Soil and “Pimp” Sessions always put on a good show so it was a delight to see them again last Saturday in a small venue in Liverpool.
Their bold and vibrant style of jazz makes them a joy to listen to even for those not usually fans of the genre. We Want More!!! was one of the first tracks that really attracted me to them and is a great introduction to any newcomer. It manages to blend the softer and the more brash elements of the band as a whole and summarises what the band is all about:
Since my introduction in 2012 with their album The Seer, SWANS have continued to grow on me as a band over their last three albums to becoming one of my favourite acts currently working today. So armed with some earplugs and high expectations I went to see them perform In Manchester last Sunday and wasn’t disappointed. This form of music could only come from the stubborn and clear vision of Michael Gira who controlled the band and the audience with a firm hand and steely determination.
The Highlight of the night was their complete playing of The Glowing Man, the title track on their most recent album. At just under 30 Minutes long the track goes through movements reminiscent of classical music but with the far harsher tones of modern electric instrumentation. It’s these movements that epitomise SWANS. Repetitive walls of distortion crash over you, battering your mind into a hypnotic trance before falling away to quiet, detailed and often beautiful instrumentation which is extenuated by the music surrounding it.
Live they also achieve a huge dynamic range, being one of the loudest acts I’ve ever heard but also playing quiet enough to hear Michael Gira sing without a microphone on occasion. If you get a chance to experience their show go along, just make sure you take some hearing protection with you. The Glowing Man demonstrates every element of what makes SWANS great with no compromises:
On this Mini EP entitled SPEICHER 93, Kolsch produces two cutting edge German House Tracks. Out ot the two KIR is my favourite.
The traditional driving kickdrum may start the track but instantly adds something new with the sudden pitch change, turning the Kick into both the melody as well as the driving force iconic of the Genre.
This slight twist on the tradition continues throughout the track and works incredibly well as the synth line swells and morphs between aggressive and wispy. Then we get hit the 2:50 mark and a traditional breakdown is replaced with an awkwardly jaunty staccato variation of the synth melody before we come back to the main arrangement backed up by an incredible driving deep bass part that elevates the track to a new level.
It’s the mix of the traditional and the fresh from a producer clearly experienced in techniques iconic of the genre which escalate this track above a lot of modern house music and make it to my track of the week:
Music is a flexible and shifting art form. Not only does it develop in style as technologies and artists thought processes change but our perception of music changes as we age.
In 2012 the Goat album World Music was getting a lot of praise and appearing on many critics end of year lists so I decided to give it a listen. Although I enjoyed it I couldn’t relate to it with the enthusiasm of several of my friends and peers. However the album has stayed with me over the past four years due to its catchy rhythms and great guitar hooks. Listening to it now with a bit more maturity I realise what a fantastic record it is.
On World music Goat stay close to the conventions of early psychedelic rock and the production styling could make the tracks easily mix between music from the 60’s without issue. However to keep it fresh they sprinkle instruments from different areas of world music with fantastic results. As a whole the album has a strong sound that unifies the tracks and also has a structure that has clearly been well thought out from its conception.
I could pick any track from this album as my TOTW but Run To Your Mama is probably the most instantly catchy. A strong groove is created by the entire band. The bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums (including hand drums) all provide rhythmic elements for the wailing vocals and lead guitar line to ball over. The track ends with xylophone freestyle solo that manages to stay within the conventions of the psychedelic rock genre but on an instrument not usually found there.
Above all else World Music is an album that focuses on the rhythms that make us want to dance on a primordial level. It keeps these up throughout its run time, taking them in exiting directions which catchy hooks and a production style that suits the sound of the record perfectly. Give the whole thing a listen and start with Run to Your Mamma.
Death Grips skirt around the fringes of Hip Hop as a genre. As they develop their sound they continue to delve into this abrasive world of harsh tones and heavy samples. It can seem daunting to a new listener who starts from their most recent works.
For this reason I would recommend their first full length album “The Money Store” as a great starting point. It already has their unique style but is centered on the traditions of Hip Hop making it more accessible. Yet it still has the creativity to turn some of these traditions on their head.
I’ve seen footage is a favorite of track of mine. A strong synthesized drum beat drives the lyrics of MC Ride which focus on the viewing of material that is damaging and yet you can’t get it out of your head, something highly prevalent in the modern internet age. It’s the way that the Vocals are processed that adds interesting elements to the track. They are sampled and looped in smaller parts to create rhythms, cut off mid delivery to add elements of surprise and ran through distortion to merge them into instrumentation it all comes together to create an aggressive sound which still holds its own today:
I have been listening to Lou Reed a lot this week and looking back to my previous Track of the week’s I’m dumbfounded that he hasn’t made an appearance on any of them until now.
Transformer for me is a perfect album; it manages to exemplify what Lou Reed was best at, telling tales about the fringes of society but with a fragility that could only originate from his unique perspective. Every track could and probably will make my Track of the Week segment in the future but for now I have to pick one and so I thought I would start with the track that initially got me into his music.
Walk on the wild side manages to introduce us to a world of characters that are side-lined by the most of society. Brief tales of transvestites, prostitutes, drug dealers/takers and celebrities who congregate together around Lous life are delivered in a light and joyous way that’s backed up by the instrumentation. This fairytale like counterpoint to some darker and more serious issues allows the track to work on several layers.
It can be enjoyed as both a light pop song and a historical document of late 60s/early 70s New York. It makes the track timeless, exemplifying a time and a place you can travel to every time you hit play:
Aside from my Love for music I’m also a fan of Podcasts and on occasion they provide inspiration for my TOTW.
I heard about Sir Deja Doog on Here Be Monsters, a podcast that tells true and fictional story’s about the darker/mysterious sides of life and his story made me want to listen to his work especially the album Love Coffin which was created at the same time as the artists issues with brain cancer.
Dark and slightly vaudevillian in style, Doogs music manages to be a mix of the bleak and the camp. When he gets it mix right it works brilliantly which is the case with his cover of I Put A Spell On You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
Doogs guttural vocals give the lyrics a far more sinister edge and the song builds to a rapturous saxophone solo which takes the track up a notch before it vanishes abruptly. A great cover creating a different take on a classic piece:
The sad news of Gene Wilders death this week reminded me of this track on which his voice is sampled.
Selected Ambient works 85-92 is Aphex Twins earliest studio record and it sounds fairly lo-fi in today’s standards of digital production. A large amount of the production was recorded on cassette tape, which causes the synthesisers and drum machines to wow and flutter throughout. This slight wobble in pitch and speed really gives the work a sense of place and a character that is still really unique. Add exelent melodies, brilliant ambient sound design and the lofi production methods become a stylistic strengh rahter than a weakness.
Although this doesn’t show Richard James at his most technically competent the fourteen tracks show him in an era of youthful creativity. Tracks are diverse but exemplify the creativity of electronic music. Rooting themselves as one of the foundations to modern electronic music today. Selected Ambient works 85-92 is a great introduction to both Aphex Twin and electronic music as a whole and should be heard by anyone with an interest in modern music as we know it:
Varmints by Anna Meredith is a wonderfully eclectic album that takes elements of electronic music and organic and subverts them in interesting ways to create new and exiting music.
R-Type is named after a Side Scrolling Shoot-em-up game and its clear that the inspiration of the track is the soundscape of music from this era. Limitations in the musical power of the hardware at the time meant composers had to be verey creative with their tools and fast arpeggiation and melodys that bleded with percussion became synonymous with the genre. Anna Takes these styles but applies them to some traditional string insturmentation and creates an interesting hybrid of the two:
Youtube:
It’s about time that I addressed putting a Beatles track on my TOTW playlist. It’s hard to tackle a band as influential and creative as The Beatles. It’s staggering that in a seven year window they created some of the most revolutionary albums and tracks of all time. With the fiftieth anniversary of Revolver this year I thought it was time to highlight one of those.
Tomorrow Never Knows is quite frankly essential listening. Those of you who haven’t heard it need to stop reading this blog press play and let it overwhelm you. When you hear it on the end of revolver it seems to come out of nowhere and in context of the time this must have seemed to come from another planet. Tape loops warped in time and pitch create a sound never heard the mainstream up to this point. It’s a sound that’s now been filtered through and popularised in so many genre that the track now sounds normal.
This is what escalates Tomorrow Never Knows to being one of the most important tracks of all time. It’s a reference point for so many genres to this day. A seed for the creative sprouting of both dance and psychedelic music that now influence every current musician today. If we all stand on the shoulders of giants then Tomorrow Never Knows is one of the grandest Titans:
Tomorrow Never Knows:
TOTW Playlist:
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