Mercury Prize Shortlist

Adele - 19
British Sea Power - Do You Like Rock Music?
Burial - Untrue
Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
Estelle - Shine
Laura Marling - Alas I Cannot Swim
Neon Neon - Stainless Style
Portico Quartet - Knee-Deep In The North Sea
Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - The Bairns
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

Music’s answer to the Nobel Prize trundles in for another year. As ever, it has that “something for everyone” look that seems to emphasize balance over quality. Rachel Unthank and the Portico Quartet take the token folk and jazz spots, and half of the rest constitute a ticklist of prevalent styles. Pop? Adele (tick). Hip Hop? Estelle (tick). Waif with guitar? Laura Marling (tick). Etc etc.

There are really only two serious contenders. Radiohead have never won it before, and that must be regarded as an oversight by the committee. And Percy Plant’s album will appeal to the Mojo set. Burial won’t turn up, so that probably scuppers his chances, and Alex Turner’s already got one which will damage his. Indie bands have won three of the last four which means BSP and Elbow needn’t book holidays. Of the two contenders, my money’s on Raising Sand.

As to whether the thing has any meaning or value (apart from the money and the publicity of course), is still a matter for debate. Having an honours board populated with the likes of the Klaxons, M People, Gomez and Badly Drawn Boy hardly boosts credibility. But compared to the onanistic Brits and the completely arbitrary and pointless Mojo Awards, it does have some class. I doubt whether I’ll bother tuning in, though.

Landfill Indie

This is quite a good article from yesterday’s Independent on Sunday:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/does-the-world-need-another-indie-band-870520.html

The only thing I wonder is why has it taken the mainstream press so long to cotton on that the world is being sold wave upon wave of generic identikit shite? It’s been thus for many years, with NME churning “best new band in Britain” claimants almost weekly - all of whom have one tenth-hand idea between them.

Still, hopefully the indie-cattle are tiring of being forcefed tasteless straw. Maybe mainstream music is about to get interesting again. I’m not holding my breath.

Cult Albums: #7 VEX’D - Degenerate (2005)

My first encounter with dubstep was hearing this album back in the late summer of 2005. I’d been an enthusiastic drum and bass fan back in the mid to late nineties, especially the more rhythmically complex and bass heavy stuff such as Photek, Source Direct, Tech Itch, Dom and Roland etc. But as the rhythms got simpler, the music got repetitive. Jonny L’s “Piper” is a minimalist classic, but the problem is, in no time every record seemed to be using that simplistic two-step beat to the point of tedium. The much heralded d’n'b revival at the turn of the decade with the likes of Kosheen and Uncut, was just two-step rhythms with pop tunes bolted on. It wasn’t anything new or exciting. I didn’t fall out of love with the music, just failed to find anything that compared to the “old school” stuff. I still listen to a few of the best albums quite regularly (those acts I mentioned, plus early Omni Trio and E-Z Rollers, Krust, Bukem, PFM, Foul Play etc).

I never really got garage, and I don’t think I ever really understood what grime was. And dubstep was just another term that didn’t have any meaning to me. I liked Mike Paradinas, though, and liked some of the other stuff on Planet Mu which is how I came by a copy of Degenerate, a sprawling double CD – one half new material, and the other a collection of previously issued twelves.

First listen was a real ‘what-the-fuck?’ experience. The rhythms were colossal, but the tempos seemed stilted, and somehow teetering on the edge of collapse, like a runner whose legs are struggling to keep up with their body. The bass tones boomed on grumbled, but apart from that there was very little melodic colour. This was bare bones music, stripped down to the bare essentials. I didn’t really get it, but I was intrigued enough not to chuck it on to the Ebay pile, but give it another bash. And in time it clicked, this strangely tempoed, claustrophobic, slightly forbidding music. I grew very fond of Degenerate, and it was largely because of it that I got into Burial, Boxcutter, Kode9 and others. Even now there’s something primal and strange about the album that I don’t really hear in other dubstep. Kinda like the Charley Patton to other acts’ Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf.

It’s been three years. Hopefully a follow-up shouldn’t be too far away. The track with Warrior Queen on the most recent Planet Mu compilation seems to indicate a move into the same sort of territory as Kevin Martin’s Bug project.

Thunder

Tracks
1-01 Pop Pop V.I.P. 6:55
1-02 Thunder 6:36
1-03 Angels 6:34
1-04 Corridor 6:24
1-05 Cold 3:32
1-06 Venus 5:38
1-07 Gunman 6:08
1-08 Crusher Dub 3:09
1-09 Fire 6:27
1-10 Destruction 0:58
1-11 Lion V.I.P. 5:59
1-12 Slime 4:51
2-01 Canyon 6:03
2-02 Pop Pop 6:00
2-03 Ghost 5:55
2-04 Lion 7:05
2-05 Smart Bomb 5:46
2-06 End Of Line 6:25

Originally issued as Planet Mu ZIQ115CD in July 2005.

Constellation

Constellation Records have rejigged their website a bit, and have now made available download samples for a few of their forthcoming releases.

What is it with Constellation and singers? Virtually every one they have are majorly idiosyncratic in their style. Some I like a lot - Carla Bozulich’s possessed rawness, Vic Chesnutt’s slightly hicky drawl, Efrim Menuck’s cracked tenor-cum-falsetto and Stuart Staples’ grumpy mumble. But some are really hard work. The singer of new signings the Dead Science sounds like Antony Hegarty sitting on a vibrator! And in the past there’s been the likes of Frankie Sparo who couldn’t hit a note if you gave him a week to find it.

Album: A FatCat Records Sampler (FatCat FAT-SAMP08 2008)

So what the hell happened to FatCat? Time was it was a label you could rely on to come up with interesting stuff that knew no boundaries, crossing classical, electronica, folk and rock. Whether it be the noisy data-rock of Xinlisupreme, the epic landscapes of Set Fire To Flames, or the warped electro-folk of Múm, there was always something pretty unique and hard to pin down about the records they put out.

The sampler given away with the August issue of Plan B was the only reason I bought the magazine, so it was a real disappointment to discover that so much of it is crushingly ordinary. It kicks off with a Vashti Bunyan track from 1965 that proves that she was never cut out to be a swinging sixties pop singer, and despite the best efforts of Jagger and Richards, she sounds really awkward trying to do straight pop. The next half dozen or so tracks range from the forgettable to the excruciating (Tom Brosseau’s contribution) but with a large dollop of twee shared between them. Charlottefield’s “Snakes” at least has some life to it, but they strike me as a poor man’s Aereogramme.

Things do pick up along the final stretch. We Were Promised Jetpacks kneel at the feet of Franz Ferdinand, but they do have a bit of spark about them (and a great name). The Twilight Sad’s contribution growls along nicely, although they forgot to pack a tune. Max Richter’s “Return To Prague” is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it miniature that’s really too short to work outside the context of his forthcoming album of very brief pieces. Our Brother The Native’s “Augural Wrath” is an excellent piece of mellow free-folk. The blurb in the magazine claimed that they’d left the best till last with Hauschka’s track. And so it proves. “Blue Bicycle” is far richer and more expansive than anything I’ve heard by him before, and easily the best thing on a disappointing collection.

As for the magazine, there’s Kevin Martin, Philip Jeck and Leila Arab and a whole host of other stuff. For some reason, I’ve never got on with the publication, even though they write about a lot of interesting stuff that often gets ignored elsewhere and don’t seem to have any agenda other than “if we like it, it’s in”. I don’t know if it’s the dead hand of Everett True clouding my judgement!

Tracks
1. Vashti Bunyan – I Want To Be Alone
2. David Karsten Daniels – Martha Ann
3. Gregory & The Hawk - Ghost
4. Nina Nastasia – Your Red Nose
5. Vetiver – To Baby
6. Tom Brosseau – True to You
7. Silje Nes – Dizzy Street
8. Ten Kens – Y’All Come Back Now
9. Charlottefield - Snakes
10.The Rank Deluxe – Tightrope
11.We Were Promised Jetpacks – Tiny Little Voices
12.Frightened Rabbit – I Feel Better
13.The Twilight Sad – Here, It Never Snowed. Afterwards It Did
14.Max Richter – Return To Prague
15.Our Brother The Native – Augural Wrath
16.Hauschka – Blue Bicycle

The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

I came across this site at the weekend

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/

It’s the home page of The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It’s a veritable goldmine of information about late nineteenth and early twentieth century recordings. They also have live streams on a thing called Cylinder Radio, so you can listen to the music (and if you know what you want, almost everything is available for free downloading). I spent a happy hour there, and learned a lot. It’s funny, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wax cylinder in the flesh, let alone a machine to play them on. They’re smaller than I thought they were - four inches (10cm) tall.

One of the many facts I learned was that the derogatory term ‘canned music’ came from the composer and marching bandleader John Philip Sousa, referring to the fact that the cylinders came in cardboard tubes that looked like baked bean tins.

PS

How about this - a 21st century wax cylinder player. You can stick you iPod

http://www.archeophone.org/warcheophone_specifications.php

Album: ENGINE7 - Me, But Perfect (Herb Recordings HERB005CD 2008)

For many years, the middle ground between ‘outer edge’ electronica performers such as Autechre, the Raster-Noton gang and their ilk, and club-friendly dance music has been a sagging mire of mediocrity. An area that was once filled with extremely popular, although not necessarily populist, acts from the Orb to Orbital, Leftfield to Way Out West, became anachronistic and redundant – something not helped by the rush to employ singers at every turn in a doomed effort to compete with indie bands. The result is all too clear from recent efforts by the likes of Spooky and Moby – bland pop with a vaguely electronic setting that pleases no one. But there has been a marked resurgence in the last couple of years, with acts combining the experimentalism of some of the cutting edge acts with a keen ear for melody. Taking elements of neo-classical music and the more expansive and left-field ‘indie’ groups, the new acts craft a kind of all-encompassing, genre-busting sound that is neither rock nor electronica, but somewhere in between. Leaning towards the former are more high profile artists like M83 and Ulrich Schnauss, whereas the reinvigorated Black Dog are on the more traditional IDM side of things. Engine7 can be found somewhere in the middle of this (arbitrary and overly-simplified) line.

I came across Alan McNeill, aka Engine7, only recently via his contributions to the two Phantom Channel compilations. Both were excellent, and the arrival of Me, But Perfect proves that they weren’t just isolated flashes of brilliance. The album is a 50 minute trip through an eclectic mixture of electronica and instrumental rock. A lazy reference point would be someone like Italian outfit Port-Royal, but Me, But Perfect is much less inclined to epic narrative. Although, in a sense, it is an epic narrative in that it is structured in the form of the events of a single day, with each of the eleven tracks assigned a specific time between sunrise and evening.

There is a definite summer feel to the album. The opener, and only vocal track, “Sunrise, Catalonia” would fit perfectly on one of the near legendary Café Del Mar pre-club Ibiza compilations of the mid nineties. The title track is a fantastic meld of cracked beats, soaring strings, fuzzy guitars and music-box melody. The stunning “Path of Least Resistance” is lazy, sweeping and sun-drenched. There are contrasting, darker hues, too. “Tempertantrum”, with its shades of prime period Orbital, ups the tempo considerably, while the sombre, glitchy beats of “Nichts” and the fuzz-drone feedback-rich “Glitches” strike a marked contrast to the generally sunny air of the album.

McNeill seldom puts a foot wrong on Me, But Perfect, but the 10.08am to 2.46pm period is especially good.

Tracks
1. Sunrise, Catalonia (7:14am) 5:13
2. Me, But Perfect (7:48am) 7:02
3. Obsessive/Compulsive (9:12am) 2:38
4. Glitches (10:08am) 2:18
5. Tempertantrum (11:36am) 4:59
6. Path of Least Resistance (12:42pm) 5:38
7. Nichts (2:46pm) 5:55
8. A Conversation (4:21pm) 4:48
9. The Air Sings (7:08pm) 0:48
10. Hive Mind (7:21pm) 6:49
11. Goodnight, I Love You (8:07pm) 3:18

Website
www.engine7music.com

Gig: THE BLUE NILE - Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, 9/7/08

Most bands still active after more than a quarter of a century will have slumped into self-parody and irrelevance as they release yet another LP that is, if they’re lucky, touted as their best since the last one that was actually any good, but is more likely to be ignored and forgotten within a month of its appearance.

The Blue Nile’s debut album came out in 1983 – the year that Thatcher won a landslide on the back of the Falkands war and set about ripping up the social fabric of the country. Some of you weren’t even born then! Since the appearance of Walk Across The Rooftops, the hardest working band in showbusiness (irony division) have come up with three more. It’s a source of both amusement and frustration to the group’s fans, but looking at it from a broader perspective, it’s a catalogue with very little fat on it. Over the course of that quarter century, the band’s music hasn’t really changed. It’s still lush, nostalgic, synth-swept melancholy with islands of rousing hope. And it still has the capacity to raise goose-bumps, particularly as many of these songs have become woven into the fabric of listeners’ lives over the years, so each is imbued with an extra layer of uniquely personal references. They stay with you for life, and become a part of it.

There’s seldom much surprising about a Blue Nile show (bar the fact that it’s actually happening). It’s too easy to slip into the cliches applied to hundreds of other shows in hundreds of other reviews – the grandeur, the melancholy, the moments of heartbreak, Paul Buchanan’s vulnerable yet hopeful vocals. They are like the records, really, but bigger and punchier. The crowd stomp and cheer and quip between songs, but each sits alone with their own emotional reactions during them. The one exception is the mass singalong to “Tinseltown in the Rain”, a kind of unofficial Glasgow city anthem.

Of course it was brilliant. In some ways, though, it was disappointing – not because of what was on offer, but what wasn’t. In other words, those desperately sought, near-mythical beasts, new songs. When Paul Buchanan played a trio of solo-billed shows at the same venue almost exactly two years go, there were two. Tonight? One of those, “The Runaround Girl”, was played. And that was it. What we did get was a hour and a half set skewed towards the first two albums which included a rare outing for “Family Life”. And an encore of “Strangers in the Night” which was equal parts cheese and high romance.

This was the first of three nights at the RCH. Perhaps the next two will see the unveiling of a raft of new material! Perhaps not. I think I’ll have a few more grey hairs before album five sees the light of day.