Album Review: Panda Dub – Psychotic Symphony (2013)

The “dub” genre, that basscentric cosmic offspring of what we once called reggae, is expanding at such a prolific rate it seems that each passing week brings us a brand new sub-genre to contend with. And where dub was once specifically identified as the voice of Jamaica’s roots and culture movement and its wider Afro-carib diasporas, it is now very much a global phenomenon. You need only look at its recent spread across the continent of Europe for confirmation of that.

 There’s always been the odd pocket of interest in Europe of course, but beyond the obvious West Indian stronghold otherwise known as the United Kingdom, it’s fair to say the good people of the European mainland have largely been immune to the genre’s wider charms. But diversification – of scenes, sounds, and styles – combined with a whole bunch of new technologies has undoubtedly changed the game, and dub’s horizons haven’t so much been expanded, as been blown wide open.

There’s roots artists like (Sicilian) Alborosie in Italy, High Freequency in Spain, and mainstream pop stars like Gentleman in Germany. There’s also the rootsteppah styles of Radikal Guru coming out of Poland, and the digital dub of DU3normal from that bastion of roots and culture we call Budapest, Hungary. Plus many others. There’s simply no escaping the reality that genre boundaries and traditional borders no longer apply in 2013. Which has to be a good thing right?

 

And then, of course, there’s the subject of this review, Panda Dub, from Lyonnais, France (not to be confused with Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad). Psychotic Symphony is the latest release from this largely anonymous artist who has been quietly releasing his unique variation on dub since as far back as 2005. My own introduction to the music of Panda Dub came back in 2010 with Black Bamboo, a release that turned me on to the expansive possibilities of digital dub.

Effectively a laidback afro/electro hybrid made primarily on computers, there’s perhaps a feeling that this is some kind of software-based dub, a synthetic, lightweight or lesser version of the real thing, but Panda also includes a wide range of live instrumentation, from a variety of flutes to melodica to erhu, to create a sound all of his own.

If there is any question mark over the credibility of Panda Dub, or the authenticity of this digital form, then it’s worth noting that this former metal fiend regularly takes his live show across Europe, with a number of dates already booked during this Northern hemisphere summer. So while his music has all the hallmarks of being a fastidiously poured over homemade brew, that doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t translate well beyond the confines of a studio.

 

Released on the Original Dub Gathering label, Psychotic Symphony doesn’t deviate too far from what we got on Black Bamboo, or earlier work (see the Anthology 2005-2008 release for a taster), though it does seem a little more fully formed, more focused, and its themes feel more developed. Bass dominates, there’s a strong UK-steppa influence, some rhythmic dubstep, and extensive use of sampling throughout.

Released digitally right on the cusp of the New Year (2012/2013), Psychotic Symphony has been a permanent fixture on my pod right through the calendar year to date, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s proving a reliable “go to” whenever I’ve felt the need for something a little different.

Highlights: ‘Sometimes I Don’t Sleep’, ‘Crazy World’, ‘Into The Woods (featuring Poussin)’, ‘Time’, ‘No Rule In The Underground’, and the title track itself.

A free download of Panda Dub’s previous release, the 2010 album Black Bamboo, can be found here ... and here's the Horace Andy-sampling 'Time' off Psychotic Symphony:

 

 

Gig Review: Killing Joke, Bodega, Wellington

It’s funny how you can think you know a band’s work intimately, and then realise you really don’t know it all that well at all.

Halfway through Killing Joke’s Bodega gig, the final set of what was effectively a “Greatest Hits/Singles” album promo jaunt, amid a whirlwind of pulverising noise, I fast came to the conclusion that I really knew only a small fraction of the band’s extensive studio discography. And what I did know, was pretty much confined to the first decade of the band’s 35-year career. Which, when you think about it, hardly constitutes knowing a band “intimately”.

But Killing Joke’s earliest work always had greater prominence in my mind’s eye, only because it meant so much to me at the time. Truth is, I’ve lost touch with the band over the past couple of decades, a point that was literally hammered home to me (in jackhammer fashion) at Friday night’s not quite sold out gig.

Not that any of it mattered. This was the legendary Killing Joke. In Wellington for the first time, and they were here to celebrate the old stuff anyway.

I got to see all of my favourites – a magnificent ‘Requiem’ to open, ‘Wardance’ three tracks into the set, a much earlier than anticipated rendition of ‘Love Like Blood’ (which I’d picked as a default encore option), ‘Eighties’, and ‘The Wait’. All there and accounted for. There were others I recognised but was perhaps a bit too sozzled to recall here … things got a little “vague” as the night wore on (ahem).

What I do know is that it was very loud, there were none of the sound problems I’d associated with Bodega in the past, and despite it being crowded, hot, and sticky, none of the issues that had apparently tainted Killing Joke’s Auckland show the previous night.

 

Vocalist, founder, and main man Jaz Coleman, was truly a sight to behold. With flowing jet black locks, deep set crazy eyes, and a truly impressive crow-like beak, he really is the ultimate frontman. With such an imposing stage presence his only focus was to give the crowd exactly what they wanted, what they expected. He knows the game and plays the role perfectly.

 

Flanked by a perpetually bored looking guitarist Geordie to his right, and bassist (and uber producer) Youth – who was clearly loving it – to his left, Coleman cuts quite the Rock God profile. His on stage dramatics and tendency to take the piss out of himself, somehow defy a 53-year-old body, and delight the whippersnappers in the front row(s) – or the dysfunctional Bodega equivalent of a “mosh” – in equal measures.

In the end we got a solid 90-minute set, of which 30-odd minutes was an encore … from noisy early punk, to gothic post-punk, with large segments of layered industrial grind … if this proves to be something of a sign-off tour for Killing Joke, they’ve left me with a gig to savour, and one that will now perhaps become my defining memory of the band.

If I didn’t really know Killing Joke to begin with, I certainly left the venue feeling rather more enlightened, and satisfied that the gig qualifies as quite probably the best $70 I’ve spent all year.

 

AudioCulture

AudioCulture is a brand new website documenting the rich history of pop music and wider pop culture in New Zealand. If you’re a fan of NZ music you’ll know about it already – unless, of course, you’re locked up in a padded cell somewhere, sans computer and have no contact with the outside world. Or live in Whakarongo, which is pretty much the same thing.

The website is the brainchild of longtime NZ music industry identity Simon Grigg, and it brings together a quality set of knowledgeable writers to document the good and the great of this thing we often refer to by the catch-all “Kiwi music”.

We’ve had some great books on the subject over the years – John Dix’s bible ‘Stranded In Paradise’, Chris Bourke’s ‘Blue Smoke’, Grant Smithies’ excellent ‘Soundtrack’, and most recently Simon Sweetman’s thoroughly enjoyable ‘On Song’. But apart from a few key individuals keeping the flame burning online with independent blogs (such as the sadly now defunct Mysterex), we’ve never before had a website that digs as deep and covers as much territory as AudioCulture.

Congratulations and a big thank you to all involved in AudioCulture (aka “the noisy library of New Zealand music”), it looks terrific, it’s a wonderful resource for history boffins, and the best thing about it is that it will only continue to get better ... if any everythingsgonegreen reader hasn’t already done so, I strongly recommend you take a squizz:

AudioCulture

Kraftwerk: Classic Albums – The Man Machine & Computer World, Vivid 2013, and Free Mixtapes

The annual Vivid Festival in Sydney has just come to the end of its spectacular near three-week-long run. Described as an extravaganza of “light, music, and ideas”, it really does look like a must see event.

This year’s Vivid Festival was made all the more exciting by the fact that legendary German technocrats Kraftwerk performed EIGHT times in just four days at the Sydney Opera House, rolling out what is otherwise known as The Catalogue – eight exceptional albums (one per gig, two gigs per day/night) from Autobahn (1974) through to Tour de France (2003). I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t totally jealous when I learned that local ‘Stuff’ music blogger Simon Sweetman had attended. Simon’s experience is well documented here …

 

Blog On The Tracks - Covering The Vivid Festival

Anyway, it got me thinking more and more about Kraftwerk. The organisers of Vivid must have been pinching themselves when they secured Kraftwerk’s participation in the event because no other musical outfit across the globe (individual, band, DJ, or “operator”) could possibly provide a better fit for the “lights, music, and ideas” ethos than Kraftwerk. Across the past four decades this German phenomenon has been at the forefront of the electronic music evolution, proving instrumental in the development of many sub-genres, not the least of which have been Hip hop and techno.

Beyond the obvious untouchable pop culture markers such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Velvet Underground, it is doubtful there has ever been a more influential act than Kraftwerk. The group’s longevity and ability to set new trends knows no bounds. As a unit, they continue to astound.

With that in mind, I revisited a couple of key Kraftwerk albums in my collection and wrote a brief review for each (below). I also stumbled across a collection of fairly cool freely downloadable Kraftwerk related mixtapes featuring the group and a whole range of different artists as compiled by DJ Food here ...

 

DJ Food/Kraftwerk Free Mixtapes

Kraftwerk – The Man Machine (1978)

The Man Machine (or Die Mensch Maschine) is one of several truly great Kraftwerk albums released during the group’s heyday of the late Seventies/early Eighties.

 

With just six tracks clocking in at around 36 minutes, The Man Machine is also one of Kraftwerk’s shortest albums, but with typical German efficiency (generalisation alert!) there is no shortage of quality with the “band” (are Kraftwerk really a band, or a group of IT geeks?) somehow managing to squeeze as much into those 36 minutes as possible.

There’s no real need for me to wax on about what this sounds like – Kraftwerk being the synth Gods they are – but this is the album that gave us ‘The Robots’, ‘Neon Lights’, and the very belated hit single ‘The Model’. It also gave us perhaps the most iconic album cover of Kraftwerk’s entire career.

Kraftwerk – Computer World (1981)

Like so much of Kraftwerk’s storied output, Computer World (aka Computer Welt) was light years ahead of its time.

The album – following on from the success of 1978’s The Man Machine – was several years in the making, yet it could have been made any time between its 1981 release date and say, the turn of the new Millennium some 20 years later, and still sound relatively fresh.

It’s worth remembering that back in 1981 computers weren’t quite the everyday item they are today, and back then they were very much a big deal. Indeed, I recall my own sense of excitement when buying something as basic as a “space invaders” pocket calculator around that time!

For a bunch of German cycling obsessives to dedicate an entire album to this new electronic phenomenon seemed rather indulgent in the extreme.

But of course, we now know different. If they (computers) haven’t exactly taken over the world, then they most certainly have taken over the lives of a large portion of its inhabitants - which is exactly what Kraftwerk were banging on about all those years ago.

Highlights: ‘Computer World’ (both parts 1 & 2), ‘Pocket Calculator’, and ‘Computer Love’.

 

Classic Album Review: Killing Joke - Killing Joke (1980)

With Killing Joke set to play my local (in Wellington) in just over a week’s time, I revisited the band’s phenomenal first album, the career-launching eponymous debut from 1980 ... a gig review will follow on everythingsgonegreen.

It is difficult to imagine the sort of impact this album would have had on any poor unsuspecting pop-loving innocent stumbling across it for the first time upon its release some 33 years ago. But the album cover art/sleeve design would surely have provided at least some advance warning of the content given that it ultimately so accurately mirrors the album’s musical imagery.

This is music for the UK’s disaffected inner city youth circa 1980; the sound of punk once that initial burst of teenage excitement, chart momentum, and shock factor had given way to far more evolutionary and pragmatic realities like advancing the genre musically.

This is a soundtrack for all those of the post-Pistol persuasion still sober and unfortunate enough to be living in the real world. The music of the many thousands of angry bleak urban landscapes spread across the globe, yet curiously enough, still music of a very British, and very Eighties nature; it’s the noise associated with cold rains, rattling old underground trains, wet concrete walls, and litter-strewn, wind-blown wastelands; the sound of boredom, of unemployment, of recession; a forewarning of Margaret Thatcher’s all new recently-elected conservative government, and its stockpile of life-changing (for many) social policies about to be unleashed upon the masses with all the subtlety of a spiked wooden piece of four-by-two bashing about the side of the skull.

It sure as hell ain’t Abba, Supertramp, Xanadu, or whatever else was rocking your little cotton socks that particular year.

It is also, it’s fair to say, a somewhat watered down variation on Heavy Metal. With large helpings of what can only be described as an early template for the form of noise we know today as “industrial”. This is a primitive industrial punk/metal/pre-techno hybrid - frantic drumming, layers of grinding guitar, droning synth, and with Jaz Coleman’s gruff building site delivery, a vocal to both die for and rally behind all at the same time.

Best Tracks: ‘Requiem’, ‘Wardance’ (“music to dance to”), ‘Complications’ (“this is the new age”), but pride of place must go to the glorious minimalism of ‘The Wait’ (clip below).

Album Review: The National – Trouble Will Find Me (2013)

A couple of fellow blogger friends of mine have come down very hard on The National’s latest album, Trouble Will Find Me. One described it as “dreary” and asked the question, why bother? Another called it a “disgrace” and a “turgid exercise in self-flagellation” ...

Harsh words indeed.

The New York based band’s sixth studio effort has certainly divided opinion so far, and I note the popular Pitchfork site, on the other hand, was somewhat gushing in its praise for the album, rating it a positively sizzling 8.4/10 and including it in its ‘best new music’ category.

So there are perhaps a couple of things worth considering in all of this.

The first is that The National haven’t done too much differently on Trouble Will Find Me. What worked on Alligator, Boxer, and High Violet (the band’s three most popular sets to date) tends to work just as well on the new album.

 

Yet there may have been an expectation for The National to come up with something novel, something exciting and fresh to stave off the sort of critical backlash often reserved for mid-career bands. Onetime ‘next big thing’ type bands keeping faith with a formula that served so well during formative years. Is there a school of thought dictating that The National must now somehow move on?

The second thing is that this band’s albums have always been slow creepers – the sort of thing best appreciated after giving it time to really sink in. Certainly, 2010’s High Violet was quite slow in revealing itself, and it took a number of listens before it dawned on me what a beautifully constructed piece of work it was. High Violet, for me, grew to become one of its year’s best albums. The counter argument to such a notion, of course, is that a good album really shouldn’t take that much work.


The National: great live rep, fading in the studio?

 

Trouble Will Find Me, as it turns out, does feel like an exception to that rule. And curiously enough, it grabbed me by the scruff of the neck right from the off. If there is a major point of difference between past work and this album, that is it. This one was instantly accessible. For me, obviously. For others, not quite so much.

There’s parts where Matt Berninger’s silky baritone feels like it’s speaking directly to me. And while this album’s set of lyrics don’t veer anywhere near as dramatically between the severe self-loathing and extreme violence of its predecessor, Trouble Will Find Me has an uneasy melancholy and dark beauty right at its core. Berninger’s words have always had a capacity for surprise, and with the odd dollop of humour thrown in, Trouble Will Find Me is every bit as quietly mischievous as everything that preceded it.

 

The band is faultless throughout, naturally; these guys are nothing if not thoroughly professional. Arrangements are immaculate, and production ultra clean. Perhaps that’s one of its problems? It almost feels a little too pristine, and if it’s the spirit of raw rock n roll you’re looking for, then you definitely won’t find it here.

And I do actually get what others are on about. A lot of this does feel fairly generic – there’s some truth in those claims. The band, while tight and polished, could be accused of playing it safe, and there is a valid concern that The National might be stagnating, switched to auto-pilot and merely going through the motions.

Beyond all of that however, I really do love this album (at the moment). I’m not sure where it will ultimately rate alongside the rest of The National’s discography, but despite its mixed reception, I’ve a very warm feeling that I’m only going to keep on enjoying Trouble more and more as the year unfolds.

Highlights: ‘I Should Live In Salt’, ‘Demons’, ‘Don’t Swallow The Cap’, ‘Sea of Love’, ‘I Need My Girl’, and the superb ‘Graceless’.

Album Review: Atoms For Peace – Amok (2013)

Atoms For Peace is the current side project for Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, and the band includes talented friends like Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, and sometime Beck and REM drummer Joey Waronker. Yorke initially formed the group as a nameless live/touring act back around 2009, and the long-time-in-coming debut album, Amok, says Yorke, was “the product of getting together, getting wasted, and listening to Fela Kuti” ...

The first couple of times I listened to Amok, it just sort of washed over me. It felt a little bit inconsequential, like well produced background music, and it barely registered at all. On first impression, the album was little more than a blurry montage of glitchy twitchy sounds, with an ethereal Thom Yorke vocal wailing indecipherably over the top. And while it had a persistent percussive pulse underpinning the whole thing, there just didn’t appear to be all that much substance beneath the exterior sheen.

 

Then I heard it through headphones, and the album instantly took on a different hue.

The intimacy of the headphone experience exposed a work of depth and detail that wasn’t initially even hinted at. Rather than the distant distraction it first appeared to be, Amok revealed itself to be a carefully crafted gem, an album that draws heavily from elements of synthpop, electronica, and afrobeat to create an almost perfect pop hybrid. And all of those minor details lost upon the first couple of listens immediately became features ... highlights even.

That shared love of afrobeat (and rhythm in general) shines brightly on Amok. There’s a strong synth/electronic presence throughout, but mostly the music is propelled by a nagging bass and multiple layers of percussion. The other major player in the band is the Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco, and it is Refosco’s best work that tends to stand out on an album that simply oozes forward momentum.

It all feels very polished (thanks, presumably, to Godrich), and in the end, even Yorke’s occasionally annoying mumble-come-moan becomes a pivotal part of the music. There’s a barely disguised simplicity about it, and perhaps even something a little magical about the way vocal FX are employed on a couple of tracks. Seldom has Thom Yorke’s voice proved more engaging over the full-length course. While some of his fretwork isn’t half bad either.

 

When Yorke released his first “solo” album, The Eraser, back in 2006, it continued an electronica path Radiohead had already long been exploring, and as highly rated as that album was by others at the time, I had huge difficulty separating the work of Thom Yorke, the solo artist, from that of Radiohead, the band. But that’s definitely not the case here. With Atoms For Peace, I’m somehow able to get beyond the Radiohead thing, and for whatever reason, this band feels much less a side project, and something way more rewarding in its own right.

Running time is 44 minutes over the course of nine tracks, the best of which are: opener ‘Before Your Very Eyes’ (clip below), first single 'Default’, ‘Ingenue’, ‘Judge Jury And Executioner’, and ‘Amok’.

 

 

 

Gig Review: Jimeoin – What?! – at the Wellington Opera House, Wellington, May 19 2013

Stand up comedy might just about be the toughest gig in all of show business. If not the toughest, then certainly the most unforgiving. Up there on stage in front of hundreds of people expecting to be entertained by little more than what comes out of your mouth. No chance of a last minute edit before it goes “live”, and no chance to run and hide should things go a little awry.

But the experienced Melbourne-based Irish comedian Jimeoin has seen it all before, and he turned up at the Wellington Opera House last Sunday with his best game face on, delivering an hour-long set that, due to its brevity, only left many of those in attendance desperately wanting more.

I get that it was a comedy festival gig, which are by their very nature notoriously short, but I had expected a little more. Having seen Eddie Izzard captivate a similarly sized audience for a much longer spell at the same venue a few years back, I had hoped that Jimeoin’s set might stretch to around 90 minutes, or at the very least include an encore. Sadly, it wasn’t to be.

 

 

Jimeoin is an engaging character with loads of charisma, but perhaps his best asset is that “lived in” face. So much of his humour is supplemented by a look, a sly glance, a knowing grin, a frown, or that moment where he tilts his head back slightly and sniggers, as though the joke is somehow on the audience itself.

There’s physical comedy (the gig kicks off with our man arriving on stage dancing to some retro-chic disco, which is a bit like watching your boss at the annual Christmas party), loads of observational humour about everyday little things, jokes about (not telling) jokes, a lot of self deprecation, with morsels of localised content thrown in every so often – the now almost obligatory mention of Lord Of The Rings is becoming a little tiresome, truth be told (it reeks of someone straining for local material and opting for the most obvious reference point).

The undoubted highlight was the section of the show near the end where Jimeoin dons the guitar and offers some light musical relief. Not so much a set of “songs”, rather, snippets of half-formed songs, or more accurately, a series of short quips about songs. There’s some audience participation at this point, and there’s no question that by the conclusion Jimeoin has offered more than enough to win the audience over.

So while it was some way short of the best comedy show I’ve seen, and certainly one of the shortest (he could have perhaps done with a local up-and-comer warming us up for 15 minutes or so), there is no question that Jimeoin is a very funny guy, and yep, I’ll definitely look for another chance to see him again.

 

 

Album Review: Depeche Mode – Delta Machine (2013)

Given that Depeche Mode have been at the very heart of the synthpop scene for the vast majority of my music listening lifetime (40 years), it was something of a surprise to learn that Delta Machine is just the thirteenth full-length studio release of the band’s career.

I know Depeche Mode have not had their problems to seek over the years (health issues, personnel changes etc) but I’d always thought of the group as one of the most prolific of all the early Eighties pop survivalists. Apparently not, a grand total of a baker’s dozen worth of albums over a span of 30 years offers us a somewhat different perspective.

 

Part of the reason, of course, that Depeche Mode have managed to remain at the forefront of our collective consciousness throughout that period is to do with the fact that so much of the band’s output has always been ripe for remixing; seldom do we get just one released version of any given DM track. And I don’t know how many different dance versions of ‘World In My Eyes’ or ‘Enjoy The Silence’ I’ve heard over the years, but there’s been a few – most of them pretty decent too. That, aligned with regular tours, has ensured the band’s profile remains sufficiently high, and “new product” regularly available regardless of whether or not the band have a new album out.

Over the years I don’t believe I’ve come across any flop or “bad” DM albums, just varying levels of “good”, ranging from mediocre to excellent, or in the case of Violator, excellent verging on the truly exceptional. So perhaps another factor in the band’s relatively light album output is the small matter of quality control … they’re either perfectionists to the point of pedantry, or they simply refuse to compromise, opting for craft (or should that be art?) over timeliness. Or to put it another way – nothing ever feels too rushed.

My download of Delta Machine is the deluxe edition; that means the standard 13-track album, and an extra “disc” of five additional tracks, including a second and “live” studio version of the fair-to-middling lead single ‘Heaven’.

What we get on Delta Machine is classic Depeche Mode – state-of-the-art production, occasionally iffy songwriting, Gahan and Gore sharing vocals, and the requisite number of a top drawer synthpop gems. And doubtlessly, plenty of source material just waiting to be plucked for another round of remixing.

In calling it “classic” however, I’m not necessarily saying it is one of DM’s best, because in all honesty, it isn’t. It offers snippets of what the band does best, crossing over into the murky waters of dark pop, without ever really presenting us with a single moment, or track, where they truly nail it.

So it’s classic in the sense that all of the band’s traditional boxes are ticked. If anything, Delta Machine, much like its predecessor Sounds Of The Universe, represents a return to older style elements of the band’s sound; a move away from the harder edged guitar-infused stuff of a decade ago, with an evident willingness to embrace synth-orientated pop first and foremost.

Not bad for a bunch of old blokes …

Highlights: the opener ‘Welcome To My World’, the single ‘Heaven’, ‘My Little Universe’, ‘Soothe My Soul’, and from the bonus disc, ‘All That’s Mine’ (see clip).

 

Lost Alternative 80s: The Clean

May is New Zealand Music Month. Celebrated by some, condemned by others, ignored by the vast majority.

A marketing ruse. A worshipping of false gods. Something akin to the heralding of the world’s tallest pygmy.

Harsh? … perhaps, but it’s fair to say that with each passing year, beyond the music industry itself, more than a smattering of cynicism has started to creep in.

But it’s also about acknowledging some good things too … some very good things. For all of its flaws (of default and design), it does at least present us with an excuse to reflect on a body of work that was, for the most part, denied a pre-internet “rest of the world”.

On that note, one of my favourite Enzed bands of the 80s (and beyond), The Clean, embracing the lo-fi DIY ethic that made Flying Nun the “go to” label of the era … here’s ‘Anything Could Happen’ (from 1981).

What better way to conclude the Lost Alternative 80s series of posts.