Hungover Albums 2013

So here it is, the moment you've all not been waiting for. In the absence of a Hungover radio show, here's some albums that either featured on the show or would've done if Chorlton FM was still on air - some albums that I really like, including some that I will no doubt have forgot about in a couple of years. You might like some of them too.

Public Service Broadcasting - Inform-Educate-Entertain
The much anticipated (by me) debut album. Having already heard half the album through previous singles, I was thinking "hang on, I want something new", but given that ROYGBIV, Spitfire, Everest and Signal 30 were all astonishing singles, it would be foolish to miss them off. The other tracks couldn't quite live up to these standards, but then not much can.

Warm Digits - Interchange

This

Steve Mason - Monkey Minds in the Devil's Time
Fantastic ambitious album finally realising the potential of the Beta Band over an entire album. I thought Boys Outside was a great album, but this is even better!

Arctic Monkeys - AM
Despite what the NME claim, this isn't their best-ever album and bringing in an R'n'B influence isn't all that radical - after all, R'n'B artists have been doing it for years. But it is still a fantastic forward thinking alternative rock album. The closing track "I Wanna Be Yours" does sound like a Flight of the Conchords song though.

Joe Gideon and the Shark - Freakish
A band I fell in love with by chance (The Deltics supported them back in 2009 or whenever) - lovely people, awesome live band. Finally a second album comes out, complete with more of Gideon's black comedic tales of self loathing and loves lost and found - and this time The Shark gets to sing two songs.

Deutsche Elektronische Musik 2
Soul Jazz release a second volume of...err...Krautrock. Covering the well known (Faust, Tangerine Dream, Can) and the lesser known (Electric Sandwich anyone? ) it's an equal to volume one and even introduced me to some new (old) music.

Cavern of Anti-Matter - Blood-Drums
The blink and you'll miss it release featuring Stereolab's Tim Gane. Like an instrumental Stereolab album with more Krautrock and less farfisa organs. A few hundred copies were pressed. On vinyl only.

The Flaming Lips - The Terror
The lush production of "Yoshimi..." and "At War With the Mystice" seems a long long time ago now. A dark, chilling album with some great tunes buried inside somewhere.

David Bowie - The Next Day
A promising debut album.

Ian McNabb - Eclectic Warrior

Boots has continued to write some great tunes, but here he's found a band in Cold Shoulder, who come on like a psych rock Crazy Horse, that can do the songs justice. Highlight for me (and arguably my favourite track of the year) is the astonishing nine minute opus Memory Be Good To Me, Memory Come Back To Me.

R. Seilog - Doppler
From a spellbinding set at The Green Man festival to this promising mini LP.

OMD - English Electric
Aren't old bands who have reformed supposed to put out albums that trade on the band's 'classic' sound and former glories? I guess that's exactly what you've got here, but those former glories here include the career suicide Dazzle Ships album, so we get a new release featuring spoken word announcements, women counting up to ten and some bloke saying "I want a future so bright that it burns my eyes". Oh, and some tunes too.

Queens of the Stone Age - Like Clockwork
It's just so good to have them back.

Julian Cope - Revolutionary Suicide
Steadily turning into our greatest living historian, how can his poppiest album in years contain a stunning 15 minute dirge called The Armenian Genocide? We also get They Were On Hard Drugs, which takes us on an alternative tour of how the ancients lived whilst the title track has the most Cope-like key change ever.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away
Do I need to repeat what I've already said?

Euros Childs - Situation Comedy
Darker and funnier than an episode of Terry and June.

Oh/Ex/Oh - Extant
Released in late December 2012 but I'm letting this one sneak in as I didn't hear it until 2013. The Boards of Canada album was very good, but this stood out for me as one of the great electronic albums of the year.

Hookworms - Pearl Mystic

Deep fried space rock from Yorkshire

Euros Childs - Situation Comedy

Bad day at the office and then I get home to find this waiting for me a few days ahead of its release date. A new album by Euros Childs.

I'm pretty sure that every record that Euros has been involved in, from the early Gorky's Zygotic Mynci releases through to his most recent 'experimental' release At The Dance, has brought a smile to my face. 

This is no different.

Things that made me smile:
It's on vinyl.
The front cover, with a grumpy Euros in front of a picture of him as a child with (I presume) his dad.
The gatefold sleeve - a still from the Tête a Tete video (see below)
The song titles - Ooh La Oona, Brides in the Bath, Holiday From Myself.
Sample lyrics: "I'm not going to dress up like your mother anymore".
And that's all before I've even listened to the music.

On first listen - and I'm writing this as I listen to it for the first time - it puts forward a convincing case for being his finest solo album. Piano led, but featuring a full band (including Laura J Martin on flute), the album is overflowing with melodies to die for and sugar coated with Euros's vocals - still one of the sweetest voices there is. Things come to an impressive finale when the beautifully stunning (or is that stunningly beautiful) Trick of the Mind floats by for 14 minutes.

Oh, and whenever I buy music direct from his National Elf website, I get a personal note from Euros (I presume he does this for everyone and he's not just singled me out as his überfan). "Hello Tim. Thanks for buying Situation Comedy. Hope you like it! Euros" it said. It made me smile.

R.Seiliog - Doppler

After blowing us away with his closing set at this year's Green Man Festival, R.Seiliog releases a mini-LP of krautrock doodles, which is the perfect companion piece to the new Cavern of Anti-Matter album.

A promising sign of things to come - please make it a full length album next time though.

Cavern of Anti-Matter - Blood Drums

Heading towards the top of the album charts anytime soon... Oh, hang on, it's a vinyl only release that hardly any record stores seem to be selling? It was always likely to be a niche recording anyway, but I suppose those of you who don't have a turntable or the will power to track this down are just going to have to trust me on this one.  Because this is a great album! The ideal companion piece to R.Seiliog's recently released Doppler mini album.

Following on from the "You Are An Art-Soul" EP (different versions of all those tracks appear here), former Stereolab man Tim Gane 's latest venture involves the band taking you through 16 tracks of loose jams, broken analogue techno, and post-krautrock bliss - or, as the text on the gatefold sleeve brilliantly states, 'black and white psychedelia'.

"Movin' on Static" almost makes you want to dance and "Dystopian Shopping Mall" sounds just like the music you would expect in a dystopian shopping mall - The Love Unlimited Orchestra collaborating with Throbbing Gristle. The whole thing sounds very much as you would expect from a Stereolab-related record.

Anyway, have fun tracking this down. It's probably a limited edition too, just to enhance its obscurity rating. Destined to become a lost classic.

Beautiful Rewind

And out of nowhere (other than a warning a couple of months ago that an album would appear out of nowhere)  Four Tet's new album, Beautiful Rewind, arrives on my doorstep.

First impressions? Beautiful. Lots of sampled female vocals so far.

Cavern of Anti-Matter - You Are An Art Soul EP

So this is the latest project by (ex?) Stereolab members Tim Gane and Joe Dilworth (are the band still "on a break" or have they officially split up?). It's great - sounds very much like the more out-there Stereolab moments but without Laetitia Sadiers sweet melodies and vocals.

Three Neu!-esque workouts, two of which are "versions", which I presume means the upcoming album versions will be different - maybe there'll be some singing and less echo. The wonderful "sound-magic's Death Ray Destroys The Vortex And Has Union With Infinity" even, at one point, threatens to morph into Television-do-Krautrock.

The vinyl is exclusive to Rough Trade shops and is limited to 320 copies, which is a hell of a haul for one shop!

There's no picture sleeve so you'll have to make do with some photos of the label instead...

The band live in Berlin earlier this year:

Steel City (Move On Up)

It's not all 'cool' records around here you know. I thought I'd post something about a football record...

The Hillsboro' Crew was a collaboration featuring Martyn Ware & Glenn Gregory from Heaven 17 and Ian Reddington - AKA Eastenders' Tricky Dicky and, for those who survived it during the late '80s, Dr Who's Chief Clown (who was, essentially, a psychotic new romantic).

The verses, a rap by Mr Reddington, eulogise the 1986 high flying (hey, we finished 5th in Division 1) Sheffield Wednesday squad, whilst the chorus is lifted from Little Steven's Sun City. There's also time to squeeze in a bit of Funkadelic and Ollie and Jerry's "No Stopping Us" for good measure because, at that time, there really was no stopping us (except in those matches we lost).

But is it any good? Well it's better than the Owls/Thompson Twins remake of You Take Me Up from the previous year.

Back when we were good.