Another oldie but a goody ... with his brand new album,
Subconscious, set to drop today, I thought it timely to post up something by
long-time everythingsgonegreen favourite Radikal Guru. Although The Rootstepa – this blog’s album of the year in 2011 –
was his full-length debut, there were already a number of sampler and one-off
releases floating around out there prior to that, and I’ve been slowly tracking
them down ever since. Included in that voyage of discovery was this little gem –
a stepper-style version of the much-remixed Max Romeo classic ‘Chase The Devil’.
I was late finding this one, only getting to it in mid-2013 ... but better late
than never. I just can’t get enough of this guy’s heady mix of dubstep, deep
bass, and roots reggae. If Subconscious is only half as good as the debut, we’ll
still be in for a real treat.
Okay,
so this one is six years old. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some 2013
relevance to everythingsgonegreen; a) it was one of the highlights of this year’s
The Great Gatsby soundtrack, and b) it got played often after I belatedly
discovered it mid-year.
Gotye
is of course the artist behind ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, one of 2011 and
2012’s most durable hits. ‘Hearts A Mess’ is quite different from that
particular earworm in that it exposes a softer underbelly to Gotye’s music. There’s
crazy offbeat percussion, subtle strings, and the clever use of what sounds
like a vintage keyboard (a mellotron perhaps?) … all combining to supplement a
set of lyrics so tragic, it’s almost enough to bring a tear to a glass eye … (if
that’s your bag).
“Let
me in/where only your thoughts have been/let me occupy your mind/as you do mine/your
heart's a mess/you won't admit to it/it makes no sense/but I'm desperate to
connect/and you, you can't live like this”
When
I reviewed Cut Copy’s last album and included it on my Albums of 2011 list, I
made the point that Cut Copy was seemingly immune to any backlash from critics
and fans alike for its blatant um, copyist approach to synthpop and wider
electronic forms.
Zonoscope
was the Melbourne band’s third New Order-aping album in succession, and Cut
Copy’s appeal was starting to wear a little thin. I mean, I liked Zonoscope
enough to include it as one of my most played albums of that year, sure, but
there were a number of small things about the band’s music that had started to
become a little annoying. Nobody else, it seemed, had noticed, and Cut Copy
continued to attract very positive reviews.
Fast
forward to November 2013, and the release of album number four, Free Your Mind
... well, it looks like things may have taken a slight turn for the worse, and
even the formerly supportive Pitchfork site was a bit underwhelmed by the
band’s latest offering, giving it – at best – a mediocre review. Ditto, The
Guardian’s music pages, which gave the album a positively drab two stars (out
of five).
I
downloaded the new album regardless. I enjoyed the band’s first two albums so
much (and clearly rated Zonoscope at the time), I wanted to give the Aussie
electro-poppers the benefit of any doubt. I really shouldn’t have bothered.
The
good news is that Cut Copy has actually moved on slightly from its default
retro mid-Eighties synthpop starting point. The bad news is the band only made
it as far as 1988 or 1989, and Free Your Mind is little more than a badly
pieced together homage to flowery second wave “summer of love” bands like
Primal Scream and Stone Roses.
Now,
there’s not much wrong with either of those bands – or indeed, that period –
but Cut Copy is starting to come across as an A-grade imposter, and the music
on Free Your Mind is barely a pale imitation of the best music from that era.
In the hands of Cut Copy, what once was universally known and loved as “baggy”,
now resembles something similarly shapeless ... something saggy, even.
And
who wants to relive that whole trippy dippy hippy thing a third time anyway?
And
so we’re left with a bunch of try-hard tunes, with lazy and clichéd lyrics, and
removed from its New Order context, I now realise it was singer Dan Whitford's
weedy vocal that annoyed me all along on Zonoscope ... something I hadn’t quite
been able to put my finger on previously.
Too
derivative, too cheesy, and with bugger all originality poking through the
psychedelic haze, I think it’s safe to say Cut Copy and I are now officially
over.
Highlights:
not much ... maybe this, at a stretch:
I picked up an mp3 download of the Lasertom track ‘Maelstrom’ on the XLR8R website a few months back and it’s a real gem. It’s still available as a free download (here), and it can also be found on Lasertom’s Drift EP.
Lasertom is Simon Cullen, a producer from Dublin with a background in funk and disco. Cullen’s a relatively new face on the electronic music scene but on ‘Maelstrom’ he gets the blend of bass music and electro-pop just right. ‘Maelstrom’ is all repetitive pulse and sparkling synth, a slow-building wordless foray into outer space … a trip that never quite peaks.
And anagram-spotters ... can you see what he's done there?
I’ve discovered loads of new music and new artists during the calendar year, but if I was asked to select one as the everythingsgonegreen “find of 2013”, it would be impossible to go past Option4, a producer/DJ working out of Denver, Colorado. Option4 is Brennen Bryarly, and not only has he been prolific in producing new work throughout the year for his own (newly established) Night Supply label, he’s given most of it away – go to the Soundcloud and Facebook links below and grab what you like.
I’ve chosen ‘Do Work’ as the clip for this Random 30 countdown, but I could just as easily have selected ‘All The Girls’, ‘Street Love’, ‘Late Night Drop’, ‘Deep Diamonds’, or his remix of Two Door Cinema Club’s ‘Handshake’ ... each and every one of them a potential dancefloor filler.
‘Do Work’ is also available as a Bit Funk remix, but I prefer the original mix featured here. A little bit house, a little bit disco, but always funky, ‘Do Work’ reads like an Option4 mission statement ... this guy just doesn’t stop ...
I generally take
music pretty seriously. You may (or may not) have noticed (ahem). But every now
and then something catchy and irresistible comes along which is clearly not
supposed to be taken too seriously. And we all love a good laugh, right?
The LA-based duo
Capital Cities is well versed in writing catchy pop hooks; in a past life,
prior to the release of this year’s debut album In a Tidal Wave of Mystery,
these guys made a good living as commercial jingle writers ... one listen to the
duo’s novelty track ‘Farrah Fawcett Hair’ and that much is immediately obvious.
The
retro-flavoured ‘Farrah Fawcett Hair’ features a guest appearance from Outkast’s
Andre 3000, and there is something quite contagious about its hook-laden
delivery and highly amusing lyrics ... it’s good shit, as they say ...
I’m
not going to lie to you. I can’t give you any sort of objective review for an
album like The Hurting. Anything I offer for the newly released deluxe version
of the album can probably be set aside and discarded as little more than the ramblings
of a middle aged fanboy. Read on at your peril ...
I’ve
owned a few different copies of this album in the years since it was first released
– at least a couple on cassette, plus a couple on CD … and maybe even a copy on
vinyl before either of those formats. But I was still excited about picking up
the 30th anniversary deluxe edition on double disc a few weeks back. A personal
affirmation, of sorts, that The Hurting remains a stick-on everythingsgonegreen
Desert Island Disc.
Back
in 1983, the music of Tears For Fears was serious business. Even a year or so
before ‘Shout’ made it an even more serious business by taking the band beyond
the loving embrace of an intimate few and out into the arms of a wider global
populace. Long before the large scale success of the band’s second album, Songs
From The Big Chair, took Tears For Fears to the very brink of what might (or might
not) have been momentary world domination.
No,
it was serious business even before it was big business because of the grim themes
explored by Roland Orzabal, Curt Smith, Ian Stanley, and Manny Elias on The
Hurting. Orzabal and Smith had studied the work of American psychologist Arthur
Janov, whose ideas around “Primal Therapy” – a treatment which deals with
unresolved childhood pain – inform much of the album’s content.
To
some extent it’s a concept work, an album about childhood, an album about isolation,
loss, and abandonment. The album deals with these themes relentlessly. It’s a
dark, intense, brooding, heart-on-sleeve masterwork … and very serious
business.
Yet,
on a personal level it was, and is, a little bit more than that. More than the mere
fact that it was “emo” well before emo was so much as a twinkle in the beady
eye of the Great God of Teenage Angst.
For
me, The Hurting is more about the backdrop it provided for just about anything
and everything I did in late 1983, through early 1984. As a soundtrack to my
first time “playing house”, as a teenager consumed by the first flush of what I
thought was true love. Even today, I can’t listen to the album without that
context gently poking me in the ribs.
I
can recall a ‘Pale Shelter’ lyric sheet being meticulously removed from the
inner pages of a Smash Hits magazine before being pinned to the wall directly above
the “marital bed” … sure, I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was
deadly serious business.
So
The Hurting is all of that and more. It’s also probably one of the best debut
albums of its decade, and one of synthpop’s alltime finest. It’s immaculately
presented, with Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum co-producing. I suppose some of
the production does sound a bit dated in a 2013 context, but you know, I’m too
close to this album to offer any genuinely accurate assessment there – distance
being the mother of all objectivity. Or something.
The
deluxe package comes in a couple of different formats – I purchased the
two-disc set as opposed to the more comprehensive three-disc plus DVD Deluxe
release, but it still represents the album in expanded form. On CD 1 we get the
original album; ten tracks clocking in at just under 42 minutes. On CD 2 we get
single versions, b-sides, and demos.
And
just how many different versions of ‘Pale Shelter’ or ‘Change’ do we need? … there’s
four of each included among the 26 tracks found on the double disc edition.
More than enough. Not to mention a gut-wrenching five full versions of ‘Suffer
The Children’ (where’s the humanity?! – Ed) …
But there’s some interesting mixes on the bonus disc, 12-inch versions etc, plus the first shaft of Big Chair light with an early take on ‘We Are Broken’. There’s the odd track on the original album I can no longer really listen to with any amount of enthusiasm (‘The Hurting’, ‘Change’) but the vast majority of it is still pure pop perfection – ‘Mad World’ (ignore the pretenders and imitators), ‘Pale Shelter’, ‘Memories Fade’, and ‘Watch Me Bleed’, all being personal highlights.
The
“super deluxe” package offers further material in the form of a third disc of BBC
and Peel Sessions, plus some live stuff, and a DVD of the band performing live
at the Hammersmith Odeon in December 1983. So far as deluxe releases go, this
one is a pretty good one.
Trouble
Will Find Me, The National’s latest album, is shaping up to be one of my
favourite albums of 2013, and I can scarcely believe some of the poor reviews
it received upon release earlier this year. It really wasn’t the barren
snorefest some critics claim it was, and I'm still enjoying it six months on.
‘I
Need My Girl’ was one of album’s stand-outs; a beautifully crafted song dealing
with the twin themes of loss and hope … so good, it’s difficult to fathom quite
how its reach could ever be anything less than universal. Vocalist Matt
Berninger’s rich but gentle baritone is the perfect supplement to the restless
sense of longing in the music, and it has to rate as one of the band’s best
tracks (of any year).
Manchester-based
recording label Earth City Recordz has just released the third compilation in
its Future Sound of the Underground series (of label samplers). I picked up a
download a few weeks back and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying it ever since.
The main guy behind Earth City Recordz is Muhammad
Hamzah. I’ve been following him via social media for a while now and it’s
unlikely there’s a harder working artist-producer-DJ-social and/or political
commentator out there. His output as an artist working under the Celt Islam and
The Analogue Fakir monikers, both live and in the studio, is prolific, and he’s
relentless at supporting the work of other artists, getting it out there, in
whatever form, wherever, and whenever he can.
As label samplers go, FuTuRe SoUnD Of ThE UnDeRGrOuNd
VoL 3 is a very generous listen at 23 tracks over the course of more than 130
minutes, it showcases a wide range of artists, and features a genuine hybrid of
styles. And just like Celt Islam’s best work, there’s a borderless feel about
much of this compilation, as you’d tend to expect from such an ethnically
diverse mash of nationalities coming together in the name of dub.
Yet to call it dub and stick such a singular label on
it fails to give the compilation, or the label, the credit it deserves. Yes,
dub, or transnational dub, does appeal as an ideal catch-all, but there’s also large
portions of electro, some EDM-indebted stuff, some drum’nbass, dubstep, plus super-sized
chunks of that thing we call “world music”.
The highlights are spread fairly evenly across the 23
tracks, the best of which are: MasterMind XS - ‘Far From Here’, Celt Islam -
‘Beyond’, Samia Farah - ‘Al Shams’, Mosienko Project - ‘Kings Valley Dub’, Vel
Curve - ‘Tribal Dub’, Oenky & Tompafly - ‘Solitude In Darkness’, 4bstr4ck3r
- ‘Mental Stabber’, Demon Dubz - ‘Don’t Stop’, and The Analogue Fakir closes the
album with ‘Retro Box’.
Gemini, aka
Thomas Slinger, hails from Leicester, UK, and while he’s probably best known
for his remix work on tracks by the chart-busting likes of Lana Del Rey, Emeli
Sande, and Ed Sheeran, he’s also released a handful of singles and EPs on his
own account. Apparently we can expect a full-length album sometime in 2014, if
not before. The original mix
of ‘Robots’ turned up on his Mercury EP back in November of 2012, but the
version which made me sit up and take note was the excellent Chrome Sparks
Remix featured here. Gemini’s music blends elements of house, electronica, and
dubstep, but this synth rich mix of ‘Robots’ almost crosses over into some kind
of plush variation on nu disco ... I’ve listened to this a lot during the year
and its seemingly effortless groove still grabs me each and every time.
For me, the
music of Stereophonics is so indelibly linked with the late Nineties – in a
sort of post-britpop comedown kind of way – I really hadn’t expected the Welsh
band’s 2013 album Graffiti on the Train to be much chop at all. And I certainly
hadn’t expected an album track like ‘Violins and Tambourines’ from a band I
never really had all that much time for in the first place.
But it is what
it is, and ‘Violins and Tambourines’ is – despite being overlooked as a
potential single – quite probably the best track ever written by the band’s
multi-talented lead vocalist Kelly Jones. It’s a song about a man seeking some
form of redemption but at the same time never quite believing or accepting he
is worthy of it.
It’s a common
and simple enough premise, but the compelling arrangement of strings and
guitar, along with a heartfelt set of lyrics, form a mesmerising whole, and
‘Violins and Tambourines’ went on to speak to me in ways I could barely have
anticipated ... and just quietly, in ways that made me more than a little uncomfortable.
As the best music so often does.
Aside
from the two Wellington stores I’ve covered in previous blogposts, there has of
course been a host of other local record shops which have at various points along
the journey served as depositories for my hard earned cash.
Going
way back, there was the weird and wonderful Silvio’s Emporium on Cuba Street, a
treasure trove of pick n mix delight, a shop that ceased to exist sometime back
in the early Nineties, maybe even a bit earlier. There was the self-proclaimed “largest
record shop in New Zealand”, Chelsea Records, in Manners Mall, which I think eventually
got swallowed up by one of the large faceless chains. And more recently, right
up until a couple of years ago, there was Real Groovy Records, also on Cuba, a
shop with just about everything any self-respecting music consumer could
possibly wish for.
But
to conclude the Retail Therapy series of posts, I wanted to write a little bit
about Slow Boat Records, an institution in Wellington music retailing. Unlike
all of the above – and the two Wellington stores I’ve blogged about previously –
Slow Boat is still operating, still a going concern as Cuba Street survivors for
more than a quarter of a century. Selling both new and used music, in every
format, stuff from all eras.
When
I wrote about the Atomic and 24-Hour Party People nights at San Francisco Bath House recently (SFBH being just along the strip), I identified the sense of
community at the venue as being something pivotal to the success of those
nights. That same sense of community, indeed, a wide circle within the very same
community, has been at the heart of the Slow Boat success story.
Owner
Dennis O’Brien is himself a local muso of some renown, and he leads a
passionate and knowledgeable team. Nothing ever feels too rushed at Slow Boat, it’s
a great place to browse, or just to hang out as a voyeur. A place to feed off the
sort of warm organic vibe you can only get amid racks and bins of pre-loved
product. It is easy to get a little lost in there sometimes, even if the carefully
categorised sections ensure you can never really stray too far.
It’s
just a little thing, but I really like the display of Slow Boat’s picks for the
greatest albums of all-time, taking pride of place over on the far wall. Something
like that works on several levels, most obviously as inspiration to finally
pick up that “all-timer” you’ve always wanted but never quite got around to
buying. But it also works as a discussion point, and it informs the punter that
these guys have a sense of history … a love of what they do. It’s an
acknowledgement that for all that popular music is so often about the present,
about the now, it also has a rich and vibrant past, and Slow Boat is a place where
you can engage with that. It feels a bit like an inadvertent mission statement …
of sorts.
In
the opening post of this series I bemoaned the fact that nowadays I don’t get
across town to Slow Boat often enough. I’m really going to have to do something
about that. In my defence, I did many times set out on lunch-break treks across
town, with Real Groovy the target destination, only to run out of time because browsing
at Slow Boat got in the way. I could never quite make it all the way up Cuba
Street within the allotted hour … and now I have no reason to.
So
perhaps I’ll have to revive a Friday night routine from a few years back and
make the effort to get there more often. Whatever happens, it’s nice to know
Slow Boat Records is still an option for me, a throwback to the past, one that just
keeps on giving …
I
reckon the small but nostalgia-rich New Zealand music sections at Slow Boat are
among the best I’ve ever seen, especially in terms of used vinyl, but more
generally across all formats. Here’s a tribute to indie record stores from NZ
band The Brunettes …
Jorge Takei (or JT) is a Cologne based producer whose
self-released music has tended to slip by without much fanfare. Until May of
this year, that is, when a sample-heavy, pulsating house track simply called ‘Aretha
(Vocal Mix)’ dropped as a free download on the excellent XLR8R website. Combining a pretty special Aretha Franklin vocal edit with
Takei’s own unique brew of bpm-driven dancefloor goodness, ‘Aretha’ was a bright
ray of sunshine for me during winter’s harshest months. I’m not sure whether this
could legitimately be described as deep house, or whether it’s yet another
variation on minimal techno, but whatever the hell it is, it’s hugely
infectious.
Where do you start with an album like Never Mind The
Bollocks? Let’s face it, for a talentless bunch of anti-social misfits
who supposedly couldn’t play a note between them, the Sex Pistols left an
indelible mark on popular music’s vast and rich multi-coloured quilt … even if
that mark now bears a remarkable resemblance to that of a stale semen stain.
I’m quite sure the band wouldn’t have had it any other way.
It is hard to believe the Pistols operated as a going
concern for little more than a year (in reality), and given the size of their
discography nowadays, even more difficult to fathom is the fact that Never Mind
The Bollocks was the band’s only official studio album. The story behind the album has been told so many times it
almost seems ludicrous to offer my own little piece of revisionism here,
suffice to say that Never Mind The Bollocks is a landmark work … of its time,
for its time – an acerbic, snotty-nosed, sneering, take-no-prisoners monolithic
monster of a Rock’n’Roll record that still, even after all these years, simply
has to be heard to be believed.
If you haven’t heard it yet, then why the hell are you
wasting time sitting there reading this? Get to it. Life’s too short …
Oh, and great cover art too. Who knew pink and yellow were
so compatible?
Five for download: ‘Anarchy In The UK’, ‘God Save The
Queen’, ‘Pretty Vacant’, ‘EMI’, and ‘Submission’.
There
is a creepy intensity to be found in the music of London three-piece Daughter. The
band’s full-length debut on the 4AD label from early in 2013 was called If You
Leave, and it was a follow-up to three earlier EP’s and a couple of singles.
‘Lifeforms’
is a regular album track, not one of the singles, something which perhaps best
emphasises the quality in depth of Daughter’s music. Vocalist Elena Tonra’s hypnotic
delivery is all-consuming, and the guitar work never less than intoxicating. ‘Lifeforms’
is an absorbing listen, and it draws me in close each and every time I hear it.
Also
worth checking out is the trio’s genre-bending cover of ‘Get Lucky’, and of
course the rest of the album, but here’s ‘Lifeforms’:
Blackbird,
the 2013 album from Wellington’s Fat Freddy’s Drop, has become a firm favourite
of everythingsgonegreen in recent times (review to come). Internationally
renowned, yet not universally popular at home, the FFD collective couldn’t care
less about the lazy labels being applied by local critics in order to categorise
the music, it just keeps on getting on with it. Doing what it does best: bass-centric
funk and crossover dub.
2013
was another huge year for Fat Freddy’s, the hard-working band once again touring
extensively to get Blackbird’s eclectic grooves out there on a global scale. ‘Silver
And Gold’ was an early taster for me, downloaded as a sneak preview before I
bought the album, and it works as an ideal sampler for everything else you’ll
find on Blackbird.
There
is something distinctly magical about the earliest Pet Shop Boys work. The
first couple of singles were perfectly formed slices of pure in-the-moment pop.
I loved that early stuff, but I wouldn’t necessarily have called myself a fan
for the longer haul. The novelty collaboration with Dusty
Springfield (and other indulgences) left me a bit cold, and the PSB and I parted ways
some years back.
Hugely
self conscious and excessively camp, the duo’s music dropped right off my radar
until a few years back when I heard a cover of the Madness hit ‘My Girl’, and a
pretty cool PSB original called ‘Love etc’. It felt like some of the magic had
returned, and I vowed back then to check out parts of the vast back catalogue …
had I been a fan, I might have got around to it. Had I been a real fan, I
wouldn’t have needed to.
Fast
forward to 2013, and Pet Shop Boys are back with a new album, Electric. More in
hope than expectation I downloaded a copy as soon as it came out – it seemed
like the logical thing to do at the time, and as good a place to start/return
as any.
The
first couple of times I listened to Electric it sounded vibrant and essential, and
early reviewers were calling it a return to form. Several months on, my familiarity
with it has led to a form of contempt, and it definitely feels like a case of
diminishing returns each time it gets an airing.
The
first half of the album has enough going for it to be more than palatable, with
some clever songwriting (main themes: politics, art, culture) and the now obligatory
PSB morsels of humour in the lyrics – particularly on ‘Love Is A Bourgeois
Construct’ … though whether that humour is intentional or not is probably
debatable.
The
real gem arrives four tracks in; ‘Fluorescent’ is possibly the best thing Neil
Tennent and Chris Lowe have done since ‘Love Comes Quickly’ all those years
ago. It’s an intense Fade-To-Grey-esque thing of true beauty, and it captures
all that has ever been good about these guys in one short splurge. I’d go so
far as to say ‘Fluorescent’ is one of my tracks of year ... it’s certainly the
standout on Electric (insert your own flare or beacon joke here).
From
there, the second half of the album starts to fall away quite badly:
‘Shouting
In The Evening’ cultivates lightweight dubstep textures that merely succeed in
leaving the impression Neil Tennant is trying too hard.
At
worst, ‘Thursday’ sounds a bit like an actual PSB parody and it features a naff
rap cameo from UK producer Example. At best, it’s difficult to listen to with
anything resembling a straight face.
The
closer, ‘Vocal’, does have its moments, but it winds up being swamped by
slightly dated techno cheese.
Tennant’s
voice remains as youthful as ever (he turns 60 next year). That boyish charm
first heard on ‘West End Girls’ is still there, and it’s one of the keys to the
duo’s long-term success, but there’s also times on Electric when I’m acutely
aware that this is an album made by two men on the wrong side of 50 … and I’m
not so sure that’s such a good thing.
I
guess I’ve always found PSB perfectly fine in small doses, but a little more
challenging over the longer form. Perhaps that’s why they’re such stalwarts of
mainstream radio ... as past masters of the perfect three-to-four minute pop song?
When
they’re good, they’re very good. When they’re not, the music feels like one big
campy excursion into the void.
So
Electric is a bit of a mixed bag, flashes of brilliance amid long periods of
same old same old ... I’ve given it a fair old workout over the past few months
but I’m pretty much at the point now where I doubt I’ll ever listen to it
again.
This one is not strictly a track from 2013 – it is lifted
off Daphni’s Jiaolong album, which was released in October 2012 – but it’s
another one that got a fair amount of my pod-time during the first half of this
year. Daphni is Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, and ‘Yes I Know’ is a heady
combination of bass, loops, and funky drum machine samples. It positively
pulses with dancefloor goodness. It’s quite different from the spacey
psychedelic forms usually associated with Caribou but every bit as good.
