intro.
This Outsideleft Week in Music, Deep Purple. For as long as I have known about them they have manifestly been the enemy of all that I hold dear and good. And yet here they are on our home page. Because. Well let's begin with the organ. They own a certain organ sound, and everyone borrows from time to time. The new single, their first since you got into long trousers is notable, if not for Ian Gillan's sinister stare. When I get to make my Scandi slasher series he's an early candidate for the chair. He looks like every Jo Nesbo villian ever. Thanks to everyone who put the time in on a bumper crop of reviews. And you guys, reading this page in record number. Your reviewers: Ogglypoogly (1), Ancient Champion (6), Toon Traveller (10), David O'Byrne (2), LamontPaul (1), Lee Paul (1), Alan Rider (7)
singles.
by Toon Traveller
First band I ever saw live, Deep Purple. At 14 I thought they were magnificent. Here we are 50 plus years on and they're still going and with THREE original members. So what are they like. Well at the time they were called, 'Progressive'. Not too sure how far they've progressed in 50 years. But is that the point? Not really. There's all the Purple-ista things fans love, raw Hammond Organ, flaming finger guitar, fist punching chorus, staccato melodic breaks everywhere. "...Man I was right on the edge", love the lyrics. Sadly there's no frenetic, top of the range, manic scream from Ian Gillian, who seems to have been away from the camera for so long, he looks sinister, but you can't have it all. Seriously it's just a good, well played slab of straight ahead 70's, 80's Booooogie. Memories pervade, and are hard to dismiss. As for the present, would I buy it, play at home? No. Would I pay to see them live? No. But thousands will, and have as good a time as I had 50 years ago. A secret confession, I was tempted to play a side of 'Made in Japan', and relive those youthful prog rock days, isn't that an essential part of music's value to us all, memories.
by Toon Traveller
Every now and again someone borrows so much from the past, so well, few new ideas or delights are anticipated. On closer inspection, it's a little funky small town Talking Heads, back alley LCD Sounds, with a little mix-in of sounds from New York's migrant roots. All that said, Font actually have something of their own here though, although most likely for the underground gang. Will they gain a bigger audience? Only if listeners are as audacious as the band.
by Toon Traveller
Opens with lots snarled "fucking, fucks", spat, ranted anger, vocals up front and in your ear, "fuck the the cops, and fuck the law", gawd, it's all so incoherent, rebel stances. There's guitar and drums, driving vocals, a slashed, bashed, smashed, wall of angry sound, before it drops into the rest, calm, exhaustion middle passage. Professionally performed with verve and sincerity. Does it say anything? Not sure is an answer to that question. They sound angry, but so is a two year old, whose mother won't buy them candy at the supermarket check out. That kinda says it all for me, toddler rage. If I had to say anything it would be that I am confused.
by Toon Traveller
It's those fingers on strings, plaintive-voiced, great melodic ranged, some double tracked voices. It's themes, it's looking back on memories, hopes, dreams and the hard to face up to reality, popped out every week, but this is one of the more magically romantic efforts. Margaret's voice, soft on the ear, whispered, then clear, resonant, a plea to a slipping away lover. "Clouds were smoke of fire, love was wrapped in barbed wire", not quite Joni, but it's, as USA commentators might say, in her ballpark.
by Alan Rider
I'm really not sure about their band name, which reads like they picked up a flyer off the floor at their local mall and said "that'll do", but 'Sha La La' is a real summer record, even down to the hummy "Sha La La" chorus. Its shiney and new sounding, very polished, with a video that they clearly spent no time at all scripting (just them wandering around shops and in the street). Its so squeaky clean you could market this as washing powder. The singer's voice even cracks a bit in the right places to imply heartfelt emotion. There is a whole album full of this available, if you think you can take it. Sugary enough to give you diabetes.
by LamontPaul
The dubs and the horns. The organs. Jazzy, funky, all so lovely. Roots Architects, how great thou art. Except for when the sax leans a bit into just too easy maybe? I don't know. 50 of the greatest reggae musicians of all times assemble... Each and everyone still great by the sound of it.
by Ancient Champion
Sometimes I click through to accompanying videos, or youtube placeholders, for a track as brilliant as this and it is so weird that on the planet I am amongst only a handful of people seemingly interested in some of the most exciting instrumental music you will get to hear. Explanation?
by Alan Rider
To be honest, I'm only including this so I can see the name Slugcrust appear alongside other, more worthy, acts in the headline for this weeks reviews. Hailing from "the vermin-saturated depths of Greenville, South Carolina" (they say), this is slug-ish Grindcore at it's most sluggish. If you venture as far as the video you will also witness that strange dance that US Grindcore fans do: head down, stomping, then flailing arms and legs violently in all directions in a wheeling motion, hammering into anyone in the way. People have lost teeth and ended up in casualty after some of these gigs. Trust me, guys (and they are mainly guys) - it really isn't worth the pain.
by Toon Traveller
These guys are out on tour with Miki Berenyi, and while I am unsure how many superstar vocalists they'll have on their bus, here on vinyl we get Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, We Gotta Move is a great funky fat hit. Opening on the drums, a striding street walking confident sure step. Wonderful vocals, high and mighty, and one of those semi-rap,semi-lists of joy lyrics. Reasons to be happy, glad, and alive. Sure it echoes 90's popped up, toned down, soft funk. And like all echoes, the signal is a contrast to the original. It dances along, a confident street stroll, past cafes, bars, We Gotta Move. A soundtrack for the Lower East in New York, London's Spitalfields, or Paris' Sentier's street fashion neighbourhoods. It's a fat, good for your health, slice of modern street funkshun, struttin' to the junction.
by Toon Traveller
Right said, Frank, and alright said Toon. Read the whole review right over here→
by David O'Byrne
It's ten years since Turkey's "The Ringo Jets" released their eponymous first album. OL's newest contributor, David O'Byrne gets psyched out by their new heavy single. See the whole review right here→
by Ogglypoogly
I wasn’t prepared for just how much I would like Hamish Hawk, yet somehow in the past couple of years they’ve become a staple in my regular listening. Heading toward perfection (nothing should be considered perfect - it leaves only a downward trajectory) this has been music that’s restored my faith in Pop. So, the anticipation of a NEW track made for an excruciatingly long Monday - hoping to get out of work on time to be safely in the confines of my kitchen to prepare Dinner and listen to the radio, like I was back in my early 30’s. If you’re hoping for more soaring chamber pop that’s soaked in sunshine and pear drops, you might be momentarily disappointed. But I urge you to stick with it, because within the opening 20 seconds here we are, another disgracefully catchy track. The verbosity and crisp diction remain, that faint sense of deja vu remains, echos of the eighties rattle through the back of my mind never settling on anything definite but capturing that same feeling. That this is the lead single for an upcoming album is very promising. If you’ve not given this a listen yet, then now is very good time to do so.
by Toon Traveller
The heritage cited, it's impressive, all the 80's sound terrorists, that we loved / hated / didn't understand / laughed at, whatever. Mark Pistel has the Consolidated bona fides. All those roots, stances, ideas, and we end up here. Just goes to show, we can start out with ideals, ideas, hopes, and self-confidence and 40 years of music later we get to wherever this is. A few synth drums, crashing power chords, soaring vocals, ponderous, wanna be dark and doomster drums, (under produced, Ultravox - Vienna). There's darkness, well maybe if you think Hammer Horror was dark. It's an echo, all too faint, all too distant, all too lost in time's swirling fogged memories from the post New Romantic, Electro dreams, days and nights. If I was told this was a 'lost track,' from, Japan, A Flock of Seagulls, Fiction Factory, I'd half believe it. The sound is that much of retro throwback, rollback, rollover and die from boredom, track. On the plus side it's well constructed, played, and produced, but there's nothing new here, it's as forgettable as the very last Big Mac French fry, you left in the carton.
by Ancient Champion
From the forthcoming, as ever it seems, super limited LP, Perpetual Musket, Elijah Minnelli has teamed up with four vocalists from the world of reggae to breathe new life into traditional and folk songs. For the old testament derived, explicitly anti-war, Vine & Fig Tree featured Jamaican singer-songwriter, Little Roy. It is a moving combination, Little Roy infusing Elijah Minnelli's low-register sonics with warmth and yearning. 'Live in peace and unafraid.' If only.
by Toon Traveller
"Terracotta Brick, why must you be so hard, and sharp around the edges, you cut my shins apart" Any song opening with this line has gotta be listened too. This is a roofers song, a real hard work song, about his life. The drawl somewhere between Australia, and USA country irony, tired of life. Is it blues? Is it country? Is it folk? Well it's about a man building walls, real, physical and emotional. It's a paean to love, life drifting away, hard times, dreams fading, facing a hurting reality, with no way out. Horizons shorten, dreams are just memories faded, sun bleached photos on a grimy rented wall.
by Toon Traveller
Mooch, mulch, mish, mash. Post-hippy vibe, slow lazy grooves, power chorded chorus, tasteful guitar, harmony vocals, evoke far away places, tripped out spaces. Seattle maybe? Lazily too darn tired slide guitar, leave it for an hour, sip, nibble, sit, and slip into the groove. Not perfect on cold damp 'toonside' dawn. But at a local town festival, late summer afternoon, wine sipping, summer kissing, dandelion swaying, it's perfect. There's nothing new whatsoever here, melodies, themes, guitars, vocals, but that's not the point. It's just a lazy summer sound, kick back, grass under your feet. Kool down, spliff out, zone in, relax, float, and live 'in it's summer blessed, sun rayed moments' a butterfly flit in life's tireder moments. No idea why, but the groove, the themes, feel just feel right, for a lazy, post BBQ, deckchair sitting evening.
by Lee Paul
Ahmed Malek was a prolific composer. His Soundtracks incorporated jazz, psychedelic rock, and funk with Arabic traditional means and sounds. His daughter passed all of this unreleased tapes to Habibi Funk is 2015, and now, oh Wow!
by Ancient Champion
Oh God I love Chance the Rapper so much, thanks for sharing him with me. And even here as he is, being restored from being Buried Alive, and you know why that story is everywhere. This feels like a total resurrection. The vitriol over the motown strings, over the gospel sing's... Too cool. From the forthcoming album 'Star Line Gallery' - a reference to Marcus Garvey's Black Star Line, in space, maybe? I've already listened a lot and want to hear it again already.
by Alan Rider
Minny Pops. Now that's a name from the past. They put some stuff out on Factory Records, but were always a footnote in the history of that label. Now they are back, just like every other '80s band of note/no note, with a new single 'Dad Dog', about the love of Minny Pops main man Wally van Middendorp's Dad for his dog. This is every bit as rubbish as that sounds, with the lyrics consisting largely of the out of tune intonation "Dad. Loves. Dog". They promise/threaten to put an album a year for the next four years, god help us. The launch event in London features Minny Pop Karaoke and 'fun'. I think I might be washing my hair that night.
by Toon Traveller
This begins with murmuring keys and pained prominent vocal, heart tugging words, honesty, confession, hypocrisy, and searching. I suppose that's life for a lot of us, a lot of the time. We don't really know where we're going, or how far we've come, or even understand ourselves, our motives. The Coronas capture that in an anthemic, it sure is, big sound, wide as Russian Steppes. AS big as a Patrick Leonard production for 80s rock Madonna that wants to be a TalkTalk record, but The Coronas just can't resist their own Bigness. "I could never to upstage you, as I walk into a room", sad thoughts, words tell how we've all felt in the past. Realization, revelation, reminiscence as love's lost, tossed away, with sanguine regret. You need that glass swirling, lone sipping, self reflective moments to understand. This could be from any period from 1990's to today, and that's it's strength, it's familiarity, comfortable, comfort blanket place. What stands out, voice, melodies and lyric, make the song, and it is a song in an old fashioned sense. The sound of certain types of men at work.
by Alan Rider
We get so many releases pouring through the virtual letterbox here at the Outsideleft offices (which you might imagine to either be a portacabin next to the bins behind Bearwood Aldi, or a glittering glass tower in downtown LA) that calling your record 'unsubscribe' is bound to get our attention. Describing themselves as "poolside glitter punks", this feisty single off their upcoming 'Unsubscribe from the Underground' EP isn't quite as strong as last year's 'Taboo' single from their previous album, with just a little too much Green Day about it, an affliction that most US punk acts suffer from. Cool video though.
ep's.
by Alan Rider
Bein-E is a shortened version of the bands full name 'Bein-a-heleiden-schafts-gegenstand’, standing for ‘The thing that you almost want, but not quite’. We featured them back in October last year you may recall. The sentiment behind the name is very apt though, as 'An Unforeseen Silence' is a slight and subtle collection of ethereally experimental pieces, darkly reminiscent of Coil. Snatches of violin and echo'd repeats mingle with synth washes, vinyl crackles and pops, distant rumbles, and siren-like wails, with faint voices barely discernible in the background, as if locked in a cellar room. Titles like 'Danger of Death' belie the subtlety on show here, being a more suitable title for Death Metal Grindcore excess, which this most definitely is not. It's hard to put a finger on Bein-E, so mysterious does this sound. Feeling partly formed in places, but deeply atmospheric throughout, crawling under your skin and laying in wait, an Unforseen Silence is out now on Bandcamp.
long plays.
by Ancient Champion
Deep in Flannery O'Connor's South, or maybe Jean Baudrillard's... There are Rabbit Kings... These rabbit kings are celebrated in Slim Cessna's songs. The Auto Club's vibrant stained and strained guitars slide through the register taking us in a second on a psychogeographer's journey from an oblique banjo to a wild, wildly unhinged and unsafe spaces, and back to an ethereal place where the rabbits just bark. There's so much edge and edgeland in this tune, believe me when I say, when the rabbits bark, that is a momentary respite. Something we can go with.
by Alan Rider
Alan Rider listens like there is no tomorrow, right here→
so, have you got anything else.
by Alan Rider
Big Black may have been around for just six years from 1981-87, and only produced two studio albums in that time, but they cast a long shadow and the sound pioneered here has been imitated countless times since, helped along by BB main man Steve Albini's prolific subsequent career as a producer. 'Kerosene' is taken off their first album, 'Atomiser', but the name of the 1987 follow up has to rate as one of the best ever titles for a rock album; 'Songs About Fucking'. Now imagine that in the racks at HMV.
by Ancient Champion
Every now and then I return to this, the peerless Jamila Woods. And every now and then I put it here for you. I want everyone to hear it. It' an emotional record for me. Father of a Black daughter. You know what that will mean for her at some point.
by David O'Byrne
So, new OL contributor, David O'Byrne told me about the Ringo Jets and his review of their new single is here→ but while I was so excited about them, I found their great version of this totally amazing Shirley Bassey song. Can I note, Woodenhand just gave me the LP with the Shirley Bassey version, I'd been looking for it forever.
by Ancient Champion
An Outsideleft writer friend, went down the street to review someone at the Sunflower Lounge. I wish she'd review Hop Along when they played there instead. Which is unbelievable to me that they even did.
Essential Info
Main image, Deep Purple by Jim Rakete
The previous Outsideleft Week in Music 'All About Me and Thee' is here→
