The Penguin Cafe Orchestra has always fascinated me as a group. Their eccentric take on music, which blends pop melodies with weirder fringe experimentation, has always been a huge influence on me.
Many of the tracks have a childlike sense of wonder to them; an openness to try things that many would be too afraid to try. And yet by doing so, many of the tracks resonate with my emotions on a fundamental level.
“The Sound Of Someone You Love Who’s Going Away And It Doesn’t Matter” is a track that perfectly encapsulates their ability to tap into your emotions. No percussive instrumentation is used throughout (although a hollow body guitar is tapped in a rhythm for a small section). Instead, this instrumental features a few electric guitars, a bass guitar, an electric piano and violins, which interweave to create a piece that’s both wistful and regretful:
Hype Sleep’s main melody is played high on a bass guitar, and repeats every four bars until this tracks outro. It has an hypnotic effect on the listener, lulling you almost into a feeling of sleep. This is backed up by the other instrumentation, which slowly shifts throughout the background of the track.
Although the track fits very much into a soundscape that I enjoy, the one thing that separates it from the majority of these kind of tracks is just how much of the instrumentation isn’t synthetic. Woodblock, woodwinds and electric bass are the core of the piece, with only a collection of effects and sound design. It gives the piece a folk aesthetic that makes it timeless.
What the track misses in melody and suture, it more than makes up for in mood. A chameleon of a track that suits many environments and sticks with you from first listen:
This raucous track instantly grabbed my attention, as I listened to it in a playlist this week. It’s constantly on the verge of collapse instrumentally as Gareth Liddard’s vocals drag it down in a justified anger and cynicism.
Although the track has these harsh, intriguing qualities, its the poetry of the piece that elevates it into an essential listen. Descriptions of how we have enabled the worst in society permeate throughout, with a building rage. That the monsters only propagate because of our own apathy is told with a keen eye and poignancy. But the track never offers a solution, and only ratchets up the tension.
The protagonist of this track is stuck in the same situation as the listener. It’s up to them to change things or continue a course that will end poorly.
After deciding to make “Young Americans” my TOTW, I went back through my posts and was surprised to see that I haven’t ever posted a Bowie track as a Track of the Week, despite the many years of writing these posts.
I think this stems from a couple of reasons. The first being that I’m more of an admirer of Bowie than his work. I like the way he continued to experiment throughout his career, creating massively varied music and personas to perform them. He was a proper artist right through to his death.
He was also and still is posthumously massively successful, with many of his tracks ingrained in the British subconscious. At this point, I’ve found the idea of talking about some of my favorite Bowie tracks inconsequential. What’s the point of promoting tracks that everyone already knows?
But on the other hand my Track Of The Week was always about the music I was listening to each week, whether it be successful or unknown. To be honest, I think the main reason Bowie has never been in my Track Of The Week is it’s been rare that I could categorise any Bowie song as a Track of the week. They have always been there, played regularly, as part of a wide balanced audio diet. Yet, they have rarely been the main course.
So, how then did Young Americans end up being my first Bowie Track on my TOTW. I doubt anyone would argue its his best track, and I’d agree with them. It lacks the more experimental nature that I find most compelling in his work. But this week, the UK has been hot. There have been warm, sunny and sometimes stuffy days spent sitting in our garden, listening to music and generally enjoying the little dry weather Manchester offers yearly.
Returning to a track is never the same as hearing it the first time. It is never going to have the surprise it did when you first heard it, and therefore having the excitement about the track to write about it in my blog becomes harder, and more nuanced then a quick take on something completely new to me.
Young Americans overall aesthetic to me is the perfect soundtrack to this current environment. Dripping with R&B swelter, grooving percussion, and simmering sax; it is soothingly steadfast and familiar. As its grooves drift out of a small Bluetooth speaker into an abundant overgrowing garden, it leaves me thinking only one thing. When the track finishes lets put it on again.
Tim Hecker has always interested me as a composer. His experimental compositions and use of sounds manage to be distinctive and also give him a very strong aesthetic that makes his work recognisable, once you know what to look for.
On “That World,” the looping and detuneing audio mangling of woodwinds creates wide and haunting textures, typical of his work. At first, these drift in and out of the piece in the background of a plucked string instrument. But over time, these swell and develop into the center of the piece.
They are accompanied by a bass line, which provides a clear root note. This grounds the warbling pitch of the flutes, giving structure and changing the whole mood of the piece.
Tim Hecker rarely directs the listener towards strong emotions. Instead, the instrumental vagaries hint at feelings, subtlety working their way into the piece and your thought processes. Although, over time, the instrumentation in his music has changed, his treatment has stayed faithful, lending a consistency to his unique vision and way of stirring up that same subtlety of feelings for the listener, time and time again:
Sorry for the delay In TOTW recently. Although in the current circumstances I’ve had more time available the hours have been taken up with some bigger projects that you’ll all find out about soon and my track of the week recommendations have slipped slightly.
Bloodbuzz Ohio was easily my most listened to track last week. My girlfriend has been listening to a lot of their back catalog and has taken a shining to this track especially so its been on strong rotation at home. It is the opening single to my favorite album of theirs; “High Violet.”
Bloodbuzz Ohio’s success rests in the counterpoint between the high energy of the instrumentation and the downplayed baritone vocals. This energy continues to escalate throughout the track as it builds to the chorus, where its chord changes cause the track to plateau and resonate between two conflicting moods.
Its one of several styles and techniques that The National are exceptionally talented at and have utilized several times in their catalog. However, for me Bloodbuzz Ohio is the first time that they mastered this technique creating a song that still resonates with me to this day:
“Red Velvet Corridor” opens the Swans album “Soundtracks For The Blind,” which sent the band off for a ten year hiatus between album releases.
Swans greatest achievement is arguably their ability to develop and then transport the listener to environments that are so visceral you become part of them. These worlds are often not welcoming places and can involve some of the darker, sinister sides of humanity. This makes the group polarizing to listeners who find their subject matter uncomfortable to hear. But, for me, the craft required in their creations makes this band one of my favorites.
Red Velvet Corridor sets the scene for this album perfectly with its mechanical loops and drone textures, and a sound that sits somewhere between metal rubbing together and a human breathing. Its title reminds me of Twin Peaks, and so does the music with its off kilter and slightly disorientating atonal style. It doesn’t sit quite naturally on the ears, creating a surreal environment that leads you into the rest or the album:
“VOID FILL PRODUCT” Is the new abum by Datassette, who has stunned me for many years with his sound design and unique programming.
In his liner notes, he describes the process of making the album as “one-shot stereo recordings of hardware jams,” which were then refined into finished works. This tried and tested technique has been used effectively through the history of electronic music, right back to its experimental routes. It serves well Datassette’s natural talent for finding great melodies and interesting sounds.
“Nowhere” is a track reminiscent of one of my favorite albums “selected ambient works 85-92,” with its lo-fi recordings and stripped down instrumentation that play around with a single theme throughout its playtime. It’s a sound I love, and Datassette adds his own flair to it with a wonky bass melody, iconic of his compositional techniques. This makes ”Nowhere” a shoe in for my track of the week and an easy one to recommend to any fans of the genre:
Feelin’ Groovy is a classic that I’m pretty sure every one of my listeners has heard. I can’t remember the first time I heard it because it probably pre-dates my first memory. I grew up with the track as many people have, and over the past couple of weeks I’ve gone back to Simon & Garfunkels music and let their beautiful melodies and harmonies wash over me.
Listening to them in more detail, many of their songs come from a darker place than I remember. Stories from characters on the fringes of society, and feelings of loss and loneliness are prevalent in many of their tracks.
But even in more positive tracks, there’s always something sinister in them. It’s an overarching feeling, permeating a lot of pop music in the 60’s. The origins of this could be tied to the drug culture of the time period, or even the Vietnam war. Whatever the case, even the most uplifting tracks can have a sinister side and The 59th Street Bridge Song is a good example.
In its conclusion, the track seems to tilt to something manic as the harmonies and whistling fade out, leaving it in a different place than the opening. It leaves the track with a twist; an unsolvable riddle that keeps me listening to it to this day:
Sinister In A State Of Hope was the first track I heard from Loney Dear. Opening his album Loney Noir, the track sets the tone perfectly.
Most of his work has a downplayed and subtle approach. The instrumentation usually fades in and out of the track, developing so smoothly that it never tries to fight for your attention.
The introverted nature of the album may not be for some people, but if you can get into its mindset, there’s a lot to love. For me, it’s always been the instrumentation that has made me come back to Loney Dear’s work.
Mostly lead by acoustic guitar, and backed up by a massive variety of instrumentation; it is always beautifully recorded, with a care for intricacy.
Sinister In A State Of Hope is a great example of Loney Dear’s sound. Lush textures created by a large collection of different instrumentation bubble underneath the vocals and acoustic guitar. It creates a music that, although saccharin for some people, has stuck with me for many years:
Bandcamp:
TOTW Playlist:
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