Audio Journal: 11/10/2013 - X Factor, Erasure, Young Knives, Ejecta

Against my will, it seems that my attempts to avoid ever watching ITV's X Factor have roundly failed, and so it has become the new weekend routine to find myself half-watching however many hours of auditions, emotional wannabes failing to get a break and oddballs who never had a chance in the first place.

The last episode I watched was, I will admit, mildly diverting, but not because of the music. Definitely not. No, in that one Gary Barlow and Olly Murs were attempting to whittle Barlow's team down, and they were doing so on the roof of a building in New York (by my estimates I'd say somewhere in Chelsea) with lots of views of beautiful skylines. So, diverting, yes, but only because I was trying to work out which buildings I recognised.

What did occur to me was that like strands of music, reality shows have their own unique vernacular. Here are some of my personal favourites, often to be heard spilling from the mouths of contestants:

• 'I've got to take it to another level.'
• 'It's an emotional roller coaster.'
• 'She's had a long journey to get here.' (To my abject horror, my eldest daughter actually used this one last week when I was being especially disparaging toward one weeping contestant.)
• 'My whole life depends on it.'

Erasure Snow Globe

On to more interesting things. This week I completed my usual round of reviews for Clash. To use another hackneyed reality show phrase, this month's assignment included a real 'dream come true' in that I was able to review the new Erasure album. This is the first time I've been able to listen to a new album from my favourite band ahead of its release, so it was a bit of a treat for me. It has also meant that I've been in a very festive mood all week, since Vince Clarke and Andy Bell's new offering - Snow Globe - is a Christmas album. It really is a lovely record, and as well as some nice versions of standards, the duo offer up some of their best things they've written together in a long time. Put it on your Christmas list.

Young Knives Sick Octave

The other album I covered this month is Sick Octave, album number four from Young Knives. For this album the trio took themselves off into a disused airbase and experimented with computers, synths, gas canisters and sheet metal to produce something that sounds like it was transplanted from the post-punk hinterlands of the early Eighties. 'Something Awful' from Sick Octave, a track that is anything but awful, can be listened to here and below.

Finally, this week I was sent the debut album from Ejecta, a duo of Neon Indian's Leanne Macomber and Joel Ford from Tigercity. Dominae (Happy Death) isn't out until December and so I shouldn't say too much now, but suffice to say that this New York duo have nailed a downbeat strain of rather lovely electronic pop full of ethereal singing and appropriately vintage synths. Listen to track 'Jeremiah' here and below.

Audio Journal : 30/08/2010

With the summer all but over, this is the third and final of my summer albums, and I promised it would be divisive.

Perhaps that was overstating it. This is just an album from my favourite band, Erasure, my fandom of said band having garnered much derision over the years. You know the sort - 'Oh, you like them? Really? Them?' or 'So you like Erasure... Are you gay?' That sort of rubbish. I've said it before, here and elsewhere, and I'll say it again. Erasure – the duo of singer Andy Bell and ex-Yazoo, ex-Depeche Mode electronic music guru Vince Clarke – are, and always will be, my favourite band. And for the record, I'm not.

The Innocents occupies a special place in my musical collection, as it was the first Erasure album I heard. I'd seen them on Going Live, loved the massive hit 'Sometimes', but was just at the cusp of starting to spend my pocket money on music; until Erasure my record buying was scattergun at best (Fat Boys? Really?). After hearing The Innocents I said with absolute conviction that they were my favourite band. When they released the follow-up, Wild!, I began collecting their back catalogue, first tentatively and then obsessively. By the time of the last single from Chorus in 1992 I owned every single and all but one limited edition release.

I'm not sure that would have happened if it wasn't for my dad coming home from work one day brandishing a tape of The Innocents a colleague had made for him. I seem to recall it was just prior to our annual Whitsun trip to Southend, and I spent the majority of that holiday on the beach listening to this on my Walkman over and over, while wearing cheap sunglasses (so I could stare at older girls in bikinis; I was 11. The most remarkable part of that is that the weather was actually good enough in May for girls to even weak bikinis). Hence why I always associate it with the warmer months.

Considering their repute as a pop band, it's not a particularly upbeat album. Songs like 'Chains Of Love', 'Weight Of The World', the Motown-esque 'Heart Of Stone' and my personal favourite 'Phantom Bride' are optimistic on the face of it but are laced with a sense of defeat, sadness and world-weariness. Only the gospel sounds of 'Yahoo!' could conceivably count as 'upbeat'. Sometime Pet Shop Boys producer Stephen Hague produced the album, which explains why the album has a less prominent electronic angle, more of an organic feel.

The album spawned three much-loved singles, the aforementioned 'Chains Of Love', plus 'Ship Of Fools' and 'A Little Respect'. The latter's defiant stance in the face of adversity was covered, improbably, by Wheatus as a teen-rock anthem.

Read more about The Innocents at my Documentary Evidence site.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 21/09/2009

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

Anyone who knows me well will know that I’m a big fan of Rufus Wainwright, the talented singer-songwriter son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and sister of similarly-gifted Martha. I’ve been a Rufus fan since a purchase of the Want collection in 2006 and his music has become a constant ingredient in the balanced musical diet that I find myself listening to as I mature nicely into my thirties. Generally speaking, if I head ‘out there’ into the more experimental reaches of my music collection, at some point I’ll swing back, pendulum-like, to artists such as Rufus, if only for a while before heading into esoteric territory once again.

I haven’t really listened to much else beyond Rufus this week; specifically, the Milwaukee At Last!!! boxset (you can derive much confirmation of Wainwright’s noted flamboyance from those three exclamation marks), comprising a live CD and DVD recorded at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 27 August 2007 whilst on tour to promote his 2007 album Release The Stars.



Rufus, who Caitlin Moran described in The Times as having 'all the quiet, don't-mind-me demeanour of a pissed rainbow on a trampoline', has a singularly incredible talent to write heartfelt yet gauche songs filled with metaphor, innuendo and vivid imagery, ranging from the ethereal, maudlin simplicity of ‘Leaving For Paris No.2’ through to the strident near-jazz of ‘Release The Stars’ or the debauched shimmer of ‘Sanssouci’; it’s a rare accomplishment indeed to have such a constant stream of inventiveness from an artist with five albums under his belt.

And that, in a way, reminds you of just how disappointing Milwaukee At Last!!! is – not that I didn’t want this; I’ve been waiting for an audio recording of a concert on this tour since seeing him live in Oxford in 2007. Simply, it reminds you that it’s about time we had an album of new material from Rufus, but distractions such as his recent opera (in French to purists’ horror) have taken precedence. In the meantime I’ll be looking forward to Not So Silent Night, the Wainwright-McGarrigle family Christmas concert which for this year decamps from Carnegie Hall to the Royal Albert Hall in December.

Although Milwaukee At Last!!! has pretty much been the only thing I’ve listened to this week, I did find the time to listen to ‘In Your Heart’ by Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers, released on my favourite record label Mute (I love that label so much that I maintain a tribute site). This is the first time I’ve heard this band, and from what I can tell they seem to blend synths, guitars and drum machines together to create a modern reflection on the more urgent side of Jesus And Mary Chain.

Of principal interest was the remix by Vince Clarke, he of fellow Mute acts Depeche Mode / Yazoo and Erasure fame. Erasure remain my favourite act of all time and I’m not at all bothered today to admit that, and Vince Clarke’s particular brand of electronic mastery is entirely responsible for my deep love of electronic music. Having recently decamped to New York, and with Erasure on hiatus while singer Andy Bell completes his second solo album, Vince has strapped on his disco boots to remix a number of artists of late – Franz Ferdinand’s ‘No You Girls’ got a seminal Clarke treatment, as did The Presets and girl-pop group The Saturdays. Vince, by his own admission around 1996, wasn’t terribly good at programming drums and percussion, something he seems to have overcome given the steady 4/4 bass-heavy grooves he adds to all of these remixes, ‘In Your Heart’ included.