Fopp goes under

Music and DVD retail chain Fopp went into administration yesterday (June 29th), and all stores were closed with immediate effect. The full story is at the BBC website here.

Although the usual story of downloads affecting CD sales was reeled out, it seems that Fopp’s main problem was bone-headed management at the highest level. In a retail sector where everyone else was tightening their belts, the company was proceeding on a huge expansion programme. Just five years ago there were fewer than a dozen stores throughout the UK – nearly all in Scotland. By yesterday the figure had reached 105. When the Music Zone chain went bust six months ago, Fopp bought out all the stores. In Glasgow this included the newly opened store in the old Tower Records premises on Argyll Street, which was immediately closed. It was open for such a short time, that I never even went inside – how much money was wasted there?. The financial strain seems to have been too much, and the company simply ran out of cash.

Most of the existing stores continued to be busy and make a profit, but the company was spending money it didn’t have, and when it couldn’t get any more credit, the inevitable occurred. I feel for the staff who have not only lost their jobs, but have been told that they will not get paid for June. It is just another example of incompetent corporate management by people who seem to think that borrowing more and more money to pay existing debts is a viable way to run a business. It’s all fine and dandy until someone says “no more”. No doubt the people who created the mess will have protected their own assets before the crunch came, and will hardly be lining up at the nearest soup kitchen. For their 800 victims things will be a little tougher.

Song of the Day: SHANNON – Let The Music Play (1983)

In the mid eighties, I would sometimes enliven a dead Saturday afternoon by going to the Queensmere Centre in Slough to watch the breakdancers and boddy poppers. There was usually a healthy crew there with their customised ghetto blasters, each a little smaller than an aircraft carrier. It was there that I first heard this track, but I had no idea what it was or who it was by. It stayed with me, though, and a decade later I heard it again at the Electric Chair night in Manchester (when it was at the Roadhouse). This time I had brains enough to ask somebody what it was.

Shannon is Brenda Shannon Greene from Brooklyn. The brains behind the track, though, was co-producer and co-writer Chris Barbosa. “Let The Music Play” was a fairly groundbreaking record when it came out. It fused the underground electro sounds associated with the likes of Cybotron and Hashim with a disco sensibilty, and a cracking song, and helped to lay the foundations for a whole heap of modern dance styles. It was also one of the first dance records to cross over to a mainstream audience, supposedly selling a million copies in the process. That aside, it’s simply a great record to dance to. It exudes joy, and still sounds fresh nearly a quarter of a century on.

Song of the Day: CARLA BOZULICH – Evangelista I (2006)

Carla Bozulich was the first non-Canadian act to sign to Montreal’s Constellation records, and the first with a substantial track record behind her. Her debut album for the label, Evangelista, involved many of the Hotel2Tango studio crew, so sounded right at home among the other acts on the imprint. Evangelista is an intense record. There are moments of quiet intensity, and moments of loud intensity, but the tension is always there. It’s not the easiest listen. The music is not overly intellectual or difficult, just very raw and harrowing.

“Evangelista 1″ is the first of two versions on the title track, and kicks of the record. It is a nine minute primal howl. There is a sample of a 1936 sermon by an old-style fire and brimstone minister called Elder Otis Jones, and the track plays like a fiery Baptist tract. Instead of reaching out, the fire is turned inward, and the song comes across as a barely sane tract of disgust, fear and self-loathing. Bozulich has a remarkable voice – it’s an instrument of immense power that sounds a little like a cross between Kristin Hersh and Patti Smith. She doesn’t sing in any conventional sense on “Evangelista 1″, but declaims the song as if she’s channelling the words rather than initiating them. The backing music is a mass of discordant strings and electronic loops. The whole thing is mesmerising, like hearing every dark thought and emotion being exorcised during ten minutes of terror. When I saw her perform the song live, the petite figure of Bozulich seemed demonically possessed by it. It was a draining and bruising experience just watching.

The album closes with “Evangelista 2″ which couldn’t be more of a contrast. The second version is quiet and calm – almost serene. The only musical accompaniment is Efrim Menuck’s gentle tremelo guitar strumming. Nothing else on the record is quite as punishing as its lead track, but the other seven songs are all strong, highly emotional pieces. A new LP is due out this autumn.

Album: PAN SONIC Katodivaihe / Cathodephase (Blast First Petite 2007)

Finnish electro-minimalist duo Pan Sonic’s last work was the four CD, four hour Kesto box released three years ago. It was a mightily impressive work, but at least two of the CDs showed a hitherto unexplored warm, almost dreamy side to the pair’s music. Anyone thinking that Mika Vainio and Ilpo Vaisanen were mellowing out may be in for a jolt.

Katodivaihe / Cathodephase (all of the titles on the album are in Finnish and English, but I’ll just use the latter) contains some of the most extreme music Pan Sonic have recorded. The opening track “Current 1″, though, is almost lovely. It features a guest spot by cellist Hildur Gudnadottir, whose instrument is pushed centre stage. The track has a dark menacing undercurrent, but also a strangely comforting melancholy about it. “Transmission” follows, a low-tempo electro piece punctuated by huge pulses of bass, that shake the speakers at even relatively low volumes. This is dark and nasty music. Just how many amps did the pair blow up in its recording? There are a couple of short, fairly abstract pieces, before “Laptev Sea” proceeds into familiar Pan Sonic territory. It gently throbs along underpinned by a rhythm of light beats and clicks. It doesn’t sound that far removed from ambient Aphex Twin, if stripped down.

The things that characterise Pan Sonic’s ouevre more than anything are the use of static hum, and manipulated electric frequencies. The crackle, spit and drone of electricity is quiet, but masks immense energy. This is reflected in the extreme range of volume that the duo use. They are not afraid to have tracks that have long periods of near silence, punctuated by a near inaudible series of microtones, or sharp slithers of sound. There are also bursts of head splitting noise, and the use of frequencies that are, quite frankly, uncomfortable at any volume. The central quartet of tracks on Cathodephase are beatless. They are largely very quiet, too. “Comparative” reintroduces the cello, but it sounds more like distressed steel. There is something almost scary about the silences, as if they portend something horrifically violent – daring the listener to hike up the volume and take the consequences. Seven minutes into the track, it erupts into chaotic broken feedback, like a malfunctioning, and potentially lethal transformer – a mass of exposed wires and sparks. “Connections” splutters and screeches like an overloaded Geiger Counter, before flying into total abstraction.

The shrill drone that introduces “Haiti” comes as some relief. Underpinned by a subterranean bass pulse, the track is airless and claustrophobic, like being trapped on a stricken submarine. It leads directly into a “Tugboat”, a muscular, hard as nails slice of industrial techno. It’s Pan Sonic rocking out, with sheets of white noise standing in for guitar solos, and enough punch to flatten a building. “Cannoning” is just as brutal – dubstep forged at a steelworks. “Cutter” is as hard as a chainsaw on plate steel. Everything is rounded off nicely by “Current 2″, a version of the opening track bathed in swathes of noise.

Cathodephase is a brutal album. There are moments of tenderness, but these are far outnumbered by some astonishing passages of brute force, and some true head-fuck moments. The middle third is an especially difficult listen, but it makes the pounding final third almost seem like a relief – a long, drawn out release of tension. It’s the duo’s heavy metal album, I guess. It must sound astonishing at high volume. I live in a flat – and I’d very much like to remain here – so it’s not something I’ve attempted.

Album: PIANO MAGIC Part Monster (Green UFOs 2007)

Piano Magic came together in 1996, although they seem to have been around a lot longer. There have been countless shifts in personnel over the years, with guitarist, singer and songwriter Glen Johnson the only constant. In the UK they have remained a cult concern. The nearest they came to the ‘big time’ was during 2001/2 when they were briefly signed with 4AD. Since This Mortal Coil had been a major inspiration, it ought to have been a union of like minds. Instead, the excellent instrumental soundtrack to the film Son De Mar was followed by Writers Without Homes, by far the weakest record in the group’s canon, and a parting of ways.

In the last five years, the band has been with the Spanish label Green UFOs, and has kept a low profile in Britain whilst cultivating a healthy fanbase across much of the rest of Europe. Piano Magic’s ninth album Part Monster sneaked out with little fanfare this month. But for those of us in on the secret of this remarkable group, there was a fair degree of excitement.

Piano Magic have never been afraid to explore new avenues, and their back catalogue is eclectic. They fuse guitar based rock with electronic elements. They are often wistful and downbeat, but can soar when the mood takes them. Glen Johnson’s lyrical concerns have always had a vein of nostalgia running through them. But not in a jolly “cor, them were the days” sense. These are lamentations for lost hopes, lost values and lost innocence. But this is no simple yearning for a mythical golden age – anger at the  monstrous ways that this country has dealt with its people in the past is never far from the surface. In a sense, like British Sea Power, Piano Magic could only be an English group. Which is ironic considering that three fifths of the current line-up are French.

Part Monster sees Piano Magic dipping into that well of anger. Fittingly, it is probably their loudest and most ‘rock’ album yet. Opener “The Last Engineer” sets the tone. It is as raw as an open wound, reflecting on the way modern life has cast people adrift, destroying the old certainties, and leaving them lost and alone. The brooding epic that follows is one of the greatest songs the band has ever written. It’s a slow lament called “England’s Always Better (As You’re Pulling Away)”, and features a guest vocal by Simon Rivers who also wrote the cynical, disgusted tract on middle England, “all apologies and queues and bright red people with ludicrous views“. “Incurable”  is epic pop, redolent of the lamented Kitchens Of Distinction, with chiming guitars and a sunny, catchy vocal by Angèle David-Guillou.

“Soldier Song” could be about Iraq, but it could equally be applied to many ill-conceived military adventures down the years. “You fought for your country, you fought for your Queen / Now everyone’s happy, now everyone’s free/ And God help the bastard who says it’s not so / And God help the bastard, for what does he know?“. It’s as understated as a lullaby, but seethes underneath. The spirit of Brotherhood-era New Order is evoked by “The King Cannot Be Found”, a song that pounds along darkly and leads into the instrumental “Great Escapes”, a tune that brings to mind early eighties 4AD band Dif Juz.

The ballad “Cities and Factories” is fairly typical Piano Magic fare, enlivened by a beautful guitar coda. The album’s only misfire is “Halfway Through”, which seems like a Smiths parody. Johnson even adopts some Morrissey-isms in his vocal, and the lyrics are just as self-involved. A fantastic trumpet solo (couldn’t imagine Mozzer having one of those) just about rescues the track. The record comes to a glorious climax with “Saints Preserve Us”, a genuinely exciting, soaring, epic monster of a track, drenched in feedback, foreboding and dripping disgust. Something to blow the roof off with when they play it live. The album’s title track is a quiet acoustic vignette that brings proceedings to a close in a more than satisfying manner. Apart from a wee wobble in the middle, Part Monster is almost flawless. It may be the group’s least experimental album to date, but it is extremely strong in composition and arrangement. I would claim that it could be the album to open up a whole new audience for Piano Magic, but they’ve been around the block a few times and aren’t a shiny new thing, and so won’t even get considered for airplay or press coverage. It’s a shame, but this is a fickle nation. It’s one that needs groups like this to prick its bloated conceits, though.

Some of the best albums of the last 6 months

Here are my 20 favourite albums from the first six months of the year. There’s been a lot of strong releases so far in 2007.

65 DAYS OF STATIC THE DESTRUCTION OF SMALL IDEAS MONOTREME
AMON TOBIN THE FOLEY ROOM NINJA TUNE
BJORK VOLTA ONE LITTLE INDIAN
BLACK DOG BOOK OF DOGMA SOMA
DEXTRO CONSEQUENCE MUSIC GRONLAND
DO MAKE SAY THINK YOU, YOU’RE A HISTORY IN RUST CONSTELLATION
EL-P I’LL SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD DEFINITIVE JUX
EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE BELLA UNION
FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO CENDRE TOUCH
HAUSCHKA ROOM TO EXPAND 130701
MIRA CALIX EYES SET AGAINST THE SUN WARP
NATIONAL BOXER BEGGARS BANQUET
PAN SONIC CATHODE PHASE BLAST FIRST PETITE
PIANO MAGIC PART MONSTER GREEN UFOS
PORT-ROYAL AFRAID TO DANCE RESONANT
RICHARD THOMPSON SWEET WARRIOR PROPER
ROTHKO ELEVEN STAGES OF INTERVENTION BIP HOP
SHINING GRINDSTONE RUNE GRAMMOFON
STARS OF THE LID AND THE REFINEMENT OF THEIR DECLINE KRANKY
YELLOW SIX PAINTED SKY RESONANT