Audio Journal by Patrick O'Donnell : Ned's Atomic Dustbin, 02 Shepherd's Bush Empire, 20.12.2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

This week's blog comes to you from Patrick O'Donnell, with a review from the Ned's Atomic Dustbin concert at the O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire last Saturday.

"Dan Dan the fast drumming man, Alex plays one bass, Mat the other, Rat does the guitar, and Jonn sings". As it was in the beginning so it was on Saturday night at the 02 Shepherd's Bush Empire. The recently restored original line-up of Ned's Atomic Dustbin took to the stage to celebrate their 1991 début album God Fodder.

"Kill... your... television," Jonn spits at a decidedly older, balder and fatter crowd than the song was originally aired to as the band rip into their most famous track and album opener with trademark energy. The crowd responds in kind as the 'Lunatic Magnets' (Ned's Fans' moniker) roll back the years and a surging mosh pit ebbs and flows across the packed venue.

Having your 'crowd pleaser' as your opening track could be bad planning in other circumstances but Ned's stay true to the original listing and a knowing audience loves them for it. They tear into 'Less Than Useful' and 'Selfish' before a typically reticent Jonn pays a customary "cheers" to his adoring fans.

Ned's had in recent years played reunion gigs and even recorded new tracks with a new guitarist and second bassist but the return of Rat and Mat makes the occasion even more special. Mat was always the voice of the band and the most energetic and was clearly enjoying reliving happy days. The crowd seems to jump with him as fan favourite 'Grey Cell Green' kicks in and when he tells the audience he didn't "expect to be playing these songs at forty" a nostalgic note hovers in the air as the fans and band unite in a sense of history and belonging.

Next up is 'Cut Up', followed by 'Throwing Things' (surprisingly no one does) and 'Capital Letters'. The youngest of the late Eighties / early Nineties trio of 'Stourbridge Scene' grebo bands, Ned's always led contemporaries The Wonder Stuff and Pop Will Eat Itself in the t-shirt stakes and the Lunatic Magnets had squeezed into their faded favourites for the occasion. And by this point in proceedings, t-shirt after t-shirt moves through the air as IT consultants re-learn how to crowd-surf.

The excitement peaks with best song of the evening, 'Happy'. Aptly named and expertly executed.
Ned's finish off with 'Your Complex', 'Nothing Like', 'Until You Find Out', 'You' and 'What Gives My Son?' before heading off the stage with a big "thank you" from Jonn. The album track-list blitzed through in 35 minutes flat. Inevitable chants of "you fat bastard" ring out (maybe invoked by Les "Carter USM" Carter's support slot) as the crowd tries to coax the Fantastic Five back.

They duly oblige and Mat takes to the mic again, explaining that we are to be treated to "some other songs that would have been toured with God Fodder, hope you enjoy them". No fear. This is like a 20-year sober heroin addict enjoying another hit.

'Terminally Groovy' is first and gloriously energetically out of the blocks, followed by other B-sides and associated tracks 'Aim', 'Plug Me In', 'Bite', 'Flexible Head', 'Faceless' and 'Trust', and neither the band nor crowd relents. Which is why it seems poignant as they slow things down to end with usual curtain-closer 'Titch'. It gives the band and their fans a moment to reflect on what just happened and revel in a mutual respect.

Having been to see The Wonder Stuff flawlessly air their 1989 album HUP to 4,000 fans at the 02 Birmingham Academy on Thursday, followed by this early Christmas present from Ned's, it's easy to see why the bands from that rich pre-Brit Pop era are cashing in on the reunion circuit. There is a deeply-held affection for bands that give their all, have personality and are an antidote to the waves of manufactured and conformist rubbish that has followed.

In a disposable age when bands seem to come and go too easily, today's young Turks could do worse than take a look at Ned's, one of the Nineties' most underrated bands, who, thanks to years of touring and learning their craft, are, twenty years later able to enjoy a sold-out gig with adoring fans. Somehow I doubt Scouting For Girls will find themselves in the same position. Kill your television? I would gladly if I could go to gigs like this every night of the week.

Setlist
Kill Your Television
Less Than Useful
Selfish
Grey Cell Green
Cut Up
Throwing Things
Capital Letters
Happy
Your Complex
Nothing Like
Until You Find Out
You
What Gives My Son?
---------
Terminally Groovy
Aim
Plug Me In
Bite
Flexible Head
Faceless
Trust
Titch

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 21/12/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

I have two other music-related projects aside from this here blog, one of which – my Nominal Musics label – sits in a state of permanent hiatus. The other, Documentary Evidence, my unofficial Mute Records tribute site just sit there, waiting for me to get around to turning some much-needed attention toward it.

This post will, eventually be about the Depeche Mode concert I attended at the O2 Arena this Wednesday; but before we get there I'm going to spend a bit of time telling you about Documentary Evidence.



Documentary Evidence grew out of a simple passion, that passion being for collecting records; specifically, those releases on a label called Mute Records. Following a particular artist, or genre, is fairly commonplace; following an entire record label's output is the exclusive reserve of a particular niche of train-spotting record collectors, yours truly included.

Mute Records was started by Daniel Miller in the late 1970s, quickly establishing itself in the post-punk anti-corporate, independent musical landscape as the place to go to get your fix of leftfield electronic pop and more challenging, noisy music. Miller himself released several records in the early days of Mute, including the very first release as electro-punks The Normal with the JG Ballard-referencing 7” single of 'Warm Leatherette' and 'T.V.O.D' (see my review here); he also hinted at one of his ambitions by recording quirky synth pop as Silicon Teens, a fake group consisting of Miller and an array of analogue synths covering Fifties rock n' roll numbers.



Mute's future was assured when Miller signed Depeche Mode to the nascent label, securing Miller's first hits with their second and third singles, 'New Life' and 'Just Can't Get Enough'. No sooner had Mute established itself than Depeche Mode's core songwriter, Vince Clarke, quit the band just as they were gearing up for a lucrative US tour. Just as things looked to turn sour for Miller, Clarke formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet and, after a few abortive side projects, Erasure with Andy Bell, while Depeche Mode continued to develop a dedicated fan base in the UK and abroad, and Mute went from strength to strength.

The success of bands like Depeche Mode and Erasure allowed Miller to recycle the label's profits into developing artists from other, more esoteric areas, such as Nick Cave – a cult figure who has only comparatively recently has gained more universal recognition – or Laibach, or Nitzer Ebb and countless other examples of bands operating just underneath the collective consciousness of the charts (see here for a less-than-complete list). The label reached a new level of success with Moby, whose Play was arguably the biggest success the label had scored (with the exception of Depeche Mode's albums), quickly leading to Miller's label getting snapped up by EMI and ending that particular stage of one of the UK's longest-running indie labels.



I had a resolutely pop music upbringing; the first band I really, really liked was Erasure. I've said it before, and I'll say it again that I still think the duo of Vince and Andy are still the best synth pop duo there has ever been, knocking spots off those irksome Pet Shop Boys, but I'm biased. Less logically, I also have Erasure entirely to thank for getting me into the wider Mute roster, and sub-pop music generally.

I bought my first 12” single, 'Chorus' by Erasure in the summer of 1991, from Woolworth's in Stratford-upon-Avon. As I took the black vinyl disc from its sleeve, a square pamphlet fell out. That pamphlet was titled 'Documentary Evidence' and something about it fascinated me; it was basically a brief biography of Mute Records by The Wire's Chris Bohn (writing as Biba Kopf) with a full list of all the releases that the label had put out up to that point. With the exception of Depeche Mode, who up to then I didn't really like, and Renegade Soundwave I hadn't heard of any of the bands listed in the booklet; I had no idea at all that music was made that didn't appear in the charts; I thought I must have just missed them or not taken any notice.



So from that point on I began avidly collecting releases from Mute, both new and old, and I'd say conservatively that 75% of my entire record collection is made up of bands and artists connected to the label. It got me into punk (both US and UK), noise, techno and rock and has cost me an absolute fortune over the years. So it was in 2003 that I decided to set up a website specifically as a tribute to the label, and I decided to call it Documentary Evidence.

Documentary Evidence contains biographies of Mute's artists, reviews of releases and live performances and occasional interviews with artists or people connected to the label, including Barry Adamson, ex Human League / Heaven 17 member and Vince Clarke collaborator Martyn Ware and Wire / Githead front man Colin Newman. I've barely touched it in the last eighteen months, but that will change in 2010 with a new interview and plenty of new reviews and biographies.



To kick things off I've added a review of the Depeche Mode concert at the O2 Arena last Wednesday, which if I remember correctly was what I said the point of this blog post actually was. You can find it here. Feel free to look around the rest of the Documentary Evidence site.

Next week's blog will be written by my good friend Neil Cullimore. Audio Journal by Neil Cullimore will feature a review of Ned's Atomic Dustbin's gig at the O2 in Shepherd's Bush as well as an interview with Jonn from the band. I'll return with more musical ramblings in 2010, as well as news of a new and totally gratis Nominal Musics release.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : A Not So Silent Night Review

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

Now that we are some way along on the runway to Christmas, seasonal songs have begun to pervade the airwaves in ever greater quantity; in our house it's no different. Our two favourite albums for the Christmas season are Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You and a compilation album given away years ago with Mojo magazine called Blue Christmas. The former is dominated by the joyously murky sound of the youthful Sixties pop groups that Spector produced, while the latter consists of a bunch of miserable songs by artists prone to introspection and cynicism. One such artist is Rufus Wainwright, whose 'Spotlight On Christmas' from an album recorded with his wider family is a folksy number with lots of festive tinkly bells and whatnot.



The Wainwright-McGarrigle clan, a family so talented they really shouldn't be allowed to have children just so other people can have a chance, descended upon the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday for an event called A Not So Silent Night, a charity event for matriarch Kate McGarrigle's cancer foundation. This on-stage family get-together usually takes place at New York's Carnegie Hall, and this is the first time they've taken the festive jamboree off Manhattan Island and all the way to London. They were joined by a cast that included Boy George, various members of the Thompson family, including Linda Thompson and various grandsons and daughters, family friend Ed Harcourt, Elbow's Guy Garvey and Jenni Muldaur (also from a famous musical family – enough already).

Somewhat needlessly, the event was kicked off by Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, which I could have done without, though they did make amusing reference to the apparent complexity of the family affair about to take to the stage. In essence, here's the score (as I understand it): Kate McGarrigle and Anna McGarrigle are sisters who have recorded many albums of American folk music over several decades; Kate married Loudon Wainwright III and produced two children, Martha and Rufus; Loudon's sister Sloan Wainwright is also a singer; Loudon worked with and became good friends with Fairport Convention guitarist Richard Thompson, who, with ex wife Linda produced a number of offspring (including Teddy Thompson, absent from tonight's proceedings), all of whom are talented musicians as evidenced at A Not So Silent Night. One can imagine that the stage performance is simply a public version of the family and extended-family get togethers this esteemed bunch of individuals would have had each Christmas. Imagine the impromptu sing-alongs that might occur at that party.

Highlights were many, and often from the most unexpected quarters. Ed Harcourt, for example, came a close second to Rufus as most impressive male vocalist here. His duet with Martha on The Pogues's Christmas hit 'A Fairytale Of New York' was probably the finest, most louche cover of the song I've ever heard, with both singers acting like the seasonal drunks in the song; later, his version of 'Merry Christmas Baby' descended into jazz nihilism and was arguably the most impassioned performance of the entire night. Imagine a more credible Jamie Cullum to the power of ten and you'd get somewhere close.



Far from being an uplifting pre-Christmas spectacle, the evening had a maudlin tone only leavened by more uplifting performances such as Boy George's take on 'White Christmas', here rendered as a cod-reggae song; working with Antony Heggarty has clearly emboldened the troubled former Culture Club vocalist, his voice now able to resonate with a new, treacly depth. His duet with Rufus on 'What Are You Doing New Year's Eve' was as camp as you'd expect from these two individuals combined, but again provided one of the most joyous sections of the show. Guy Garvey leading off all the singers in a version of the Lennon / Ono staple 'Happy Xmas (War Is Over)' was another, only bettered by Sloan Wainwright belting out a gutsy, bluesy take on Queen's 'Thank God It's Christmas'. Earlier in the show, two performances from members of the Thompson clan – the Chuck Berry song 'Run Run Rudolph' by Thompson grandson Zac Hobbs and another by Kami Thompson (who Rufus described somewhat unfairly as a 'Dickensian slut') – served as rock 'n roll interludes, both displaying a brilliant rawness that the Royal Albert Hall didn't seem to know how to respond to.

In spite of the stellar talents on stage, it was clear from the audience reaction that the main draws here were Rufus and Martha. Mic-less performances from the former have become standard feature of his concerts, and here he decided to test how good the Royal Albert Hall was for acoustics with 'Minuit Chrétien', which was as breathtaking as ever. His duet with partner Jorn Weisbrodt on 'Silent Night' – two thirds of which was actually in German, so we should perhaps more appropriately label it 'Stille Nacht' – closed out the first half of the show, Jorn's lumpen tone somehow perfectly complemented by his partner's range. Martha, who became a mother just three weeks ago seemed to have adopted a maternal air in the proceedings, shepherding her tiny mother around with evident concern. The song 'Mary Had A Baby' was dedicated to the son she delivered less than a month before with the band's bassist Brad Albetta. Consequently, the quartet performance of the Wainwright siblings, their mother and Brad on bass on 'In The Bleak Midwinter' was appropriately sweet in a 'let's have a sing along round the piano' post-Christmas-lunch fashion, in spite of just how damn depressing that song is.

Rufus's début opera, Prima Donna, whose female lead Janice Kelly performed a duet with Rufus at A Not So Silent Night arrives on UK shores in April 2010 at the Sadlers Wells Theatre in Islington – tickets can be bought from here.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 07/12/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure by San Francisco electronica purveyors Matmos was, upon its release, a new yardstick in the electronica genre. Along with Matthew Herbert with the sounds he culled from his kitchen, Matmos took the notion of sampling to a new level. In the not-too-distant past sampling was merely the art of stealing a section from a song or snatching movie dialogue and then re-contextualising those snatches of sound together in another song. With A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure, Matmos took the bulk of their samples from a non-traditional, and potentially macabre, area – operating theatres and cosmetic surgeries – and then turned those sounds into rhythms over which other, more derivative electronic passages were laid.

The concept makes for queasy listening if you imagine the kinds of things they feasibly could have captured (there was some talk of a bone saw being recorded, as well as a liposuction procedure); on record it's mercifully impossible to deduce the sources of most of the sounds within the palette of the clattering electronica beats and skittish percussion that has informed this genre of music since Autechre, Aphex Twin and all those other early Warp acts deprogrammed their drum machines in the early 1990s. That and the prevalence of detailed 'real life' surgical programmes on TV these days somewhat inures you to Matmos's ideas. That said, if you ignore the fabled source of some of the sounds, A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure remains as good an introduction to leftfield electronica as there is.

Matmos subsequently collaborated with Björk, an artist who has done more than most to bring the outer reaches of music into her and her fans' orbit. For those who believe the Björk phenomenon started with oh-so-irritating 'It's Oh So Quiet' and ended with a punch up in an airport, Medúlla will have come and gone without a trace. It is an album where vocals, or more precisely vocal sounds, achieve a prominence thanks to much sampling of Björk's voice and the conversion of those sounds into beats and otherworldly percussion. It's a genuinely inventive album, highlighting just how comfortable Björk is taking her music way out there, but it can occasionally become cloying and over-long. If you can't stand Björk's unique singing, this is not an album for you.

Over-long is a charge that could never be levied at Alistair Crosbie's one-track The Last Days Of Summer, which even at twelve minutes is far, far too brief. Crosbie self-releases music on his own Lefthand Pressings label, and in the case of The Last Days Of Summer this was released as a 3” CD-R in a handmade sleeve back in the summer of this year. The track is quite honestly one of the most serenely beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. Constructed entirely of heavily-processed layers of guitars recalling Robert Fripp's Soundscapes series or Stars Of The Lid, the track approaches a kind of icy classicism whilst maintaining an air of ethereal stasis. Anyone interested in hearing how guitars can be made to sound is urged to get their ears around this release. Copies can be obtained from Alistair's blog.

In 2002 my mothballed Nominal Musics label released – in similar lo-fi style – Songs From The Shelley, the complete recorded output of Fungal Noise, a band of school-friends centred around Haywards Heath and the song writing axis of vocalist Patrick 'Pod' O'Donnell and guitarist Neil Cullimore. Their songs had a youthful exuberance informed by bands from the Stourbridge scene like The Wonderstuff and Ned's Atomic Dustbin and often the archness of Blur. Fungal Noise recorded several strong demos between 1993 and 1996 and I thought their songs were really good, blessed with the sorts of spiky guitars and wry, cynical and often highly abstract lyrics that only a bunch of hip school kids could have conceived of. I came across the tracks on my hard drive last week, and they haven't lost any of their adolescent kick. Nominal Musics is on the back-burner until 2010, but you can email me at info at nominalmusics dot co dot uk for details on how to get a copy – go here for a comprehensive biography of the band and more information on Songs From The Shelley. To find out more about the Nominal Musics project, point yourself here.



Interview with Simon Nelson (SixtyFiveMiles)

Last week I caught up with Simon Nelson, whose band SixtyFiveMiles released their début mini-album Finnish Tango via Cherry Red earlier this year. Check out their MySpace and my review of the mini-album.

MJASmith : So why the name SixtyFiveMiles?

Simon Nelson : It's the distance between Elton in Cambridgeshire and Atherstone in Warwickshire. I live in Elton, and the other guys live in Atherstone. We rehearse there too.

MJAS : What's a Finnish Tango?

SN : I've travelled regularly to Helsinki in the last three years. Between work commitments I ended up writing the lyrics to a few of the tunes. I was also very much inspired by the ballroom dancing clubs in the city where women ask men to dance on Tuesday evenings – if you dance three times you have to wed.

MJAS : How did SixtyFiveMiles come about?

SN : Ash Woodward, who plays guitar, and Neil Gordon, who plays bass, have been in bands for years – I joined them in May 2008. We got to know Ryan Vann, who plays drums, through the musical grapevine in the West Midlands.

MJAS : Who do you see as your biggest influences?

SN : My personal influences include The Byrds, The Who, The Beatles, Dylan, Television, The Undertones, The Pistols, The Waterboys, The Las – your usual guitary stuff basically.

MJAS : How did you come to release Finnish Tango through Cherry Red?

SN : Cherry Red approached us in June – they also they put out The Best Of The Milltown Brothers [Simon was the guitarist and song writer in the band] but I also feel proud to be associated with a venerable British indie like this.

MJAS : Where can fans see you live?

SN : We've got gigs coming up at the Derby Arms in Colne (Lancashire) on 12th December, the Dublin Castle in Camden on 21st January, and the Kasbah in Coventry on 22nd January.

MJAS : How do your songs tend to come about?

SN : I tend to write songs on the acoustic guitar before taking them to the band for orchestration. I pick up a lot of my lyrical ideas from travel experiences and personal relationship dramas.

MJAS : What's next for the band?

SN : We are aiming to release a three-track EP in the New Year. We've just shot a video to support this.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 30/11/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

One of the albums I've returned my attention to this week is the seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, which my good friend Martyn gave me a few years ago. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is in many ways the yardstick by which all subsequent alt. country albums should be judged, deploying all manner of effects and sounds ordinarily restricted to the more esoteric reaches of modern electronica and sampleadelica. The opener, 'I Am Trying To Break Your Heart' is a case in point – a fragmented, clipped ballad that hangs together for almost as long as it threatens to fall to pieces (which it ultimately does), whereas 'Heavy Metal Drummer' is a blissfully straight up slice of lo-fi folk rockery. Other strong tracks are 'Kamera', a cheerful Sixties-esque upbeat track, and 'War On War' which has an unexpected middle eight almost entirely comprised of buzzing synth firework chaos.

Further out, Ubuweb delivered an obscure Yoko Ono piece in the last fortnight or so. 'Coughing Piece' was recorded in Tokyo in 1961 and comprises a bed of rich background environmental sounds – traffic noise, subtle feedback, muffled conversation – over which someone (possibly Ono) occasionally delivers various coughing sounds. The overall effect is one of considerable sonic depth but claustrophobic edginess. Over the length of the track the sporadic coughing becomes more pronounced, and as a listener you can't help but feel short of breath yourself; a bit like contagious yawning, I found myself coughing along at one point. At just over thirty minutes in length, it may appear excessive but as a piece of avant garde sonic art it is nevertheless thoroughly absorbing.

Wire's IBTABA – shorthand for It's Beginning To And Back Again, a line from the song 'German Shepherds' – was an album I bought on vinyl from Andy's Records in Colchester on a 1996 summer's day after finishing my first year of degree exams. Of all the band's material from their second coming, IBTABA is perhaps the most comprehensive. The electronics which first emerged on The Ideal Copy and the spindly, frantic 'dugga-dugga-dugga' guitars of 'Drill' – a track which would, when performed live, take on an entirely amorphous dimension and length – are all present, as are some of their most obviously elliptical lyrics. Principally containing new versions of tracks taken from the earlier album A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck, the album was conceived as a way of presenting the tracks in the studio the way they were realised in a live setting. Accordingly, the superior slow-building version of 'Boiling Boy' is probably my favourite track from Wire's entire 1980s / 1990s period, inspiring me to use the title as a moniker for a single electronic pop track I wrote a few years later.

Earlier this year I found myself at Piccadilly Underground station one balmy summer evening after a client event at the Royal Academy. Descending the steps from street level I saw a large poster containing the words 'Pop Will Eat Itself' and my pulse momentarily quickened – was this the return of the Stourbridge band that I listened to almost constantly throughout my A-levels? Sadly not; it was some sort of Art On The Underground installation. My friend Jon got me into PWEI, recording me tapes of the band's samples-and-punk-meets-Brummie-hip-hop albums, sizeable chunks of which I wound up sampling for my own tracks. The swansong album Dos Dedos Mis Amigos ('Two Fingers My Friends'), with its characteristic Designers Republic sleeve, found the band straddling the wry, cynically humorous elements of their sound with more robust, serious material – the single 'Ich Bin Ein Auslander' is an anti-Nazism rant while 'Familus Horribilis' (a play on the Queen's apocryphal 'annus horribilis' speech) casts the Royal Family as a Simpsons-style dysfunctional family. It shouldn't work, but it does. The bleak 'Everything's Cool' remains my anthem of choice for a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world.

Midlands band SixtyFiveMiles released a seven-track mini download album via the usual sites on the frequently pleasing Cherry Red label, one of the UK's most enduring independents. Finnish Tango is a small slither of indie-rock brilliance from the fourpiece band, key tracks being the Foil-esque opener 'Found Out' and the arid negativity of 'Don't Want You Hanging Around' which reaches the same depths of weary dystopia as Interpol, and knocks spots off the NYC band's hopeless copyists – and fellow Midlanders – Editors. 'Butterflies' and 'Manhattan' are, in contrast, upbeat and gleefully optimistic pieces. Definitely a band to check out. An interview with Simon from the band should appear here next week, but in the meantime check out SixtyFiveMiles's tracks on their MySpace.