TLOBF :: Now Playing

Another month, another list of what our team of writers have been listening to. Bit of a random selection this month as well, from A-Ha, to Kyuss via Nine Inch Nails and Speed Caravan. We do have an eclectic bunch…

Andy Johnson :: Nine Inch Nails – ‘Not So Pretty Now’
Now used to giving things away for free, Trent Reznor celebrated and promoted the tour NIN undertook with Street Sweeper Social Club and Jane’s Addiction with the NIN|JA EP, released in March. The two NIN tracks on the record were both also-rans which failed to make inclusion on the 2005 album With Teeth, but despite that “Not So Pretty Now” in particular is a brilliant selling point for the freebie. Less “industrial” and more “rock” than usual, it’s a thrilling, breakneck angle grinder of a song, barbed as usual with Reznor’s acid-tongued lyrics and vocals. As fascinating as Reznor’s more experimental and overtly industrial music is, this is a great reminder that when he puts his mind to it, he can still rock with the best of them.

Daniel Offen :: The Antlers – Hospice
Although not officially released in the UK yet, this complete gem of an album is available on spotify (and I managed to find a promo copy in a second hand record shop). The beautiful, and heart wrenching tale of a man watching his wife die of bone cancer, Hospice is the only album released this year (or perhaps decade) that’s brought me close to tears. Full of poetic, but blunt and astonishing lyrics, which reveal the story fairly quickly, but have enough deep meaning to keep a listener rooting about for weeks. Hospice isn’t however just a lyrical album, a fantastic mixture of folk and post-rock, making for a genuinely beautiful and emotional piece of work. Peter Silberman’s voice is particularly strong, and is very good at transmitting the emotion in the songs. I can’t possibly tell you how annoyed I am that I missed them whilst they were here.

Simon Rueben :: A-ha – The Bandstand
A recent article in The Sun newspaper recently had the potential to spark Hillsboroughesque boycotts in Norway, listing A-ha among the artists attempting nostalgic raids on the wallets of those fortunate enough to have been teenagers in the eighties. Not so. Now on their 9th album, they are producing original material that far exceeds the songs of their glory days. And the title track of their previous album would probably be the finest moment of their career, if not for the opening track of their latest release, “Foot of the Mountain”.

‘The Bandstand’ is a towering chunk of perfectly produced keyboards, all bleeps and bloops and snarling synthesiser patterns. All this allows Morten Harket to do his usual trick of gliding his voice up and down the octaves as if he were playing an extremely long swanny whistle. But what really sets this song apart is how contemporary it all sounds. Other bands of their generations have either forgotten how to write songs or are merely content to retread their past. This is not a game A-ha want to play.

Sadly, they have not yet decided to release this song as a single, probably because it sounds more like LCD Soundsystem than the usual Radio 2 fodder. This is a terrible decision, as I am convinced that if released it would be the biggest hit of their career. Its fresh and modern, without sounding forced and trendy, and I can’t stop playing it.

Jude Clarke :: Speed Caravan – Kalashnik Love
This month I’ve been on a bit of a “World Music” tip, exploring a few albums of non UK or US origin that have been getting a bit of recent attention. Of most note has been Speed Caravan – Kalashnik Love, which features the virtuoso oud (Arabic fretless lute) playing of Mehdi Haddab. The album combines Eastern and Western musical tropes with varying degrees of success: the cover of The Cure’s ‘Killing An Arab’ is witty, and works well, as does their take on ‘Galvanize’ by The Chemical Brothers. The realistic and moving evocation of migrant workers in Dubai on, err, ‘Dubai’ is another highlight. A wide range of collaborators have been involved (including, bizarrely, Richard Archer from Hard-Fi), and there is sometimes a sense that they’ve tried to throw a bit *too* much into the one bag (Serbian, Turkish-Armenian, and Arabic traditional music can all be found alongside the dancey or rocky Western style stuff), but overall it is an enjoyable, fast-moving, and often distinctly ‘rock ‘n ‘ roll’ listen.

Simon Gurney :: Paul Wirkus & Mapstation -Forest Full Of Drums
This is basically a couple of people dicking about in the woods with recording equipment and a drum kit. The textural qualities of tree branches rustling, logs being thrown, birds tweeting away, the layered depths of a forest, the timbre of cymbals being prodded, skins of drums brushed and tapped and skittered on. There’s something here, and not necessarily in that dippy ‘communing with nature’ sense neither, more like interacting with this forest full of wood by talking it’s language. The language of trees is of course percussive, not tied to a rhythm, or any overarching sense that a human could understand. The percussion here is like stoned far-out jazz, cymbals blush into mini drones (‘Darkness Arriving’), taps and brushes on the drum heads, sudden sharp left turns, fade outs as if interest has been lost, a light, airy and yet ominous cacophony (‘Between The Beeches’), and just straight weirdness that you wouldn’t think a drum kit was capable of (‘Animals Possible’).

Like a cross between Chris Watson and a drum kit gracefully tumbling down a hill. Here’s a video of a Pole and a German messing about in the woods:

Matt Poacher :: Kyuss – Sky Valley
No album I know of reeks of place quite so much, is so much a product of environment, as Sky Valley. Those opening chords of ‘Gardenia’ and ‘Whitewater’ are the very teeth of the wind, the endless expanse of the valley floor, ‘Space Cadet’ the empty sound of pre-dawn. Standing beneath the limitless sky, you feel you could almost summon forth asteroids… I once went to Sky Valley. We turned off the highway near Palm Springs and the further out into the desert we got, the louder the ambient sound became: the wind was limitless, a fibrous wall; it came off the desert, out of the wide skies. As we drove in to the valley, the rumour of geography as sound became real and as the sun sunk in front of us, the wind dropped and there was an extraordinary barrage of silence, backgrounded by the slow whoompf of wind turbines.

Chris Goss had got them sounding loose and huge on Blues for the Red Sun, but this was something else – they sounded like captured fire. Live at the Astoria II later that same year though it was obvious something was up – Reeder, bare foot and wild-eyed looked close to unconsciousness, Alfredo Hernandez – brought in to replace Brant Bjork, a huge pair of shoes to fill – was dropping beats, and adding them where they shouldn’t be. The tension made for a remarkable gig but it wasn’t to last. They went on to make And the Circus Leaves Town but something had gone. For a brief moment though, Kyuss were the best band astride the earth; and as a document of a band harnessing their own and the dense weight of natural forces, Sky Valley is some legacy.