Outsideleft Week in Music... Entangled and Free in OUTSIDELEFT

SINGLES

IRREVERSIBLE ENTANGLEMENTS - Protect Your Light (Impulse Records)
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by Toon Traveller

NPR Music says Irreversible Entanglements are "the most thrilling band in jazz right now." Irreversible Entanglements bring a Latin Brazilian opening, it's the exuberant - drums and horns of Copacabana, a dash of Favela foot stomps. A heady sense of Jazz exploring its roots Africa and Caribbean. It dances and transforms into a wonderful discordant middle passage. It's that dance, spot the tunes, and that sense of everyone in a separate room playing their 'own thing', this is just what a great slice of Jazz needs, to perk up your day. Moor Mother we know and love and find her here in the middle of this slab of 70's Jazz, bang up to date, there's all the spiritual hope "protect your life" cowbells clang, repeated horns punch in and out, trumpets slice and lead. Wonderful mix of sounds and imagery. This honks, stonks, stomps, and funks it's way to a glorious finale. I absolutely love Irreversible Entanglements.

WILLIAM EGGLESTON - Improvisation ft. Brian Eno (Secretly Canadian)
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by Toon Traveller

Brian Eno brings his bells over opening Improvisation. Eggleston's is the disembodied distant voiced piano. Does this eno interjection add anything? This is a piece high on delicately arranged tender minor key emotion, low on excitement, empty of passion. This is a piece not a track, not a tune, it's pastel winter images, it's slow tender looks, early dawn sun beams. An echo on Wyndham Hill. That most passionless label. It's a problem. Eggleston of course can do no wrong until he does. Despite sounding mawkish, and over sentimental, it's worth a late night pensive, contemplative listen.

CREATION REBEL - This Thinking Feeling (On U Sound)
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by Toon Traveller

Forty years ago... begins the press release (usually a huge gap is fatal for ideas and composition), but here's the exception that proves the rule. This is great slab of 70's Reggae, the opening's, straight outta Electric Avenue, London SW2. it's got that great slapped down rhythm that skips along full of summer delight, that keeps your feet dancing on the floor, and heart in your happy place. Sure there's more than a strong echo of the masterful voice of "Prince Far I", a sonorous, deep, stomach wrenching sound that once heard id never ever forgotten, He's sadly long passed, a true legend lost, but his ghost lives on here, in the phrasing, in the syncopation, most of all in the beats. This a wonderful slab of classic reggae.

L7 - Cooler Than Mars (Dunno really)
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by Alan Rider

The re formed L7 have gotten the environmental activism bug, along with every right thinking person (so not any politician then) and this is available as a limited edition flexi disc, presumably because it uses up a lot less oil gobbling vinyl. First cassettes, now flexi discs making a comeback. Its like the 80s never went away. This is a good deal different to the rock sound of L7 of old, sounding far more Siouxsie-ish than Runaways-ish and even featuring (gasp) synths! They say the song was inspired by the "strange passions of billionaire space cowboys to explore and exploit the outer limits of our stratosphere" and generally fuck up everything they touch of course in a reverse of the Midas Touch, despite our Earth being way cooler than dusty and barren Mars will ever be, hence the title.

CITY GIRLS - Face Down (UMG)
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by Ancient Champion

A folk music riposte to the positivity about Barbieland's brand of feminism? "I'd never do that to you," are words I am very familiar with. This is a follow up to one of the most essential of summer hits the City Girls riff on LLCoolJ's I Need Love, I Need A Thug. While I Need A Thug had pastiche hallmarks Face Down is the way we do pure pop fun now.

DOMINIQUE FILS-AIME - Our Roots Run Deep (Ensoul)
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by Lee Paul

The title track from Dominique Fils-Aimé's new LP which will be released next week. Vocals are layered semantically over a well at first a double bass then the spare percussion. But kind of, it will always be about her voice, that voice. Dominique is an award winning superstar in Canada and even with this relatively understated single, has the ability to transfix, which feels like she should be transfixing folks from an international stage. Quality.

CASH AND CARTER - Letting Her Go (Soundcloud)
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by Toon Traveller

Tragic sound and opening, a man and his Guitar, picked and played, a lovely voice, just him, with that cracked, croaking, pain drenched voice, doubled tracked as the song develops, later drums bring a sense of faraway memories. A passed, missed and much loved life, held close and the reality of absence, slowly being faced. There's that sense of loss but a celebration of a life that touched souls, and left its mark on the heart, that place where regrets and treasured memories live, breath, and are loved. The sound of a heart cracking but surviving.

JESSE KINEL - I Sat on a Ridge (Soundcloud)
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by Toon Traveller

Sat on a ridge, yeah been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Alone with his loneliness. It's a sad, mawkishly maudlin sadness. His voice is reaching for the played out, tired of emotion and even life, but are there insights? Listen and you'll find out. There's a simple guitar and bell accompaniment echoing the contemplative sentiments. A slow build with other instruments gradually, adding to a crescendo. Distant voices coming alive. But really there's nothing in the song, no delights, just words, and mumbled semi-revelations. It is ponderous and unflinchingly earnest. Is there insight? I am sat on a ridge and I just can't see it.

COURTNEY BARNETT V BUSTA RHYMES - Start Somewhere, Life Balance & First Slow V LUXURY LIFE (Various Labels)
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by Tim London

Open up another tab, play these together and enter the 21st century.

LAIBACH - The Engine of Survival (Mute)
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by Alan Rider

Slovenian collective Laibach are a difficult band to get your head around. Occupying the same ground as Swans they aim to challenge and intellectualise music. In many ways they are very up themselves, in others they provide welcome relief from the usual rock posturing. This sounds very Swans like to me (albeit with female vocals) and has an arty and silly video to go with it where a couple of models get paint smeared on their faces which is no doubt making some point that passed me by.

BIG THIEF - Born For Loving You (4AD)
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by LamontPaul

2nd track to be previewed from the vinyl single due in late October (the other was Vampire Empire). Born For Loving You. Because. "From the first kiss, to the first fuck, I don’t think it’s just good luck. Take me to the back of your pickup truck, Show me a thing or two." That there is poetic. It's all pretty linear and no so bad for all that. Great even.

ADDISON GRACE - SLIME! (Wally The Wall Shark)
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by Tim London

When you’re young everything you do is new. Of course, it’s all been done before and old cunts like me will point that out. Equally we are also impressed when we see or hear something a little different. In this case, I am pleasantly surprised by Addison’s wearing of an over-sized cricket pullover. And I wonder if they understand the cultural aspects as seen from a British POV.

AAYUSHI - Beach Pockets (Bandcamp)
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by Lee Paul

Aayushi does this with ease and elan. Beach Pockets is a tail end of summer joy for sure. Layered vocals, intimate and warm. Laconic lyrics crafted so wispy and delicious. An intoverted inflection. Like a West Midlands Norah Jones at her ind-demand peak really. It's difficult to understand why this woman isn't a commercial giantess because musically she is for sure. Idiosyncratic and almost perfect, and it's in the lack of perfection where the beauty lies.

HOUSTON - Wag The Dog (Init Records)
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by Alan Rider

Houston sound like they should be a West Coast soft rock band. Like Chicago or any other band named after a town. But they 'aint. They in fact sound more like Queens Of The Stone Age, Foo Fighters and so on. A lot like them, along with oodles of other bands. Its jolly good fun being in a band like this I'd imagine. Very blokey. All beer and farting. Once you've been round the festival circuit half a dozen times and everyone agree what a rockin' act you are though, another band just like you will come along and everyone will forget about how rockin' you were and tell the new lot how rockin' they are instead. Yes, I'm a cynic who thinks music stopped developing about 40 years ago and all this is now just part of the fossil record whether they know it or not.

SARAH JAROSZ - Jealous Moon (Rounder Records)
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by Tim London

In another review I mention bored drummers and plodding. This tune definitely has plod possibility but, somehow, the drummer manages to inject a little energy into the arrangement of this fairly ordinary song, featuring one of those American country rock melodies that nods towards hippies but is more a well looked after clapboard bungalow in a gentrified part of town circa 2012 than a Haight Ashbury commune circa 1966.

IAYE - you're my achilles heel (Sony)
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by Tim London

Drummers famously get bored. That’s why they are often the top party people in a band’s entourage. Songs like this are probably responsible for that attitude. When lots of plodding is required. Must be boring. Plodding away behind a pout. Comparing the asses of the whole band.

ROGER WATERS - Time (DSOTM Redux) / Money (DSOTM Redux) (SGB Music Ltd)
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by Jay Lewis

The main thing that infuriates me about Roger Waters is that he genuinely believes that he is one of the greatest popular music lyricists. Forget Bob, forger Joni...Rog is the self-appointed best in class. But, and I won't bore you with the evidence - just trust me, he is a crass writer, his lyrics are didactic, lacking nuance, humour, or any hint of poetry…and his characters are poorly sketched, seldom believable. These two tracks remain some of the earliest examples of this, they sounded trite back then, and, with all the decent musicianship removed for their 2023 REDUX, they are now fully exposed in all their juvenile awkwardness.

And I haven’t got around to mentioning Putin yet.

EPs

SKEET - Park Road (Almost Unknown Records)
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by Alan Rider

Alan Rider listens to the sound of 80s bedroom creativity by Skeet, check out his thinking, right here

SOFT CELL - Nostalgia Machine - The Remixes (BMG)
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by Alan Rider

Soft Cell really seem to be hitting every opportunity to maximise/milk their material of late. Aside from a live DVD record set, deluxe reissues, and a couple of extensions to their 'Happiness Not Included' album you can buy as add on CDs and special editions, they are now releasing an EP of remixes of the track 'Nostalgia Machine'. Its a good track, but like most remixes it's a bit of a pointless exercise designed largely to reach further into the rapidly emptying wallets of their hard-core fans. I have a message for Marc and Dave - give it a rest now guys, we've got more than enough to be going on with.

LPs

BILL LASWELL AND PETER NAMLOOK - Outland Box Set (Cold Spring)
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by Alan Rider

The ‘Outland’ album series spanned five instrumental drone/electronic albums over a thirteen year period from 1994, all of which are collected together here, along with a sixth one of bass drones, all in a big box. It requires a good deal of patience to listen to the lot and I won't pretend that I have. Intended to evoke different emotions in a sort of musical voyage, its very Prog Rock in its approach. Personally though, on the evidence of the tracks I did play, I doubt very much I'd be sitting down to spend over 6 hours of my life on this in the hope it would be a consciousness changing experience.

BUCK CURRAN - The Long Distance (Obsolete Recordings)
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by Alan Rider

Buck Curran isn't a name you would normally associate with electronic soundtrack albums, of which there has been a steady flow of late. I don't know a great deal about him but I gather he is better known for acoustic guitar instrumentals. Having said that, this isn't bad. Its akin to the sort of SF soundtrack you might well hear on a creepy, edge-of-the-known-universe SF horror. He sounds like he has just discovered that hey, you can make some really weird sounds with synths that you just can't wring out of an acoustic guitar and he is having a lot of fun with that. It gets a bit samey after a while as he overdoes the horn sounds and portentious analogue rumbles a bit, and goes heavy on the reverb, but hats off to him for getting stuck in.

DADá JOãOZINHO - tds bem Global (Innovative Leisure)
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by Sofia Ribeiro Willcox

dadá Joãozinho's ambitious new LP get a listen from Sofia Ribeiro Willcox right here.

MAGNETIC SKIES - Empire Falling (ReprinT Records)
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by Alan Rider

When we last came across Magnetic Skies in OL I commended them for their guts in attempting to launch a new 80s sounding synthpop act that had elements of Depeche Mode, Tears For Fears, and suchlike running through it like a stick of rock. Mesh tried this a few years back and did pretty well with it too, but I'm just not sure that the world needs another Mesh right now. 'Empire Falling' is a slickly performed, recorded and produced pastiche, right down to the videos. These are no fresh faced teens either so I have a feeling they may be working to a plan. Whether that plan will work I couldn't say, but they are certainly giving it a damn good try.

IVAN LINS - Renata Maria (Resonance Records)
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by Toon Traveller

This is from the LP My Heart Speaks on Resonance Records, featuring a super stellar jazz line up, which is hmmmm, is no guarantee of innovation, invention or insight. Sure the music is "tasteful", in a cruise liner, cocktail bar sorta way. Wonderful arranged, tasteful played strings, and a guitar solo, a 70's George Benson would have been proud to have played. Drums keep the whole thing nicely on track, and keys echo an underscored Ronnie Foster, slinky smooth 70's Jazzateer. A Latino vocal flutters along inoffensive, slightly breathless, marshmallow soft, but melted and sagging. Careful arrangements though worth some consideration. Music for folks who never want to frighten their horses.

GRAHAM PARKER AND THE GOLDTOPS - Last Chance to Learn the Twist (Big Stir)
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by John Robinson

Graham Parker, a legendary British songwriter, most famous with his backing band The Rumours during the 70s, returns with an excellent set of songs, backed by a hugely talented band featuring Geraint Watkins, Martin Belmont and The LadyBugs. The songs run from the intensely personal to the globally urgent, and Parker has clearly gone against his more usual writing habits to produce songs with a wide variety of instrumentation, song structure and intent. The Music of the Devil, his own celebration of classic rock, is a great introduction and Sun Valley is the stand out for me, single tracks We Did Nothing and Them Bugs both highlight environmental concerns and elsewhere his musical heritage, sound lyrical insights and ear for a hook are in good stead: a stalwart of the British and American music scenes showing just why he has endured.