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Outsideleft Week in Music: Nihil aptius est quam latine ad Pascha We're hearing from... Seerr, Indigo De Souza, African Head Charge, Temps, Inner Space Quartet, Kyoto Kyoto, Diplo, October London, Terzo, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Oliver Nelson, Iguana Death Cult, JFDR, Cavern Deep, Laveda, Venus Fly Trap, CHAI, Eaves Wilder and Media Giant

Outsideleft Week in Music: Nihil aptius est quam latine ad Pascha

We're hearing from... Seerr, Indigo De Souza, African Head Charge, Temps, Inner Space Quartet, Kyoto Kyoto, Diplo, October London, Terzo, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Oliver Nelson, Iguana Death Cult, JFDR, Cavern Deep, Laveda, Venus Fly Trap, CHAI, Eaves Wilder and Media Giant

by OL House Writer,
first published: April, 2023

approximate reading time: minutes

There really aren't enough song lyrics in Latin are there? Well, Seerr is setting about changing all that...

SINGLES

SEERR - Sic Ego (Bandcamp)
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by Jay Lewis

There really aren't enough song lyrics in Latin are there? Well, Seerr (the Birmingham based solo artist who wrote, performed and produced this), is about to change that with his fiercely brilliant single 'Sic Ego'. Taken from his forthcoming EP 'Arcadian Ecological' Seerr is sharp and defiant here (opening line 'Hands up if you believe this shit? Now give yourself a slap) over anxiously pounding drums that are reminiscent of Stephen Morris circa Joy Division and urgent grungy guitars.  A fabulously captivating introduction!


KYOTO KYOTO - So (Blitzcat Records)
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by Alan Rider

'So' is a bit of a mess as a song to be honest.  It starts off ok, all stentorian vocals and an oddly off kilter guitar line.  Intriguing.  Then it goes all thrashy, and by the time we get to the end its all over the place, like a drunk tripping over every piece of furniture in the room.  I'm sure Kyoto Kyoto have more in them than this, but its a poor choice for a single.


TEMPS - ificouldjust (Bella Union)
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by Tim London

Admission: I manage Law Holt, one of the huge list of collaborators on this project so the fact that I’m reviewing this at all is an indication of its worth - if it was shite, I’d hide. This is the latest track before the album is released and it’s, along with everything so far released, a glorious, barmy, sunny cocktail that manages to reference so much forward-thinking, grown-up indie-pop that flies in the face of the slow armageddon seeping into the consciousness of ‘this’ generation that you have to wonder about the fantastic quality of the drugs they are prescribed. A sweet ironic fuck you to fate.


OCTOBER LONDON - Makes Me Want to Holla (Death Row Records)
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by Toon Traveller

What to say "the shape of music to come", hard to be objective on this coz I've loved Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On album, since I heard it mid '70s. This is a great copy, tribute, rip-off, cover, update. Strange, the music, tune, voice is the same, but the adjective used in judgement differs.  For me, love the whole feel of the backing, it's got a great sleazy, slinky, feel, it's that late night, slow n easy, up close, intimate club feeling. While raising a question, is a cover, a rip off, a tribute? Yeah his voice is very similar to '70s Marvin Gaye, and many listeners won't realise. But if this opens ears, minds, and soul, to discover the real source, it may be a good thing. However my fear, the algorithms will not lead to more Marvin in the world, but to a load of AI, created covers that strip out the best of Marvin, Smokey and similar singers, who will loose already minuscule income already depleted by streaming and sampling. Hearts for the sheer delight of the voice. But this could be the future of   "pop" music as AI "composition develops" and is another chapter in a debate about  'A.I. music', original, covers, and tributes, technical reinforcement of performances, a journey on which we as listeners barely taken a first hesitant step. But probably know from our history of pop music classes that we listen to the product of an industry that will won't stop for scruples.


CHAI - We The Female (TVCM Song)
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by Tim London

About four songs in one. A strangely polite thing that manages to be a bit early-90s sixties pastiche like Go! Team, B52s, Deee-Lite but tidied up and put in a clean, pine cupboard. ‘Just trust and listen!’ they say and I am inclined to trust them, they seem very organised.


ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES - City Federal Building (ATO Records)
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by Toon Traveller

Dark opening, images of dystrophy, discordant vocals, juxtaposed harmony and discord, perhaps, optimism in the harmony maybe? The vocals strangely beguiling at times almost falsetto over crashing feedback echo? A portent of even darker, desperate, mysterious, confusing times to come?  This is a song from another time, when uncertainty was just reduced optimism, but now uncertainty is fear and paranoia, haunting more and more of our self-isolating lives. Love the vocals, and steady back beat, echoes of distant hopes, but realising deep fears. 


IGUANA DEATH CULT - Oh No (Innovative Leisure)
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by Alan Rider

It feels like only five minutes ago I was reviewing the gloriously named Iguana Death Cult's last single 'Pusherman', awarding it a stonking five hearts.  Now they've gone and done it again.  If they get a hat trick with the next one too they should probably get some sort of special hat or something. 'Oh No' is often the reaction I get when the latest batch of releases pour through the virtual letterbox at Outsideleft like cold sick and its only acts like Iguana Death Cult that stop me from pouring petrol over the lot and tossing in a match.  The gloriously low fi production reminiscent of The Fire Engines (go Google them), the distinctly home made looking video, the off the wall lyrics, for me its all there.  Their very lack of polish IS the polish (they are not from Poland by the way, just in case you were confused by that statement).  Rough edges and spirit count for a lot around here.  An album 'Echo Palace' is on the way.  Bring it on!


INNER SPACE QUARTET - Telemagnetic Information (Dime Records)
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by LamontPaul

Yes! There's touch of Mike Oldfield at the disco sure as the machines crank back to life, sounding utterly like they are lumbering delicately after many decades beneath a plastic dust sheet in someone's garage. Beautiful and brief. What's not to love?


EAVES WILDER - Connect The Rooms (Secretly Canadian)
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by Alan Rider

Forget the song, which is drippy and instantly forgettable, but the video to accompany it is a master class in Videography by Nick Scott and Julia Fletcher, so its worth investing a few minutes of your goldfish attention level just to admire the skill on display.  Its just a shame it won't get a wider audience.  In the halcyon days of MTV this would have been on rotation solely on the strength of the video, but its fourty years too late for that so Youtube will just have to do.  Feel free to watch with the sound turned down.


CAVERN DEEP - Beach (Bonebag records)
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by Toon Traveller

Picked this out because there was so little i heard this week that wasn't bland. Cavern Deep give you lottsa fuzz guitar, that I'd've loved and adored and gagged for 50 years ago. Those tastes are long gone. These are lovely childhood reminders, memories of King Crimson concerts, and was it Greenslade, and too many guitar passages in from some '70s prog rock outfit. Hell bro' it's even got the strained female vocals, and a doomster gloomster pre-goth feel.  It could be a recreation of Jefferson Airplane "After bathing at Baxters", or maybe not. Whatever it is, it's dark, deep in a deep well of pleading anguished, pained self-pity, yeah, there's passion but about what? Who knows or cares. Ends in the prog rocks's obligatory "Fast Fingers Freddie" guitar solo. Nothing original, nothing new, nothing to hear, move along, move along move along. At best a metal requiem for a denim clad, metal rockers' funeral. 

No right accorded to embed audio so compliance.


AFRICAN HEAD CHARGE - Microdosing (On U Sound)
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by Toon Traveller

Heard the band name passed around friends, and heard some great stuff on the 'U-Sounds' label in years past, so expectations high on this one. African drums open, always a sucker for those rhythms, and a wonderful 70s reggae organ skipping along bringing hope and happiness to the sounds. There's dabs and splashes of 70's dub, a hint rather than a driver, just enough to bridge the melodies as they change over the underlying rhythms and drum patterns. This skips along, verve-y and uplifting, reminders of the energy of London markets, stalls blaring out sounds, winter rains, summer sounds, matching the mood whatever the weather, cassettes, pre-releases, 12" platters. Where did those days go? When did it change? This is just a great, but somehow sad reminder of what's been lost to the Spotify, i-tunes, you-tube, tick toc streamers world, times when sound, not image mattered most. e.  


JFDR - Life Man (Houndstooth)
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by Alan Rider

The shadow of Bjork falls heavy across any icelandic female artist and this is no exception.  Painfully desperate to be off centre and quirky, it fails because of its very ordinariness, despite a game attempt at an odd video.  I'll be honest, I got a bit bored and drifted off to make a cuppa half way through.


DIPLO - Wasted ft. Kodak Black, Koe Wetzel (SME)
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by Tim London

America will be healed by Black people singing country and Diplo driving a jeep-boat along a river in Mississipi. When the whole American population realise that what they have in common (their existence as a huge social experiment based on hedonism as the world burns) is so much more than the whatever separates them. This is horrible but, somehow, noble, in the same category as Kier Starmer returning home to his family who know he is a committed socialist and stoically washing up as the radio news talks about his lies, Labour’s plans for immigrants and the acceptance of another Tory MP into the fold. It’s a dirty job…


LAVEDA - Clean (Papercup)
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by Ancient Champion

Dark pop duo Laveda share a pretty intense, although intensely melodic few minutes too, on their new song, Clean.  Recorded with their entire touring band in one of those endless liminal spaces outside Los Angeles. A continental divide for the band. They've been likened to My Bloody Valentine and it's easy to see why. This is a difficult genre to get right. Spare instrumentation and breathy vocals. Twists and at turns twisting further, more taught. Clean is an emotional garrote. All of the sounds as present, and thick as rafters. It's genuinely exciting and bodes supremely well for the LP, A Place You Grew Up In which we will hear in April. 


ST. PAUL AND THE BROKEN BONES - City Federal Building (ATO Records)
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by Ancient Champion

I live in an age dominated by visual media and I suppose over time I have become more and more superficial, to the point of abstraction, maybe. One look at the photo St. Paul and the Broken Bones sent accompanying their press release, and I had to forward to several people to canvass opinion because well, as a cautionary tale, it bothered me and I wouldn't want my band to look like that... Meanwhile what does Call Me sound like? Imagine if the Black Pumas or Brittany Howard were mediocre, everything dialed down to 5 instead of up to 11? Still listening. Not so much. Play by numbers soul. I'd asked Adrian the Ancient Champion drummer about the picture, whether it would make him more or less likely to press the play button on St. Paul's music. "I would certainly press the ‘off’ button," Adrian said, "Unless there was a ‘fuck off’ button."


INDIGO DE SOUZA - You Can Be Mean (Saddle Creek)
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by Alan Rider

I just don't know if I can take another 'broken' soul splurging out all their inner angst for our entertainment.  This song is apparently about a "toxic relationship" with some "asshole".  OK, Indigo, thanks for sharing, now go away and fix it/yourself, just please don't inflict another sing song attempt at pop stardom on us in the process.  Haven't you heard?  Lily Allen did this years ago, only a lot better.  Apparently there is a whole album of this stuff heading our way. God help us.


EPs

MEDIA GIANT - Son of a Son (Brace Yourself Records)
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by Toon Traveller

The straight (no chaser) UK 70 synthpop opener is your introduction to the Talking Heads vocals and phrasing, and harmonies. If I didn't know, I'd think... Talking Heads Tribute band; a presentable pastiche. It skips along in a pretty, happy way, but there's a terrible fuzz guitar at the bridge destroying the harmonic sensibility of this track. If you loved Talking Heads way back and want something similar, this may be Easter listing for you. Well written, and played, where's the originality? Where's the desire to make me care?


LPs

TERZO - Terzo (Icons Creating Evil Art)
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by Alan Rider

Italian two piece Terzo describe themselves as a " darkwave/drone/shoegaze duo".  That doesn't give a lot away. The majority of this album contains quite samey sounding songs built around a string/organ drone overlaid with Cocteau Twins-esque vocals and, opening as it does with the 11 minute debut single 'Cymbeline', requires a good deal of patience to get under the skin of.  I wanted to like Terzo, I really did, and their stand out second single 'Eve Seven' (also included) shows them at their best, but I just have this niggling doubt in the back of my mind.  It may be the continual drone, or the slight squeakiness of the vocals, but I just can't connect with Terzo in the way I'd like to.  Three hearts are well deserved, and it may grow on me if I persevere (though I may not) so I am keeping an open mind, but for me this has the feel of a work in progress as an album and hasn't grabbed me in the way I thought it might have.  


OLIVER NELSON - Black, Brown and Beautiful (Flying Dutchman)
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by Lee Paul

Okay so this incredible record hasn't been available on LP record since 1970, and now seriously limited vinyl versions are out there. Widely regarded as one of the sweetest alto sax players of any time, Oliver Nelson's Black Brown and Beautiful records in music an era. Maybe it would possibly not be released now with the 1970 cover shot by Chuck Stewart, but he'd photographed Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, had documented John Coltrane's A Love Supreme sessions and maybe 2000 other LP sleeves and so almost certainly had a lot of creative control.


VENUS FLY TRAP - Time Lapse 1995-2010 (Glass)
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by Alan Rider

Alan Rider shares his thoughts on Venus Fly Trap's collection here⇒


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