Audio Journal : 27/09/2010

Fans of electronic music / dance music read on; those not that bothered can skip to the end (if you want some tracks by me) or hit delete. Your choice.

I go through phases of eschewing and then returning to electronic music. I have a wide interest in electronica of all hues and variations – from Eighties synth-pop to often erratic, deconstructed soundscapes. Two recent purchases in the latter field were ANBB's Ret Marut Handshake (Raster-Noton, 2010) and Iconicity by Incite/ (Electroton, 2010).



The former is a collaboration between Alva Noto (an alias for electronic musician and artist Carsten Nicolai who runs Raster-Noton) and Blixa Bargeld. Bargeld is the stimmung of cult Berlin noise-merchants Einstürzende Neubauten who has more recently developed processed spoken-word performances ('rede') into his repetoire alongside his day job fashioning unexpected sounds from guitars and detritus in Neubaten. Nicolai on the other hand is the poster boy for lowercase glitch-based electronics, notable for early works based on the error sounds made by skipping CDs. The combination of two mavericks on Ret Marut Handshake finds Bargeld's voice surprisingly suited to Nicolai's cracked electronics, leaving you feeling slightly cheated that they only crafted five short tracks. The album is named after Ret Marut, a shady, chameleon figure that Bargeld found intriguing. One can only hope for more from this unlikely pairing.

Iconicity by Incite/ (the back-slash is not a typo, such keystrokes being pretty commonplace in the outer reaches of electronica) is also a short-form release; a 3" CD-R in a tiny transparent DVD case with the typography appearing to float over the box, an image doesn't really do this justice. Iconicity is interesting, absorbing electronica in a similar vein to the ANBB release above, though sharing much more in common with the sort of warped, distorted beats and odd time signatures of Autechre.



If skeletal beats and broken electronics aren't your bag, Jarl & Fotmeijer's Lifesigns (Innertrax, 2010) might be more your thing. Lifesigns captures the essence of the minimal, arpeggiating Detroit techno of the early Nineties laced with grid patterns of upbeat 4/4 beat alongside stasis-dominated ambient passages. The most insane thing of all is that the duo / Innertrax have elected to release this album free. I almost feel guilty downloading it it's so good. Those who don't share my sentiment can locate it here.



And so, finding myself once again enthused by these music forms as I frequently am, I'm making available three of my own electronica compositions, via my revived Nominal Musics label. You can get the Elliptic Paraboloid EP by Sketching Venus 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 : 14/09/2009

Growing up in the Eighties, you couldn’t help but be touched in some way by the birth of dance music. Chart hits by the likes of Black Box, S’Express and M.A.R.R.S. are probably responsible for many a current dance music producer discovering the genre. As a listener, I’m no different. Those songs paved the way for me getting into the likes of The KLF and Moby in the early nineties, and my deep passion for more esoteric techno and electronica which really started in earnest with Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman.



Between 1994 and 1998 I really immersed myself in techno and all its spin off genres, accumulating a collection of albums, 12” singles and mixtapes which has lain dormant for over a decade. Not being the most gregarious person, I never really went to clubs, at least not the types of places that would play the stuff I wanted to hear, and instead just listened at home intently.

Over the weekend, perusing the contents of my iTunes shopping basket I noticed a couple of Underworld mixes of Spooky’s ‘Schmoo’ which I’d tried to track down back in the day to no avail. Listening to those two Underworld remixes this past week – and the intriguing new Toykult album a week or so ago – has once again encouraged me to listen to whatever dance music I’ve had lying around in my iPod and I’m even contemplating heading loftward to dig out more old CDs.

So I’ve found myself trawling through my Orbital singles collection, reminiscing about how good songs like ‘Halcyon and ‘Sunday’ are; listening to Plastikman’s edgy minimalist techno on Musik (the track ‘Marbles’ is ten minutes of spiky acidity) and delving into stuff salvaged from a couple of old compilations – The Science Behind The Circle and The Serious Road Trip. Artists as diverse as David Holmes, Laurent Garnier, Egebamyasi, Higher Intelligence Agency, Loop Guru and Andrew Weatherall have graced my eardrums, bringing with them a range of genres from urgent acid house through to chilled-out sounds incorporating Indian samples and percussion.



Feeling that warm and slightly fuzzy feeling of rediscovering something long forgotten, I even went out and bought Mixmag. Mixmag seems to be the only surviving dance music magazine; my old favourite, Muzik, seems to have bitten the dust many years ago. What surprised me the most was that it really hasn’t changed at all.

Sure, there seem to be less proliferation of genres as things like jungle and garage have moved out of favour, but essentially the key cornerstones of club music – techno, electro, chill-out / ambient and house – are all there. And modern dance music doesn’t sound that dissimilar to how it did when I was an avid listener, as evidenced by the eleven free tracks I downloaded from the Mixmag website (the key track of which was Rex The Dog‘s Yazoo-sampling ‘Bubblicious‘). About the only thing different from when I bought dance music magazines was a proliferation of pictures of half-dressed, sweaty girls in clubs and a rather odd – and unnecessary – fashion section.



I find dance music really hard to write about hence why I haven’t really focussed this week on any particular artists or tracks. My wife says this is because it all sounds the same, which I totally disagree with. This week I feel like I’ve resolved my issues with dance music and I expect I will be listening to much more over the next few weeks. Right now, after a week of largely instrumental music, I think it’s high time I listened to some singing again.

Back when I was making music, I adopted the moniker Scanlines and recorded several tracks that had a techno vibe. Among the last tracks I ever recorded was this one. It’s sat on my hard-drive since about 2001 and no-one’s ever heard it before. Enjoy.

Download : Scanlines 'Polarity Flicker' / .mp3 / 5.1mb

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