Yippee!

Yeah, I know it’s no big deal really, but it’s nice to know folk are reading this stuff!

Lots to come including Stray Ghost, God’s Gift and others.

Remix albums are nearly always hit and miss affairs. They are too often inconsistent in mood and quality while at the same time being naggingly repetitive. Having eighteen mixes spread over two CDs with a running time of two hours AND all of the same piece of music seems like total overkill. However, Innova’s double album’s worth of remixes and reimaginings of Terry Riley’s “In C” works largely because the approaches of the (very) mixed bunch enlisted to give it a go vary enormously.

The original played by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble of Michigan closes disc two, and it’s this that provides the clay to be worked by the remixers. “In C” was an unusual composition when it was published in 1964 and is often cited as the first truly minimalist piece. It has no set duration and the score allows a certain amount of improvisation within strictly defined limits. Similarly the instrumentation and number of players is left to the performers to decide. The only fixed constant is the repetition of a C note at eighth intervals throughout the length of the piece, usually played on a piano, giving a metronomic rhythm to proceedings. This is the work’s instantly recognisable motif, and unsurprisingly provides the backbone to most of the remixes.

Some use it more than others. Many twist it, mangle it, slow it down or even turn it into a sequence of notes. Masonic’s “Terrycloth Troposphere” is one of the few reworkings that strips it out altogether, concentrating on the violins. Others do the opposite, and the piano figure is the only recognisable remnant of the GVSU reading left intact.

In the end, In C Remixed works so well because the piece gives such free reign to the remodellers that they can, and do, bring almost anything to the party. Nico Muhly strips away the strings, working with just piano, percussion, bass and clarinet while DJ Spooky adds a tonne of new stuff to create a surprisingly mainstream rock sounding track that has echoes of the Lightning Seeds’ “Pure”. In between, there are abstract versions (Michael Karlsson and Rob Stephenson), glacial electronica versions (Michael Lowenstern), breakbeat versions (Lowenstern again), neo-classical versions (Phil Kline), electro-funk versions (Dennis DeSantis) and even infant samples (Jad Abumrad). My favourite is the dark funk of Jack Dangers’ “In C – Extension” that harks back to the mid nineties golden era of Mo’ Wax. But all the takes are worth hearing, and importantly, the album works as an album rather than an aural equivalent of Groundhog Day.

Tracks
1-1 In C: Semi-Detached – Jack Dangers
1-2 Terrycloth Troposphere – Masonic
1-3 Smooth – Glenn Kotche
1-4 Bints Mix – Michael Lowenstern
1-5 Zinc – Zoe Keating
1-6 Counting In C – Jad Abumrad
1-7 In C with Canonms and Bass – Nico Muhly
1-8 In Sea of C – DJ Spooky
1-9 In Cognito – Phil Kline
1-10 In C – Dennis DeSantis
1-11 Zachary’s Dream – DBR
2-1 In C: Extension – Jack Dangers
2-2 Xenoglossia – Mikael Karlsson & Rob Stephenson
2-3 Foster Grant Mix – Michael Lowenstern
2-4 Is In C In F? – Luke DuBois
2-5 In C – Todd Reynolds
2-6 In C Remix – Kleerup
2-7 Simple Mix – David Lang
2-8 In C – Terry Riley / GVSU New Music Ensemble

Websites
www.in-c-remixed.com
www.newmusicensemble.org
innova.mu

Jon DeRosa’s Aarktica project covers ground where many have trod before, namely the use of guitar, loops, feedback, distortion and tape manipulation to make musical atmospheres and mood pieces. As the name suggests, the dominant aura is one of cold, oceanic isolation. But there is more to In Sea than an hour of Arctic ambience.

DeRosa lost almost all hearing in his right ear ten years ago, so the way he perceives sound is different to most of us. What is obviously a severe handicap for a musician, he has used to create sound slightly differently. Instead of stereo separation, he concentrates on depth and distance. It’s the aural equivalent of watching a movie without left-right panning but in 3D. A good example of this is the opener “I Am (The Ice)” where a guitar figure of graceful serenity dominates the foreground while the background is a tumult of crackle, feedback and distortion.

Some tracks on the album set moods, but don’t really develop anything with it. The best are more adventurous or, paradoxically, more traditionally structured. The deep, submerged drone of “A Plague of Frost” is almost free of rhythm or solidity and the title track, with its homophonic pun of a title, recreates the repetitive minimalism of Terry Riley.

On the other hand, some of the stand out pieces move away completely from the realms of the ambient. The gentle “Young Light” is upbeat, almost childlike. And the two actual songs are real gems. “Hollow Earth Theory” (as in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth) is beautiful and delicate pop. Even better is the closing cover of Danzig’s “I am Demon” which turns Satanic metal into an almost folk-ish appeal for peace and rest. It’s a stunning interpretation.

In Sea has a few generic patches, but enough passages of beauty and distinction to leave it standing head and shoulders above most in what is becoming an ever more crowded field.

Tracks
1 I Am (The Ice)
2 LYMZ
3 Hollow Earth Theory
4 A Plague of Frost
5 In Sea
6 Onward!
7 Young Light
8 Autumnal
9 Corpse Reviver No. 2
10 Instil
11 When We’re Ghosts
12 Am I Demon?

Websites
www.myspace.com/aarktica
www.silbermedia.com/aarktica/

It’s a sobering thought to think that the punk and post-punk boom of the late seventies and the very beginning of the eighties is as far back in history to us now as the end of the second world war was to them. Society was very different. Mass unemployment was a new thing not experienced since before the war, and compared to what it was to become in the Thatcher era and again today, it barely merited the term. Britain still had industries – factories, shipyards, steelworks and mines – and a working class who were working and politicised. Against that, of course, most of the technologies we take for granted today simply didn’t exist. Where music scenes now can be transnational due to the wonders of the internet (this blog being an example – you, dear reader, could be anywhere on earth right now), back then they were necessarily localised. You could be a legend in Kentish Town and a complete unknown in Camberwell.

The latest trip in the post-punk time machine that is the brilliant Messthetics series takes us back to a three year period between 1978 and 1981, and to a few square miles of North London centred on Camden and roughly stretching south to Euston and north to the far off reaches of Hornsey. Central to the story are the short-lived Dining Out label and the art-rock collective The 49 Americans.

Messthetics 107 thus has more of a focus to it than any other volume bar the Manchester Musicians Collective one, and consequently a slightly more homogeneous sound. That is just a relative statement. But there is a definite musical theme running through the tracks. Percussion is rarely limited to a standard rock drum kit playing straight four/four time. Bass lines are fluid and often the main melodic force while guitars scratch away adding atmosphere and colour, or simply dissonance. There are also an unusually high number of folk who would go on to greater fame.

There are 23 tracks on the CD, plus 7 bonus MP3s as well as a fact-stuffed 24 page booklet that includes interviews with a good number of the band members. The quality of the music on hand varies considerably, but there is nothing without some merit. And in the same way, although some of the production is distinctly lo-fi, you’ll have heard much much worse.

The set’s relative superstars are the Disco Zombies, Six Minute War and the aforementioned 49 Americans, a collective whose passing members probably exceeded the 49 mark and included such luminaries as Max Eastley, Steve Beresford and David Toop among their number. The band’s two contributions are both brief – “Newton’s Laws” is exactly what it says it is, a reading of the basic laws of physics against a punk-ish backdrop, while “Should Be More Ideal” features tuba, tin can percussion and off-key piano in a wild piece of experimental pop. Spin-off group the Avocados bring a lovely little pop tune to the party.

The Disco Zombies featured writer Dave Henderson and future boss of Food Records Andy Ross. They were more mainstream than the Americans, dealing in a fairly arty take on power pop. The previously unreleased “Greenland” is especially good, a sensible response to nuclear war (ie bugger off quick to somewhere no one’s going to bother obliterating). My favourite track of all on the CD is Henderson and Ross’s other band Club Tango and their funked-up epic “Performance” – a real find.

Six Minute War started life as North London’s answer to the Minutemen. A trio playing very short, highly political punk songs. By their third EP, represented by “Weathermen” here, they’d stretched out musically way beyond the two minute mark and adopted a more martial post-punk sound.

The set has a few fairly generic lo-fi pop songs (and a band called Steppes who add a distinctly old-school guitar solo to their track. What were they thinking?), but also some fantastically inventive pieces. Patterns’ “The Bishop” is a like a four minute medley of completely unrelated mini-songs. If the voice is naggingly familiar, it’s because it belongs to Nanette Greenblatt. No wiser? Well, Patterns became And The Native Hipsters whose “There Goes Concorde Again” was a Peel favourite (and Festive Fifty number one? Close anyway) and almost a proper hit.

Elsewhere, future members of Alien Sex Fiend, A Certain Ratio, the Alabama 3 and the Afro Celt Sound System all pop up, and the influences of bands like Swell Maps, Joy Division (the brilliantly named Insex do a better job than most JD imitators), Raincoats, Pere Ubu, Scritti and the Pop Group are all apparent, but never in a copycat way.

Another fine set from Hyped to Death. It seems like the well of goodies is nowhere near to running dry yet.

Tracks
1 Stepping Talk – Common Problems
2 Jelly Babies – Roller Skate
3 Avocados – I Never Knew
4 Occult Chemistry – Water
5 Patterns – The Bishop
6 Six Minute War – Weathermen
7 Demon Preacher – Royal Northern
8 Methodishca Tune – Leisuretime
9 Jangletties – Happy All the Time
10 Stolen Power – Little White Lies
11 Flags – Is God Love?
12 Steppes – God’s Got Religion
13 Disco Zombies – Here Come the Buts
14 Insex – Inner Sanction
15 49 Americans – Newton’s Laws
16 Disco Zombies – Greenland
17 Milkmen – Since You Went Away
18 Methodishca Tune – LFD
19 Design for Living – One to the Wise
20 Twilight Zoners – Twister
21 49 Americans – Should Be More Ideal
22 Club Tango – Performance
23 Jelly Babies – Living It Up

Websites
www.hyped2death.com