keep your eye on the little guy with the red hat.
Pretty happy with the music this month. It
may not hang together thematically or musically or in fact in any way at all,
but there's no need to pretend that's a problem. I mean, you don't actually
listen to any of this, do you?
"Puls", by Gunter Schickert. So
why don't we start off, then, with 15 minutes of semi-abstract German noodling
from 1979. No, I hadn't previously heard of this, notwithstanding that my ears
usually prick up at the mention of the Sky Records label, home of some of my
favourite late-seventies semi-abstract German noodling.
"Disco Computer", by Transvolta. Like the ad says, "I can't believe it's not Moroder." Actually, the person behind this
song was also largely responsible for Telex, a band that could only do one
thing, but did it so damn well, and it was manifestly such a great thing, that
nobody would be so churlish as to raise it as a point of criticism.
"Lies (Theo Parrish re-edit)", by
GQ. One of the many, many things that Theo Parrish can do is take a seemingly
workaday disco number, distil the salient parts, and extend it out for so many
minutes that at some point you stop wondering when it is going to end and start
wishing that it never would.
"Poppy Seed (Boards of Canada
Remix)", by Slag Boom Van Loon. There was a Van Loon who went to my high
school. I don't think his first name was Slag Boom. That might have been fun!
(Side note: this remix stands with the best of Boards of Canada, if you ask me.
Always check what remixes your favourite artist has done. You never know.)
"Y.M.D. (Young Michael Douglas)",
by Maya Vik. Classic pop song of the month. Produced by Lindstrom, whose hands,
in the best possible way, are clearly all over it. Who else does ascending
chords like this?
"Beach Mode (Keep It Simple)", by
Ikonika. Vocals by Jessy Lanza. I could easily have missed this. Don't you make
the same mistake.
"A Beautiful Woman", by
Deradoorian. Yet another slice of classic pop, this time bearing the mark of
sixties psychedelia as also purveyed by the likes of The Time And Space Machine and Jane Weaver. In other words, get hip to this, all you groovy cats and
chicks.
"Strassen Kaempfert", by Visit
Venus. If people were listening to the music of the sixties in the 2015s, they
were also listening in the mid-nineties. But the sixties those nineties dudes
were listening to wasn't the drug-infested morass of the end of the decade, but
the clean-living, high-production-values sixties of your Bert Kaempferts and
the like. Visit Venus capture the vibe pretty well, and with high production
values of their own. Couldn't find a version on the world wide web, so here, as long as nobody minds, is a copy on the dropbox.
"Hangdog", by Small Wigs. In
honour of Record Store Day, an actual, honest to god, seven-inch vinyl single, in a garage-rock / Gun Club vein. My scepticism about the whole vinyl revival
is hereby temporarily suspended.
"Running Away (Long Version)", by
Roy Ayers Ubiquity. By the mid-seventies, blacksploitation-soundtrack funk had
to some degree morphed into a kind of funk-disco hybrid. At least, that's a
plausible narrative to wrap around this song, given Roy Ayers' previous guise
(or one of them) as blacksploitation-soundtrack auteur (e.g. "Coffy"). This sets up an undeniably smooth groove
and runs (away) with it.
"Man Of Means", by Alan Hawkshaw.
In which the famed British library-music composer catches (albeit somewhat
late) the wave that Roy Ayers was surfing on the "Coffy" soundtrack,
to surprisingly non-"cod" effect. Featuring bonus harpsichord (or
synthetic equivalent). Bet you didn't see that coming.
"Music For Chameleons", by Gigi
Masin. Masin's name has been coming up around here a bit lately, so I thought I
would dig a bit deeper, but to little avail. It seems he is an Italian
composer, who has been doing his thing since the late eighties. This track
(nothing to do with Gary Numan's song of the same name) is taken from a
seemingly wide-ranging double-disc compilation (available for a good price on
Bandcamp). It carries with it definite resonances of David Sylvian's
mid-eighties work; I am probably thinking of the second disc of "Gone To
Earth", but then I always am.
"Usha (Daphni Edit)", by Usha
Uthup vs Alex Israel. We finish off with a couple of one-off tracks by Dan
Snaith's other alias, Daphni. Daphni tracks tend to be a slightly more
rough-and-ready version of the work he does with Caribou. This first one Snaith
claims to be a mash-up. Maybe, but heck, it sure bears the sonic palette of the
Daphni album.
"Vikram", by Daphni. This is
coming from a similar place, but with added beats. Can you have too much of a
good thing? I think not.
