Gigomaphone

Tight as a drum, Microcastle is like a fusion of mid ’90s hazed out dream-pop and well schooled punk and it’s very, very good. That said, albums like Microcastle don’t pop up too often. Reading at first like a playlist of short but punchy and melodic proto-punk cuts, the album expands into more dreamy atmospheres, with the guitars taking a back seat to a swathe of ambient pulsewidth. It then concludes with three or four seriously good tracks, all bound together with miasmic guitar and swirling atmospherics.

Whilst this has been plonked in the ‘dream pop’ basket by some, it is far broader and darker than that and there’s much more of a foothold here. There is an elemental punk ethic going on within the mix but it’s a buffed over sound, more ambient than noise but not mush- not by any stretch.

Deerhunter hail from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I must admit I’d never heard of them before but it would seem I’ve caught them at about the right time as this is by all accounts their tightest and most focussed effort yet. Recommended.

5/5

If memories are like spongy squelches from a Roland TB303 acid box then the personal musical era during my mid twenties is one very long acid track.

Back before a mate painted his old car KLF style, with the LFO logo (see Warp Records LFO not the poxy boyband that crops up post-most internet searches) and not long after I picked up New Order’s classic ‘Power, Corruption and Lies’, I spent a small summer basking in the warm acid-bath of this enduring piece of musical embroidery.

Manchester’s 808 State emerged head-on into the furnace of early acid house, with two musical power-plays – “New Build” (1988) and “Quadrastate” (1989), both deleted for a number of years and a reinstated a few years back. Both albums were very much a product of the insular and narrow wedged scene that was acid-house – driving, pulsing, mono-dimensional slabs of music that slugged you over the head whilst you danced or mused your way through the travails of the late ‘80s.

‘90’ was a different beast though. Whilst the music here is, at heart, acid, there is a lovely sense of melody and place to it. The ‘melody’ bit is obvious whereas the ‘place’ is entirely personal. Memories may indeed be acid drops but the acid drops here evoke a wealth of memories in return. It would seem, based on the widespread appreciation of this album that I am not alone in this regard.

There are a number of highlights although the money shot on here is without a doubt, ‘Pacific 202’, the most recognisable and user-friendly version of this track. It’s soaring saxophones and gorgeous chord-hover strike right to the core of the acid house movement and reveal a beautiful, beating heart beneath all the bleeps, tweaks, pulses and squelches.

The State went on to release a very good follow up album - ’Ex:El’ (1991) although there were signs on that one that all was not necessarily pure in their musical intent any more, a fear confirmed with the release of the woeful ‘Gorgeous’ (1993) although this was all redeemed later by the noodling but worthwhile ‘Don Solaris’ (1996).

As a snatch of rare genius, ‘90′ is the business though. An unmistakeable classic of its genre.

5/5

Post rock is different things to different people but it’s also a fairly lazy term to suggest a wide range of styles. An old friend of mine, sick to the brimful of Mogwai and Godspeed! albums once called it, frustratingly, ‘bad jazz’. That definition’s a fine one but by bad, he meant ‘gone bad’, not necessarily poor; instead, jazz that’s slivered off to the ‘dark side’. At least that’s what I think.

There’s a segment of the 15 minute track on ‘f#a#infinity’ by the name of ‘East Hastings’, subtitled ‘The Sad Mafioso’ that reminds me of that description. A sad, poignant guitar strums from a silent start and slowly builds to a crescendo then just as suddently dies back into nothing. It’s rhythmic jazz-licked stuff that becomes a musical monster, more slavering dragon than hep-cat.

I think this is my favourite Godspeed! album. Consisting of three tracks - ‘The Dead Flag Blues’, ‘East Hastings’ and ‘Providence’, it tells a tale of the end of the world - or at least it does for me.

The music is a seething mixture of orchestra and electronic, with a rigid guitar spine. There are vocal samples that foretell doom, numerous ’movements’ within the three tracks that involve fiery progressions from an otherwise melodic idyll of backyard guitar pluck and there’s a cloud of atmosphere in between, all late night smoked over opium dens and broken down arcade parlours. There’s even a 4 minute break for some silence at the end of ‘Providence’ whereafter an end movement ‘JLH Outro’, named for John Lee Hooker brings us to a chin-stroking close.

This, like a lot of their stuff, is demanding but rewarding. Listen to it late.

5/5

I hesitate somewhat in preparing this review. Yet another album I want to enthuse about. So much for balance in all things. So shall it be though - I shall just have to scratch around for some mediocre/sub par/Joe Average LPs to review. There are plenty of them about.

But let me return to this one for I have much to say. DJ/Rupture is clearly a talented muso, evidently known for his mix-ups/mash-ups technical turntablism in New York circles. I had never heard of him prior to hearing this but I’m intrigued. This is the ‘mix album’ on a virtuoso scale, full of tracks that sound like they were destined only to ever be played together, which I suppose is the sign of a good mix album. To be fair, I’m not a mad fan of mix albums, besides the previously mentioned ‘Back to Mine’ and ‘Late Night Tales’. Generally prefer my music with 2 second bookends.

Not here though, for this is what it’s all about. The selection is world-wide, with an overall focus on dub-step ragga, traversing Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the UK and the US. There’s even a lovely flourish of avant-chamber music mid way through and the album comes to an eventual rest on the cushion of some unwound, dark ambience that’s still full of echoes from the music prior. It is all bound together in flavour by a dense, simmering stock of multi-layered dub, all very dense and intricate and the mixing is imperceptibly good. It’s mature, intense, clever and textured. All at once. By the end of it all, silence seems a bit lonely.

DJ/Rupture: funny arms.

I’d suggest there’s a lot of re-working and reinvention here, although it’s so hard to be sure, such is the intensity of the mix. I understand a good amount of the music is previously unreleased and some of it was produced especially for the album, which would explain in part why so much of it sounds so compatible.

There’s really no point naming highlights. The whole 23 track shebang is a highlight, a big, clambering, roaring multi-headed dub monster and a mythological one at that. I like it. Can you tell? 

For best effect, this could and should be played late, after everyone’s gone to bed (although don’t play it too loud!) You’ll have lively dreams. Or nightmares.

5/5

Amidst the shifting sands of desert-rock experimentalism, this album’s a standout. Joey Burns and John Convertino had been plucking away at Calexico since the mid 90s, with mixed results, but in 2003, released ’Feast of Wire’ which masterfully bound together a gamut of musical sources including jazz, country, Mariachi-blues and avant-garde piano minimalism, burnished with a rubbing of parched late summer rock.

This is an excellent album: dense, musical and full of surprises. Across the course of sixteen varied tracks, a party dies to a close, the desert whips up into a storm overnight and in the morning, the glasses and empty bottles glisten in the scorching early sun. We can still feel hear the echo of the celebration, thumping around in our sleepy minds. A pair of duelling pianos can be heard in the distance.

Pretentious perhaps, but this is an imaginative and inventive set, it cannot help but evoke the spirit of a time and place, somewhere in the south-West. The musicianship is top-notch and the songcraft is tight but there’s also so much that’s loose and gaping and open to the elements. 

Worth a listen - worth several listens in fact. Inspiring stuff.

5/5

Having only heard of Lindstrom through his contribution to the underrated ‘Late Night Tales’ compilation series, I was intrigued to read several excellent reviews of this album. Having listened to it now, several times, I am compelled to add to the plaudits.

This is Norwegian space trance disco at its most splendidly recognisable. With just three tracks, the self titling opener nearly 30 minutes long and two others weighing in at around 15 and 10 minutes apiece, Hans-Peter Lindstrom, who is evidently quite an eclectic character, weaves a thoroughly engrossing and very comfortable blanket of pulsing, arpeggiating sound. This is an album concerned with journeys and is probably most effective pulsing away in the background of our own personal journeys, on a walk, a run or whilst working, although it’s peaks, troughs and progressions equally reward self-contained absorption. There’s one thing I’ve learnt over the years, listening to epic prog-electro: 30 minute tracks pretty much demand peaks and troughs, otherwise they get boring. So there’s a story here too, buried deep within the mix.

Whilst this is not without its failings, chief of which that it tends to spend a bit of time with it’s crazy organic musical disco head up its arse (one could easily accuse Lindstrom of self indulgence on a grand discofied scale), it is superbly composed and the production values are extremely high. The music is coloured, textural and rich, with a throbbing minimalist quality not unlike the work of Steve Reich, whilst Giorgio Morodor, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, and old Meco (obscure 70s Italian quasi-disco muso) vinyl LPs from my long-lost childhood get a showing. Parents take a bow.

The last half of the last track, ‘The Long Way Home’ introduces some playful chintzy synth bells that are right out of a forgotten ‘Jazz and Moog-does-The Hits’ long player buried in a pile in a second hand shop somewhere, teetering on a pocket-knife edge between cringeworthy and inspirationally sentimental. I’ll dob for the latter, naturally. 

Whilst Lindstrom uses throwaway electronic disco-flam to make a point (and I’m not entirely sure where that point leads to), it is substantial, well rendered, melodic flam and in its own beautiful way, it’s masterful.

I understand this is his first ‘official’ LP, after a raft of EPs and remixes. I’m interested to see what’s next.

Captivating.

 5/5

Bob Dylan is a strange man.  He leaves on the editing room floor material which is both brilliant and significant.  Most famously, he elected to leave the utterly brilliant “Blind Willie McTell” off the album Infidels, yet left in several far inferior tracks.

Now we have Tell Tale Signs, Dylan’s anthology of unreleased studio material from 1989 to the present.  Also thrown into the mix are a few non-album studio tracks from film soundtracks, and a selection of recent live material.  This release simply reinforces the fact that what Bob Dylan rejects, a sane person would publish and revel in (and probably win a Grammy for).  At worst, these tracks are interesting alternatives to the final versions which made it onto albums like Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.  At best, they are classics which stand alongside anything else in a ridiculously huge and brilliant body of work.

As an aside, it is impossible not to comment on the pricing of this release.  The two-CD version can be had for around $25-30, as one would expect.  The three-CD version can be had for no less than A$200.  That’s right, an extra A$170 for ONE CD and a couple of glossy photos (you might also get a record single, I think).  Sony, you’ve done it again.  Although I can’t help but think that Dylan himself could have prevented this if he wanted to.

As stated, there are basically three types of tracks on this release.  The live material shows that Dylan has definitely still got it, whatever ‘it’ was and is.  The modern Dylan touring band is arguably the best he’s ever had, and you will not hear tighter backing musicians in many places (the drumming, in particular, is sublime across the breadth of these CDs).  Dylan’s actual singing is also surprisingly good, particularly given his sometimes lacklustre performances in the last decade or so - for the most part he is lively and melodic throughout these recordings.

The previously released non-album tracks are uniformly awe-inspiring, even if they have been heard before.  “Cross the Green Mountain” deserves special mention.  Recorded for the soundtrack to the virtually unknown (and apparently somewhat racist) civil war movie Gods and Generals, it reduces Dylan’s whole mythical civil war-era America (which has appeared as the vague backdrop to many tracks across the years) to a single epic poem about the desolation and courage produced by war.  It also traverses a great deal of literature and poetry from across the centuries, most notably Walt Whitman (the lyrics are here).  Another highlight is “Huck’s Tune”, recorded for the film Lucky You, which displays some of Dylan’s best lyrics in a long time.

Finally, there are the previously unreleased studio tracks.  Many of these are embryonic or alternate versions of tracks which eventually made it onto Love and Theft or Time Out of Mind, but they are no less worthwhile for that fact (the alternate version of “Can’t Wait” from Love and Theft is particularly good).  Then there are those which have never surfaced before, even in bootleg form.  “Red River Shore” is an instant Dylan classic, and “Miss the Mississippi” is a delicate song which emphasises that although he may have slowed down, Dylan has not lost his subtlety or skill.  The others - too many to list - are more than enough to make an excellent album worth of studio material.

There will always be two ways of looking at a Dylan release - the Dylan fanatic’s view, and the casual listener’s view.  There’s no doubt that for a fanatic, this is a goldmine, and every track adds something worthwhile to the greater Dylan discography.  Even for the latter, though, there is a lot which should be of interest in this release.  Yes, Dylan can still sing.  Yes, he can do crazy delta blues and Clapton-esque blues-rock.  Yes, he can play the piano, and he can still carry a song with just himself, his guitar and a harmonica to assist him.  And most significantly, yes, he is still writing songs like no-one else can.

Probably just as important for the non-fanatic, though, is that this is essentially a double album of highly listenable folk-rock from the inventor and master of the genre.  It’s just a shame that most non-fans will never hear the third disc because of the ridiculous pricing structure.

5/5

(Sony’s pricing and release strategy: 0/5)

I have seen the future of electronic music and it’s name is Ulrich Schnauss. Or at least that’s what I thought when I first heard this album. My opinion has shifted marginally since, but we’ll get to that.

Born in Kiel, Germany in 1977, Ulrich Schnauss became interested, as interesting young musical men can well do, in bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Tangerine Dream. Evidently it did not take him too long to get around to producing his first music, in around 1995 and a signficant, albeit largely unknown and rare album ‘Landscapes’ (1999) under the pseudonym Ethereal 77. That was an extremely competent collection of high energy drum & bass on the ambient/jazz tip. If anything, there were too many strings, jazzy bleeps and flourishes happening too much of the time. You sometimes need some darkcore to make your jazzcore all the sweeter. But I digress.

This album is something else. Six concise, emotive tracks that do not speak of 2001 at all, rather an undefined future somewhere. There’s no referential drum & bass here, only reverential and crystalline electronic music, with one big toe plonked onto the dancefloor. You would probably never dance to this though as you would look quite silly. You would, instead think, muse, or just listen without doing anything else.

The album’s opener ‘Knuddlemaus’ is probably the best of a very solid bunch. It’s a gorgeous, synth drenched canter that after numerous listens still does not wear. It’s melodic, evocative and allows us a peek into a gold-lit underground cavern where kind memories are stored. ’Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn’ is equally atmopsheric, albeit somewhat more workman-like whilst ‘Molfsee’ is awash with echo-bells and distant voices. ‘Between Us and Them’ is probably the album’s first real nod to shoe-gaze, with a lovely sugar-spun shell enrobing a machine-network of percussion. Like all of the album, it’s dense, textured, musical and lovely. It burrows into your head and fills your brain up with melodic loveliness. And it doesn’t hurt one bit.

‘Far Away Trains…’ however, requires more context than a raft of preceding schoolboy pre-releases and a drum & bass collection. A more textured, dramatic and introspective album followed this: ‘A Strangely Isolated Place (2003)’ which strong-headedly expressed Slowdive/MBY influences, and whilst not as beautiful as this, is still excellent and a worthy companion piece. His latest, ‘Goodbye’ (2007) is however, somewhat disappointing, taking the Slowdive progression to a fuzzier, distorted extreme and by the end of it’s we’re left with a slightly confused and muddled album, a fall-back onto a reliable sound but with the stale taste of samey-ness.

‘Far Away Trains…’ is my favourite though. It’s my friends’ favourite. It’s my workmates’ favourite. It’s my wife’s favourite. It’s my cat’s favourite. And it would be my lawn mower’s favourite too, if it could hear.

5/5, with a melodic rocket.

I’m not going to go into much detail about Zappa himself here. Suffice to say, the man was prolific at the very least. Genius, slightly daft, clever businessman, moralistic, not-so-moralistic, hypocrite, virtuoso… there are countless descriptions that could summarise the man but instead of me going into any more detail, a quick review of his Wikipedia entry will give you some idea.

This is probably my favourite album of Zappa’s and it is undoubtedly one of his ‘purest’, consisting pretty much of nothing but long avant-jazz guitar compositions/jams. It’s an engrossing, heady brew and works a treat with the headphones. I find it a great accompaniment to creative thinking but then some might just find it annoying.

The first track, which in a way is a bit of an ‘odd-one-out’ is ‘Peaches En Regalia’ and is probably one of his more commercial/popular tracks. It’s musically substantial but has a far lighter tone than the other material which grinds far more into a seething boil of blues, jazz and rock. The second track, ‘Willie The Pimp’ features Captain Beefheart’s growling voice for the first couple of minutes then unfolds into a grinding blues workout with guitar aplenty.

‘The Gumbo Variations’, a 17 minute long jazz jam is probably the true standout with an impressive violin solo from virtuoso French violinist Jean Luc Ponty popping up in the mix. This is excellent stuff, engrossing in it’s length and depth.

‘Hot Rats’ is generally representative of late 60s Zappa, as are two other albums from a similar time - ‘Waka/Jawaka’ (also excellent) and ‘The Grand Wazoo’. These sit somewhere between his Mothers of Invention stuff and later, explosive, prolific, satirical, crude, intelligent 70s/80s material.

Zappa always hired/surrounded himself with highly talented musicians and demanded high levels of performance from his crew. I understand there was low tolerance for turning up drunk or otherwise under the influence. As a result, we’re treated to tight-as-a-drum music for much of his career, even if some of his albums are turkeys.

This one is no turkey though.

5/5

I suppose this review qualifies as pure indulgence. This album has been banging around my collection for some years now and I’m pleased to say I have the German edition: Die Mensch-Maschine. So there.

Ignoring the music for a minute, there’s much to be intrigued about with Kraftwerk. Tales of endless bike rides throughout the German mountains, mysterious music alchemy within the Kling Klang Studio in Dusseldorf, sending robots on stage to play whilst they supped coffee in their bike knicks and hopped onto the saddle in another time zone.

Wolfgang Flur’s tell all biography ‘I Was a Robot’ was interesting but I really didn’t care to know about their discretions with the ladies during the peak of their fame nor their late night sojourns to German discotheques. So much of Kraftwerk is about the image and the enigma and this mystery entwines itself into the music. That and the fact that much of their music has impregnated a range of technological music that has followed, most famously with the early hip hop tracks.

Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider must be pretty old by now but they’re still releasing, after a lengthy hiatus of bike riding and enjoying their profits from the Autobahn. Their material isn’t so fabulous anymore. It’s good, very good even, but it no longer possesses the currency or relevance that their old music had.

Which leads me to this, my personal favourite and it would seem, by most appraisals, their second best album. That title has been handed on a number of occasions to ‘Computer World (1981) and it’s certainly their most plagiarised and possibly influential album. For me, though, that collection, whilst good, is too compact and too thematic. The tracks are, dare I suggest, a bit samey.

‘The Man Machine’, on the other hand, is a different beast. 6 tracks, all quite different but all possessed of multi-layered melody, atmosphere and most importantly, the essence of late night. Sure, these qualities are not sought after by every listener but for me, they are golden. ‘Neon Lights’, ‘Spacelab’ and ’Metropolis’ are probably the most obvious in this regard; like sonic baskets weaved of the finest neon melody, very intricate and nuanced with dangly syncopations and obscure Germanic vocodings. ‘The Model’ is the standout single but it’s hard to believe a world where this was a hit single (equally harder to concieve of such a world where ‘Autobahn’ was a hit but that’s another line of digression). My version is all German but the story is about a model ‘and she’s looking good’. Jaunty and fun in a nerdy synthesized way.

The weakest track for me is the last- ‘The Man Machine’ which would be a stand out on ‘Electric Cafe’ (1986), probably their least successful album, but on here it’s just a bit underwhelming; a little too sparse and none of the warmth and melodic richness that the rest of the album has.

I suppose for me, it’s all a bit personal. This stuff is the sound of driving around in the dark suburbs at 2am on the way home, playing on a tinny car stereo on a crappy cobbled together mix tape. And fittingly enough, I was driving a Volkswagen.

Essential.

5/5