Portishead

Since I live in Bristol, it's almost compulsory for me to like Portishead.  So it's a good job they're pretty fucking great, really.

To my ears, their albums tell the story of a post break-up spiral descent into insanity.  The first record, Dummy, is all "nobody loves me" depressive introspection.  By the second eponymous record things have taken an altogether more sinister turn, and the vibe has switched from "I'm going to kill myself" to "I'm going to kill myself, but I'm taking all you fuckers with me".  Then there's a long period of uneasy silence... and then Third, by which point we're listening to Portishead sat in the corner of a darkened room, gently rocking back and forth and singing to the severed head in it's hands.

Somewhere in the middle of all this is the very excellent Roseland NYC live album.  It's one of those records where the band plays their hits with full orchestra backing; and usually you get the impression that the band in question is determined to get their moneys worth and it's all orchestra all the time, but Portishead have way more class than that.  For some songs the orchestra hardly does a thing, because it wouldn't sound right; whilst on others, the additional arrangements conspire to an even greater sense of forboding menace.  Or sound more like Bond themes.  Whatever, it's all good.







Website: http://www.portishead.co.uk/
Myspace: http://nz.myspace.com/portisheadalbum3
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/portishead
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portishead_(band)

Godflesh

For a big chunk of the 90s Godflesh was one of those bands that I knew I was supposed to like, but it took me ages to get around to sticking any of it in my ear.  This probably worked out best for me, as I reckon I prefer the later records; the relentless industrial dirge is still very much relentless, industrial and dirge-y, but with a bit more variety and texture.

Godflesh disintegrated around the early 2000's, and frontman Broadrick (once in Napalm Death) went on to form Jesu.  Cut from the same drum-machines-and-vast-slabs-of-distorted-guitar cloth as his former outfit, Jesu is generally a bit more uplifting - occasionally overlapping with some of the more doomy shoegaze bits of Godflesh.  Doomgaze?  I dunno.  Well worth checking out though.

But I'm a gloomy bastard at heart; and since Godflesh reformed for a few shows a couple of years ago and maybe are perhaps writing some new material possibly, I'll take a fat slice of caustic mechanical trudging this week please.







Website: http://justinkbroadrick.blogspot.com
Myspace: http://nz.myspace.com/godsflesh
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Godflesh/11374368195
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godflesh

Aphex Twin

I felt certain that I'd strung together some shit words about this funny looking bastard already.  Never mind, now's as good a time as any.

Except that I really don't have much to say about this weird fractured drum 'n' bass 'n' ambience 'n' contempt, other than I like the contrasting mix of fractured drum 'n' bass, ambience and contempt.  I like that everything by Aphex Twin sounds like Aphex Twin without being formulaic or predictable.   I like that Mr Aphex Twin (Richard D James) is either a funny looking bastard possessed of sublime musical genius that transcends all mortal comprehension; or a funny looking bastard possessed of that special kind of genius that compels people to handcraft aluminium foil headwear, shout at clouds and collect toenail clippings.

And I like Chris Cunningham's disturbing video accompaniments.

Get startled, yeah?







Website: http://warp.net/records/aphex-twin
Myspace: nope
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aphextwinafx
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphex_Twin

The Future Sound of London

Yet another dance act I got into thanks to Wipeout 2097.  See also Underworld, Orbital, Photek, and many more.

Presumably they got that gig thanks to the pounding pounding industrial techno of first record Accelerator; but by the time the game was released, FSOL were full into their crazed experimental ambient soundscapery.  It's all either brilliantly visionary, or desperately pretentious.

Probably both.  Either way, 90's techno seems to be floating my boat this week; and I have been shoving a lot of it into my ears.  I strongly recommend you do the same.







Website: http://www.futuresoundoflondon.com/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/fsolfsolfsol
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Sound-of-London-FSOL/34897435627
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Sound_Of_London

12 Rounds

About a million years ago, in 1997, I was wasting my lunch break trawling through the forgotten rubbish in the second hand record shop a few doors up from the shop I worked in.  That's when I stumbled across Jitterjuice - the debut record by these guys.  I'd never heard of it, or them, before; but the CD case was a fruity shade of neon yellow, and it only cost £3.  Sold.

As luck would have it, it was a pretty great record; a bit turgid towards the end, but mostly a bewildering mix of raucous guitars, dark electronica and a thick smear of weirdness.  Somewhere between the Pixies and Lamb.  Nice.

I never made any effort to keep up with all things 12 Rounds related, happy just to play my splendid bargain happenchance over and over and over again.  Turns out that they released a second record at some point, and recorded a third.  Though the record itself was never released, the band are making some of the songs available for free download through their website.  It's a little more polished than that first record, but still well worth checking out.







Website: http://www.12rounds.net/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/12roundsfan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/12rounds
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_Rounds

Faithless

One of the most enduring memories of my years of retail servitude is the tyranny of public performance licences, and the dreary tedium of having to listen to the same limited selection of mix CDs each day.  Working on the basic principle that mediocre dance music is far less offensive than mediocre rock music, my part timer Jeff McDeath and I would regularly stick in the dance mix CD and spend our weekday mornings body-popping to fat beats.


One of the standout tracks on that CD was the Tom Middelton "Cosmos" remix of Mass Destruction by Faithless.  It was all dense, bass-heavy electronica, and for the first time I found myself wondering if maybe Faithless were worth more of a listen.


For a long time they never quite made sense to me outside of work; until a few days ago, when my ipod spat Take The Long Way Home into my ears as I cycled to work.  And then I realised the magic of Faithless lay in their ability to make mundane activities (working in a shop, cycling along the A4174, being in a nightclub) seem epically euphoric.











Website: http://www.faithless.co.uk/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/faithless
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Faithless
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless

The Prodigy

This was the band that dragged me out of the guitar angst exile of my youth and made me realise that good music is good and that it should be listened to frequently, at high volume.

Of course it probably helped that my local metal club would frequently spin the likes of Poison and Out of Space; making it definitively okay for metal kids to like bleepy dance music, even before the crossover masterpiece that was/is Fat of the Land.

The sheer quality of their first three records has meant that The Prodigy have struggled at times to live up to their own fearsome reputation. Album number four Always Outnumbered... has some great tunes on it, but also a lot of filler; and whilst most recent effort Invaders Must Die is more of a return to form, it still doesn't set my world on fire (my favourite track is the dub-steppy Noisa remix of Omen on the bonus disc).

That said, it sounds fucking amazing through headphones; and although The Prodigy's inclusion on the line-up for this year's Download festival still isn't enough to make me want to buy a ticket, it means that I won't pity the fools that do buy tickets quite so much.

So in conclusion; festivals are rubbish, genre nazis are fools, The Prodigy are awesome.

Website: http://theprodigy.com/

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

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Prodigy/18452288248

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

Blak Nite

I first stumbled across this chap a few months back, when the good people at Holy Roar records were kind enough to chuck in a free Tangled Talk label sampler with a load of stuff I'd ordered. There was a whole bunch of cool shit on there, but Blak Nite stood out mainly by virtue of being a great dirty spike of electronica sticking out of a swirling mass of hardcore.

Naturally I forgot about it almost immediately, until some absent-minded trawling through the internets revealed that Blak Nite had released a 10" remix album during the summer. It is of course very splendid indeed; a dark slab of glitchy, sinister electronica that doesn't resort to the sort of dubsteppy wob-by-numbers that seems to be all the rage these days.

Behold!

Website: http://music.tangledtalk.com/album/versionen

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

Wikipedia: nope

Mushi Mushi

Two weeks after I subjected my good friend the RoboJew to the bleak rage of Necro Deathmort, he remembered who they reminded him of; these guys.

Apart from a lot of sub-bass WOB, it's kind of hard to see why; but that doesn't matter, because Mushi Mushi are cool.

It's kind of electronica; but really only because the electronic element is so prominent. The rest of it is made up of proper drums, some girly wailing and a tasteful sprinkling of guitars. The end result is less oppressive than Necro Dethmort's crushing walls of bass sludge, but no less sinister. Fun, often frantic, but with weirdly malicious undertones.

Like a neon squirrel with a dark past.

The Dietary Habits of the Byker Pigeon - the dietary habits of the byker pigeon

Website: http://www.distractionrecords.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45

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

Wikipedia: nope

††† (Crosses)

Free stuff is cool, but also - by definition - valueless. Well, sort of. In any case, the fact that I hadn't spent any money on it meant that I had no real sense of urgency in getting around to listening to this self-titled ep.

††† is a side project from Chino Moreno (Deftones), Shaun Lopez (Far) and some guy called Scott Chuck; and when I did eventually get around to sticking it in and pressing play, my first thought was that I was glad I hadn't spent any money on it. Not that it was particularly bad; it just sounded a bit like a more radio-friendly Team Sleep b-side. All production, not a lot of soul.

After the first track, though, things got a lot better; and by the end of the fifth and final track, I was reaching for the play button again.

I still can't get into the dreary plod of the first track (†his Is A †rick), but the rest of the ep is pretty damn great; great celestial waves of lush electronica with a malevolent undercurrent. It's like being smothered with a pillow by Depeche Mode, whilst Shaun Lopez and Chino Moreno jam out sinister ambient electronica in the background...

Similes were never really my strong suit. If you'd like to be smothered with a pillow by Depeche Mode, go to http://www.crossesmusic.com/ to download the ††† ep for free.

Website: http://www.crossesmusic.com/

Myspace: nope

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosses_(band)

erwtenpeller

For years I had the faintly uneasy sense that something was wrong, missing, that my life was somehow devoid of something. Naturally I assumed it was my soul.

But then my friend Rich turned me onto this version of Jeff Wayne's musical based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds, reinterpreted through the medium of dubstep.

Earth. Belonged. To the Martians.

No video for this, but you can listen to it here; and by following the instructions you can download the whole damn thing for free here.

Nice.

Website: http://www.erwtenpeller.com/

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

Wikipedia: nope

Radiohead

It is a commonly understood fact that a man can never possess too much pretentious vinyl; and so it was that I forked out £30 for the "newspaper album" version of Radiohead's new record The King of Limbs with barely a second thought. This apparently comprises of two clear vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve, a compact disc, many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold it all together.

As I said; pretentious.

More importantly though, it comes with a free download of the record - which is very nearly all that I've been listening to this week. Because it's terrific.

Anyone hoping for a return to the soaring guitar of Bends-era Radiohead is probably going to be a little disappointed. I love that record too, but for me Radiohead just keep getting better as they get weirder. Plus, Codex - the sixth track on the new record - is quite possibly one of the greatest songs not just by Radiohead, but by anyone, ever. To attempt to describe it using mere words would seem a rather clumsy disservice; so you'll just have to listen to it yourself.

Having never seen them play live, my favourite Radiohead experience is still the discovery of the scribbled booklet full of Thom Yorke's thoughts hidden beneath the CD tray in my copy of Kid A, after a year or so of owning the thing.

Crazy bastard.

Website: http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

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

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

Gary Numan

I've always been aware of the existence of Gary Numan, of course. No matter what you like listening to, it's damn near impossible to not hear Cars at least once before you die. But I've just never really cared.

Until the other night that is, when I saw this clip of iconic eighties wish grant-o-rama Jim'll Fix It.

The first thing that hit me was that the kid with the bowl cut was probably trying hard not to reflect on how much cooler he thought this was going to be. Then I realised that I'd heard this song before... this is the one Alan Partridge played air bass to... this song's amazing! AMAZING!!!

Once my hysteria had abated somewhat and my breathing and heart rate had returned to normal, I got onto the Spotifys to find out exactly which Gary Numan song it was...

...and hours later I found that I was still there, listening to almost everything he'd ever done ever (I think it's fair to say that the fifteen years following the release of I, Assassin were not his best).

Even the new stuff is cool; it's nice to see the cycle coming around, with Numan taking influence from the more modern acts he himself gave inspiration to (NIN, Marilyn Manson et al).

And just as a side note, I also really like the cover artwork to debut LP The Pleasure Principal, in which a suited Numan sits at a desk viewing a glowing red jelly pyramid with a mixture of suspicion and contempt.

Brilliant.

Website: http://www.numan.co.uk/

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

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

TV On The Radio

I was first introduced to these guys by a friend of mine, the infamous Jeff "Cock Will Set You Free" McDeath - ultimate arbiter of all things indie. At the time Jeff was one of my loyal minions in the nerd emporium that I lorded over. During the day we had to put up with the insipid mix of emo and alt-pop that filled the company-sanctioned compilation CDs; but once the store was closed we could play what we wanted, which was typically ear-splitting violence anthems (me) or desperately trendy minimalist European shoegaze techno (him). Generally, we didn't see eye-to-eye - musically speaking, at least. But every so often a little gem would turn up.

Return To Cookie Mountain, TVotR's second full-length, was one of those gems - although I didn't immediately take to it. The vocal style was a bit weird, and stylistically the album never quite seemed to settle down. But working late one night to meet a fast approaching deadline, I was left with a choice between listening to that or the radio-friendly shop CDs; which was really no choice at all. Incidentally, this is also why listening to this album always reminds me of building Dwarf mountain fortresses.

After repeated listens, Cookie Mountain began to grow on me. It slowly dawned that the style wasn't randomly jumping about, but that each song featured whatever instrumentation was most appropriate; sometimes guitars, sometimes electronica, sometimes tribal drumming, sometimes whistling. And the vocals that had seemed so out of place at first were what gave it all a sense of cohesiveness, in all their quirky and soulful brilliance. It all sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, and it was bloody brilliant.

Bizarrely, it was TVotR's obvious flair for experimentation that put me off getting any of their other records; they were clearly capable of anything, and there was no way of knowing what the rest of their output might sound like. Of course, I shouldn't have worried - it's all the same mix of jazz, soul, electronica and indie as before - though for me they're at their best when it's all driving rhythms and great walls of rich and luscious electronica.

Website: http://www.tvontheradio.com/

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

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

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 Dillinger Escape Plan

Once you exclude all of the "Dillinger who?" and "What is that, some kind of plan?" people (which is admittedly the vast majority of people), you're left with two distinct emperor's new clothes-esque groups.

There are those for whom The Dillinger Escape Plan are inspired and genre-smashing virtuosos draped in robes of the finest silk.

And then there are those for whom they are a bunch of naked shouting jackasses that can't agree on what tune they should be playing; or even if they should be playing a tune at all.

This week I have been listening to their most recent effort Option Paralysis, and find myself firmly in the "hey, those guys are pretty snappy dressers" group. It's just fantastic; like being beaten around the skull by a screaming brick shithouse of a man with LOVE written on one set of knuckles and JAZZ on the other in a grimy trance club, only with weirder time signatures. But in a good way.

Website: nope

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

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

Tim Hecker

Kinda following on from last week, really. I don't really know much about Tim Hecker, and certainly don't listen to much of his music - although since it's all ambient shoegaze soundscape electronica (this is a good thing), chances are I will start fairly soon.

The reason he's here, and the reason this follows on from ISIS being the greatest band in the world ever, is that a few years ago ISIS released a 2cd "Remixes and Reinterpretations" record based on their timeless classic, Oceanic. All of the artists involved were handpicked by the band themselves, and as the title suggests they each remixed or reinterpreted a single track from the album.

There are two versions of Tim Hecker reinterpretations on there. I say reinterpretations, because as far as I can tell there is not a single element of the original song present.

I can only find one of these versions out there in the interwebs; but that's fine, because in truth they are both quite similar. It's the most lonely, desolate and peaceful piece of music I've ever heard. Puts me in mind of arctic seascapes, all cold and hard and white. So vast, so powerful it renders all existence and endeavour futile and meaningless.

Also, it's quite pretentious (in case you hadn't got that already).

Just for reference, here's the ISIS version.

Website: http://www.sunblind.net/

Myspace: (fan site) http://www.myspace.com/rainbowbloodx

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

Nedry

I'll admit, these guys are probably only the greatest band in the world ever this week because they are bathed in the alluring glow of all things shiny and new.

I caught them supporting the also very excellent 65daysofstatic a few days ago, and was quite taken with their ethereal trip-hoppy electronica. Glitchy beats, a few dub step moments, a hint of jazz guitar and some not-quite-Bjork vocals all woven together to make something that's honestly not awful at all. Though I must concede, now that I read it back to myself it sounds a bit like the aural equivalent of George's Marvellous Medicine.

Having only discovered Nedry some 52hrs ago, I can't claim to know much else about them. Apparently their moniker is inspired by a shared love of the film Jurassic Park (Nedry was the name of the useless fat guy)... that's about it.

Website: http://www.nedrymakesmusic.com/

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

Wikipedia: nope

Thom Yorke

To be honest, if you're the sort of person that doesn't think Radiohead have done anything worthwhile since The Bends, then there's probably not much for you here.

But you know what? Pablo Honey was mostly a bit crap, and for me Radiohead only got really good when they stopped moping about and got weird.

Of course, this isn't Radiohead - it's wibbly-eyed frontman Thom Yorke's solo project from a few years back - but the comparisons are justified, I think.







Website: http://www.theeraser.net/Stage2UK/
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/thomyorkemusic
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thom_Yorke