Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 31/08/2009

I’m currently listening to Narcisstika by Toykult, a band I’ve never heard of before. They briefly started following my tweets this week, so I thought I’d check them out. Reverbnation have been giving their new album away and I thought ‘What the hell? It’s free’. Described as ‘rock electronica’, it reminds me of bands I used to listen to like Cubanate or Parallax who melded heavy guitars with electronics to fantastically bleak effect. Electronic sounds have come a long way since those two bands adventurously deployed them, the effect of Narcisstika being a sequence of edgy, jarring beats, twisted sounds and warped vocals all melded together in a rapidfire blur, as best illustrated by my favourite, ‘Automatic Addict’. Get a copy here.



Gang Of Four are listed as one of Toykult’s influences, and coincidentally I bought their classic Entertainment! album this week. Gang Of Four, along with bands like Wire, The Pop Group, Mekons and others, epitomised the post-punk sound which has had a strong bearing on modern bands like Franz Ferdinand. True UK punk really only lasted a couple of years (it’s a shame no-one bothered to tell Sham 69), rapidly fragmenting into a sound that incorporated other influences. In Gang Of Four’s case that influence was a combination of arty knowing and funk – their lyrics read like a dystopian Nietzschean self-help book while their basslines wobble around like a punk-weaned George Clinton.

The Rumble Strips, whose debut album Girls And Weather failed to live up to expectation and just reinforced the narrow-minded view that they were Dexy’s clones, have returned with a confident new album, Welcome To The Walk Alone. The album is glossily rendered by producer du jour Mark Ronson with plenty of strings and less emphasis on the horn section that made the Dexy’s comparisons so easy. The effect is something I can only describe as how Elvis Costello might have sounded if Phil Spector had ever produced an album for him. For all the strong new material, my favourite song is ‘London’ which I first heard at an NME gig in Northampton a couple of years ago.

I should give a quick plug to Those Brave Airmen, a four-piece band formed by some of my old school friends. Their MySpace page includes four of their songs, which are anthemic heavy guitar tracks with a grungey vibe. My wife, who is something of an expert on such things, says they remind her of a band she used to like called Live.



Finally, I’ve been listening to So Damn Happy, a live album by Loudon Wainwright III which effortlessly blends together emotional, folksy numbers with more humorous tracks. ‘Heaven’ has the audience in stitches, detailing as it does a debauched vision of the afterlife while ‘Primrose Hill’ movingly recounts the depressing story of a homeless London busker. I don’t know how Wainwright can so easily blend together such apparently conflicting themes, but he does and it’s brilliant.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 24/08/2009

‘I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar’ is potentially the most evocative lyric of the Eighties, but the Human League story didn’t start with Dare, the album that ’Don’t You Want Me’ was taken from. Dare was in fact their third and there are few indications on their previous two – Reproduction and Travelogue – that point to the glossy pop brilliance that producer Martyn Rushent would lend to the 1981 album. Travelogue includes a track called ’Gordon’s Gin’ which may inadvertently allude to the lyric above, but aside from a turgid disco track the earlier albums are mostly spiky and experimental.

According to an Amazon review of one of the League’s first two albums, the sound of the early trio of Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh and Philip Oakey was more like fellow Sheffield band Cabaret Voltaire or the Cabs’ counterparts Throbbing Gristle. This is the kind of lazy music journalism that gets my goat. Sure, the sound of the first two albums is more out there, more gritty, but I own every Cabaret Voltaire album and those two Human League albums are really tame in comparison. All the reviewer has done is looked at who else on the nascent electronic scene came from Sheffield and namedropped casually. As for the TG comparisons? Well don’t even get me started.

Rant aside, Reproduction and Travelogue have some good songs. The enduringly minimal early cult electro of the Mantronix-esque ‘Being Boiled’ is included as a bonus track on the former, while the latter includes an electro-glam medley of Glitter’s ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ and Iggy’s ‘Nightclubbing’ which predates and predicts Goldfrapp’s dabbling in the genre circa Black Cherry. Marsh and Ware left to form Heaven 17, Oakey recruited Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall, recorded ’Don’t You Want Me’, defined the synth pop sound of the early Eighties then rapidly went downhill. I interviewed Martyn Ware a few years ago – my interview is here.



Music recommendations often come from unlikely places. In a recent profile, one of my fund manager colleagues was asked what he was currently listening to. He namechecked a band I’d never heard of, Datarock, which piqued my curiosity and so I took a listen. The consistently time-robbing website rcrdlbl.com has a couple of free Datarock songs, one of which is ‘True Stories’ whose lyrics are entirely made up of Talking Heads song names and whose clipped funk vibe authentically evokes the distinctive sound of that band. The Norwegian duo are clearly off their (data) rockers, and may be a huge joke, but I remain intrigued. They remind me of The Hives crossed with Daft Punk, but don’t ask me why.

Although terrible quality, I’ve been listening to a couple of sonically intriguing downloads from the expansive UbuWeb archive. One is the seven-minute track ‘Loop’ by a very early Velvet Underground (although it seems to just be John Cale). In ‘Loop’, which is essentially a pure noise feedback piece that was originally released as a rare flexi-disc, you really hear what attracted Andy Warhol into the band’s orbit originally; it’s rock ’n roll music reduced to its basest elements, justifying the band’s reputation as NY punk’s guiding lights. ‘I’m Sticking With You’ it ain’t.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 17/08/2009

Though often broad-minded, this blog has generally been about that which can be described, however loosely, as music. But what is music? Is music art? Is music played without regular instruments actually something that can be adequately described as ‘music’?

Such are the questions that go through your mind if you should find yourself at Playing The Building, the installation by elastic-limbed ex-Talking Heads front man David Byrne at the Roundhouse in Camden until the end of the month. Playing The Building finds an old pump organ, fully gutted and kitted out with various electric switches in the centre of the historic venue, those switches in turn being connected by coloured wires to various hammers and compressors attached to the beams, hollow pipes and girders of the building. People visiting the installation are allowed to sit at the keyboard of the organ and play the keys, causing drones, clicks and whistles to fill the circular structure. In short, visitors are literally able to play the actual structure of the building.



In 1979 the Roundhouse, after incarnations as a turning shed for locomotives heading in and out of Kings Cross, a gin warehouse, a radical hippy hangout and a theatre, found itself a mecca for punk bands, especially those visiting from the CBGB scene in New York. One such band was Byrne’s Talking Heads, who played the venue that year. Thirty years on, Byrne’s art school tendencies and music have come together in this installation, which was first created at Färgfabriken in Sweden and most recently the Battery Maritime Building in Manhattan.

Time pressures meant that I only stayed for about twenty minutes when I visited last Monday, which effectively precluded me from joining the lengthening queue of people looking to play the Roundhouse. But I did grab a photo and three minutes of audio from two teenagers playing together at the organ. Apologies for the sound quality, but I only had an old Nokia with me. Better clips from earlier incarnations of the installation can be found here.

Download : two teenagers Playing The Building (10/09/2009) / .mp3 / 1.4mb

Incidentally, New York punk lost one of its pioneers last week. Willy Deville, who in the incandescent scene that burst forth in Manhattan’s Lower East Side recorded rockabilly-inspired punk with Mink Deville passed away last week. His ‘Spanish Stroll’ from his 1977 debut Cabretta has been in the eardrums a lot since died, as has his urgent, intense ‘Soul Twist’.

Is it punk? Is it art? Is it music? I found myself listening an album that I know, categorically, only around four people have ever listened to. Jason Gets His Fingers Burned was recorded by my good friend Matt Handfield and myself one evening in 2001 under the name Handfield / Smith. Matt played guitar while I processed his riffs and strumming in real time using various effects.

The result is a 45 minute jam with discernible melodies contrasted with lots of feedback. It was my vision to create something like how I thought the album Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed (this must be New York week, sorry) might sound; having listened to MMM since, I can confirm that it sounds nothing like it, but even though I’m normally extremely self-deprecating about any music I’ve ever made, it still sounds good to me. We planned a follow-up, which in my head was called Grow Beards. Handfield has now actually grown that beard, whereas I’ve stopped making music altogether in favour of listening instead. We coulda been huge in the alt.noise scene.

The second track on JGHFB was a noodling guitar passage that Matt created the same evening and which I then later remixed offline. You can find it by doing the right click / save as thing on the link below.

Download : Handfield / Smith 'Tsm / Dog Soup (Tsm)' / .mp3 / 4.1mb

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 10/08/2009

‘You’ll love this,’ said my father, handing over a CD of At The Foot Of The Mountain by Eighties comeback kids a-ha. I looked at the front cover and thought to myself how odd it was to be receiving music recommendations from my parents. ‘It’s like Depeche Mode,’ he added. Though sceptical I thought I’d listen to it, you know, be charitable, and write here scathingly about how unbelievably naff it was and add it to the blogosphere.

Unfortunately, I can’t do that, much as I’d like to. Okay, so it’s not all to my taste – and some of the songs veer into Take That-style pompous balladry, while Morten Harket’s lyrics are occasionally horribly twee – but my dad was right in places about the Depeche similarities. More specifically, the 1981, Speak & Spell, Vince Clarke-era synth pop sound best evidenced on the track ‘Riding The Crest‘. So overall, I was pleasantly surprised, however, if you want a genuine modern take on the 1981 sound – as deployed on Soft Cell‘s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Human League’s Dare and the aforementioned Mode LP – you are advised to check out Vic Twenty’s excellent Electrostalinist, described by Daniel Miller (producer of Speak & Spell and founder of Mute Records) as ‘too 1981’. And he’d know. (My interview with Adrian Morris of Vic Twenty is available here).

Elsewhere this past week I’ve been listening to In Sides by Orbital, the fourth album from the Hartnoll brothers. I’ve probably listened to it more in the past week than I have since it came out in 1996, as my cumbersome triple vinyl edition has been languishing in a record bag since pretty much the week it was released. Though not as good as their second album (colloquially known as The Brown Album), it’s a definite improvement on their third (Snivilisation), being six tracks of decent but not self-indulgent electronica.

The 7” box this week turned up something that I’d never listened to before, the single ‘Less Of Me’ from Guildford band Fourth Quartet, now sadly defunct. Released in 1998, it’s lo-fi post-rock with a slight tilt toward Radiohead introspection. Highlighting its indie credentials, the single comes in a handmade, stapled sleeve. They went on to record one album, which after finally listening to this after owning it for 11 years, I might attempt to track down.

Also defunct are the band Action Plan, who supported Razorlight and who had the potential to make it big; two singles in and the dream abruptly ended, leaving a few concert appearances and a smattering of recorded songs as their only legacy. After seeing them at The Garage – my favourite London venue by far – I downloaded their online demo, which was fantastic. Very Pixies-esque and reminiscent of Mute band Foil (also, it would appear, lost for good).

Other stuff in the eardrums this week includes a bunch of songs downloaded legitimately – the upbeat Low-life remix of Moby’s ‘Mistake’ being one (download it here), a new track by David Byrne and Dirty Projectors (get it here) being another – the debut single ‘Fake Blues’ by excellent New Jersey band Real Estate (some free demos, including an early version of the single are available at Stereogum), and the breakthrough album Sally Can’t Dance by Lou Reed.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 03/08/2009

With all the controversy surrounding Phil Spector’s recent imprisonment, it is all too easy to overlook the music that the wacky-wigged producer made, however Leonard Cohen’s Death Of A Ladies’ Man – his fifth album – is one that is deservedly ignored, being neither a highlight of Cohen’s back catalogue nor Spector’s finest moment behind the mixing desk. The sound is murky and overall the album suffers a major identity crisis – the theme of the songs seem, predictably for Cohen, to focus almost exclusively on carnal matters, but the gauche musical backdrop veers from New Orleans-style processionals to louche disco on the best song on the album ‘Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On’ (with backing vocals supplied by Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg). Apparently, the typically capricious Spector locked the singer out of the studio to focus on the music, even though Cohen hadn’t done much more than lay down guide vocals, hence why Leonard sounds as if he’s singing from inside a box. I can honestly say that the highlight of this album is the sleeve which sees Cohen on a banquette with two women draped over him, a trace of a sly grin spread across his ordinarily sombre face.

Incidentally, Cohen fan Nick Cave wrote a truly brilliant song called ‘Hard-On For Love’. Cave and his band The Bad Seeds’ Live Seeds collection captures the band on tour in Europe in 1992/93, and seeks to evidence their status as a premier live band. Many of the band’s best-loved early songs are here, only rendered still more powerful live: take a listen to the incendiary version of ‘The Mercy Seat’ – later covered by Johnny Cash – which knocks spots off the studio version on Tender Prey or my personal favourites ‘Papa Won‘t Leave You Henry‘ and ‘Jack The Ripper‘. The band also deliver a cover of ‘Plain Gold Ring’, a plaintive song recorded by both Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, with the Bad Seeds‘ version winding up with some beautiful ear-bothering feedback. A more comprehensive review can be found at Documentary Evidence.

Nina Simone, in her twilight years, performed at Nick Cave’s Meltdown Festival on London’s South Bank. Simone’s only representation in my music collection comes in the form of a cheap compilation CD and I have never intended to develop a greater interest in her music beyond this cursory introduction. When I do stick this on I tend to eschew the pop of songs like ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ or the politicised ‘Mississippi Goddamn‘, in favour of her more out-and-out jazz recordings.

Still surveying the contents of one of my boxes of 7” singles, I alighted upon ‘The Riddle’ by Nik Kershaw this week. This was the first single I was ever bought, back when I was a mere seven year old. Even to this day I regard Kershaw’s brand of music and lyric writing as superior to anything else of its time, and don’t regard songs like this as guilty pleasures. ’The Riddle’ is, as its name suggests, thoroughly cryptic with a leaning toward Celtic mythology, unlike the B-side (’Progress’ recorded live at Hammersmith) which is out-and-out New Wave, ironically taking pot-shots at modern culture whilst casually deploying modern sounds. Although finally selling out and hitting the arenas as part of the Eighties flashback carnival, he’s still turning out excellent music – his 2001 album, To Be Frank contains some of the best song writing from him or anyone, forgiving him both his pay-the-rent touring commitments and his collaborations with Chesney Hawkes.