SINGLES
BEDLESS BONES - Dead Woman (Metropolis)
by Alan Rider
Kadri Sammel from Estonian electro-noir act Bedless Bones describes 'Dead Woman' as ‘incantations of nocturnal rapture’. It certainly is something like that, full and luscious, sounds weaving in and out, round and round, and keeping your interest pinned to its heart until the last note. Glorious.
ANOHNI AND THE JOHNSONS - SCAPEGOAT (Secretly Canadian)
by Tim London
A remarkable song and performance. The video is neither but that’s the video, I’m just a bit annoyed that I watched it. Don’t watch it, just listen to Anohni inhabiting several clashing personas and wonder about the ability of a short-ish piece of pop to give you an incomplete Rimbaud novel in a blink or two.
EVE EGOYAN AND MAURICIO PAULY - Height (No Hey Discos)
by Toon Traveller
HAUSCHKA - Inventions (City Slang)
by Alan Rider
Quirky additive and addictive little song-by-numbers, this jerks and stutters its way along accompanied by a Japanese travelogue video until it stumbles unexpectedly to a halt, surprising everyone in the process.
CALIBRO 35 - When the world is feeling blind (feat. Arya, Tahnee Rodriguez) (Universal Italy)
by Ancient Champion
A little less insanity reigns for sure from the band Rolling Stone recommends as retro maniacs. Controlled chaos. Everything is almost as it should be.
JAMILA WOODS - Practice ft. Saba (Jagjaguwar)
by Ancient Champion
After all this you wouldn't expect Jamila Woods to be anything other than wholly philosophical about it. Wonderful.
JOANNA STERNBERG - Neighbors (Fat Possum)
by Toon Traveller
JUDAS PRIEST - Panic Attack (Sony)
by Ancient Champion
Judas Priest! I've spent the last 30 minutes trying to find out whether Rob Halford is the leader still. Old metal men all seem to look the same to me. Very Lego Metal, particularly Rob Halford whom I so often confuse with Rob Rinder. They might've shared a hair style for a while back there. Rob is the self-proclaimed Michael Jackson of Metal and the Pride of Sutton Coldfield. Raised on the same Walsall housing estate as Noddy Holder. The home town of Jorja Smith and Ancient Champion's drummer, Adrian. Panic Attack is killer no filler, of course, the older they get the faster they seem to go. There's something very masculine about the line up that showed up at the Power Trip Festival in Indio, CA this week. Still, Judas Priest, 50 years of chalking up an average of one million albums sales per year. Can't find a decent Panic Attack video just yet, so how about the Julian Temple directed Breaking The Law, where Rob Halford nails Thatcherism. Distinctly. It's almost punk. Like Cockney Rejects at their best punk. Punky Iron Maiden. That good.
SUPERCHUNK - Between Days (Merge Records)
by Alan Rider
1990 indie rock band Superchunk (still going btw) cover a Cure song, shock, horror! Put like that, it sounds rubbish, but this is taken off one of those album collections of B sides, outtakes, covers and so on that bands often put out to fill a gap in their release schedule using the excuse of making hard to find tracks available for their 'die hard fans'. Both of them. However, its a bloody good track all the same. One of the Cure's best and they make a pretty decent fist of it. Superchunk themselves were a top band too I recall in that loose, slacker-ish way that US indie rock bands are so good at. Judging by what's available on Youtube they can still cut it live too.
DYLAN GOSSETT - Beneath Oak Trees (Glam & Glory Records)
by Tim London
Every lame ass country song should have within its bones an unspoken apology for all the pain that the genre has celebrated and accepted, for all the starry eyed legends that really smell of boot-sock and motel carpet, for the over-beefed, bullet jangling myths of its huge bellied stars as they tell lies over the same four chords. This, though, is just beardy schmaltz.
BRITTANY HOWARD - What Now (Island)
by Lee Paul
Far be it from me to suggest that Brittany could do better. What happened to that cute little band of hers? Gone for good? This is funky great for 40 seconds and then. Fab singing always. Something is a bit polished session-dude-y about bits of it. Admittedly my hearing is crap but I can hear the polish too clearly. But we'll always have those first 40 seconds together.
CALEB NICHOLS - J’ai Vu La Lune! (Kill Rock Stars)
ZERO s
by Alan Rider
I'm sorry, I just can't get how much Caleb Nichols looks like someone I used to be in a band with. He was a right pain in the arse and very, very annoying in the way this dweeb seems to be. I wish I could knock him right off his stupid bicycle. His song is really shit too. You know, I actually feel a lot better now having said that. If only I'd have said all this to my ex band mate at the time. It's theraputic, that's what it is. Theraputic for me that is, but is honestly not worth your wasting precious moments of your life subjecting yourself to listening to this tripe.
MASSIMO SILVERIO - Nijo (Okum)
by Toon Traveller
HIS LORDSHIP - Jackie Works For The NHS (Psychonaut)
by Tim London
That good looking bloke who defies age and his liver sitting in the corner of the pub with a never ending whisky and ginger and would be alright if it wasn’t for his ogling of women young enough to be his grand daughter.
EPs
THE MIND IS COMPLEX - I Closed the Windows and Left (I dont know)
by Ancient Champion
This is what you get when Berlin meets Athens. The Mind is Complex. Challenging, dippy, eccentric, wildly unencumbered, but stylized and knowing. I Closed the Windows and Left is the brief fifth Ep in a series of works from composers Lorina Speder (German lyricist and vocalist,) and Swedish producer Jari Haapalainen who is based in Athens. People who know not to do too much. What cosmopolitan lives I think they must have as I ponder going to bed at 8.30pm just to keep warm.
LPs
ROGER WATER - The Dark Side of the Moon - Redux (SGB Music Ltd)
by Jay Lewis
Jay Lewis wishes you were here. Instead of him.
RED PAINTED RED - That Was The Reason Why (Zoharum)
by Alan Rider
'That Was The Reason Why' gets the Alan Rider once over over here
QUINSIN NACHOFF - Stars and Constellations (Adyhâropa Records)
by Toon Traveller
Pinky, twinkles, and my favourite jazz sounds, and loaded with ideas, imagination and innovation. It's got bows dragged over cello strings, huge slabs of bass and drums, hints of classical and sax swirls disjointed the joint and splashes of melodic harmony. So that sounds unstructured? Stars and Constellations is full of the spaces, paces and changes that make live music, truly alive. Saxes breath and soar, violins sweetly swoop and swoon, one minute a lover's intimate touch, the next, a switchblade street light flashing and the resplendent sounds and aggression. A horn skips in and out, adding playfulness to the piece, but it's the strings bowed, plucked, or scraped that's at the centre of the performance, There's flirtation, romance, scurry and flurry, rest and reconsider, plead and celebrate. The sounds evoke flashes of light, shades of darkness, ideas, fizzle, this is Jazz, here is an audio palette of ideas, it's invention, it's laser bright, it's molten hot, it's glacier cool, it is contemporary music not bound by genre and Quinsin Nachoff displays a true PUNK ETHOS.
LISA BUTEL AND BRENT CROSS - Last Mountain (Elektramusic Berlin)
by Lee Paul
Finger forever on the pulse, we're getting to this early summer release from Lisa Butel and Brent Cross as the early winter weather closes in. Last Mountain is a recording of complex and courageous uneasy listening. And yet hugely rewarding. I was listening to Mahler's 92nd or 93rd Symphony this morning and had been thinking about the Beatles being regarded by many as some sort of high watermark in composition from the past century and began to wonder where it all, where everything went the hell wrong. Meanwhile back in the C18 Mahler was rockin' it like a prehistorical Andy Kim. There is much to enjoy on the Last Mountain; and much to fear in a musical landscape rent apart. It is a unique recording. Often Lisa Butel's vocals were captured on the first take and surrounded by samples. Piano is significant but not for crystalline flourishes, for... It epitomizes an audio/literary cut up continuity, if you like. The themes are derived from their experiences of parental loss, the awakening of memories on the land with our family who were homesteading settlers and the implications of colonization, changing landscapes and genocide. If that sounds like a lot to absorb, it's because the Last Mountain is.
Other Materials
ANDY KIM - Rock Me Gently (idk)
by Ancient Champion
Andy Kim, a household name, in his own house at least and a bit of an everyman really. Like most everyman types throughout history, is almost entirely forgotten. Rock Me Gently one could've been sung by so many dudes from when it was released back in '73. It's got a sense of belonging to a space in time that didn't really exist, between pop and soul, rock and roll. Between Tony Blackburn and Peter Powell. A Neil Diamond pastiche for sure. However, Andy Kim makes writing a pop song seem so easy it's vulgar. And so great for that. Like working in money. It's so easy it's dirty. And if you can't hear how simple he makes it sound, crafting a hit, you should know, Andy wrote Sugar Sugar for the Archies in 1968 and they didn't really exist either. Oh well, enjoy it here because I can't imagine there are many other places you'll still get to hear it. Not timeless, not a classic.
ISLEY BROTHERS - Harvest For The World (T-Neck)
by Ancient Champion
From 1976, a long term personal fave. Turn it way up and immerse yourself in it. It's here this week for so many reasons. But because well, you know why.
SAMUEL COLERIDGE TAYLOR - Hiawatha Overture (London Philharmonic Orchestra) (Youtube)
by Ancient Champion
Black history month is every month.
DOROTHY ASHBY - Li'l Darlin' (Youtube)
by Ancient Champion
Written by Neal Hefti for Count Basie in 1957, Dorothy Ashby recorded this in 1961. Available now, remastered from, well I can't see the label, but it's part of an Essential Classics Series (number 116! - who knew?). A bit of a soft shoe shuffle, wouldn't do well on Strictly where they want their soft shoe shuffles to be reinterpretations of Kaiser Chiefs songs or something. But for the cosplaying camper crowd, chunky knitwear, hefty boots and jeans, I think there's something here. It remains a beautiful sound.
Essential Information
Main image Rob Halford of Judas Priest wikipedia
