Audio Journal : 03/11/2010

At the weekend we watched Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, a teen romance flick based around two indie kids' love of music. Set in Manhattan / Brooklyn, the film tells the tale of one solitary night in the city – imagine Scorsese's seminal After Hours without the mystery – and Nick's quest to get over the heartbreak from his on-off relationship with a girl (Tris; that's right, Tris), for whom the hapless lovestruck romantic would produce mix CDs. These CDs were routinely binned by the girl, falling inconceivably into the hands of Norah, who, after watching Nick's band The Jerk Offs (himself on bass, his two gay mates on vocals and guitar and a child's drum machine) performing at a club somewhere Downtown, falls in love with him. The plot then follows their on-off attempts to get together while the back story sees them trying to track down the appallingly-named (and hopefully imaginary) cult band Where's Fluffy who are performing a guerrilla gig somewhere in the city.



Okay, so far, so teen flick. Aside from shots on NYC's trendier locations, the key differentiator is the knowing musical backdrop, from the offbeat 8-bit electronic score supplied by Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh (imagine his work for Rugrats, but all grown up), to the soundtrack which features stalwarts of the US current alternative scene like Band Of Horses, We Are Scientists and Vampire Weekend (who turn in the exclusive track 'Ottoman'). Devendra Banhart, making a brief cameo in one scene of the film, delivers a typically oddball funk-folk-unclassifiable song in 'Lover' and the rest on the soundtrack are mostly from bands I've never heard of.

Where the film became fairly cloying with its continual namedropping and attempts to look musically cool (doesn't that just grate? I mean, who would do that?), the soundtrack album is eminently listenable, with lots of interesting and introspective ear-friendly songs perfectly evoking the subtle, heart aching mood of the movie. It has a Richard Hawley track, for example. That said, my favourite track overall is still the urgent dirge-y NYC punk of The Jerk Off's 'Screw The Man' (sentiment of the lyrics most definitely to one side); so what if they're a prefab, made-up-for-this-film band and this is a pisstake, it's a great track which reminds me of The Runaways 'Cherry Bomb' mixed with The Gun Club's 'Sex Beat', two classics from the CBGB era.



Those Brave Airmen are a four-piece band from Stratford-upon-Avon consisting of Dave Johnson (vocals, rhythm guitar), Neil Edden (bass), Gavin Skinner (drums) and Mark Rehling (guitars) who released their debut single on iTunes last week. Entitled 'Pure Evil', the track has an unmistakeable grungey atmosphere and raw production edge, Johnson delivering the lyrics in a style which Eddie Vedder would be proud of and a grinding middle eight interplay between guitar and bass which could last a whole lot longer and never become tiring.

'I guess our influences are far ranging although the 90's grunge sound is definitely one we've all grown up with and enjoy,' Edden told me by email. 'It's not really a conscious decision, it's just the way that we sound together on that song.' Other Those Brave Airmen tracks cover different territories - slower, faster, harder, softer. Describing their eclectic live sound, Edden says 'I like to think that seeing us is a bit of a mixed bag – almost like seeing a covers band, but with originals – there's something in there for everyone.' What's not to like?

Download 'Pure Evil' from iTunes here.

Audio Journal : 27/10/2010

On Saturday my colleague Ian and I found ourselves in a dirty corner of Shoreditch to watch the legendary industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle at the cavernous Village Underground, more of an art space than a gig venue. The fourpiece band – Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and Genesis Breyer P’Orridge – delivered almost two hours of ear-shredding noise, electronic experimentation and even a naked stagediver during the encore. Those intrigued by the event and wishing to read me compare their sound to a Jubilee Line train at full speed can head over to Documentary Evidence where you'll find my review proper.



Tonight though Mrs S and I went to the Scala in Kings Cross to watch the infinitely more hearing-friendly ex-Libertine Carl Barat. Mrs S swoons whenever said singer is mentioned and has been gushing about his Brechtian debut solo album since it was released earlier this month. And it is indeed a good album; it's not The Libertines, and thankfully it's a world away from the coke-fuelled disaster of Dirty Pretty Things' sloppy second album. More theatrical and ambitious than any of the songs written for either of his previous two bands, Carl Barat is a work of some confidence from indie rock's mumbling troubadour. (I couldn't understand anything he said on stage tonight; I gave up trying after a while; even Mrs S, doe-eyed and smitten though she was, said we needed subtitles.)

Barat and his band were supported by Swimming and Heartbreaks. The former were probably only about 17 (which made me feel really old) and they looked like an after-school band practice, featuring a guitarist who had all the poise and clumsy gracelessness of the lanky kid in class who started shaving before anyone else. A blend of guitar fury and electronics, they didn't really move me, in much the same way as Delphic don't move me, and their keyboard / laptop kid bore an unnerving resemblance to Chesney Hawkes. Heartbreaks were better – frantic thrash indie-pop euphoria with a vocalist whose style aped vintage Costello. They also featured the most stylised Mod drummer avec obligatory Weller haircut, and the quiff count was unseasonably high. I liked them. The only dud song, bizarrely, was their first single.

Barat, on the other hand, proved that he doesn't need Pete Doherty at all. The Libertines festival reunion shows at Reading and Leeds, just ahead of Barat's debut album, looked set to overshadow his first solo release. There is no denying the deep love and affection shared by Barat and Doherty, and it's a theme that runs throughout his simultaneously-published Threepenny Memoir. Freed from the conflicting personalities of Dirty Pretty Things and Pete's bumbling 'is he a poet or a singer? An artist or a sad, washed-up mess?' meanderings, Barat proved himself tonight to be an accomplished and confident frontman (until he spoke and you couldn't fathom a word he said).

Tracks which initially don't make sense on the album like 'The Magus' and 'What Have I Done' shone tonight with a circus-like mysteriousness, while the album's clear highlight, 'So Long My Lover' – easily the most beautiful, emotional song I've heard outside of a Rufus Wainwright album – was rendered even more plaintive live, his girlfriend / mother-of-their-unborn-child Edie Langley and her two sisters sprinkling McGarrigle-like folksy harmonies behind the song's world-weary acquiescence. I damn near sobbed my heart out; always a sucker for a moving chord change and a theme of unrequited love, me.

Then there were tracks from The Libertines' and Dirty Pretty Things' quartet of albums, all of which – predictably – prompted the most enthusiastic and raucous crowd response. 'Up The Bracket' was probably the best track of the lot, the only disappointment being the absence of Gary Powell's intricate yet powerful drum work. But though they were always half his anyway, performing the songs without Doherty found him owning the songs completely, and it left you wondering why Pete's contribution was as highly regarded as it was.

Audio Journal : 04/10/2010

Take a four-piece band, take away the singer after a supposedly acrimonious split, cleverly change the band's name so it both references the absence of the singer and yet remains broadly identifiable as the same band, add a load of guest singers and the passing of about five years after the 'split' and release a new album. That's the formulae in theory. In practice they're 1) Talking Heads - David Byrne = The Heads; 2) (1996 - 1991) + (Michael Hutchence + Shaun Ryder + Richard Hell + Debbie Harry etc) = No Talking Just Head.



I've had this album on my Amazon wish list for ages, and always saw it as a low priority item in my trawl through the Talking Heads / David Byrne back catalogue; plus I've never been that struck on Tom Tom Club, the band that Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz formed whilst still in Talking Heads, and whose success far outstripped the parent band; plus it never stays in stock for long.

There are undoubtedly elements reminiscent of Talking Heads – the funk edge and the distinct 'alternative' / 'college radio' sound; but in other ways it's a little like watching Rock Star: INXS, with various singers trying to fill David Byrne's shoes; only that doesn't work as an analogy since Michael Hutchence actually appears on 'The King Is Gone'. Considering the main reason for buying this would be because you're probably a Talking Heads fan, the best tracks are those which don't attempt to ape former glories. The opener 'Damage I've Done' (with Concrete Blonde's Johnette Napolitano) sounds like Wir's 'So And Slow It Grows' with a distorted, urgent chorus that creates something both fragile and tense simultaneously. 'Never Mind' (featuring original NYC punk Richard Hell) may sample the drums from the Eno-produced cover of Al Green's 'Take Me To The River', but the track positively swings under Hell's slightly creepy poetry. Another good track is the collaboration with Happy Mondays / Black Grape's Shaun Ryder which sounds to me like Dos Dedos Mis Amigos-era PWEI. Overall, this album works best when you try not to compare it too much to early Talking Heads glories, leaving you content to acknowledge the odd discernible echo of the elements that made that band so vital.



Happy Mondays turn up on the compilation Zero, which is a collection of tracks produced by auteur Manchester producer Martin Hannett; anyone who's seen his portrayal by Andy Serkis in Michael Winterbottom's Twenty-Four Hour Party People will recall Hannett as an odd mix of madcap scientist and musical rebel, ordering Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris to 'play faster, but slower' when creating the band's seminal 'She's Lost Control'. His unique treatment of drums and grinding bass appears throughout Zero, cropping up on tracks from Wasted Youth through The Psychedelic Furs and on to the starkly minimal 'In A Lonely Place' by New Order. This compilation is an essential purchase even if just for Jilted John's self-titled single and its 'Gordon is a moron' refrain. In 'Eleven O'Clock Tick Tock' there's also a brief reminder that U2 could have mined the post-punk sound successfully without turning into stadia dinosaurs.

Clearly forever to be associated with the punk of Buzzcocks (their first, self-financed single 'Boredom' is included here) and the post-punk of Basement Five, Joy Division and Magazine, Zero nevertheless highlights that Hannett worked just as successfully with leftfield indie pop bands like The Only Ones and Kitchens Of Distinction, while work with VU chanteuse Nico and her Invisible Girls on 'All Tomorrow's Parties' highlights a softer, more austerely-layered style. Happy Mondays' joyous 'Wrote For Luck' points to the producer's relevance right into the baggy / Madchester scene of the late Eighties and early Nineties, sadly coinciding with his death in 1991 from heart failure, induced by spiralling drug and alcohol use.



Underworld have come a long way from their early Eighties electronic pop work as Freur (their 'Doot Doot' single is totally of its time, but as relevant for the New Wave period as 'Rez' would be for the early Nineties dance scene), and Athens, a compilation released on !K7 last year highlights a totally different side to the duo of Karl Hyde and Rick Smith. For many, its the urgent strains of 'Born Slippy (Nuxx)' that they see (wrongly) as synonymous with the Underworld sound, and so Athens will disappoint anyone expecting an hour of shouted 'Lager! Lager! Lager!' laddishness, highlighting as it does Hyde / Smith's interest in, wait for it, jazz.

And not just any old jazz, but the interstellar strains of Alice Coltrane and Mahavishnu Orchestra; the out-there sounds of Sun Ra are sadly absent but would've dropped in just as well. There is a liberal sprinkling of jazz-funk-disco fusion and jazzy techno, all of which makes little sense in the context of the well-established Underworld sound until the segues into their own 'Oh' and the Eno / Hyde collaboration 'Beebop Shuffle', whereupon you start to appreciate that there really is a jazz looseness to their sound, whether that be in the sounds that float in and out of their tracks or the stream-of-consciousness (improvised?) vocal riffing from Hyde. All that said, this compilation works best – like No Talking Just Head – when you suspend any attempts at comparison with other reference points in the Underworld back catalogue.

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 : 20/09/2010

Two albums that I was particularly looking forward to were released last week. The first was Grinderman's Grinderman 2. Grinderman is a four-piece band comprising Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn P Casey and Jim Sclavunos. Grinderman is designed to be an alternative to the band members' day jobs in Nick Cave's main band The Bad Seeds, and also allows Cave and Ellis a departure from their relatively high brow soundtrack work.

Grinderman, for those familiar with Cave's work with his earliest band The Boys Next Door / The Birthday Party and, from 1984, The Bad Seeds, is intended to be more raw, less refined, less planned. Cave describes it himself as more 'fun'. I got into Nick Cave in 1993 when I saw him perform the seminal 'Red Right Hand' on Jools Holland; I'd been aware of him already through the NME's continual praise, but also because he was (and still is) signed to my favourite label, Mute. Up to that point I'd only heard a unrepresentative B-side on the Mute compilation International, and hearing 'Red Right Hand' encouraged me into his back catalogue. My good friend Neill and I saw The Bad Seeds live at Brixton in 2004 and it cemented my belief that Cave is indeed one of the best performers in the business. More reviews of The Bad Seeds, The Birthday Party etc can be found over at my Documentary Evidence site; the full review of Grinderman 2 can also be found there too. If you can't be bothered to read that, it would appeal to anyone with half an interest in loud, rough rock with a fuzzy edge.

The other album was Interpol, by Interpol. Yeah, yeah, how many times have I mentioned that band here? The recording of their fourth album saw the departure of bassist Carlos Dengler, a key member of the group and throwing doubt on whether this was the end of the line for the band. Recruiting ex-Slint bassist Dave Pajo for live duties, the band appeared to have shrugged off any scepticism and refocussed.

Interpol is probably the band's most polished album yet. There's still the melancholy edge but there are brighter spots too, marking a progression of sorts. Some of the best tracks are the ones that start quietly and build toward epic crescendos – 'Lights' and 'Always Malaise' are the two critical cases in point, both consisting of layered elements which coalesce during the course of the song. Drummer Sam Fogarino makes his kit sound like a drum machine set to 'Krautrock motorik' setting and the piano sprinkles that crept into singer Paul Banks' solo album (as Julian Plenti) are liberally applied across the album. The brilliant single 'Barricades' is about as upbeat as this band is going to get, while other tracks court a punky ska vibe. I love it, but you'd have probably guessed as much.

Vinyl corner



A business trip to Luxembourg City and a degree of free time meant I found my way to CD Buttek Beim Palais, a treasure trove of vinyl and CDs spread haphazardly across a scattergun array of genres. I bought a second-hand 7" of Pete Shelley's 'Homosapien II'.

A late-night conversation a few weeks ago with Steve, a colleague, reminded me of this track. I only had a Simple Minds version of this (remixed by Erasure's Vince Clarke), and that conversation reminded me I should try and track the original down.

Well, this isn't actually the original. 'Homosapien' was released in 1981 from the album of the same name by the Buzzcocks frontman. The BBC banned it for the same reason that Frankie was silenced a couple of years later (thus ensuring the single cult and popular success). This 1989 re-recorded second version is credited to Pete Shelley and Power, Wonder And Love and recasts the electronic original as a floor-filling dance track with decent techno sounds. It doesn't knit together terribly well on first listen, and initially I thought it was a Stock, Aitken and Waterman record (the fact that the initials of the collaborators forms PWL didn't help). The B-side, an instrumental version, is better and would have dropped neatly into DJ sets, though it is definitely of its time.

Then again, it's hard to get too disappointed when you've only spent €0.50.

Audio Journal : 11/09/2010

Going to see Muse was always going to be a rather unusual experience because I'm neither a fan nor terribly well-acquainted with more than one album in their back catalogue. That said, we spent an evening at home watching their Glastonbury performance with barely concealed awe at its sonic precision and theatrical stage spectacle, and found ourselves tracking down the last God-awful seats available for one of two dates at Wembley Stadium.

Since we booked those tickets, my enthusiasm has waned and despite my principal stipulation was that we must make a concerted effort to gen up on their back catalogue, we wound up there only really knowing 2006's Black Holes And Revelations which we bought when it was released; a good album, granted, but one I've only really listened to a few times and which never got added back into my iPod after I lost all my songs.

My interest was piqued, however, when I saw White Rabbits on the line-up. White Rabbits are a band hailing from Brooklyn whose 'Percussion Gun' single from last year featured a dense barrage of burundi drumming and some of the most impassioned vocals I've ever heard. The intensity of their performance was nothing short of thrilling. And the crowd seemed pretty appreciative too – not bad for the first band on the bill.

White Rabbits were followed by The Big Pink, whose first song sounded like the groove from 'Supermassive Black Hole', only like it had got stuck. I'd describe The Big Pink as a potentially interesting Muse-lite electronically-infused doom-prog. The singer looked like Ralph, the teddy-boy rocker from Dear John. There was absolute no justification for the dreary a capella cover version of 'These Arms Of Mine' by Otis Redding, which made you realise what sort of Johnny Borrell-sized ego their singer must have. 'Dominoes' was probably the highlight. 'Ohhhh,' said the woman behind. 'So, that's who they are.'

I can't bring myself to write about Lily Allen, I just can't. I don't have anything bad to say about her, and I also don't think there was anything wrong with her performance (apart from a weird junglist breakdown), but I just don't think she really fit the bill.

As for Muse; well, after watching the Glastonbury footage, they were everything we thought they'd be. The performance was ludicrously, ridiculously and fabulously over the top. During one song they ejaculated streamers over the crowd; they rode out into the crowd on a revolving, ascending stage to perform 'Undisclosed Desires'; during an encore a giant UFO was floated out above the crowd and a Cirque De Soleil-esque acrobat burst from the bottom to perform acrobatics while hanging from the bottom of the spaceship. That sort of thing. You get the picture. Totally Spinal Tap.

Add to the enormous stage set and unabashed pomposity a performance that was delivered with the band's trademarked flawlessness, and I think I began to understand just why Muse are regarded as such a vital stadium act, and also why our side of the stadium seemed to be dominated by hordes of loyal European fans who obviously schlepp around the globe watching them. For three unassuming guys from Devon (Matt Bellamy's silver suit aside), their stage presence and enormous progtastic sound way exceeds their relatively diminutive stature.

Having an appreciation of their wider catalogue would have stopped me feeling like a fraud – I normally hate those people at concerts who only know the hits – but my highlights were probably 'Starlight' and the glam-prog 'Personal Jesus'-meets-'Doctorin' The Tardis' strains of 'Uprising'.

Audio Journal : 06/09/2010

Over the past year or so, I've focussed this blog on things I like. Now it's the turn of the things I don't; specifically, albums that I've decided to delete from my iPod.

The first is Hot Fuss by The Killers. I bought this album to scratch an itch, and itch duly scratched I realised I didn't like it very much and that quite honestly I preferred the itch. Growing up listening to Eighties synth-pop and hearing some of that electro / New Romantic sound evoked in the singles taken from Hot Fuss made The Killers appealing as a concept, and I listened to the album repeatedly when I bought it. Then I just went off it; Sam's Town killed turned me off them completely and now it's time to say farewell to Hot Fuss. CD sold on eBay and deleted from my iPod.

After my wife played me 'Slow Hands' I fell for New York's Interpol in a major way around the time of their second album, Antics. In New York in 2005 I caught up with their back catalogue and bought Turn On The Bright Lights from Other Music in the Lower East Side. However, I was frustrated by the paucity of their back catalogue. And then along came Editors, rising from the somewhat less glamorous Midlands, with The Back Room, which seemed almost to be a carbon copy of Interpol. I loved it. And then Interpol released Our Love To Admire and suddenly I had no need of Editors. Plus since then they've become altogether Killers-esque in their leanings. See above. CD sold on eBay, deleted songs from my iPod.

We all liked Keane when their début Hopes And Fears came out didn't we? The album was released at a time when introspective, emotional music was in focus – Snow Patrol, Elbow etc – and for a while Keane were leading the dour pack. And to think they didn't even have guitars. I had a couple of their songs pegged for inclusion on my hypothetical soundtrack to the film adaptation of the book I haven't finished writing yet, but finding the album again and giving it a listen I've decided they're just boring. Deleted.

Bloc Party's A Weekend In The City was a major disappointment for me. I liked Silent Alarm, their 2005 debut, and I figured I'd like the follow-up. The sleeve – with its slightly eerie shots of the Westway – is weirdly moving; opener 'Song For Clay (Disappear Here)' is named after Clay, the main protagonist of Bret Easton Ellis's seminal Less Than Zero, with the parenthesised section being a phrase that has appeared in every one of Easton Ellis's novels. Sadly, given Less Than Zero's air of casual detachment from the events unfolding around Clay and the sonic possibilities that could be created using that reference point, the Bloc Party track is hugely disappointing. As is the rest of the album. The closest the band get to that vibe of chilly aloofness is on the thinly-veiled 'On'. Sold / deleted.

Vinyl corner



I used to buy a lot of records from charity shops. Back in the days of my first website / blog (Red Elvis Central), most weeks I would just write about 7" singles I'd bought that week in Colchester's many charity stores.

Occasionally I'll still go into such shops and look for things, but it's without the enthusiasm of my early twenties. I'll flick through vinyl absentmindedly, smile at 7" singles I own and ruminate on how it's generally Eighties pop tracks that you find there these days. Back in the mid-Nineties it was Eighties stuff that I'd buy, feeling excited when I chanced upon a Human League or Tears For Fears record, if only because they were unusual in amongst the vast swathes of dumped Jim Reeves records. Now I can't be bothered.

However, a couple of weeks back I found a copy of Owen Paul's 'My Favourite Waste Of Time' from 1986, a song I saw performed on children's TV at the time and have had buzzing round my head at various points ever since. With maturity I began to think of the song as a bit of a guilty pleasures and that's exactly how I felt when I finally bought it for 25p a few weeks back.

I haven't heard 'My Favourite Waste Of Time' since it was released, and I'm impressed that I had even remembered how it went after 24 years, but that wasn't the most surprising thing - the surprise was the fact that I may have remembered this as a cheesy pop track, but it's actually a reasonably mature example of proper pop, in the same way that Nik Kershaw or Talk Talk transcended chart-bothering naffness. Sure it's anthemic, soulful, joyous, whatever, but it's not naff at all. It has a pleasant acoustic guitar running throughout the track, and true to this point in the Eighties, it has a sax solo; I wonder whatever happened to sax solos.

B-side 'Just Another Day' is a delicate, laid-back mixture of skipping percussion, Michael Karoli-esque Krautrock* guitar atmospheres tucked away in the distance and a heartfelt vocal.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Owen Paul McGee to give him his full name, 'is now back on the road as the lead vocalist for Ex-Simple Minds', a fact that I only mention because he was never a member of Simple Minds.

* Ian - you might be disappointed to know that Krautrock comes up as 'geriatric' on my BlackBerry spellcheck.