Audio Journal : 07/01/2011

The holiday was spent, as usual, with me hardly listening to any of my music, although I did spend some time with a Depeche Mode playlist I made a few years ago. I got some new music for Christmas which will probably get covered here in coming weeks – History by Loudon Wainwright III, Hudson River Wind Meditations by Lou Reed, The McGarrigle Hour from Kate and Anna McGarrigle and their various talented relatives and friends (Loudon, Martha, Rufus etc), Station To Station by Bowie, and one album which I'll come to further down this page. Mrs S, on the other hand, rediscovered her love of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

The Chili Peppers are a band that she was into as a teenager at the time that Blood Sugar Sex Magik was released, and then promptly forgot about them. That interest was rekindled at the time of By The Way (her joint favourite album with Blood Sugar...) and started a passionate love affair that lasted until just after the birth of Daughter#1 and the simultaneous release of the bloated, patchy and horrendously-titled Stadium Arcadium double album. The single 'Snow (Hey Oh)' from that album is the one Mrs S always think of as the soundtrack to Daughter#1's first few weeks and it still evokes fond memories and emotions whenever we listen to it now, nearly five years on.

Daughter#1 was relatively well-exposed to the Chili Peppers (and the parallel solo albums of the band's now second time ex-guitarist, John Frusciante) quite a lot during her time in the womb. The track 'I Would Die For You' from By The Way was the one song Mrs S would play over and over while pregnant and a few days after we found out we were going to be parents Mrs S and I went to the Borgata hotel and casino in Atlantic City to watch an intimate performance by the band along with around five hundred other people, an event that totally ruined seeing them at Earl's Court the following year. Once you've seen a big band play a small venue you can't go back.

A book that Mrs S got for Christmas re-ignited her interest in the band, who are scheduled to release a new album this year, ably assisted by Frusciante's replacement, Josh Klinghoffer (who was brought into the band by his predecessor to add extra guitar to the Stadium Arcadium tracks on that album's tour, and who has been a long-standing musical partner of Frusciante). Consequently we spent a good chunk of New Year's Eve watching old RHCP performances instead of the garbage on TV. Since then the band have rarely been off the house iPod, and it's nice to see Mrs S falling back in love with them all over again. She even played some of their old videos to the impressionable Daughter#1. 'What did you think of the Chili Peppers then?' Mrs S asked. 'They were....really....noisy,' she replied, proof, if required, that familiarity with songs developed in the womb doesn't change a child's fundamental insouciance. She just wants to listen to Rufus Wainwright, which is okay by me.

The album I found myself listening to often during the holiday was Angelo Badalamenti's soundtrack to David Lynch's Twin Peaks. For reasons that I still don't understand – possibly my long-standing aversion to hype – I didn't watch Twin Peaks when it was first on; school friends discussed it avidly the day after an episode and yet the whole thing would just go completely over my head. Later I became something of a David Lynch fan after exposure to the twisted Eraserhead, but still for some reason I never watched Twin Peaks.



When the Horror channel started showing every episode late last year I figured it was about time I finally checked this out, and at last I understand what the fuss was all about; I was totally hooked. The mystery, intrigue, the faint whiff of Dynasty / Dallas piss-taking and the brilliantly loopy FBI agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) all add up to something pretty addictive and I'm vaguely reluctant to get around to watching the final three episodes, simply because I know then it's over.

The soundtrack grabbed me from the first episode. The electronic strings of Badalamenti's 'Laura Palmer's Theme' were familiar to me from Moby's 'Go', which sampled those strings and set them to a thudding 4/4 beat, never for one second losing the drama and lingering darkness of Badalamenti's piece. My favourite piece on the soundtrack is called 'Audrey Dancing', a wonky ersatz jazz number dominated by an off-kilter vibraphone riff and some skronking synthetic sax, used in the programme whenever something amusing or plain mysterious is happening (i.e. it gets used a lot each episode). The Julee Cruise songs I could live without (I'll stick with A.C. Marias for my ethereal female vocalist thanks), but do they effectively compliment the slightly surreal atmosphere of the programme.

Vinyl Corner



Sharks In Italy 'Time (Is Ours)' b/w 'Dancing' (7", 1984, Clay Records)

A Google search on the Eighties band Sharks In Italy produces one discogs.com entry for the Canadian release of their solitary album, and nothing else apart from some images of pontiffs and sharp-toothed and menacing great whites. I'm not terribly surprised; Sharks In Italy's 'Time (Is Ours)' found its way into my parents' collection thanks to a loose extended family connection to the singer, Sandy Reid, and consequently I figured that this was a 7" that only existed in the collections of random Stratford-upon-Avon friends of the band. I've had to scan the sleeve myself and everything, for Heaven's sakes. I'm not sure my parents ever played it while I was around, buying it more out of local duty rather than musical interest, but its existence has taken on an almost mythical importance to me; an importance which I fully expected to be shattered when I finally listened to this after New Year as part of a process of recording my parents' vinyl collection.

It's brilliant. If the recently-departed John Hughes had wanted another fey English band in the mould of Psychedelic Furs to populate more soundtracks to films of teenage classroom emotion and angst, he would have been well-advised to include 'Time (Is Ours)' or its equally excellent B-side 'Dancing'. Nice synthetic-sounding drums, shimmering, watery guitars, subtle keyboards and a euphoric Andy 'OMD' Humphries-esque vocal from Reid makes this overlooked gem suddenly one of my favourite Eighties-songs-I-didn't-actually-hear-in-the-Eighties.

You'd agree, if you could actually get your hands on a copy.

Audio Journal : 22/12/2010

Saint Etienne, the trio of Sarah Cracknell, Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley released a song with Tim Burgess from The Charlatans called 'I Was Born On Christmas Day' in 1993. Its title alone assured the song of a modicum of airplay during the festive season that year, and I know it's popped up on several Christmas compilation albums since. The song is an upbeat piece of pop majesty, but apart from the line in the chorus about being born on Christmas Day (being a reference to Bob's birthday), it isn't really a Christmas song; it's just a song with Christmas in the title, released at Christmas.

It would appear that Saint Etienne, who I didn't even realise were still operating, have released a festive fan-club only album called – fnarr, fnarr – A Glimpse Of Stocking. My days of being into the band roundly stopped after the best of album Too Young To Die, which I still listen to from time to time. I didn't intend to try and get a copy of A Glimpse Of Stocking (which collects every Christmas song recorded by the band) and after hearing the new track 'No Cure For The Common Christmas', I am even less likely to do so. Sonically, it sounds like 'I Was Born On Christmas Day', has the same euphoric (if jaded) Euro-disco edge, but like a pissed relative on Christmas Day, it falls down somewhere along the lines. I was quite looking forward to rekindling my love for Saint Etienne, but sadly not after this song.

This being my final blog of 2010, it seems appropriate anyway to talk about Christmas songs. This year, more than any, the magazine list writers have been attempting to persuade us punters to shell out on alternative Christmas albums – i.e. not the usual derivative compilations of Elton John's 'Step Into Christmas', John 'n Yoko's 'Merry Christmas (War Is Over)', Chris Rea's 'Driving Home For Christmas' etc – with Johnny Cash's overlooked Christmas album seeming to top the 'must have' lists.

But what makes a Christmas song 'good' anyway?' Is it a religious re-telling of the Nativity, messages of love and goodwill, glam rock anthems with choirs of out-of-tune Brummie kids or just a nice pop track adorned with tinkly bells? If there is no prescribed formula as such for a Christmas song, why can't a song like Pulp's 'Disco 2000' become established as a Christmas song?

'Disco 2000' was released way back in November 1995 and its chorus foretold the millennium fever that enveloped pretty much everyone who uses the Anno Domini calendar as 1999 passed into 2000. Getting released a shade too early for the Christmas top-spot that year ensured it was probably all but forgotten by the year end charts; later the band would prevent the song from being used in TV and radio adverts in 1999 / 2000, effectively scuppering many an ad man's wet dream of carelessly and lucratively tacking the song onto any product during that time.



Can 'Disco 2000' be held up as a Christmas song? Undoubtedly. It is an accessible pop song with a Slade / Wizzard-esque glam guitar introduction and a huge chorus ideally suited to Christmas / New Year parties of the time. Plus, by not being a Christmas song in the truest sense of the word (no Nativity, no religious undertones, no tinkly bells) it lasts all year, unlike Christmas trees, Bailey's and festive goodwill. Even at fifteen years old it hasn't lost any of its lustre and unexpected festive sparkle.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, thanks for following, and expect more weekly musical witterings next year.

'Disco 2000' is featured in my second annual Christmas short story, Josh & Laura, as the soundtrack for a scene set in a student end-of-term Christmas party (see, it works perfectly!). Josh & Laura can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Audio Journal : 19/12/2010

What's not to like? Take five compositions by John Carpenter for his quintet of cult psychological horror films – Escape From New York, Escape From LA, Assault On Precinct 13, Halloween and The Thing – and let two French electronic music wizards (Étienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman, aka Zombie Zombie, named after a 1984 ZX Spectrum game) re-record the tracks with a contemporary edge. Well, I say 'contemporary'. Electronic music has had a tendency to always try and sound like the golden age of analogue synthesis, and this EP has a tendency to sound simultaneously retro and bang up to date as a consequence.

The point is that these soundtracks were good to start with. Carpenter wrote and performed most of his scores himself, or with collaborators – The Thing was a collaboration between him and no less a luminary than Ennio Morricone. Zombie Zombie add beats and other signal flourishes that simply add to the drama of the originals. The main theme from Halloween still makes you hold your breath in anxious fear-induced excitement, but a track like 'The Bank Robbery' (from Escape From New York) is given an urgent beat and frantic synth breakdown at the very end, making it ideal for minimalist dance floors; like a remix of the Airwolf theme tune, only with more drama. The Escape From LA main theme becomes an hard-edged, industrial jack-booted synth-fest, not unlike Deutsch Amerikanisch Freundschaft circa 'Sex Unter Wasser' or Nitzer Ebb circa 'Let Your Body Learn', a sort of cinematic Electronic Body Music as that genre became known. Fans of Carpenter and electronic music generally should definitely look out for this.

Two highly limited edition CD-Rs, in hand-made packaging, from the Apollolaan label fell on my doorstep in the last week. The first, a 3", single-track CD-R from Space Weather (Alistair Crosbie, who has graced this blog before, on electric guitar; Brian Lavelle on electronics and Andrew Paine on bass) is entitled The Weather's Maiden. It was an edition of 100 and is now all sold out. This is a release that sounds markedly different at different volumes; at low volumes it sounds like a bleak, distant sonic landscape of hissing radio waves and transmissions from some frozen, desolate, abandoned world. For some reason it sounded to me like a soundtrack to the film Hardware, a British film from 1990 that painted a very bleak picture of the future, wherein savage death robots were unleashed on the populace to control the population growth. Listened to at louder volumes reveals other aspects of this sonic stew; heavily-processed, looped guitars (I think) dominate the background and deep bass tones and drones offset the spiralling, whining electronics. It is something constantly shifting, rarely static, and could have extended far longer than the fifteen minutes we have been gifted here.

The other Apollolaan release was Peter Delaney's live set from Amsterdam's VPRO festival in May 2009. This 5" CD-R is again an edition of 100 and comes in a cardboard Muji CD sleeve adorned with the white outlines of houses. I had never heard of Delaney before being sent this. He is an Irish singer-songwriter whose songs are frankly a delight for the ears. These are delicately-rendered acoustic folk ballads, occasionally dark and mysterious and evoking the vastness of the sea; but mostly these songs are uplifting affirming in nature. Delaney's perfect live set proves him to be an accomplished lyricist and his guitar playing is intricate and finely-wrought, gentle and enveloping, his voice having remarkable range and a subtle emotional intensity.



There is much that I could say about this, but to write further wouldn't ever come close to doing these songs justice. So I will just say that I honestly don't think I've ever heard a more beguiling record in my life. Higher praise than that I honestly can't find. There are a few copies left at apollolaan.co.uk; you would be wise to buy one quick.

Audio Journal : 04/12/2010

Reading The Times magazine a weekend or so ago, I alighted upon a series of photos by Kevin Cummins of Joy Division. Cummins' black and white shots have become as synonymous with the imagery of this band as Peter Saville's iconic sleeve for Unknown Pleasures – monochrome, dark, misanthropic. It's an image that a film like Twenty-Four Hour Party People tried to redress, in part, though it's difficult to totally move away from the notion of the band being a bunch of misery guts when there's the unavoidable fact of front man Ian Curtis's suicide (hence Anton Corbijn's Control, based on Curtis's widow Deborah's book Touching From A Distance); Cummins, in the brief blurb attached to the photos, said he regrets not capturing more photos of Curtis smiling.

So I thought I'd listen to the Joy Division back catalogue and look for clues to a happier, less grumpy world view. I failed, so instead here's a playlist I came up with for Mrs S a few years ago, highlighting my ten favourite Joy Division tracks. Note that 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' doesn't feature; I love that song, but it's a bit 'obvious'.

Unknown Pleasures



1. New Dawn Fades
2. She's Lost Control
3. Interzone

I recall buying Unknown Pleasures after saying farewell to my then-girlfriend as she set off on a train back to her home; something about the goodbye must have made me think 'Right, now's the time to finally buy Unknown Pleasures', for that's exactly what I did.

'New Dawn Fades' was a song I first heard covered by Moby. Whereas his version was angry, buzzing with a distorted aggression, Joy Division's version is far sparser, lots of reverb masking the gaps. It's certainly heartfelt, tragic and almost disturbingly negative. 'She's Lost Control' has some of the most inventive drum processing by Martin Hannett or any other producer, creating a sound not dissimilar to spraying aerosols (instead of using cymbals) and banging pipes (instead of using snares). Hooky's muted bassline dominates until reedy, inchoate guitars ascend. Curtis's lyrics detail flashes of madness from the female subject of the song. This was punk turned inside out – all the traces are there, yet none of them are.

Joy Division referenced William S Burroughs on 'Interzone', this being the disturbing parallel nightmare world of his Naked Lunch novel. This is just about the most straightahead punk track Joy Division ever produced, all snarling overdriven guitars and urgent drums; but the lyrics – two parallel sets in the left and right channels. Even when passed through Hannett's unique, and occasionally overbearing, filter this punchy little track never loses its raw appeal. To hear this in an even rawer state (without the double vocals), check out the Stooges-esque demo version that emerged from when the band were still called Warsaw.

Closer

4. A Means To An End
5. Decades

I bought my Joy Division collection in the wrong order, starting with their second (and technically final) album, Closer. Having been a New Order fan by then for some time, the album was initially confusing – delicately maudlin and introspective. Not quite ready for that degree of misery, I gravitated toward these two tracks: 'A Means To An End' for its buzzing guitars and earnest pulse, a definitive take on punk's spirit delivered in a more controlled manner; and 'Decades' for its fragile keyboards and slow build, its plaintive vocal refrains and its captivating grandeur (the keyboards on the live version I also have do tend to get a bit wonky and out of tune).

Still

6. The Sound Of Music
7. Dead Souls

The Still compilation chiefly reminds me of the first term of my university third year, and arriving back feeling miserable and lost. Still became the soundtrack to those first few weeks. Still was a posthumous collection of tracks not properly recorded, plus live songs (including the band's seminal take on Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray' and most of their last ever concert in Birmingham), all polished into decent shape by Martin Hannett. 'The Sound Of Music' has a trudging, slightly phased beat and scratchy, restrained guitars that wouldn't have gone amiss on a Wire album c. 1978.

I first heard 'Dead Souls' when it was covered by Nine Inch Nails for The Crow soundtrack. The steady drum patterns here are again gently phased, giving Stephen Morris's kit the sound of a drum machine. Unlike most Joy Division tracks, the intro has an extended instrumental interplay between Bernard Sumner's guitar cascades and Peter Hook's elastic bass. If it wasn't slowed down to a sludgy, dystopian pace, it would almost have a punk-funk sound a la Gang Of Four. It is a wondrously bleak track.

Substance

8. Digital
9. Transmission
10. Atmosphere

Substance, like the 2CD New Order album of the same name, gathers together singles and other odds and ends not featured on other albums. 'Transmission' was the band's début Factory Records single. It sounds like post-Devoto Buzzcocks and comes across as reasonably upbeat – at first – but includes quotes from self-styled Satanic guru Aleister Crowley; as the track progresses what at first sounded euphoric becomes more dark. 'Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio,' implores Curtis, ever more urgently. Deborah Curtis' book was titled after a line in this song. 'Digital' is far too joyous to fit the mood of their two LPs; it has one of the most infectious basslines I've ever heard, plus an urgent motorik beat and some fine staccato guitar. The track was recorded in their very first sessions and included on the first Factory Records sampler double 7" EP. (I have had this song in my head all week.)

'Atmosphere' is a towering work of genius, relying heavily on Hannett's skills as a producer to create one of the best torch songs of the era. Curtis gives his best attempt at an impassioned Scott Walker vocal, drums pound in the distance, bass notes float in and out and the origin of New Order's distinctive keyboard sound rise up from the depths. It never fails to send a chill. There is hope somewhere in this song, but it's elusive. Definitely elusive.

Audio Journal : 23/11/2010

I was watching MTV on Sunday night. Alexa Chung was presenting some collection of old videos, all loosely connected by her arch / ironic / disinterested / banal commentary. It was somehow concrete affirmation of why music television bores me to death. She introduced 'I Don't Like Mondays' by The Boomtown Rats and my first reaction was 'Did Johnny Borrell from Razorlight base his look and sound on Boomtown-era Geldof?' The similarities – in Geldof's appearance and in the sound – were uncannily like the stuff that Borrell has produced on pretty much everything but the first Razorlight album.

The second thought that went through my head was a recollection of an evening many moons ago in Colchester. My house-mates Barry and Neil and I descended upon a pub around the corner from our house to play pool. It felt like we were three cowboys walking through the doors of a dusty saloon (an analogy that has been reinforced over time by something elsewhere in the story); the assembled old goats and regulars all turned around as we walked in, and if it wasn't for their general lack of interest it would have felt threatening. Even the big dog sat under one of the wooden chairs couldn't really be bothered to growl. Instead we bought drinks and were just heading to the pool table out back when I spotted a box on the windowsill containing – unexpectedly – a load of old records. If one thing has become apparent through my frequent eulogising of my student days, it's that I spent a lot of money on music, and quite a lot of it from charity shops. Buying vinyl from a pub was, however, definitely a one-off.

While Barry went off to set up the pool table, shaking his head disapprovingly as he went, Neil and I began raking through the cardboard box of records. I came across a perfect condition LP of Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (now the Western analogy makes sense, you see) and Neil found a battered copy of 'I Don't Like Mondays'. I still have the LP; Neil discovered later that the 7" was basically snapped in half and certainly unplayable.

I'd love to say that I'd listened to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly soundtrack this week, but I didn't. So we shall move on from this elaborate and undoubtedly pointless anecdote and focus on what I've been listening to these past few days.

Mostly it's been the new Brian Eno album, Small Craft On A Milk Sea, released on Warp in the last fortnight. I've become used to Eno albums sounding like ethereal stasis – The Shutov Assembly is one of the most delicate, beautiful albums I own, and I sometimes put it on to help me fall asleep on the train to work (hopefully Eno wouldn't take this the wrong way). I know that this isn't the only aspect to Eno, and many times I've listened to albums showcasing a different side to his sound and found myself thinking 'What was that all about?' Nerve Net, for example. I remember borrowing that from Stratford-upon-Avon public library and trying three or four times to get my head around it before giving up, perplexed.

I wouldn't say Small Craft is like that, and, besides, I'd probably find that Nerve Net makes complete sense to me now. But it is different. Perhaps the release of this album on Warp has some significance here; Eno albums have tended to be released on his All Saints label, or self-released as downloads. Warp was initially exclusively a techno label but has since fragmented to focus on an infinite number of musical shards, including electronically-supported rock and lots of other micro-genres too. Small Craft has lots of drifting electronic introspection ('Emerald And Lime'), but it also features spindly beats ('Horse'), juddering rhythms ('Flint March'), distorted guitars and even a blissfully motorik punk freakout that wouldn't go amiss on a Neu! covers compilation ('2 Forms Of Anger'). It is utterly Eno and a perfectly-timed reminder of why he remains so essential, covering as it does so many of the facets that have featured in his work over the past four decades.

Vinyl Corner



'My Definition Of House Music' by DJ Hell (Helmut Geier) was released on the Belgian R&S label and I picked up this repressing in the late Nineties. First released in 1992, the original version features sampled strings and what we used to call Italian house piano riffs as well as squelchy synths. Taking a look at the always useful Discogs website, I found out that the strings were sampled from a David Byrne song. No wonder I like 'My Definition Of House Music'. This is one of those classic 12" singles from dance music's crucial first flushes and it still sounds excellent today.

Not, however, as excellent as the B-side remix by Resistance D (Maik Maurice and Pascal Dardoufas). This mix reminds me chiefly of the simplicity of 'Lush'-era Orbital mixed with the prog-house tendencies of early Spooky. It has a denseness and urgency that the original lacks and a neat suite of 303 bubbles for the quintessential acid house freak out, something that (at least to me) sounds every bit as thrilling as it did in the late Eighties.

Audio Journal : 19/11/2010

I had one of those mornings this week where I flicked through the album playlists restlessly in my iPod and couldn't settle on anything. Scrolling down the list, nothing appealed. It's at times like this where I tend to employ the 'playlist roulette' game I've mentioned here before: I close my eyes, drag my finger around the circular wheel a couple of times, then open my eyes again and whatever I've landed on I have to play. Well, today, even that didn't do the trick. I really wasn't in the mood for Ryan Adams, Jesus And Mary Chain and most definitely not The Hives. So I listened to Sparks' 'I Can't Believe You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song', turned back to Justin Halpern's book Shit My Dad Says, and staved off the decision for a few more minutes.



Finally, a few minutes outside Euston, I settled on Sabresonic by The Sabres Of Paradise (Warp, 1993). The Sabres Of Paradise were a trio, consisting of esteemed producer Andrew Weatherall (he of Screamadelica fame) and two engineers, Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, who also worked as part of Warp contemporaries The Aloof. This album was one I bought from Time Records in Colchester, a shop where I blew most of my limited student income (clearly I would not be able to do this if the proposed increases to tuition fees had been delivered in the period 1995 - 1998), but for some reason I bought Sabresonic II (1995) first. Consequently, at the time, Sabresonic felt a little light compared to the more expansive follow-up. I've changed my mind on that front now, finding it immersive and eclectic.

The key track for me is 'Ano Electro (Andante)' which is a delicate piece of classic Warp label electronica, lots of deep bass tones and icy melodies. Those icy melodies are something I still find appealing in electronic music, and they remind me, in order, of a) Degrassi Junior High (to this day, I don't know why; I didn't even like that programme when I was a kid and I don't know whether spindly upper-octave keyboard melodies were a feature of its soundtrack or not) and b) Teen Wolf. Teen Wolf was, for the duration of the Eighties, my favourite movie and I watched it most recently before Daughter#2 was born; unlike most things from the time (such as, say, luminous socks and needless saxophone solos), it's still pretty good. The Teen Wolf soundtrack does feature some edgy, minimalist tones in the vein of 'Ano Electro', so at least that comparison makes a degree of sense; elsewhere on the soundtrack, at the very start of the film and over the opening credits, is a fantastic piece of sonic alchemy – the sound of no-hoper Michael J. Fox's basketball bouncing between his hand and the floor of the court, only processed to sound otherworldly and as if heard through water. Perhaps exposure to that sort of sound as a kid is the reason why listening to the likes of The Hafler Trio in my teens was so easy.

So where were we? Sabresonic completed, I alighted upon David Bowie's The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust. Initially, my exposure to Bowie was purposefully confined to the trio of albums produced with Brian Eno in Berlin during the mid-Seventies, but I've since found myself working backwards through Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust. I don't feel terribly qualified to comment on Bowie, mostly as I still feel like I'm only just dipping my toe into his catalogue, but I will say that 'Five Years' is just about the most un-Glam track from the genre, a fragile and Brechtian take on end-of-the-world themes.




I've had La Monte Young's (deep breath) The Second Dream Of The High Tension Line Stepdown Transformer From The Four Dreams Of China sat on my hard-drive for months and have never dropped it onto my iPod. The reason is quite simple: I've only ever read about La Monte Young's music (in The Wire) and when you never actually listen to something you've read about, you form all sorts of impressions about how it might sound, and I didn't want to have those preconceptions proven to be unfounded.

Young is a survivor of the infamous New York art scene in the Sixties, producing drone-based music from a loft with the likes of John Cale from The Velvet Underground and Tony Conrad (also, briefly, a member of the first iteration of the VU); Cale, a classically-schooled violinist first and foremost, would employ the drone methodology on Velvet Underground And Nico on tracks like 'Venus In Furs'. However, while on those tracks it was part of a wider musical template, with Young's music it is all about the drone, his pieces being long-form affairs (The Second Dream is single track lasting 80 minutes) with variations only discernible by intense concentration. It's not dissimilar to staring at a Rothko painting - initially you just see the colour, and then you see the tone and depth of expression.

Scored in 1962 for eight trumpets, The Second Dream isn't just a single solid drone; it starts and stops frequently but the individual sections themselves are lengthy, each consisting of overlapping, naturally phasing tones, that envelop and cut across one another. Far from sounding dull and cloying, I found this piece of music absorbing and almost relaxing. 'Almost' because very occasionally this can sound sinister, but on the whole it is what one of Young's peers, accordionist Pauline Oliveros, described as 'deep listening'.

Vinyl Corner

For some time now I've been weeding out my old dance vinyl collection, though not, it seems, for profit. In the last few weeks I sold a few 10" and 12" singles to Music & Video Exchange on Berwick Street for a paltry £6.00. It doesn't necessarily feel worth doing, especially since before selling them I'll generally record the songs to MP3 first, which can be time consuming. Also, my kids didn't exactly enjoy walking across London a few Saturdays ago to get to the shop, and I didn't exactly like them walking round the more colourful parts of Soho either.

One of the 10" singles I sold was 'Legend Of The Golden Snake (Version 2)' by Depth Charge, also known as DJ J Saul Kane. (Suffice to say, the rear sleeve has an image on the sleeve which wouldn't have been out of place at the seedier end of Berwick Street.) I first got into Depth Charge when I heard 'Shaolin Buddha Finger' on a mix compilation by The Chemical Brothers, back when the NME still gave away tapes on the cover, and back when The Chemical Brothers were still called The Dust Brothers.

'Legend Of The Golden Snake (Version 2)' is a heavy slab of what used to be called trip-hop, with an infectious speaker-warping dub bassline and lots of odd noises and kung-fu soundtrack melody snatches dropped in over the top. B-side, 'Sex, Sluts & Heaven (Bordello Mix)' is dense and atmospheric, phased in yelps and such like overlaying the bass-heavy groove. Funny, for all my musical taste changes over the years, I've never gone off Depth Charge. I perhaps regret flogging the vinyl copy, so I won't dwell on that too much.

Audio Journal : 11/11/2010

I wrote about Underworld's 2009 mix compilation Athens a few weeks ago. I first got into Underworld in 1994 with Dubnobasswithmyheadman, their third album, an album which saw them becoming courted by the indie music press, presenting as they did an amalgam of trendy dance music with sporadic deployment of treated guitars. It seems that, musically, 1994 was something of a pivotal year for me, looking back, and Dubnobasswithmyheadman was at the forefront of my developing eclectic musical pallette.

Second Toughest In The Infants, the eagerly-anticipated 1996 follow-up and 1999's Beaucoup Fish continued the bleeding-edge appeal of the Karl Hyde / Rick Smith / Darren Emerson unit. Emerson departed soon after Beaucoup Fish and the duo forged ahead without him, releasing 100 Days Off (2002) and Oblivion With Bells (2007), as well as a best-of and a live album, living proof if required that dance music artists also need to follow the well-worn path of miscellaneous albums of non-new material to pad out the sales. In fairness, they also released a load of online-only material too.

Having moved my gaze away from Underworld after Beaucoup Fish, I became quite excited about their new album, Barking. This album, their eighth, was named after the frequent appearance of dogs in their lyrics / imagery ('Dogman Go Woof' being an early, non-album single, plus they named tracks like Second Toughest's 'Sappy's Curry' after greyhounds raced at Essex dog tracks), and also the fact that Barking, Essex is Hyde's adopted home. In getting enthusiastic about the new album from two of my 1994 heroes, I overlooked the sticker on the front which advised that this album included a number of collaborations with other producers – über-cool names that didn't mean anything to me, with the exception of long-standing collaborator Darren Price, who remixed a couple of their singles, and whose releases on NovaMute are still lurking in one of my record boxes, somewhere.

Collaborations at this juncture in a band's career, whatever the genre, can be interpreted as either rejuvenating or an indication that the band have run out of creative steam. I honestly don't know which category Barking falls into. There are some excellent tracks here, the junglist 'Scribble' and 'Between Stars', the collaboration with Price. Opener 'Bird 1' has a minimal pulse and dynamic forward motion and providers a real, if updated, reminder of why Underworld were always so essential.

Some of the other tracks are harder to digest. 'Always Loved A Film' has a 'hands in the air' euphoric chorus, lots of 'Heaven's and 'Can you feel it?'s, and whilst it's joyously upbeat, it doesn't sound like Underworld to me, at least not the Underworld I remember. It sounds like the sort of pop-trance issued by Perfecto in the mid 1990s, the sort of music that Underworld provided the effective antidote to back then, while 'Diamond Jigsaw' sounds like 'Swamp Thing'-era Grid, or the most recent Goldfrapp album, Head First. I love that album, and it's pop-dance credentials are beautiful in their brazen-ness. But Underworld were always more sophisticated than that. And don't even get me started on the final track, 'Louisiana'. Depeche Mode fans will be used to the sections of their concerts where Martin Gore delivers a couple of songs, usually just with a piano accompaniment; it's what we expect from Gore – it's not what we expect from Underworld, tender and fragile though this song might be.

Vinyl Corner



A trawl through the sale racks in Brick Lane's Rough Trade East yielded 'For The Love Of Others' by Piney Gir, released in 2009 on Damaged Goods. Piney – real name Angela Penhaligon – first came onto my radar as part of electropop duo Vic Twenty and I did an interview with her back in the day, just as she was releasing her superb Peekahokahoo solo album. Since those electronic days, Piney's gone off and moved into more countrified territory and I haven't listened to her for a while.

'For The Love Of Others' is delicate Bacharach-tinged country pop. It's sweet, flavoured with Piney's honey-coated tones and beautiful, soulful vocal harmonies, with layers of horn accompaniment. It reminds me of the tracks by Kimya Dawson on the wonderful Juno soundtrack, with just a bit more knowing maturity.

On the flip, Piney tackles the Jungle Book standard 'I Wanna Be Like You', approaching one of Paulo Nutini's best-loved covers with an easy listening / jazz club vibe. There's also the miniscule 'Brady's Bluff', featuring lots of delicate vocal harmonies and gentle acoustic guitars and a neat little chord change right at the very end.