Audio Journal: 23/08/2013 - The Islanders, Flöör, Karnezis / Lally / Jörgensen, Autechre

Aside from writing about a couple of upcoming new releases on the consistently interesting Touch label (Diluvial by Bruce Gilbert & BAW, Monstrance by Mika Vainio & Joachim Nordwall), trying desperately to like the new 12" from Mark Fell, the music highlight of the week was watching a performance of The Islanders at Underbelly, part of a month-long run for the Edinburgh Fringe.

Billed as a lo-fi musical, The Islanders is performed by Amy Mason, enigmatic Art Brut frontman Eddie Argos and folk musician Jim Moray. Mason talks, detailing intensely personal recollections from when she and Argos were a couple in the Nineties; in between her monologues Argos does the talking to music thing that have made Art Brut a relatively unique proposition over the past decade; Argos's recollections of the same relationship are frequently vastly different from his ex-girlfriend's, which would be far more amusing if it wasn't highlighting how disjointed they were as a couple. The climax and trigger for what would become the start of the end of their relationship was an ill-fated trip to the Isle of Wight which informs the title of this artsy show. A more complete overview of The Islanders that I've written can be found here.

The Islanders poster. Source: MJASmith

A couple of weeks ago my Swiss-based musician friend Rupert Lally tipped me off about his new project Flöör with singer and guitarist Camilla Matthias. The duo's debut single 'Waiting For The Summer To Fall' was released today and can be streamed below. You can read my thoughts on the single (and, somewhat improbably I admit, Disney's Teen Beach Movie, which has rarely been off our DVD player this summer) over on Documentary Evidence.

Over the last year or so, Lally has been locked into a productive musical union with Norwegian documentary film-maker and collector / creator of sounds Espen J. Jörgensen. The duo have released a whole stack of albums, concluding their partnership with This Is Art which will be released later this year. Preceding that, the duo will release 'Greece @ Peace', a short single with Greek bouzouki master Lakis Karnezis. As with all of Lally's collaborations, 'Greece @ Peace' was a distance project, Lally taking environmental sounds that Jörgensen had recorded (in this case from a trip to a Greek island in 2009), moulding those into atmospheres before adding synths and Karnezis's bouzouki. For a ninety second track, the results are profoundly stirring and haunting. My Documentary Evidence site snagged an exclusive of the video that Jörgensen created for the song, which I've included again below. For those on email, you'll have to head here.

This week my vinyl collection was gently pruned with the sales of two vintage 12" singles from Rob Brown and Sean Booth, better known as Warp electronica stalwarts Autechre. I bought 'Garbage' and 'Anvil Vapre' back when they were released in 1995, during a period where I was buying any experimental electronica records I could lay my hands on. Autechre, like their label mate Aphex Twin, have produced some of the most consistently odd and arresting pieces of electronica for nigh on 25 years, taking modish elements (with these two it was drum and bass predominantly) and deconstructing the rhythms and sounds to make something that feels like a freakish relative of whatever they were listening to at the time. It's a formula that's never failed yet.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 05/10/2009

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

I would describe my approach to music this past week as ‘restless’. I haven’t been able to listen to one band or style of music for very long, which has created a rather odd, disjointed play list for the week.

I started the week listening to some ‘arty’ music, namely The Knee Plays by David Byrne, musical compositions – principally for horns – written for a play by Robert Wilson in 1984. It wasn’t at all what I expected, but then again I’m coming to be continually surprised by Byrne’s eclectic output. Broadly instrumental like last year’s Big Love: Hymnal album, the brass instruments are occasionally complemented by Byrne reading in a flat, robotic monotone. From The Knee Plays I moved on to some Philip Glass violin pieces, driven by an ambition to listen to more of his works after immersing myself in his Low Symphony last week.



I stumbled upon my Inspiral Carpets album collection this past week. The Carpets, now seemingly permanently defunct, produced four albums of spiky organ-embellished indie pop that transcended the rest of the overrated ‘Madchester’ scene that sprang up in the late 1980s. Whereas at the time their quirky, pseudo-Animals type sound earned them a reputation as oddball leftfielders, with time their songs are found to have an earnestness and depth which few would have bothered to have noticed at the time. The track ‘Two Worlds Collide’ from Revenge Of The Goldfish, with its world-weary chorus of ‘What have I done with my life?’ remains my favourite Inspirals track.

I also listened to a Luke Slater DJ mix on the train home one night while frantically sending emails from my BlackBerry that had two effects – firstly, and positively, the music made me type faster and secondly, I was left feeling light-headed like I’d drunk way too much coffee.

As I write this I’m listening to One Of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing) by A.C. Marias, aka Angela Conway with production assistance from Wire’s Bruce Gilbert among others. Conway now makes films, which is a shame, as this single album from 1991 has an ethereal vocal quality while arch-sound smith Gilbert (who is, along with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Robert Fripp entirely responsible for redefining how I listen to guitar music) adds obscure textural backdrops. I always think of the song ‘There’s A Scent Of Rain In The Air’ whenever I smell that freshness that prefaces a downpour. More on this album at my Documentary Evidence site.



Elsewhere, I watched the BBC Imagine documentary on Rufus Wainwright’s first opera which had Wainwright play a new piano song, ‘Zebulon’. Effectively a conversation after many years with an imaginary childhood friend and confidante, the track has a plangent Rufus expressing his sadness at his mother’s illness, and points to a more sorrowful sound on his next album. Rarely, I also found myself listening to Gideon Coe on 6Music, who played a Peel session by Glaxo Babies, a band I’ve never heard of. Their session version of ‘Who Killed Bruce Lee?’ is a Gang Of Four-esque number which was adorned by seemingly random, skronking, James Chance-style saxophone, an element missing from the vaguely inferior studio version. Speaking of sprawling music, I listened to Locust Abortion Technician by Butthole Surfers, one of the more challenging bands on the SSR label to emerge from the States in the 1980s.



Finally, They Might Be Giants, that quirky pop duo who scored an unlikely hit in the shape of ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’ in 1990. Since then I’ve always had the band on my list of acts I’d like to listen to more of, though so far this has only extended to the aforementioned song, ‘Istanbul (Not Constantinople)’ and the delicate postcard pop of ‘New York City’, a love song which also lists all the major well-heeled landmarks of Manhattan. So, I was pleasantly surprised a few weekends back, watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Playhouse Disney with my two daughters, to find that TMBG had done both the title music and the song ‘Hot Dog!’ (see video below, or for those reading this on email, click here). So, er, ostensibly for the girls, I downloaded ‘Hot Dog!’ this week and have no qualms in saying that it is a delightfully infectious little song that worms its way, like all the best kids’ songs, into your brain and refuses to budge. Not that I would, for example, listen to it on the train into work. Never. Honest.