A Few Forthcoming Releases: Dec 2009

Not a lot to report as the majors fill their boots with the once a year Christmas shoppers and the indies generally take a break. A few juicy 2010 releases beginning to be announced though, with Mary Margaret O’Hara guesting on the new Tindersticks (yay!) and another highly anticipated (in M M & M towers, at any rate) BJ Nilsen record.

Dec 7th

• RESIDENTS – The Ughs! (Cryptic Corporation)
• SEMUIN – Circle and Elephants (Ahornfelder)
• SLEEP WHALE – Houseboat (Western Vinyl)
• YELLOW6 – Merry6mas 2009 (Editions6)

Dec 14th

• BONNIE PRINCE BILLY & THE PICKET LINE – Funtown Comedown (Drag City)
• OREN AMBARCHI – Intermission 2000-2008 (Touch)

Dec 28th

• CHARLIE PARKER – Complete Royal Roost Live Recordings on Savoy vols 1-4 (Columbia Japan)
• CHARLIE PARKER – Complete Studio Recording on Savoy vols 1-4 (Columbia Japan)

Jan 11th

• LAURA VEIRS – July Flame (Bella Union)
• SLOW SIX – Tomorrow Becomes You (Western Vinyl)
• VAMPIRE WEEKEND – Contra (XL)

Jan 25th

• BJ NILSEN – Invisible City (Touch)
• CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG – IRM (Because)
• LINDSTROM & CHRISTABELLE – Real Life Is No Cool (Smalltown Supersound)

Feb 8th

• ROEDELIUS – Wenn der Sudwind Weht (Roedelius)

Feb 15th

• FIELD MUSIC – Measure (Memphis Industries)
• TINDERSTICKS – Falling Down a Mountain (4AD / Constellation)

Feb 22nd

• EFTERKLANG – Magic Chairs (4AD)

The M M & M 1000 – part 50

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

THE BYRDS – So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star / Everybody’s Been Burned (Columbia 43987 1967)
They had a bit of a nerve poking fun at the Monkees when just a couple of years earlier only McGuinn played on their own debut single. Still it’s a fun piece of satire. The flip is one of the best things the Byrds ever did, a dark but hopeful Crosby ballad.

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE – Soldier Blue / Moratorium (RCA 2081 1971)
Ralph Nelson’s 1970 western Soldier Blue was unlike any other before it. Shockingly violent and, for once, the good guys were definitely not the US Cavalry. Based on a true massacre that happened in 1864, it was also as much about Mai Lai and the Vietnam War. Buffy Sainte-Marie, a Cree herself, invested the song with both anger and bitter sorrow and yet it is just as much a celebration of the natural wonders of a country and her own ancestry.

DUKE ELLINGTON & HIS ORCHESTRA – Solitude / Mood Indigo (Columbia 35427 1940)
Ivie Anderson is one of the most underrated jazz vocalists, and she shines on these two Ellington ballads, both of which have become standards crooned by virtually every nightclub and torch singer since.

PETER GABRIEL – Solsbury Hill / Moribund the Burgemeister (Charisma 301 1977)
Fresh out of Genesis, Peter Gabriel launched his solo career with this, still one of his most poignant songs. Solsbury Hill itself overlooks Bath in Somerset, and the song captures that very special pleasure of sitting somewhere still and peaceful and watching the lights and bustle of the city night below.

JESUS & MARY CHAIN – Some Candy Talking / Psychocandy / Hit (Blanco Y Negro 19 1986)
By 1986 the screech of feedback had largely been excised from the Mary Chain’s records, replaced by cavernous echo. With it went a lot of the vigour and excitement, but that didn’t matter so much on songs as good as this, with its booming Spectorish sound.

LEE HAZLEWOOD & NANCY SINATRA – Some Velvet Morning / Oh Lonesome Me (Reprise 651 1968)
How trippy is this? Essentially it sounds like a verse taken from two completely different songs intercut. Hazlewood’s bit is dark and rumbling like Johnny Cash meets Link Wray while Sinatra’s is hippy-dippy flower child stuff, well away with the faeries. It’s like a cocktail of quaaludes and acid.

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE – Somebody to Love / She Has Funny Cars (RCA 9140 1967)
When Grace Slick joined the Jefferson Airplane she brought this song along from her previous band the Great Society, written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick. The Airplane version is tighter and punchier with a chorus so strident it’s almost accusatory.

EDDIE COCHRAN – Somethin’ Else / Boll Weevil Song (Liberty 55203 1959)
STANDELLS – Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White / Why Don’t You Hurt Me? (Tower 257 1966)
By 1959, most of the first generation rock and rollers seemed to be mired in gloopy ballads and sounding little different to the pre-rock generation of singers like Johhny Ray and Frankie Vaughan. Eddie Cochran, on the other hand, still had a raw spirit about him: still sounded like someone a teenaged girl would think twice about introducing to her mother. That’s why he was so popular with the punks nearly two decades later, along with his friend Gene Vincent. The Standells, too, had that snotty fuck you attitude. But as they say in the song “You think those guys in the white collars are better than I am baby? / Then flake off!” True blue-collar working class pride…from a bunch of LA rich kids. Oh, well.

BLUR – Song 2 / Get out of the Cities (Food 93 1997)
The indignation this caused from my Pavement loving underground rock friends always made me laugh. It’s noisy and fun. What’s not to like?

LEFTFIELD – Song of Life / mixes (Hard Hands 002 1992)
A nine minute progressive house monster that pretty much defined the genre and still stands as one of the best tracks of its kind.

THIS MORTAL COIL – Song to the Siren / 16 Days (4AD 310 1983)
Originally This Mortal Coil were convened as a one-off project for this single, but its success was such that they ran to three albums, each with a constantly changing cast of performers. Liz Fraser hadn’t really tackled a proper lyrical song before, her voice more used as another instrument in the Cocteau Twins. But she gives Tim Buckley’s classic song a ghostly innocence that is absolutely captivating. The backing is so subtle that she’s almost on her own, but there’s no sign of nerves – she’s absolutely lost in the song. An amazing performance.

JOSEF K – Sorry For Laughing / Revelation (Postcard 814 1981)
Famously a band who seemed happier the flatter their records sounded; a band who scrapped their first album because it sounded too warm and produced and instead put out something tinny and stark. Paul Haig’s bored drone of a voice isn’t the most appealing instrument, but it gives this song a dry sarcasm. And it’s pretty much the touchstone record for the C86 generation.

LAVERN BAKER – Soul on Fire / How Can You Leave (Atlantic 1004 1953)
She’s better known for appealing, but ultimately disposable pop ditties like “Tweedle Dee” and “Jim Dandy”, but Lavern Baker was happiest singing the blues. If anything, though, “Soul on Fire” is deep southern soul a decade too early.

DAVID BOWIE – Sound and Vision / A New Career in a New Town (RCA 905 1977)
A long long way from Ziggy in just four years. “Sound and Vision” was the introduction to Bowie’s leftfield masterpiece Low and about as traditionally pop as the album got. Which isn’t very.

SIMON & GARFUNKEL – The Sound of Silence / We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’ On (Columbia 43396 1965)
Dylan had gone electric, the Byrds were having big hits doing jangly folk-rock. It made sense for Simon & Garfunkel to add drums and rock arrangements. Unfortunately they weren’t working together at the time, and Paul Simon was touring folk clubs in Europe armed only with his trusty acoustic. Producer Tom Wilson stepped in anyway, gave the track a new “with it” backing and Columbia watched another of their folk acts have a huge hit. Simon might not have liked it, but he could hardly complain at the new levels of exposure, and the duo quickly reconvened.

MEMBERS – Sound of the Suburbs / Handling the Big Jets (Virgin 242 1979)
They came from around ten miles away from me, and lyrically this song captured perfectly the tedium of North Surrey / East Berkshire Sundays. Nothing else to do but kick a football around with your mates. Nothing on telly, nothing on the radio (except David Rodigan’s Sunday show on Radio London) and school next day.

More soon

Album: VLOR – Six-Winged (Silber 075 2009)

Vlor are a Silber Records supergroup comprising a dozen musicians from various bands, the best known of whom is probably Jessica Bailiff. Starting out with guitar and bass lines from team captain Brian John Mitchell, the tracks were all completed by various people from all over the world. Comparisons with This Mortal Coil are inevitable. Indeed, there are plenty of musical similarities – short neo-classical instrumental sections, low key ambient pop and ethereal vocal tracks redolent of the Cocteau Twins at their most mellow.

The major difference between Silber’s supergroup and their 4AD counterpart of two decades ago is that Vlor are even more eclectic. “Tolerate the Wicked”, for example is an eight minute long dark ambient drone piece. “Damage the Land and Sea” is an instrumental based around a deep throbbing bass and scratchy slide guitar that threatens to explode into aural violence, but never quite does. However, the next track “Watch Me Bleed” injects some real aggression into proceedings. It’s a thrashing punk-pop thing that comes across like Sons and Daughters at their most bolshy. Definitely NOT very This Mortal Coil!

Half the tracks are under two and a half minutes, and many of these are little more than instrumental sketches of ideas. But they work as the glue that keeps the album flowing and not sounding like a random grab-bag of tracks. Only “Not the One for Me” grates a little, seemingly no more than an endlessly repetitive fade out whose title is the entire lyrical content.

Six-Winged is a terrific album that flits from style to style, but manages to hang together perfectly. Even the book ending tracks, ostensibly two versions of the same thing, sound nothing like each other. The first a delicate, fragile whisper of a song, the second straying into Galaxie 500 territory. It shows that surprise and variety needn’t be at the expense of consistency and flow.

Tracks
1 I Have Left Home 2:05
2 Without Blame 2:17
3 Guided 2:24
4 Never to be Rebuilt 1:59
5 She Goes Out With Boys 3:08
6 Tolerate the Wicked 8:08
7 Damage the Land and Sea 3:44
8 Watch Me Bleed 2:31
9 Children’s Teeth 1:30
10 Statue of Jealousy 1:14
11 Will I See You Again 1:40
12 Maybe You Should Chew On My Fist 4:19
13 Not the One for Me 3:19
14 Young Lions 1:20
15 Boundaries of the Land 2:40
16 I Have Left Home (reprise) 3:28

Websites
www.silbermedia.com/
www.myspace.com/vlormusic

Album: IAN HAWGOOD – Before I Let The Sunshine Rot (Phantom Channel PHCH012 2009)

Ian Hawgood is pretty prolific. Discogs lists seventeen CDR or MP3 releases in the last couple of years. His latest (who knows, it may not be by now) is an eight track mini LP for Phantom Channel consisting of four long pieces and four short pieces. The titled track is a glazed, delicate ambient drone. Elsewhere there are a couple of solo guitar tracks, and some subtle uses of field recordings. The overall effect, though, is a bit wishy-washy and bland.

Hawgood claims his music is based on memories. Other people’s memories, though, are like other people’s photo albums – full of people you don’t know and places you’ve never been. After the initial curiosity, it all gets a bit dull. It’s all pleasant enough, but is too self-effacing to make any demands on the listener. Still, it’s a freebie, so you can judge for yourself without parting with your pennies. Great cover.

Tracks
1 Before I Let the Sunshine Rot 7:12
2 Airguns After Supper 1:40
3 Seoul I 2:00
4 The Latin Quarter 2:48
5 Pirouette of Cotton 7:22
6 Seoul II 0:36
7 Ginseng and Polaramin and One Long Slumber 7:08
8 Thank You Sara 4:48

Websites
www.myspace.com/iandhawgood
www.phantomchannel.co.uk/

The M M & M 1000 – part 49

Here’s the latest batch of Music Musings and Miscellany’s unapologetically subjective selection of the twentieth century’s best 1000 singles.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION – Si Tu Dois Partir / Genesis Hall (Island 6064 1969)
In the period between the end of the sixties and punk, for the serious prog-rock, metal and folk-rock fan, the 45rpm seven inch single became a bit of a joke. Some bands (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd) didn’t bother with them at all. For others, a hit single and a Top of the Pops appearance was a bit of a lark, not to be taken too seriously. Fairport’s cover of a Dylan song, in French, with chairback and milk bottle percussion (with an accident when one fell off the table and smashed left in the final mix) was a surprise hit. It’s not a comedy record, just light-hearted and gleeful.

LEE MORGAN – The Sidewinder / Part 2 (Blue Note 1911 1964)
Jazz artists, too, weren’t generally interested in singles. Most that were released were edits of album tracks aimed squarely at jukeboxes. The ten minute “The Sidewinder” by jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan has become one of the best known post-bop standards, with its funky rhythm and catchilly repetitive central riff. In some ways, it’s one of the foundation stones of jazz-funk, acid jazz, fusion and the rest.

PRINCE – Sign ө the Times / La La La La He He He He (Paisley Park 28399 1987)
Stepping back from his tales of sex and Corvettes, Prince unleashed this unassuming little song that dug into the underbelly of the brash and flash eighties for which he himself was part of a symbolic triumvirate of pop stars, along with Jacko and Madonna, who came to represent the ‘me’ decade. The flipside – AIDS, poverty, the still real threat of nuclear catastrophe (remember Ronnie “let’s bomb Russia” Reagan was still president) were marked out, almost without comment. It’s still his most forceful and thoughtful song.

STEVIE WONDER – Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours / I’m More Than Happy (Tamla 54196 1970)
“Signed, Sealed, Delivered” represents the end of phase one of Stevie Wonder’s career when he was still just a cog (albeit a vital one) in the Motown hit factory. As his 21st birthday loomed, he held out for a new contract that would give him unprecedented artistic control – something almost unheard of at Motown – and would pave way for his classic period when he would fuse soul, pop, gospel, electronic music and funk into his own unique and brilliant vision.

TORI AMOS – Silent All These Years / Me and a Gun (East West YZ618 1991)
Out of the flood of singer-songwriters who’ve emerged over the last two decades, Tori Amos remains a singular talent, and the two sides of this single go a long way to explaining why. The first, a lush, beautifully orchestrated, literate piano ballad. The second, a chilling a capella recounting a harrowing rape experience.

CARTER FAMILY – Single Girl, Married Girl / Storms are on the Ocean (Victor 20937 1927)
This proto-feminist tune comparing the lots of the wed and unwed woman has become one of the best-loved, and oft-covered Carter Family tunes. With good reason.

NIRVANA – Sliver / Dive (Sub Pop 72 1990)
NIRVANA – Smells Like Teen Spirit / Even In His Youth (Geffen 19050)
Only a year separates these singles. The first a dipped toe into melodic pop rock, albeit with a lyric recalling a pre-school Kurt being shipped off to his grandparents’, and despite TV and ice cream, just wanting to be in his own home. The second a Pixies parody, and last minute addition to Nevermind, that made him a reluctant global icon.

BEACH BOYS – Sloop John B / You’re So Good To Me (Capitol 5602 1966)
Added to Pet Sounds at Capitol’s insistence, “Sloop John B” doesn’t really fit with the rest of the album, but as a single works just fine. A strange choice of song for a 45, it’s actually a Bahamian song about a wild party that took place on the Nassau waterfront the night that the John B was sunk and was originally entitled “The Wreck of the John B”

ULTRAVOX! – Slow Motion / Dislocation (Island 6454 1978)
Another classic from the Foxx era, and an inspiration from everyone from Gary Numan to Duran Duran. Don’t let that put you off, though.

THE UNDISPUTED TRUTH – Smiling Faces Sometimes / You Got the Love I Need (Gordy 7108 1971)
Less a band, more Norman Whitfield’s own experimental lab rats. The man was even more of a control freak than his boss Berry Gordy, and wanting a group a little less combative and more malleable than the Temptations he ended up with the Undisputed Truth. Many songs would be road tested by the Truth before being handed to the Tempts, but they did at least have one major hit they could truly call their own – this dark, paranoid masterpiece.

PLATTERS – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes / No Matter What You Are (Mercury 71383 1958)
SABRES OF PARADISE – Smokebelch II (entry) / Smokebelch II (exit) (Sabres of Paradise 9 1993)
HOWLIN’ WOLF – Smokestack Lightning / You Can’t Be Beat (Chess 1618 1956)
ROBINS – Smokey Joe’s Café / Just Like a Fool (Spark 122 1955)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the smoking section. The first a 1933 show tune by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach about blind love, turned into an unparalleled piece of weepy melodrama by the rich tenor of the Platters’ Tony Williams. The Sabres of Paradise’s classic come-down instrumental has graced a million TV soundtracks, but still sounds fresh and sober. Wolf growls and howls his way through a typically apocalyptic blues, whilst the Robins encounter a problem when trying to hit on the girlfriend of a large and borderline psychotic café owner.

More soon

Album: | □ □ | (GATE) – No Exit (Fluttery 004 2009)

Noise as a genre is something I confess to having limited knowledge about. The only regular exposure to it I have is at the annual Instal shindig in Glasgow. In my experience, done badly it just becomes a cacophonous, shapeless and pointless din. Done well, though, it sucks you into an alien environment where rhythms and melodies exist, but only become apparent through careful listening. Sometimes they may not exist at all, but the brain creates them as it tries to make sense of the hostile aural environment.

| □ □ | (pronounced Gate) is the project of Japanese artist Lajos Ishibashi-Brons, based in Tokyo. He uses his own home built instruments including a sousen, an electric four string instrument used to create drones, and an electric morin khuur, an adaptation of a Mongolian stringed instrument played with a bow, as well as guitar, radio distortion and bass.

Some of the music is fairly abstract and (gasp!) quiet, such as “38 ss.mk” (all titles list the instruments used). Most is intense, with pulsing drones overlaid with sheets of noise. What surprised me is just how melodically rich a lot of the music is, even if the melodies are often buried deep. The rhythms, too, are hypnotic if relentless. Even at its most full on, where intense screes of noise cascade out of the speakers, there are rhythmic patterns to hold on to. The brain battering “8 ss.rd.mk” is a fine example where a dark and menacing slow march emerges from a seemingly random squall of feedback.

The most effective track is “29 ss.rd.gt” which looms out of a fog of white noise as a slow, alien pulse surrounded by distant drones of stark beauty. Absolutely hypnotic, at its heart there is a surprising serenity that pulls you into its sound-world. Then, towards the end, the darkness closes in and the nightmares start. The closing 28 minute epic is not, as you might expect, a total freak out, but on the whole a quiet, almost reflective piece centred around bass guitar notes with snippets of noise appearing and evaporating as quickly, with alien sounds like squeaking hinges and distressed geese adding to the mix.

No Exit is an impressively varied work that uses subtlety and force in equal measure. At times fierce and ugly, there are plenty of moments that are mesmerising, almost blissful.

Tracks
1 28 ss.rd 7:12
2 38 ss.mk 2:40
3 13 ss.rd.gt 2:49
4 44x ss.rd.bs 2:54
5 8 ss.rd.mk 8:47
6 29 sd.rd.gt 12:19
7 21 ss.rd.mk 6:28
8 ss.rd.mk.bs 27:48

Websites
www.flutteryrecords.com

A few short reviews

I’ve been pretty busy over the last couple of months, and accordingly I’ve not had a great deal of time to devote to M M & M. This is especially true of the number of things submitted for review. As much as I’d like to give everything proper, in depth attention, I just don’t have the time at the moment. But I thought I’d do a bit of a trawl through some of my backlog, and at least give you some flavour of the music.

ZURAMONE – Spider’s Dance EP (XS Records XS67)
Zuramone is the solo project of a Portuguese drummer called Alex. It’s a free download EP consisting of four short tracks. Each is percussion led with a variety of electronics and guitars giving the tracks a bit of colour. Opening track “Green is Not Our Enemie” comes across like a twentyfirst century Sandy Nelson, but elsewhere the emphasis is on a more abstract kind of electronica which reaches its apogee on the atmospheric industrial sounds of “The Spider’s Last Moment”.

FRENCH WIVES – Dogfight / Halloween (Instinctive Racoon)
This two track single is the debut release of French Wives, a group who deal in the kind of literate indie that is typical of Scottish acts. They are slightly reminiscent of My Latest Novel, combining a bouncy pop sensibility with more sober violin and brass flourishes.

BPOLAR – Subversive Vespers (XS Records XS66)
Another free download from XS Records, Subversive Vespers is a four track mini album that runs for just short of half an hour. If I was to slap a label on it, I guess ambient dub would be the closest. This is music concerned more with texture and atmosphere than it is with melody. “Burning Statement” plods along in a narcotic fog. “Petrol Song” is pure cosmic ambience, while “Encoding Airport” is featherlight. Final track”Cortex Delta” returns to the infected dub of the opener.

PINTAIL – Impulses (no label)
I have no details about Pintail except that he/she/they/it is/are based in Brighton. Impulses is a nine track EP consisting of nine short pieces imaginatively entitled Impulses I-IX. This is instrumental music that is by turns both melodic and abstract, sometimes lush, sometimes skeletal. Influences mentioned include Murcof and Steve Reich – the former is very apparent. Even so, this is a compelling eighteen minutes that ebbs and flows with a delicate piano figure here, and a discordant passage there. It’s strong on atmosphere and restlessly flits from idea to idea.

PUNTO THE FEEF - Spellbound / Trips to Nothing (no label)
Punto the Feef are a Glasgow guitar band who seem torn between being the next Stone Roses and a headtrip psychedelic rock group. “Spellbound” is built on a heady riff that is pure John Squire, but has a good punch to it. “Trips to Nothing”, on the other hand, is a multi-faceted piece that has an almost prog-rock structure, heading back and forth between impish bounce, bucolic folk and acid freak-out over its seven minutes. The sound lacks a bit of punch which is a shame, but they definitely show a lot of promise and, crucially, don’t sound much like anyone else out there at the moment.

More reviews to come soon including God’s Gift, Gate, City of Satellites, En Plein Air, Ian Hawgood, Sleep Whale, Karlheinz Essl and Matthew Ostroski, Vlor and Wes Willenbring.

EP: STRAY GHOST – Each Paradise is a Lost Paradise (Hidden Shoal 2009)

Anthony Saggers aka Stray Ghost has been prolifically building up a fair profile with four releases in around eighteen months. The latest is a download-only mini LP featuring three tracks based around melancholy organ loops and drones.

This is calm, reflective music, rich in texture. Opener “La Belle Semaine” builds and fades, before resuscitating with a lightly touched sequencer pattern. The ghosts of sampled voices lead into the haunting and ethereal chimes of “Au Revoir à la Belle Semaine” whilst the closing “Réminiscences Et Rêves De Beauté” gradually decays into nothingness as Saggers tips a nod to William Basinski’s Disintegration Tapes series.

While there is nothing startlingly new here, Each Paradise is a Lost Paradise holds the attention. It also seems the least troubled and dark of the four Stray Ghost releases to date.

Tracks
1 La Belle Semaine 10:42
2 Au Revoir à la Belle Semaine 5:11
3 Réminiscences Et Rêves De Beauté 10:28

Websites
music.hiddenshoal.com
www.myspace.com/strayghost