Album: REMEMBER REMEMBER – Remember Remember (Rock Action ROCKACT42 2008)

Rubber shark? Check. Sellotape dispenser? Check. Wind-up monkey? Check. Bubblewrap? Check. As far as a list of instruments used on a recording is concerned, there can be few stranger than the credits on the debut album by Graeme Ronald, aka Remember Remember.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who’s seen him live. Tunes are built up using self-samples – layering loop upon loop to give a big and complex sound. Often they begin with the click of a lighter or the clack of a pair of scissors and work up from there. It’s a methodology fraught with danger. A conventional musician can play a bum note and move on, but a bum note sampled keeps returning to haunt you. When it all goes according to plan, it can sound wonderful, but when it doesn’t…

Of course, in the studio, none of this matters. Mistakes can be eradicated, and the finished article probably sounds much more like it was intended to, than it often does live.

Remember Remember runs like a ten track suite, with each of the tunes seamlessly morphing into the next. At least, it does for the most part. The opening piano piece sets the scene but ends clunkily, and in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t seem particularly necessary. It’s the only real reservation about the record. From that point on, the music ebbs and flows, twists and turns, builds and falls with a series of beguiling melodies. Sometimes the tunes are mellow and low key; on other occasions (such as “Imagining Things (i)”), they swell up into a grand sound that encompasses live drums and violin. There’s none of the post-rock quiet/loud cliché, though – the music is much more subtle than that.

Some of the tracks move into serialist territory, with tight repetition a la Philip Glass or Michael Nyman, but others are looser. “Genie” comes across like Can attempting to provide a soundtrack to Trumpton. The last four tracks are probably the best. By this point, it feels like the music is flying on its own. It’s an excellent debut. Now he just needs to sort out the live shows.

Tracks
1 And The Demon Said… (1:19)
2 The Dancing (5:11)
3 Genie (For Amaya) (7:01)
4 Fountain (4:17)
5 Mountain (4:12)
6 The Swimming (5:15)
7 How Did You End Up Like This? (5:33)
8 Imagining Things (i) (5:22)
9 Imagining Things (ii) (5:57)
10 Up In A Blue Light (9:10)

Websites
www.rock-action.co.uk
www.myspace.com/rememberremember

Gig: ERRORS / REMEMBERREMEMBER (Oran Mor, Glasgow, 10/10/08)

Cramming three bands into two and a half hours meant that by the time I arrived just half an hour after the doors opened, the first band had already been and gone. It’s a regular feature these days, particularly at weekends, where venues put on a gig followed by a club night – two lots of admission instead of one, so more money for them. But it makes the evening feel rushed, like you’re just a bean being processed and spat out.

RememberRemember I did see. I’ve reviewed him/them before. The music is based around looped samples, gradually building a piece from scratch, with innovative use of plastic toys and other ephemera. The problem with this method, though, is that if the samples don’t gel, it’s easy to end up with a total mess. It’s music making without the aid of a safety net, and unfortunately the first two tunes went seriously awry, degenerating into directionless, formless gunk. The second half, aided by a trio of supporting players on violin, sax and drums, was far more successful. With more energy, and less spiralling around in ever decreasing circles, these pieces had a pleasingly epic quality. It would be easy to iron out the glitches by using pre-prepared samples on a laptop, so full credit to Graeme for going down the more uncertain route. Although there is more that can go wrong, it means that there is a level of improvisation and uniqueness to each performance that keeps things, even the failures, consistently interesting.

The first time I saw Errors back in 2004, they seemed to spend more time patching their equipment together with brown paper and sealing wax than they did playing. Last year when they supported Underworld they’d developed into a sleek and mean disco machine, effortlessly blending experimental indie rock with technoid dance grooves. The sound tonight was considerably beefed up, which was a bit of a mixed blessing. Several tracks seemed to trade character and swing for power, leaving a bombastic indie rock that was as empty as it was slick. When they hit the mark, though, which they did with increasingly frequency as the set progressed, the groove came back. The most successful tracks had a punk-funk feel or a four-to-the-floor rhythm aimed squarely at the feet. Towards the end, they were letting fly with some truly exhilarating stuff that more than made up for some of the more lumpen rock they’d begun with. The dance-rock template may be something that the band would like to branch out from, but it remains their real strength.

Gig: Galchen / RememberRemember/ Konx-Om-Pax (Mono, Glasgow, 29/1/08)

Many years ago, when I first saw Autechre at Manchester’s Roadhouse (it must have been around 1995), they insisted that all the stage lights be turned off when they came on. The result was two barely discernable figures in the gloom – the ultimate in invisibility on stage. Or so I thought. Sound and animation artist Konx-Om-Pax took that one stage further by crouching on the floor in the dark, behind most of the equipment, peering at his laptop. Only the occasional flash of movement gave away his position. To be honest, it was no less dull, in a visual way, than the recent Murcof show where Fernando Corona stood in full view staring at his Apple. At times Konx-Om-Pax’s music was extraordinary. One track resembled the sound of dying pinball machines blitzed in a hail of white noise: another a beautiful, looped prepared piano melody gradually attacked by a plague of viruses. It was difficult listening at times, but totally absorbing. The most bizarre track of all was the final one – a completely straight and funky slice of minimal techno that seemed to beam in from another set altogether.

RememberRemember at least tried to present something visually, but it was totally shambolic. An old film of Scots legend Tom Weir out and about in the islands was projected on the back wall, but was obscured for the most part by Graeme’s shadow. And as with the last time I saw him, he seemed to be fighting a losing battle with his equipment for a lot of the set. This reached an embarrassing nadir during the third track. A looped xylophone sample tinkled away while he scrabbled around looking for something, before giving up and apologising. Each tune seemed to take an age to get going, and there was usually a false start as something, somewhere was not plugged in or switched on. All this may make the set seem like an exercise in endurance, but there were rich rewards for the patient listener. The pieces have a naïve, playful charm, but when they get going, with layers of guitar, bass, handclaps and various toys, stationery objects etc, they develop into something immensely powerful and fulfilling. The addition of saxophone and melodica on two of the four pieces helped give them a warm breadth.

Galchen make furious, cinematic instrumental rock of a broadly similar stripe to 65daysofstatic. It can be both grindingly brutal, and gloriously blissful – often within the same song. Tonight seemed a little patchy. The snare drum was mixed way too loud and all but drowned out everything else at times. And the general sound tended to descend into a sonic soup during the loud passages. The quieter stuff worked better. There seemed some sort of tension between members on stage, too, which led to an oddly strained atmosphere. Thirty minutes and they were done. Galchen are an exciting band, but tonight was a bit of an off night for them. Everyone has ‘em.