My gosh, I am SO SORRY for the delays in getting this list sorted out.

What can I say? Work has been ridiculous. Life has been only slightly less ridiculous. Who knew that you could be so busy without leaving home.

I’ve considered abandoning this list, or just posting the rest of it as a straight up 30 to 1 without written content, in order to allow me to move on to some more relevant and rewarding content-creation. But no. So much good music came my way in 2020, it would be a travesty of the blog’s loose principles not to follow through and give it all a good shout - so on we plough.

If you missed part # 1, please don’t forget to catch up with it here. (And again - please don’t take the numbers to heart; they make these things easier to manage, but are basically pretty arbitrary. If it’s on this list, I really liked it - end of.) 

 

From September:

“The three songs herein find [Paul] Allen’s strained, rather desperate voice holding forth against the blights of age, impoverished touring and, on ‘Six Six Sigma’, “a truly awful corporate training company”, apparently. Despite the somewhat, uh, mature nature of this subject matter though, the churning, discontented mid-fi murk of these recordings could have seeped up from a darkened Bristolian basement at any point over the past thirty summers, and is all the better for it, proffering an anxious and assaultive brand of acid-damaged space-punk grue which continues to feel exhilaratingly beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability, irrespective of the calendar year.

Allen’s defiantly Out There guitar-work is of course a consistent highlight, abetting technically accomplished Groundhogs-esque shred with some truly unhinged pedal-board demolition work, spurting malfunctioning dot matrix laser goo all over ‘Six Six Sigma’, and doing a pretty good impression of a garden gate being abused by a variety of power tools on… well, all three tracks really, now that I come to think of it.” 

 

 

Full appreciation of this double LP set from Manchester-based trumpet player Halsall and his backing band represents a bit of a challenge for me vis-à-vis my on-going struggle to widen the parameters of my listening. By which I mean, whenever I sling one of its sides on the turntable, some part of my brain immediately revolts, informing me that this basically sounds like an MOR rehash of the kind of stuff Don Cherry and Alice Coltrane were doing back in the ‘70s, with all the edges painstakingly filed off, leaving behind a brand of spiritual jazz suspiciously devoid of fire, challenge or experimentation.

The remainder of my brain however is forced to cop that the results sound ever so nice regardless, encouraging me to sink into the groove of Gavin Barras and Alan Taylor’s tidal rhythms, to appreciate the plain beauty of Maddie Herbert’s quivering, bead curtain harp strums, and to engage with the restrained, Miles-esque monologues of Halsall’s horn work.

Do what extent does music need an ‘edge’, I’m forced to wonder. Where does this relentless demand for sonic aggression and discomfort come from, and how has it become so completely embedded in my psyche? Ultimately I suppose, different kinds of music are needed for different times, to fulfill different purposes. When my energy levels are higher, when I’m out and about, pursuing my own real world objectives, much of ‘Salute To The Sun’, with it’s bamboo partition yoga studio vibes and ‘Mindfulness Meditations’ (actual song title - side # 3) sounds like absolute anathema.

Fact is though, I do not have the kind of energy (never mind aggression) that I used to. Give me a year of sitting at home, conducting business from a desk four feet from my bed, quiet streets, empty skies, and the multi-faceted stresses and uncertainties of global pandemic and economic collapse, and the winsome, overpoweringly pleasant rise and fall of Halsall’s ensemble starts to sound very comforting indeed, thank you kindly (and I do thank them kindly). 

 

 

Comprising a single, forty minute improvisation, ‘Unconscious Death Wishes’ finds this Portuguese duo building from a slow start - seagull cries and sinister, sustained organ chords creating a pensive, vangelis-like atmos - before voudon junk-can percussion, ecstatic, canine cries, questing clusters of Jajouka-like horn riffage and a forboding, perpetually rising string drone usher in an engrossing, hypnotic journey to the heart of some post-apocalyptic wasteland in which the animal skin and war-paint clad ‘Mad Max’ bikers have long since expired and turned to dust. More fun than it sounds. 

 

From June 2020: 

“As much as I’ve been enjoying Sarah Davachi’s work recently, her pursuit of monotonal melancholia can sometimes tend to get a bit, well, monotonous after a while – which makes this collaboration from French ambient artist Ariel Kalma feel like just the ticket. Herein, Kalma adds some welcome bursts of melodic and textural colour to Davachi’s pure-tone excursions, complimenting her quietly monolithic, largely synth-based work with the sound of tanpura, harmonium, slightly different synths and Vangelis-esque echo sax.

The simple fact that there are two people working together here helps cut against the barren loneliness that has sometimes made Davachi’s solo releases feel slightly unapproachable, making ‘Intemporel’ stand out as one of her sunnier, more optimistic recordings, with the sublime ‘Adieu de Vie’ in particular sinking into a warm steam bath of exactly the kind of ingratiating, escapist psychedelia I’m hard-wired to enjoy, electronics and delays burbling away like a morning chorus of robot birdies above a lightly LSD-brushed alien onsen resort.” 

 

 

Emma-Jean Thackray’s records to date have been consistently fun and forward-thinking, but this EP, released last March, is one of my favourites.

The opening ‘Rain Dance / Wisdom’ in particular powered me through much of 2020’s voluntarily locked down spring/summer, a sublime full band recording with gentle, sundazed Rhodes organ and echoed-out trumpet weaving around some of Thackray’s characteristically thunderous, distorted Sousaphone bass tones (played on this occasion by ben Kelly) and a clipped, head-noddin’, hi-hat heavy drum beat, courtesy of Dougal Taylor. Fantastic, effects-heavy production here, making a pretty much definitive exemplar of London’s all-directions-at-once, psych-tinged contemporary jazz sound. Splendid stuff. 

 

The back story behind the LP is pretty convoluted (see extended description on bandcamp page for more), but it basically boils down to Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard - who comprise instrumental guitar duo Elkhorn - becoming trapped in a New York apartment with their similarly inclined associate Turner Williams a couple of years back, as an unforeseen blizzard raged outside.

And, under such circumstances, what’s a bunch of pickers gonna do, beside pick? Record, that’s what. Though rooted in the post-Fahey ‘American Primitive’ tradition (never quite felt comfortable with that term, but there you go), the players happily see fit to expand considerably beyond that acoustic / folk-based MO, engaging - so one supposes - with the icy conditions out on the street to tease out an album’s worth of cold and lonely string-based meditations from a palette which includes 12 string acoustic, fuzz-toned electric and - courtesy of Mr Williams - electric bouzouki and shahi baaja.

Side # 1 finds Gardner initially dropping blissful, Garcia-type modal leads over Sheppard’s baleful, low key acoustic thrum, as Williams adds a burble of heavily effected weirdness to the mix, making for an agreeably psychedelic nest of interlocking string textures. It’s on side # 2 however that things really get going, as the tambora-like drone of the shahi baaja crashes head-first into some sheets of fuzz from Gardner, his pedal hitting that rather charming straight-into-practice-amp-at-living-room-volume sound which I suspect recording engineers would usually have moved heaven & earth to avoid under more conventional circumstances.

Though Sheppard’s 12-string maintains a lonely, falling snowflake vigil throughout, ‘The Storm Sessions’ nonetheless comprises a happy motherlode of loved up, multi-layered string jamming which, for me at least, hits a similar sweet spot to that mined so beautifully by Desmadrados Soldados de Ventura a few years back - which you can take as a fairly gargantuan recommendation, should you have a mind to. 

  

 

From way back in Feb 2020:

“So, Louise and Morgan range out beyond (what I assume to be) the more conventional, song-based folk of their own groups, embracing a woozier, more free-form approach, whilst [Kryssi] Battalene for her part nixes the PSF-styled noise-rock maximalism of her playing in the aforementioned bands, instead threading her way into the gentler, more delicate fabric favoured by her collaborators. Applying a variety of more intuitive and low-key guitar/effects treatments to the tracks here, she helps bring the underlying psychedelia of the enterprise simmering nicely to the surface, finally breaking out with some tormented, dissonant racket towards the end of the track-list, on what is probably my favourite track here, the mantra-like forest mulch trip-out of ‘Emerald Ash’.

Prior to that however, beautiful heavy tremolo strumming adds shimmering depths to the otherwise fairly trad country-folk of ‘Gathering’, whilst strange, throbbing delay pedal conjurations provide an ominous bed for ‘Squash Vine’s similarly healthy, no nonsense indie-folk take on free-from jamming, allowing it to grow into something rather spectacular across its six minute duration - a winning combo of elements repeated on the record’s slightly more tangible centre-piece, ‘Cherry Tree Carol’, whose mix of earnest, trad-arr vocal recital and more rock inclined backing might perhaps strike a distant chord with fans of Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band’s revered ‘No Roses’.” 

 

 

Now here’s a funny thing. Way back at the start of last year, a representative of Slum of Legs very kindly dropped me a line to let me know they - finally, after about five years of silence (but no worries, band people all know how that goes) - had an album on the way. I was told that they were planning a tour for November, and I thought, boy, that’s really planning ahead, but it will be great to see them play again, despite the wait. LITTLE DID WE KNOW, etc etc.

Anyway - we still have the record. And the record still sounds great, so let’s count our blessings.

From March 2020:

“..for the moment, let’s just say that the six members of Slum of Legs still sound like an unruly gaggle of entirely disparate, equally strong voices, all pulling in different directions whilst still somehow coalescing into some unholy, unified whole that’s almost, well, pop, Jim, but not as we know it. I hate reviews that end with “For Fans of…” lists with a passion, but if you can find me another band somewhere in the world whose hypothetical list might include The Mekons, Broadcast, The Raincoats, Marianne Faithful, Rudimentary Peni and Fad Gadget, I’d probably really like to hear them. Thanks in advance.” 

 

 

Recorded live-in-studio in 2018, the simple arithmetic underpinning this collaboration between San Francisco-based guitar/drums duo Numinous Eye and Tokyo-based guitar/guitar duo Suishou No Fune, thus brings us a free-from splurge of moody, maxed out guitar/guitar/guitar/drums rumination - and you’d better believe those are the kind of odds we’re always happy to stake an LP’s worth of dough against round these parts.

As per the Elkhorn recorded I waxed lyrical on above, storm and blizzard are very much the kind of sonic metaphors being conjured here, but this time around it’s thunder instead of snow, black waves crashing ‘gainst a blighted, unwelcoming shore, as the guitar trio’s amps gradually fire up, reverb knobs pointed safely t’ward the east as judicious boot-clicks on a few suitably scary looking silver boxes bring us a damage-dealing buzzsaw growl worthy of the band’s name.

Though the players seem to be sounding each other out with some sustained, high pitched solo work on the record’s more low key opening cut, any sense of ego or individual dynamism soon disappears here, subsumed within a collective whole of eerie, shuddering yet oddly triumphant noise, rather akin to a totally unglued Cheater Slicks ploughing off on an SF ballroom tip, or Fushitsusha taking it easy with a mug of cocoa at their rural weekend hideaway, peeking at the inclement conditions outside and thanking the powers that (airb&)be for their well-worn sofa and functioning fireplace. About as cozy as soul-wrenching electrified skree gets, in other words. 

 

 

From Nov 2020:

“An exuberant and outspoken stage performer to put it mildly, Dawid here leads her band through an increasingly intense series of rhythmic vocal mantras and cathartic call and response routines, sometimes veering closer to some kind of unhinged improvised theatre, revival church testimonial or group therapy session than to many listeners’ preconceptions of a quote-unquote ‘jazz’ set.

To some extent recalling the more militant and unglued corners of Art Ensemble of Chicago’s discography, one imagines this must have put the wind up some segments of the refined European festival crowd presumably assembled for this show, but, any walk-outs or deserters from the concert space may well have been forced to ask themselves - if you don't want to listen to an African-American woman speaking her mind, what the hell are you doing at a jazz festival?

Contemplation of that question, to my mind, provides an immediate validation of Dawid’s confrontational - genuinely rather “‘punk’” in fact - performance style, and needless to say, those jazzbos who did stay on for the duration will have found themselves richly rewarded, in pure muso terms just as much as on the more visceral/emotional/existential side of things.

As unconventional as their approach may have been here, Dawid and her band are certainly no slouches on the technical front. The extended interplay between Dawid’s clarinet and Xristian Espinoza’s sax on the loping grooves of ‘London’, and her keyboard improvisations on ‘Black Family’, are absolutely inspired, whilst the smouldering, nocturnal heft of the piano/horn intro to ‘We are Starzz’ is just plain sublime. Enhanced by wild, rhythmic glossolalia and cosmic synth swirls, ‘We Hereby Declare The African Look’ and ‘Melo Deez from Heab’N’ meanwhile present bizarre, sci-fi groove-outs worthy of either Funkadelic’s most errant, acid soaked excursions or Sun Ra’s most wonkily accessible ‘80s pop crossover work (depending on which way you look at it), whilst the rolling rhythmic backbone provided by South African drummer (and bandleader) Asher Gamedze and lodestone bassist Dr Adam Zanolini is exceptional throughout.” 

----

To be continued ASAP….

Labels: Angel Bat Dawid, Anthroprophh, best of 2020, Elkhorn, Emma-Jean Thackray, Matthew Halsall, Paisiel, Sarah Davachi, Sarah Louise Sally Anne Morgan & Kryssi B, Slum of Legs, The Noise Birds

Following up on my hopelessly naive post from earlier this week, you’ll probably already be aware that Bandcamp have announced that they will be waiving their revenue share on all sales made this Friday, allowing all revenue to go straight to the artists and/or labels.

Now, Bandcamp ain’t perfect (I know some people have issues), but it’s probably about as ethical a way to buy/enjoy music as exists when face-to-face interaction is no longer an option, especially during the window when they’re kindly not grabbing their own cut off the top, and if there is one rallying cry that can surely unite us in these dark, working-from-homey times, it’s “fuck Spotify”, right?

As such then, here is a swift list of a few things new and (slightly) old I will buying on Friday.

Mako Sita / Hamid Drake – Ronda



I just today discovered this 2018 collaboration between ubiquitous avant-jazz luminary Hamid Drake and “Chicago’s premier free-rock trio” Mako Sita (whom I confess have passed me by until now), and my freaking god, it’s exquisite. Sounds like Ennio Morricone, Charles Mingus and Alessandro Alessandroni recording a soundtrack to a moody, post-apocalyptic spy thriller set in the Near East. Kind of fits the current mood quite nicely, if you want to go there. Partially recorded at Electrical Audio (tho not with Albini), the sheer SOUND of this thing is incredible…. just a hugely evocative mess of all-points brilliance. [The same line-up of players have a follow up album currently on pre-order from the Astral Spirits label, and the sample track is equally inspired.]

Slum of Legs – s/t LP



Slight cheat here, because technically I already own this, but I was incredibly happy to discover earlier this month that Slum of Legs, one of the most exciting, idiosyncratic and imaginative bands to have emerged from the UK DIY milieu in recent memory, have returned from a five year hiatus with their first full length LP, and that furthermore it’s pretty brilliant, mixing wildly exuberant renditions of all the great songs I remember them playing back in the day with a bunch of equally inspired new material.

Very much deserving of a full write-up at some point in the future, but for the moment, let’s just say that the six members of Slum of Legs still sound like an unruly gaggle of entirely disparate, equally strong voices, all pulling in different directions whilst still somehow coalescing into some unholy, unified whole that’s almost, well, pop, Jim, but not as we know it. I hate reviews that end with “For Fans of…” lists with a passion, but if you can find me another band somewhere in the world whose hypothetical list might include The Mekons, Broadcast, The Raincoats, Marianne Faithful, Rudimentary Peni and Fad Gadget, I’d probably really like to hear them. Thanks in advance.

Tamikrest – Chatma



Playing some of the best Tuareg rock (can’t quite ring myself to call it ‘desert blues’) I'ver heard this side of the mighty Tinariwen, Tamikrest have been about for at least a decade, but they’re a new discovery to me. They too have a new record on pre-order this month, but further investigation soon led me back to this 2013 release, which rules pretty mightily. The band’s line-up seems to have undergone a fair few changes over the years, but this earlier release is definitely enhanced by the presence of female vocalist Wonou Walet Sidati, whose declamatory, pop-savvy style and defiant presence in the midst of what is still very much a male-dominated sphere adds a real fire to these fret-blazin’, hand-clapping songs of displacement, defiance, struggle and survival.

As ever, bands from this scene/genre represent a strange paradox, in that they are professional touring outfits who enjoy a higher profile, bigger bookings etc than most of the other contemporary groups I’m liable to cover on a blog like this, but at the same time it’s a fair bet that, as members of an embattled and disenfranchised itinerant culture without a homeland to call their own, they still really, really need your effing money right now, more so than, say, some guy in Leeds or Chicago with a day job in IT. Not that that really matters one way or another in view of the fact that their music rocks like an absolute bastard and is assured worth a few dollars of anyone’s pay cheque purely on its own merits, but y’know what I mean.

Headroom – Head in the Clouds



2017 debut LP of fog-shrouded, heavy-lidded fuzz-psych bliss-out from Kryssi Battalene & friends over in New Haven, CT, previously discussed in these pages on several occasions. Nuff said, I should hope.

Bridget Hayden - Pure Touch Only From Now On, They Said So: Outtakes



A late addition to the line-up, Bridget Hayden – who I was looking forwarding to seeing live last week, pre-cancellation – has just uploaded a set of ‘outtakes’ from her exceptionally affecting ‘Pure Touch Only..’ album from 2018 [also available here]. Forlorn, elegiac and beautiful in the sense that that vision of hell at the end of ‘The Beyond’ is beautiful, her quasi-abstract, elemental shut-in blues should provide some appropriately uneasy catharsis for our grim, collective-yet-isolated current predicament.

The Bevis Frond – various records





Meanwhile, I will also be buying some digital albums from The Bevis Frond, because I like The Bevis Frond at the moment. Listening to them makes me feel comfortable and happy, and he/they have more-or-less an entire lifetime’s worth of music up on bandcamp, so this is a good opportunity to fill some of the gaps in my collection. Frankly, if Nick Saloman were to knock on my door and ask for twenty quid, I’d be happy to oblige, so getting about six hours of music into the bargain seems like a good deal all round.

---

Away from Bandcamp meanwhile, let it simply be said that if London’s best venue Café Oto closes as a result of all this kerfuffle, I for one will be pissed. Their in-house Otoroku label has a huge archive of releases & live recordings available for download – and they also offer a range of downloads in collaboration with the aforementioned & generally great Astral Spirts label - so please, fill yr boots and empty yr virtual wallets upon their counter.

(Regarding other ‘best venue’ contenders meanwhile, DIY Space For London can always be donated to here; I’m not sure if there’s any remote way to support New River Studios or Pulse Studios in Walthamstow during their inevitable periods of closure, but if you know better please let me know.)

Labels: appeals, Bridget Hayden, disasters & emergencies, Headroom, Mako Sita / Hamid Drake, Slum of Legs, Tamikrest, The Bevis Frond

Lazy blog recycling goes meta here, as I quote from a September review of Slum of Legs’ single that in turn quotes from a bit I wrote about their demo tape back in March;

“I said of Slum of Legs’ demo tape earlier this year that; ‘..the three tracks [here] do function VERY MUCH as a demo […] giving only a fleeting, muffled impression of the kind of rampant creativity this unit is capable of’. This single then can be seen to represent the full realisation of this Brighton collective’s potential – a stew of wildly disparate (some might say contradictory) elements, successfully boiled down to a perfectly imperfect essence. A kind of fiendish, exploratory outsider pop music that recognises no limitations, imposes no boundaries upon its members’ divergent impulses, yet somehow works toward the same functional totality. It is a lovely thing to hear.”

[...]


“Weird, dissident, homemade, different from anything YOU’D make – these are some of the key notion that spring to mind where Slum of Legs is concerned I think. I may have bandied around an unpalatable number of dubious band-name comparisons in the preceding paragraphs, but perhaps SOL’s true spiritual predecessors are – naturally - outfits that sound more or less nothing like them. In particular, I’m thinking the sort of feeling that can be found lurking in the obscurest corners of unacknowledged female creativity in the murkiest years of post-punk era. Androids of Mu, The Fates, that sort of thing. Basically, both this single and the demo tape sound like what pop music might have become in 1982 if William S. Burroughs had been writing the script and a stern regiment of well-drilled Raincoats/Au Pairs partisans had been carrying it out.

Even in 2014 – perhaps especially in 2014 - it is exhilarating to hear a band making such imaginative, evocative and open-ended music whilst still remaining ostensibly within the realm of song-based ‘pop’, trawling for thrills in the shallows of the avant garde whilst happily avoiding its tendency toward alienating abstraction. This is Weird Music, no doubt - taking risks, posing questions, demanding attention. But it is also very giving music - a lot of fun for creators and listeners alike.”

Both releases are still listen- & buy-able from Tuff Enuff.

Labels: best of 2014, Slum of Legs

This little 45 is a monster. Within its two song / nine minute duration, there is more creativity, chaos, surprise, energy and innovation than can be found on the vast majority of full length LPs/albums I’ve heard this year. (And that’s not just mindless hyperbole either – before writing this, I put all my recently purchased records on the scales, just to check.)

I said of Slum of Legs’ demo tape earlier this year that; “..the three tracks [here] do function VERY MUCH as a demo […] giving only a fleeting, muffled impression of the kind of rampant creativity this unit is capable of”. This single then can be seen to represent the full realisation of this Brighton collective’s potential – a stew of wildly disparate (some might say contradictory) elements, successfully boiled down to a perfectly imperfect essence. A kind of fiendish, exploratory outsider pop music that recognises no limitations, imposes no boundaries upon its members’ divergent impulses, yet somehow works toward the same functional totality. It is a lovely thing to hear.

All this is rather abstract thus far, so let’s get down to brass tacks.

‘Begin to Dissolve’ opens with an overdriven Add N to X-ish analogue synth riff that is soon joined scraggly, chiming guitar, nervy, Cale-ish violin, martial drumming and vocalist Tasmin Chapman’s voice a clarion of assertive, post-punky anguish: “Inside the static I hear whispers, they say everything is dead!”. Thunking great X Ray Spex/ATV punk chords enter to emphasize what I suppose is the chorus part, before waves of Radiophonic/Oliver Postgate oddity and a few bars of poignant, doleful violin swing past over the uneasy, Mo Tucker-ish clatter of the gtr/bass/drums. Next a touch of roaring, doom-ish low end guitar enters the equation, closely followed by a storm of transistor radio static. “Is there anybody there? Can you tell me your reaction?” demands an unidentified interviewer/operator as muttering EVP voices crackle away in the corners. We’re at 2:30 of a 3:44 song by this point, and nothing we’ve heard sounds contrived, inorganic or at all out of whack with the elements surrounding it. The remaining 70-odd seconds becomes a drop into dream-time, a sort of grey-skied river-gloop narrative of decayed spoken word and DIY punk propulsion, concluding in a maelstrom of roaring gobbledygook.

‘Razorblade The Tape’ dials down the strangeness considerably, flying a lot closer to what journos are obliged to term ‘accessible’, which makes it’s placement on the b-side oddly pleasing. Beginning gently, like a long-lost Marine Girls off-cut, things quickly evovle into a quite wonderful bit of off-kilter, synth-damaged guitar pop, that drifts into a persistently catchy, Stereolabby song-drone over the course of the next few minutes. It demands less comment than the A side but is equally persuasive - a perfect flipside to the preceding song’s more menacing impulses.

Weird, dissident, homemade, different from anything YOU’D make – these are some of the key notion that spring to mind where Slum of Legs is concerned I think. I may have bandied around an unpalatable number of dubious band-name comparisons in the preceding paragraphs, but perhaps SOL’s true spiritual predecessors are – naturally - outfits that sound more or less nothing like them. In particular, I’m thinking the sort of feeling that can be found lurking in the obscurest corners of unacknowledged female creativity in the murkiest years of post-punk era. Androids of Mu, The Fates, that sort of thing. Basically, both this single and the demo tape sound like what pop music might have become in 1982 if William S. Burroughs had been writing the script and a stern regiment of well-drilled Raincoats/Au Pairs partisans had been carrying it out.

Even in 2014 – perhaps especially in 2014 - it is exhilarating to hear a band making such imaginative, evocative and open-ended music whilst still remaining ostensibly within the realm of song-based ‘pop’, trawling for thrills in the shallows of the avant garde whilst happily avoiding its tendency toward alienating abstraction. This is Weird Music, no doubt - taking risks, posing questions, demanding attention. But it is also very giving music - a lot of fun for creators and listeners alike.

Labels: singles reviews, Slum of Legs

As the Vernal Equinox stomps on by and the signifiers of ‘Spring’ seem to come and go on an hourly basis, I realise that we’re about one quarter of the way through the year already, and, contrary to impression you might have acquired from reading this blog recently, I’ve not spent the past three months wholly occupied by esoteric soundtrack reissues, random second-hand vinyl and weird old acid rock shit either.

In fact there have been a spiriting number of NEW THINGS that have attracted my attention, and here to prove the point is a quick run-down of them, thus clearing the deck of all this stuff that deserves your attention / support, but that I haven’t quite had the time or impetus to write a full-length-blog post on.

 
Habibi – self-titled LP (Burger)

A really solid LP of catchy, non-clichéd guitar-pop from these Brooklynites, delivered in deliberate, straight-faced fashion and sitting a good notch or two up from the swamp of sloppy, indeterminate, indiefied gack that the majority of young people’s guitar music has devolved into over the past few years. To various extents, Habibi recall assorted alumni of the 2009-11 golden years – Grass Widow, Yellow Fever, Fungi Girls, Vivian Girls - but never for quite long enough for me to really get a bead on ‘em. Even within these tightly patrolled waters, they’ve managed to stake out their own little corner, which they inhabit with confidence and panache, groovy and self-sufficient mermaids just daring the music industry to come and bother them. Exactly the kind of quietly perfect, unremarkably remarkable band that could have grown up out of New Zealand 1982 or, well, North America 2010, and you’ll want to get on this quick if you miss those halcyon days.

‘Detroit Baby’ is the best neo-girl group tune you’re liable to hear this year, and it’s not the best song here by any means. I really like it when they go all-out on the reverb and twang and throw in some longer instrumental passages (‘Persepolis’, ‘Sweetest Talk’). There’s a slower, indie-er number at one point that’s kind of a bummer, and a few songs towards the end that don’t appeal to me much, but you can’t have everything. I just did the maths and this is 80% gold. Check it out.

(Listen on Soundcloud & buy from Burger.)



Sapphire Slows – Allegoria LP (Not Not Fun)

I very much liked Sapphire Slows’ ‘True Breath’ EP from a little while back, and now the first proper full length from this mysterious Tokyo dweller proves an absolute joy, fully delivering on the promise of those earlier tracks, as Ms Slows (if I may) barely puts a foot wrong from beginning to end, drawing heavily from the foundations laid by former label-mates Peaking Lights (nothing wrong with that!), but also often investing her ragged, homemade dub-pop with an absolutely luminous dose of hyper-melodic pop optimism, like the gigantic vocal chorus / breakdown bit of some cheesy, long-forgotten house anthem distantly reflected back to us in dreams, through veils of glass-fronted, urbanite dreamland.... just a lovely, lovely, undemanding little trip. A fucking HAPPY album, if you can believe such a thing legitimately existing in 2014, this one’s still making me contentedly smile n’ nod after a ton of repeat spins. Perfect comfort music.

(Listen on Soundcloud, buy via Boomkat.)





The Love Triangle – Clever Clever LP (Static Shock)

Some certifiable Good Punk here, from a trio led, somewhat inevitably, by the bloke who used to sing in The Shitty Limits. Fully energised approach reminds me slightly of my still-beloved Royal Headache, but with a more downbeat, British feel always in evidence. They probably won’t much thank me for invoking The Jam alongside Eater, Buzzcocks and The Lurkers, but that’s where my thoughts keep heading here – well-composed, content-packed songs blasted through fast and sloppy and angry and smirking and don’t-give-me-that-shit-mate-let’s-just-get-it-recorded. Spirited, that’s the word.

As the eye-rolling reference-points thrown out above might suggest, this resembles the compressed residue of all the good ’77 UK punk bands and none of the shit ones, whilst also somehow ducking the accompanying nostalgia bear-trap - and as such I like it a lot.

(Listen & buy from Static Shock.)





Irkallian Oracle – Grave Ekstasis tape/LP (Nuclear War Now!)

It was Neil Kulkarni’s (consistently wonderful) blog that hipped me to this one (none more KVLT!), and of course he sings the praises of Irkallian Oracle a lot more eloquently than I could attempt to, so instead I’ll just give in to this record’s function as a hyperbole magnet and just say: holy fucking shit. This is the most purely devastating, world-swallowing thing I’ve heard from the realm of black metal in years. The sort of music that’s so overwhelming it just… make.. all… words.. stop, like the stuttering, ellipsis-filled end of a Lovecraft story, as ill-judged metaphors flail hopelessly, aware of their inability to ever really capture the totality of.. this.. goddamn… thing. The bone-shattering, practice room brutality of ‘80s Napalm Death, the gravesoil-caked pagan tape-hiss of the most funereal BM, the cosmic/hypnotic maximalist wipeout of The Boredoms or Oneida in their prime – all of these things are here, sublimated into something new and staggering.

For a long time now, many metal bands of a more forward-thinking variety seem to have been lost in bombast, endlessly trying to recreate that uncomfortable, tummy-churning Surround Sound OOF that comes from watching a giant monster lay waste to a city in some epic 3D folly. Irkallian Oracle are no exception, but where most contenders just end up creating the sonic equivalent of a Michael Bay Transformers headache, these guys actually walk the walk, conjuring the sound of the stars aligning as Cthulhu himself breaks the waves. And they do it themselves on fucking TAPES. None of this bloody drivel really does it justice, but… just… [speechless].

(Listen and buy from Nuclear War Now!)



Slum of Legs – demo tape (Tuff Enuff)

Definitely one of the most interesting/exciting bands I’ve caught live so far this year (not that that’s saying much, I’ve only been leaving New Cross Gate about once a month), this Brighton six piece are one of those bands that seem to function as a kind of volatile, open-ended brain-trust rather than as a pre-planned “this is what we’re gonna do” type venture, with each member seemingly bringing in a quite different approach & set of influences, mixing it all up into a pleasantly dissonant brew that could head off in any number of directions at any moment. From a basis in artfully self-taught Raincoatsy guitar/viola skree and Mo Tucker thud drumming, we are apt to experience unsignposted diversions into anguished punk yelling, atmospheric soundscaping and totally-out-of-leftfield burbling analogue synth business, never quite cohering into a verifiable ‘THAT’S THEIR SOUND’ sound, but then why should it? I mean, who wants to go around listening to bands that “cohere” all day long, y’know what I mean? And since I already seem to be digging myself into a hole re: the whole only-comparing-women-to-other-women trap, might as well go whole hog and also throw in passing reference to ‘80s feminist oddballs like Androids of Mu and The Fates, whilst concluding that they also often end up sounding a bit like a far rougher, gnarlier version of token Flying Nun lady-band Look Blue, Go Purple… and that can only be a good thing, right?

(As a ‘Big Sigh’ type aside, this is the problem after so many years of intensive music-listening: however hard a new white-ish, guitar-ish group might try to do something a bit different, it is now scientifically impossible for me to hear them without going “oh yeah, that’s pretty cool, but you know it basically sounds a bit like [insert obscure old bands A, B, C and D here], right?” It’s a dreadful affliction that makes me feel like one of those hand gesturing, arsehole celebrity wine-tasters whom we all used to laugh at before middle class consensus rendered them normal - please make it stop.)

Anyway, despite the fact that it has been distributed and sold for money by a third party label, it’s worth noting that the three tracks on this Slum of Legs 'demo tape' do function VERY MUCH as a demo (yes, it’s that same semantic query I had with previous Tuff Enuff releases). Giving only a fleeting, muffled impression of the kind of rampant creativity this unit is capable of, this is a real chunk of old fashioned “wow, I can’t wait to hear what they’ll come up with next” type demo tape excitement, exactly the kind of thing you could imagine John Peel tearing up his schedule for and jamming straight on the airwaves, back in ye olde halcyon pre-internet days. The best thing you will be able to buy for 50p (!) in the whole of the rest of your life, in other words.

(Listen and buy from Tuff Enuff.)

Labels: Habibi, Irkallian Oracle, Sapphire Slows, Slum of Legs, The Love Triangle