Outsideleft Holy Week in Music

Folk can be saved! Well. Well if it can then it's gonna take the Folk Bitch Trio to do it!

Coming from Belarus, you have to admire Mission Jupiter's courage in putting out a single like 'Crippled Country' that is so overtly critical of the political situation in their home country, a close ally of Russia.  It puts most of the other weekly fluff in the shade when you think that this sort of thing gets people locked up, or worse. "I'm stuck in here, where constant fear destroys my life" they sing.  "Should we stay here and weep for a crippled country? Or maybe I must flee the place I love". Its a powerful message that cannot fail to hit home.  I fear they may well need to leave to preserve their liberty, and who would blame them? Whilst they stay, they deserve our praise, regardless of musical taste.  This is brave.

How sweet though art. No mid-Atlantic drawl hear. No, no,more like something Mensi would hold dear over whipping Waves of Fear—a Lou Reed tune that Pissed Jeans originally recorded during the sessions for their acclaimed LP, Half Divorced. It was also available as a limited edition flexi disc, which was released by US punk zine New Noise Magazine last spring. Where can flexi discs get made now? Well done for that. They'll be at Green Man in the UK.

Ahhh, the immersive sound of New Mexico pysch-rock, Tan Cologne are awash with the stink of it. It's dreamy, but this evocation of a dream has me on edge, because these gals, Lauren Green and Marissa Macias, have an edge. Cloud of Mirrors is taken from their third LP, 'Unknown Beyond' out in June, it promises to be a good one.

Ex Chicano Batman strikes out alone if you discount the array of talent he is surrounded with... Synthetic funk for a big part of it. But the bass, oh the bass...

So this is simply sacrilegious or what? I thought the Coldplay's guys were a bit new agey praying to rare earths crystals and all that so what do I know now they're trying for an easter number one? This is the way to do it, stack up the stay and play stars, for the most purportedly arms-dealery of record labels - yes, I do know, everyone is guilty of something, but let the guilty cast the first stone anyway, that's what I say. Everyone here is super guilty but probably aren't hanging their heads out of their battery powered green beamers in shame. They should they so really should. Because aside from all else this is calculatedly hopeless. That it is so hapless, late period capitalist music machine music for End Times makes me a believer all over again. I heard God made them do it.

Oh I get it. I really do. This is just a beautiful paean to love is, can be and can become. Really. But way before Naomi's story, there is the opening bass note to be grateful for and an acoustic melody to live for. "I want a friend who turns into a lover..." Of course, that would be perfect. A lover who turns out to be a good friend can be pretty cool too. 

Early 80s post-punkers now reformed, Wasted Youth were big on the indie scene at the time, touring with The Only Ones and the Psychedelic Furs.  That seems to have rubbed off on them, as this is a drawly, mid tempo approximation of both of those bands. It's a lacklustre choice for a single though.  There is a new album, Neo Noir, out too, which continues in a similar vein. To me they sound like they could do with a decent nights sleep, as the songs lack energy and some can barely crawl out of the door.  Regardless of their history and pedigree, they will need to try a bit harder than this if they want to impress in today's crowded marketplace.

From time to time on Outsideleft we get direct approaches from bands, rather than through PR agents.  There is a palpable difference, with the absence of much of the usual PR bluster we are used to, and a more straightforward honesty in their approach.  Komodos are from Brooklyn, are peers of Two-Man Giant Squid who we featured a short while back, and make a mighty wonderful racket here on Icarus, driven along by a brutally pulsating bass line.  It's a fine combination of post punk and shoegaze, produced by someone who has previously worked with Sonic Youth and it has that same rough edged charm.  Komodos have been around as a four piece since 2023, which isn't that long, and seem destined for greater things if they can just break out of the Brooklyn scene and onto the international stage.  I guess the direct approach is a part of that game plan. Icarus flew too close to the sun, as all you classical scholars out there will know, but for Komodos their day in the sun is just beginning and I have a feeling they will be a bit more careful than Icarus was not to singe their wings in the process. I will be talking to them soon too about the experience of a band just starting out so we can find out just how high they plan to fly. 

Yann Thierson's probably gonna be your go to guy when you're making your moody independent (< $1,000,000 budget) movie. Probably in the gloomier regions of the otherwise sunny coast. And Ninnog hits right there into the ballpark. Spare contemplative piano. Yann's no song and dance man is what this recording is saying. It's from his own dual personality split LP. You can figure all that out while you're listening. 

I never know how I feel about the Gizz. In everything they do, there is a moment where "I love this!" wells up only to be vanquished by "I hate this" and am being washed in from and out to their endless sea, battering me until I am a polished shell. Which is something. 

Well, this rocks, as relentlessly as you would hope. There's the instant metallic clang of pre post industrial Birmingham. That relentlessness cannot be overstated because it is never less than intense. This is inexplicably Wild! So wild I can't even imagine how they did it. I'd like to know. Maybe I should ask them, after all Nightingales Week in Outsideleft is so nearly here. But that's not the sort of thing I ask about though, that's a veneer I don't need to crack. I am thinking of reviving my 'What was the last thing you spat out?' question for them... Dental damn! I don't really want to think too much about all of the morning after mouths in my lifetime.  That's a tricky thought. A friend's friend hadn't given much thought to brushing the back of their teeth, just the front side. I have a mouthful of very British pre-serious dental care teeth. I met a worker in a late night food place with perfectly white teeth. He never drank coffee. Couldn't risk it. When did our teeth get all American in significance? In swept vacuity? Or just my envy. The Morning After Mouth sounds like it's a warning against all given wisdom. Fuck, I get so sick of those wisdom givers myself. 

Craig Finn is one of those guys that feels too sincere, except his superpower is that sincerity. Sincerity about being a former midwestern wastrel, a Catholic, a memory-obsessive, a motormouth, about everything. With the Hold Steady, this sincerity was riding a jet ski down the canals of flooded memory. On his less explosive but no less emotionally technicolor solo records, he is the canal. There is more being said in "Bethany" than most people have in their entire catalog. "People of Substance" might have be the subtitle for his songwriting. Or a memoir, if there is anything left that didn't make it into his records. "Crumbs," about his niece, is maybe his greatest heartbreaker. I could go on. We all go on.

The reading of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis, a piece determined partly by placing star charts over musical staves, feels appropriately cartographic, a wandering through the mysteries of experience and intention with sublime melancholy. The other Cage pieces are similarly delivered with Cage's deadest-pan humor and philosophical rigor, the sounds of skill saws and traffic noise and radio static cavorting in the ether. The real treat, if your find the limits of musicality delicious, are rare performances of pieces by Earle Brown, one of the lesser known composers in this wing of the sanitarium. Brown's November 1952 and December 1952 are more like "music" as it were, if music was trapped in amber and its hopes and dreams filtered into almost nonexistence through that golden lens. Or if the notes came one by one in the mail. The slightest clunk of a woodblock feels like you've been rear-ended at a stoplight. I'm a fan of this kind of thing, but Bickerton's performances here are elegant and spectral enough to catch anyone in their gaze. One of my officemates was momentarily spellbound, only asking what we were listening to, when he realized we were listening to something. 

I can't imagine any useful descriptor to illuminate their knuckleduster slap echo garage punk thing that isn't already said in the name Teen Mortgage. The next big thing if there is one.

Recently I have found myself silent on the subject of music. I have instead tried to write fiction, horrific, gloomy and laden with dread and fear... Back here then to review a new Momus record, over here.

Mute Records habit of constantly milking the TG back catalogue feels exploitative and environmentally unsustainable with all these box sets and vinyl re-issues rolling off the production line.  This 11-track live album has already been issued by Mute not that long ago as part of a box set, TG Berlin, which chronicled unreleased work recorded around a series of live events curated by the band at the Berlin Volksbühne in 2005/2006.  We reviewed the track 'Hamburger Lady' from this same performance recently.  This is chalk and cheese to that though.  Light and atmospheric, it really is quite beautiful, the polar opposite of what the name Throbbing Gristle conjours up.  This is pure Chris and Cosey, or would be if it wasn't marred by Genesis P-Orridge's out of tune caterwauling over the top.  Musically, he is very much the weakest link in TG, as has become very clear with the passage of time, yet was the driving force behind their iconic image and ideas, which were always his strong point.  There will, no doubt be more teaser tracks released ahead of the albums 16th May release, then Mute will move on to the next incremental re, re, re-issue from their back catalogue!

Easter Sunday Candy... I've put this here a few times I think because I never get tired of it. I always want more people to hear it, see it, to think about what they have just seen. Writing for Vice, Alex Robert Ross called it "a window into a less shitty America.' Ten years removed, more than ever. A single shot video. It's beautiful, immensely ambitious, sensationally directed in one shot, mightily allegorically joyously profane maybe in my hearing, (take and eat my body like its holy...). And Barthes allows for me to hear that I think. What we who are not the authors want to hear. So much talent on one soundstage, choreographed by Ian Eastwood, singing by Jamila Woods, rapping by Chance—family and cooking! Trumpet by Niko the Trumpet in Donnie the Trumpet. Love pours forth. Why not.

Sam Battle (aka Look Mum No Computer) is bonkers.  He really is.  He fixes old technology, makes flame throwing organ door bells, and performs live using this great monster of a modular synth he built himself.  Part of his solo act is taking between-song requests from the audience then frantically plugging things in to try and emulate whatever song they challenge him to do, like this Blur track.  If often goes a bit tits up, but he shrugs that off.  Good enough is good enough.  Who wants perfection in a live performance anyhow?  You can experience his highly entertaining brand of imperfection at a rare UK appearance headlining the International Drone Day in Canterbury on 17th May.  If you can't wait for that, don't worry, we are talking exclusively to Sam on drones, drains and DIY synths for our regular Sunday interview slot on April 27th