Elastica

As has already been well documented, I've been on a bit of mid-nineties girl fronted indie kick of late; and have now reached the following conclusions.

• Sleeper have a bit of sass, but lack swagger.
• Echobelly, whilst actually quite brilliant, are at the same time almost offensively inoffensive.
• Lush were the most disappointing of all, all too frequently descending into navel-gazing angst.
• Kenickie... well actually, I forgot about Kenickie.

All of which confirms something that I had hitherto only suspected; that Elastica were fucking great, and their self-titled debut is one of the very best records of the last twenty years.

Website: http://www.elasticated.org/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/stutterconnection

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastica

Amon Tobin

The earlier records from this Brazilian lunatic had titles like "Permutations" and "Supermodified", because the songs were composed of many bits of other songs - like a great audio collage. His most recent work, "Foley Room", is the first where he feels (in his own words) as though he has actually created the music, instead of chopping other bits together.

Thing is, the way he created this music was to go out with teams of people and a billion microphones, make field recordings of anything and everything - insects, radio telescopes, that sort of thing - and then chopping it all together with original compositions recorded in the studio.

As far as I can tell, there's not much of a difference in approach; it's still the same glorious mosaic of odd noises and found sounds, and you would still need to be some kind of insane genius to produce the oddly stuttering works of art that fall out the other end. Amon Tobin is that insane genius.

Website: http://www.amontobin.com/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/tobinamon

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amon_Tobin

The Breeders

So as I mentioned last week, I recently purchased a heap of second hand 90's alt-rock; and Last Splash by The Breeders seems to have floated to the top.

It seems odd that I shouldn't have picked this up the first time around; lead single and floppy-haired pogo shoegaze anthem Cannonball was a regular spin at my local rock club The Agincourt (which is, tragically, still open). I always thought it was a pretty cool song; though in retrospect I may have been slightly embarrassed about this, being the necksnappingly brutal metal kid that I was.

In any case, I am now making up for lost time by fully immersing myself in this early nineties alternative masterpiece. By which I mean I'm driving around with the windows down and playing it very loud. Cannonball is just as good as I remember, with its groovy verse, bouncy chorus and that bassline. But I'm also very taken with the rest of the album, full as it is with surf twangs and shoegaze droning; and of course a somewhat inevitable (but far from unwelcome) Pixies-ness.

Smashing.

Website: http://breedersdigest.net/2008/

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/thebreeders

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Breeders

Mustard Allegro

I was a bit stuck as to which was the greatest band in the world this week. My most recent CD binge yielded a near insurmountable heap of alt-rock from the 90's, suggesting more of a greatest genre in the world. Meanwhile, I finally picked up Diamond Eyes by Deftones; and rather predictably it's completely awesome, but I've already done them once this year...

But then I got suckered into going to a bar gig, where I saw these splendid chaps. As it turns out, it was guitarist Alex's birthday; which meant that all of the handful of people in attendance had to sign a card for him. It also meant that he had down a shot at the very start of their set, and then another after every three songs played. Unfortunately for him, Mustard Allegro songs tend to be frantic blasts of surf guitar seldom lasting more than a minute, and they played a lot of them. On the plus side, the music all has a somewhat room-spinning quality to it anyway, so nothing seemed out of place.

Merch was available from the Asda bag that the drummer kept with him.

My only complaint about the otherwise very excellent mini album Dwarf Shortage that I purchased is the title; if they had only called it Shortage of Dwarves, there might be a possibility of 'shortage' becoming the collective noun for dwarves.

Website: http://www.p4ft.co.uk/mustardallegro.htm

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/mustardallegro

Wikipedia: nope