INTRO STARTS HERE
Oh wow. That title is Welsh you know and perhaps that will not be wildly known until now. It's a little extra meme to draw your attention to one of this week's records reviewed by DJ Fuzzyfelt, Gillie's new EP from stalwart welsh label, Libertino records. It's a week of stars with the return of Kamasi Washington, Nick Cave and Kim Gordon and so many more superstars besides. This week's reviewers are... LamontPaul (1), DJ Fuzzyfelt (3), Toon Traveller (7), Lee Paul (2), Alan Rider (9) and Ancient Champion (1). Let's get to it...
SINGLES
by Toon Traveller
Norwegian Jazz, usually ice cold, precise, spiky and shivers down the spine. Norwegian Folk, expect screeching scraping fiddles, jerky rhythms, and big vocal ranges. This does not disappoint, hell there are hints of small accordion and improv-jazz guitar thrown in. Terje Rypdal, we know who you've given guitar lessons to. Enigmatic, and enchanting, this spins a web of musical delights, summer, autumn, and a hint of spring slowly waking. Sadly, hardly anyone will give the time and commitment it deserves, their loss, their loss.
by Toon Traveller
Lovely laaaazzzzzeeee slurred vocal drawling opening. Manc voices it ain't. It's the heavy, fuzzy, buzzy, guitar driven, US plod through grunge rock. Yeah, it's gotta sorta slacker, don't give a fuck attitude, fished from the depths of Seattle sound, maybe. "You're only human, but you're also a jerk", "You show my face, to your foot"... The loose guitar drive will send some Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Weezer fans, bopping wild. Truly, Teen Sprit's West Coast alienation, lives, breaths, yells, and strums, and all in under 2 minutes. It ain't bad.
by Toon Traveller
There's a sense of revival about this, think 80s UK Women in Pop, yeah they were packed and promoted as breathless innocence. But underneath all the soft focus and frills, the kicked ass. They were life-hardened. Make no mistake, they did their best to rock and Porji continued that tradition. This has that early 80s techno soundtrack, great dance beat, syrup sweet vocals that covered up a core message - don't be predictable, and be proud of who you are.
by DJ Fuzzyfelt
Sorry to get all nerdy on you but when I heard this I had to reach for the nearest search engine to see if Serge Gainsbourg collaborator and great composer in his own right, Jean Claude Vannier was still alive - thankfully he is, and, at 81 years young, still making music, however, there's no mention of him working with Saint Nick, but my does it sound like it. Subdued verses with big choruses and a very grand finale when an enormous choir is let loose. I do like it but is it because it sounds like a Ballade of Melody Nelson outtake?
by Alan Rider
We came across the amusingly named Satanic Tea Co before when they released the charmingly titled 'Shit Karma' single. I wasn't charmed, but at least they got the shit bit right. It was. This remix of another track maintains that low standard. They should have stuck to selling tea.
by Toon Traveller
Wow, power! Power chord opening, Tony Iommi lives! This is a throwback to early 70s Black Sabbath, if that's your thaaang, then go for this. It's dark, anthemic, not too sure if there are witches covens, or Hobbits being cooked in the song. There's even a Guitar solo Iron Maiden would sell their souls for. Nothing new, but I'm sure lots of people who are not me will love it.
by Toon Traveller
One Of the weirdest tracks that has come to my attention in a long time, sorta a revival of 30s, Jazz meets 80s rap, over a ragtime riff. Now you're feeling it, right? It's a delightfully eclectic mix-up of sounds, some lovely muted horns, swing, solos, straight outta Scott Joplin's New York Jazz, Manhattan, Bronx, it's here. This is one of those standout individual tracks, it defies genre and definitions. OK, the voice is a bit indistinct, sang through one of those conical megaphones perhaps. Just a magic sense of the new, ideas, and senses, this is one song that needs loads of plays.
by Lee Paul
Epic. Lush. Mellowpop. From Notebook Fantasy their fifth LP out later in March. It's no Manuel and His Music of the Mountains, it does have a decisively Eurovision-y easy-ness. Oh man, I could listen all day.
by Alan Rider
Ah that Metropolis Goth sound. Here it is. Actually, this sounds more like a cross between The Cure and U2, if you can imagine that. At just under three minutes this is also admirably short for a modern single, many of which clock in at 5 minutes plus. That's partly a good thing but also means that it starts, it finishes but lacks very much of a cohesive tune to go in the middle, being largely comprised of chiming guitars, half-familiar U2 licks, a bit of crooning, and then it's over.
by Alan Rider
I don't know what 'Ride or Die' means, but I've long stopped looking for sense or meaning in song lyrics. I suggest you do the same. This is a slice of traditional old-school Goth in the Sisters of Mercy vein, of which there is, it has to be said, rather a lot around, much of it issued by Metropolis. Does this stand out? Not really. It's stopped playing now and I've forgotten it already. It's not that it's particularly bad. It isn't. It's just that it's very...ordinary.
by Toon Traveller
PR describes this as 'chamber pop' hmmm. Sure there's a pretty, pseudo-classical opening, all Vivaldi and Spring. Vocals slip in, plinky, plonky, piano, and it may sound bizarre but, it reminds me of Kermit the Frog, (after singing lessons). I was wondering if this was one of those witty comedy performers you'd have heard in 70s Frisco, New York, or Boston, in about to trendy coffee shops. Too twee for me, in twee-est possible way, it does raise a wrysmile with lyrics. Here's a video to give you the idea...
by DJ Fuzzyfelt
Kamasi Washington's first release in a while. Two tracks knocking 15 minutes so I guess the album that these two tracks are prefacing is going to be another marathon listen. Prologue sounds like the sort of thing that Washington could knock out in the time it took to record if it wasn't for his usual more is never enough approach to recording. The Garden Path is much more like it. An awful lot of trumpets and not much Kamasi, in fact, most of the heavy lifting on both tracks is done by whoever is playing the trumpets, with Kamas's saxophone only seeming to actually appear on the first track... Despite this, Garden Path will be loved by the Gilles Peterson crowd of which I'm one. So 2 out of 5 for Prologue, and 5 out of 5 for The Garden Path... (I am rounding up to 8 and dividing by 2 - oh man do you make my life hard. -Ed.)
by Alan Rider
Another single taken from Kim's new album 'The Collective' (which we will get to next week) and it's as avante-garde and disconcerting as they come. With offbeat noise, shouted vocals, and challenging, thudding, rhythms, Kim gets more confrontational as she goes, rather than slide into predictable acoustic strummings or orchestral gloom as so many of her vintage peers have done. Kim is as vital, no, MORE vital, now than she has ever been.
by Toon Traveller
Swans & Cop Shoot Cop associated friends, come together as The Children... with the wow spacey trippy opening, lottsa echo, deep bass, voices become distinct, drums drift in and out, Indian strings, mystery, magic, places, spaces, this is NOT like anything else passed for review this week. The vocals rise in intensity and desperation, fear and resentment. Dark, horrors, a deep resentful instrumentation. This has that fear just around the corner of the block. it's a disturbing record, unsettling, edgy, it's those spaces occupied by just recovered memories, barely buried fears.
by Alan Rider
There really isn't a lot of individuality to be found in the Death Metal arena. One band blurs into another. They look and sound identical. Every singer sounds like they need a bag of throat sweets, videos are always of four or five hairy blokes standing in a line on stage or in a rehearsal room thrashing away at their geetars at top speed. Its bloody boring to be honest.
EPs
by DJ Fuzzyfelt
Libertino, the consistently great record label, home of acts wonderful as Adwaith, Ynys, Rogue Jones and Angharad - who have all released music to love, comes up with another fine record, this one from Gillie. Four tracks, I Ti, Llawn, Toddy, and the title tune Yn y Bore are all worthy of your attention. If I say there are lots of skittering drums, ethereal vocals plus chorus and echo on the guitar, you might yawn and say it's all been done before, however, Gillie has woven it all into something more. It's a very beautiful 17-odd minutes of music that's right cheered me up. Gillie will be one of over a hundred artists from all over the world who will be appearing at the annual Focus Wales Festival that's taking place at various venues in Wrexham from May 9th to 11th - one of those little music events you don't generally read about in the media, but those who go once end up making a space in their diary every year to attend thereafter.
LPs
by LamontPaul
I've really been enjoying Liam Bailey this week as he follows me around in my car with Zero Grace. In some respects, this record reminds me of Van Morrison in a Caravan at his most productive. It's an album that gently careens through the gears. Soulful and contemporary. Whispered and poetic, and damn if that rock' guitar doesn't sound like the Small Faces at another turn. It's very British like that I think, the sheer eclecticism is a charm that marks Liam Bailey as an important British artist on the world stage. Like a singing Paul Smith. And Liam Bailey is from Nottingham too.
by Ancient Champion
Lu Warm, the self-styled Black Country Guitar Primitive has a superb full-length record out and happily for us, he talks us through it, track by track, here→
by Alan Rider
Wikipedia states "Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth's shape as a plane or disk". 'Beyond The Flat Earth' likens that to the restrictively one-dimensional understanding we have of sound and its use in music. Fallen Sun, the noise/industrial alter ego of Reverse Image from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is an intriguing character, as much an artist as a musician. She layers the sonic textures generated on her modular synth set up like a painting, to form a picture that is as far from our usual concept of music as trite entertainment as performance art is from a watercolour of a sunset. This is intense stuff and not something you can easily ignore, and certainly not hum, tap a toe, or dance to. Yet it has structure and rhythm and a trance-like quality that I admire. Pushing the boundaries is what labels like Fourth Dimension and acts like Fallen Sun/Reverse Image do, and do very well. Moving beyond the Flat Earth is something not everyone can do though. In a 2018 US study, only 82% of 18 to 24 year old respondents agreed with the statement "I have always believed the world is round".
by Lee Paul
The Mekon, Jon Langford was purportedly booted from the Sisters Of Mercy for not wearing black. That's a great reason to pick up this new LP. Which you can hear first on Bandcamp. It is literally not the Sound of Blackness. It is something else altogether. If you can wear black well, all well and good. And if not, should you be offered new opportunities then? Sure. The Blackshirts are gonna stick together. Let's just say, let's ask, let’s ponder this… I was driving along in East Anglia, outside Hunstanton, on the road to Kings Lynn, and there was a church-y jumble sale going on and I, of course, sidled over to the side of the road. Of course, I did. Now I don’t want to keep the churches open by supporting them, I want them to become not quite right architecturally made over dwellings where the floors split the windows to make no perfect sense. But some sense still. But wow. What rich pickings there are in the East Anglia jumble. The point is, a friend bought a 50s/60s dining table. Oh for the days when Formica was not a forever chemical, and was just a forever dining table with wiry barely stable space antenna legs and bobbly feet. I don't want to impugn the Formica company. It's just that one sight of that finish throws me into an apoplectic yet non-medical emergency condition. I can recall every scattered 1960s sugar granule on the table surface at the Linden Milk Bar, all awaiting a damp cloth... Where are they now? And where are the black-shirted Sisters now? Anyway, driving through Hunstanton, pulling over, and finding, I know you won't believe this if you know your style vs. fashion retail, two Paul Smith shirts, both black, but with the flower-lined cuffs which when applying the necessary cufflinks fold outwards, breaking up the black. Are those Paul Smith shirts still black? Could I wear them and not be booted to, from the Sisters of Mercy? Meanwhile on Where It Really Starts, here is Jon and the Bright Shiners taking a nominally traditional verse, chorus, verse, chorus and the other bit before the final double chorus idiom and infusing it with enough la difference, lyrically, melodically and instrumentally, twisting each and every element just far enough from the centre to keep a listener involved, paying attention and holding on. No mean feat. Not so many can do that good, although a great many try. Good-o. Jon Langford remains a legend and his friends ain’t half bad either.
by Alan Rider
Vivabeat was a pop band formed in 1978 from various LA and Boston music industry insider types and was allegedly 'discovered' by Peter Gabriel, though it turns out they cornered him at a music industry do they were all at together. They disbanded in the 1980s, but, as is the way with these things, they've gotten all nostalgic about the old band, dug through garages and attics, unearthed old tapes and song fragments, reconstructed/re-mastered them in the studio, and pushed them out as two box sets with bonus tracks and so on, this being one, 'The House is Burning' being the other. Soundwise, this is very much in the territory of Lene Lovich or Nina Hagan. There were a lot of bands like Vivabeat around in the '80s, all vying for attention, and this sounds very identikit. It's not for me really, it's too bland, too commercial, and too overproduced. Typical 80s pop/rock really.
by Alan Rider
There have been a fair few attempts at melding Western rock, with its strict 4/4 driven structure, to the more languid and circular flows of Eastern music, and I cannot deny that has a lot of appeal to me. Toronto's The Shadow Majlis have mixed in dub elements as well to create quite a magical mix. The standout track 'Mazdur' balances all of these elements together perfectly. I have always regarded Jaz Coleman and Anne Dudley's Egyptian odyssey 'Songs From The Victorious City' to be the pinnacle of East meets West composition. 'The Departure' treads more of the Peter Gabriel end of that path, but really does have some great moments and comes very close. Sitar, Tabla rhythms, and soaring synth lines work together, offset by deeply personal vocals. Just in case you were wondering, The Shadow Majilis is Ali Jafri, who has played with David J (who returns the favour on this), Pigface,The Gotham City Drugstore and others. He confides this album is borne out of a series of personal losses and misfortunes, as attested to by the downbeat lyrics, and they sound like the sort that would have floored most people (losing his son to cancer being just one of them), so the fact that he has produced something so beautiful and evocative here really is quite something.
Other Materials
by Alan Rider
Skin (or alternatively, The World of Skin) was Swan's members Jarboe and Michael Gira's spin-off act, and in many ways was its equal. Blood, Women, Roses has a lot more Jarboe than Michael in it, and is sublime and simply a wonderful album. I wore it out when it originally came out in 1987, as can be attested by the scuffed sleeve and crackly grooves of my copy. Fortunately, we have YouTube so you won't have to put up with all the pops and crackles my overplayed vinyl copy now sufferers from. Ignore any hard rock imposters or Skunk Anansie singers of the same name. This is the original and by far the best.
Outro
main image Gillie by Finlay O'Hara
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