My Second New Album of 2018

Open Here by Field Music. Blue Vinyl. Very good.

2012 Re-View

So here it is - the best music things of 2012.

Best song:
PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING - Spitfire

Of course.
I've already raved about this - it's one of those rare songs that I can listen to on repeat. Six months on, I still get a buzz whenever I hear the intro.

Best song title:
Scott Walker - SDSS141E+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)
Clocking in at just shy of 22 minutes, the track almost outdoes the title when it comes to incomprehensibility. Sublime, ridiculous, pretentious, hilarious, impenetrable but totally compelling. Not quite "Make It Easy On Yourself" then.

Best album:

Field Music - Plumb

Or is it Dexys - One Day I'm Going To Soar?
Or maybe The 2 Bears' Be Strong?
Both strong contenders, but I'll go for Field Music - because of it's brevity, I can listen to it repeatedly SO many more times.

A great "alternative rock" album:
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
What I love about Dirty Projectors is how essential everything is. Every sound, note, hit of a snare drum, have a purpose, each adding something unique - there's nothing superfluous here and no generic guitars strumming with a bass playing the root note. Oh, and the songs are pretty good too, which helps.

A great "alternative electronic rock" album:
Fuxa - Electric Sound of Summer
A Christmas present, so there's still plenty to discover with this as I've only had it for just over a week. Post/space rock and electronica, featuring three brilliant cover versions - Our Lips are Sealed, Some Things Last a Long Time and Cheree (which they have stretched out to 10 minutes). In fact the Suicide references stretch further than covering Cheree, with another track being named "Marty Suicide" and the sound on many tracks coming across a bit like Suicide collaborating with Lali Puna - that is if Suicide were a bit happier and enjoyed spending summer afternoons lying in a field listening to the birds singing.

Five great gigs
So much great live music. Here's five examples.
Grandaddy (Ritz)
Public Service Broadcasting (Soup Kitchen)
Pulp (Motorpoint Arena)
Dexys (Green Man Festival)
tUnE-yArDs (Green Man Festival)

Some great album covers:

Three Ambient Records:

It was quite refreshing to find the man who is to blame/thank for the whole genre showing the kids how it should be done. Brian Eno's Lux is one of the most beautiful things he's released in a long time. It sounds even more special now I have it on "180g DMM mastered double vinyl". Honest.

Daniel Lopatin is steadily becoming one of my favourite 21st century artists, with three brilliant albums released over the last couple of years. After Ford and Lopatin's homage to the 80s (1980s and 2080s) that was Channel Pressure, and Oneohtrix Point Never's sublime Replica, we now get a collaboration with Tim Hecker on the Instrumental Tourist album, which might be called ambient, but a thoroughly modern and forward thinking ambient.

Oh and Julian Cope released Woden, which was originally recorded in 1998 but left in the vault. He describes it as "one 72-minute ambulent meditation upon Warden Hill & Avebury". After a difficult opening section, it transforms into a beautiful and absorbing three-note melody accompanied by the distant sound of church bells. Or is it the sound of distant church bells?

Drone Pop:
I'm talking about Circles by Moon Duo, a Wooden Shjips side project (for one member anyway) that takes the sound of Wooden Shjips / Spaceman 3 and blends it with tunes that border on pop. Fantastic stuff.

And talking of side projects...
Tame Impala or Pond? Well, they both released great albums, with TI getting (most of) the accolades. Lonerism was the more consistent, but Beard, Wives, Denim contained Moth Wings - a psych rock masterpiece. A tough one to call.

Hot Chip or The 2 Bears?
Both will put a massive grin on your face. In Our Heads sounds like Hot Chip (understandably), whilst Be Strong is the perfect soundtrack for anyone pining for some post-house, Ian Dury-esque pop...and anyone who is in need of a Bear Hug.

Reissue of the year:

In agreement with 99% of all music publications, it has to be Can's The Lost Tapes. Archive material from 1968-1977 and previously unreleased, this is probably the most remarkable thing I've heard in years. So good, in fact, that I bought it twice.

Oh, how they spoil us:
After a six year gap, Mouse on Mars return with not one, but two shiny new albums of their unique glitchy electronica in a collision with techno, krautrock and hip-hop. One for the head (Parastophics) that you can dance to, which took years to complete, and one for the feet (Wow) that you can admire for it's cleverness, which was thrown together over a few months. Both great.

Best Format:
Barry Adamson - Brighton Rockers. Released as a playable postcard. That's right, a postcard that you can play.

And here's some more albums I've loved this year:

Barry Adamson - I Will Set You Free
Spritualized - Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
Euros Childs - Summer Special
Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill
Pye Corner Audio - Sleep Games
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Hallelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Four Tet - Pink
Daphni - Jiaolong
Toy - Toy
Squarepusher - Ufabulum
The Flaming Lips With Heady Fwends

Anyway, you get the point...

Keep Calm and Green Man 2012

A Green Man Festival 2012 review

Right, so I've just got back from this year's Greenman Festival and have washed off the mud from my legs. Here's what it was like....

Despite to torrential rain throughout Thursday night and most of Friday and briefly on Saturday morning and Sunday morning, the weather was pretty good. Seriously. The sun came out a lot, it got too hot at times and you could sit around and enjoy the music...as long as you could find somewhere dry to sit. I've been to festivals where the conditions have been much worse than this.

Anyway, here's some of the quite/very/exceptionally good stuff I caught...

So hip it hurts, Toy played an excellent set of Krautgothrock on the Far Out stage. Hopefully being flavour of the month with the hipsters won't result in a backlash and they can become as successful as anyone melding the sound of the Horrors with early Stereolab can ever be - like all the great bands, they make two chords go a long way and it has to be said, they are infinitely better than Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong ever were.

Friday's rain stopped in time for the return of Dexys who, despite the futile shouts for Geno (this isn't some "I love the 80s" return) performed the most remarkable set of the weekend - the nearest a gig has ever come to nearly making me cry for a long time. Rewriting some of the lyrics to old songs and setting them alongside the highlights of the new album, this was more a play set to music than a gig, revolving around the mental rehabilitation of Kevin and his ability/inability to fall in love, with vocals shared by Kevin (the male lead) with Pete Williams (his best friend/father) and Madeleine Hyland (the love interest).

The Junior Boys were probably just glad to play in a tent and not outside in the torrential rain as they did last time they played at the festival. They did good.

A couple of hours before Mogwai's headlining set on Friday I had the good fortune to meet Stuart and Barry from the band in the Rough Trade shop, so I quickly went and bought the San Pedro 7" and got them to sign it like the fanboy I am. Anyway, the band did exactly what you would want from them on a festival headline slot, with songs from last year's awesome Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will sitting comfortably alongside everything else in the set with the exception of the peerless Mogwai Fear Satan, whose thunder made the valley shake. It's just a shame it wasn't raining at this point as this is probably some of the best music you can set to stormy weather.

What was missing from the festival was Post Modernism, Lover's Rock, a middle aged white man rapping and oblique lyrical references to Immanuel Kant. Fortunately, Scritti Politti were on hand to set that right. I'd always understood that Green Gartside had a real aversion to playing live, but he showed himself to be a brilliant front man - witty, charming and self effacing. Yes, a lot of people were waiting for them to play the "hits" (they obliged), but the later material is equally strong, with the one NEW new song (which he hasn't finished writing yet) being one of the highlights of the gig.

Van Morrison was 'headlining' the Mountain Stage on the Saturday night. The funny thing was, he was on at 7:15pm, with 2 bands on after him. Anyway, whatever the reasons behind this decision his music is ideal for a sunny Saturday evening rather than late at night. Not that I saw any of his set, but it sounded great from back at the tent.

Field Music played their usual quality set of mini symphonies in 7/8 time. I've raved about them in a previous blog, so I won't say any more here.

tUnE-yArDs were another highlight, mainly to see quite how Merrill Garbus can transform the multi layered vocals/instruments/effects of her albums into the live setting. And the answer is via a live band, probably a Loop Station, her charisma and a lovely orange dress. It was quite brilliant and one of those true festival Sunday-feel-good sets. Mind you, it does you no harm when people get this view of your band on stage...

Other bands worth a mention include Alt-J, Jonathan Richman, King Charles, Ghostpoet and Dark Dark Dark and that guy dressed as a spaceman with his own mini-stage.

So, yeah, it was alright really.

Field Music's Plumb

This incredibly inventive album plays like a 36 minute suite over fifteen short songs. The album flows so smoothly that at times it's almost impossible to tell where one songs ends and another begins - of course this is made more difficult by each song packing in more melodies and ideas into under three minutes than most bands manage in a lifetime.

I recently - and rather crudely - described Field Music to a friend as being the missing link between The Futureheads and Fleetwood Mac, a comparison that I'm sure many will dispute, but it served it's purpose and there is some truth in those reference points, I just omitted a hundred other bands that spring to mind when listening to this album, such as Supertramp and XTC and the Beach Boys and Calexico and Foals, and...err..Marillion circa Misplaced Childhood. Oh, and Field Music too, because, despite the eclecticism that is on display here, there's something incredibly unique in this music that makes 'sounds like Field Music' a valid reference point.

The album comes on lovely 'plum' (yes, yes, very funny) coloured vinyl and sounds fantastic - as the sleevenotes say 'in order to preserve sonic fidelity, this record has been mastered using significantly less compression and limiting than most contemporary records. For your maximum listening pleasure, please turn your stereo system UP!'. Not that this will be of concern to most fans of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers (if you want to know what I mean by this, read the chapter on 'The Story of the Band That Clipped Itself to Death' in Greg Milner's superb book "Perfecting Sound Forever").

Oh, and if you buy it from Piccadilly Records in Manchester now, it comes with a lovely exclusive free 'studio sessions' 7 track CD.