Log #202 - Lakes, Caves, and Rock, from Van Occupanther and Orpheus

 

Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther

Midlake - The Courage Of Others

Nucleus - Elastic Rock

Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD1

Nick Cave - The Lyre of Orpheus
Ulrich Schnauss - Goodbye

Goodbye was Ulrich Schnauss's third album released in 2007 to acclaim from NME who described the album as unleashing...

...great crashing waves of Cocteau Twins guitars, Slowdive atmospherics and precision-tooled beats that pick you up and throw you around, before depositing you somewhere else entirely – somewhere better and infinitely more beautiful.

More accomplished guitar and synth swoosh and even some guest singing which sits a little uneasily amongst the extended instrumental passages. I think I still prefer A Long Way To Fall as my favourite Schnauss album but plenty more to hear yet from the prolific German producer who has been involved in fifteen (yes 15!) album releases alone as a member of Tangerine Dream just since 2014.

Both these Midlake albums (nos. 2 and 3 in a 4 album discography) are top notch "prog americana indie folk rock". They are very similar displaying a touch more instrumentation than your standard americana fayre. I'm undecided which one I prefer. Possibly the latter The Courage Of Others which singer Tim Smith has described as more mature, but they are both excellent.

Depeche Mode I'm sure never sounded so good. 

A return of a perennial favourite this week in the chillout dub of Austrian DJ duo Kruder and Dorfmeister. The production on the Sessions album is brilliant with crystal sharp drumming and deep bass just throbby enough to rattle the speakers without overwhelming the mix. A double album, I tend to turn to CD1 the most with its up tempo dance and rap remixes. You can't go wrong with this album which still sounds fresh despite its 20+ years vintage! Depeche Mode I'm sure never sounded so good. 

Finally Elastic Rock which is superb jazz rock fusion with plenty of electric guitar. If you like early '70s period Miles Davis or John McLaughlin you'll love this.

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Log #105 - New Reggae Old Dub

Today I read this in one of those excellent 33 1/3 album books. This from author Alan Warner writing on Can's Tago Mago album:

It is inevitable for writers writing about music that we must resort to image, simile, and metaphor. So you are going to get guitars playing on balconies across a mountain valley, and you are going to get keyboard solos compared to a killer whale rodeo. It is not something I am proud of, it is a tradition, a trope, a linguistic attempt to seize the myriad impressions and sensations which affecting music can throw at us. We resort to common poetry to describe the impossible, the same way scientists and physicists must when attempting to explain their most recondite flights. These images are variations of the pathetic fallacy but there is a tradition to it and sometimes the metaphors are apt. I like to avoid this plump fancifying but I cannot.

Musicians (and artists of all kinds in the public eye) are understandably dismissive of music writers generally and especially critics. Frank Zappa described music journalists as:

People who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.

Perhaps Neil Young summed it up best with these cutting words from Ambulance Blues:

So all you critics sit alone
You're no better than me
for what you've shown

I'm not sure about killer whale rodeo keyboard solos but Alan Warner is right - writing about music is very flawed. Is there a point at all? Are one's views so personal it renders any opinion irrelevant? Surely it is just better to hear for yourselves without any pre-judgment inflicted by a writer?

Do writers have any right to pass judgement on artists?

But there remains so much of it about. Even more so these days with the internet and the prevalence of review sites like Amazon where anyone can leave their opinion. And I use those opinions when deciding on a purchase - the wisdom of the crowd is often correct even though all public review sites tend towards the positive.

Most of my 33 1/3 collection

So I'll continue, but not without a feeling that my writing might be arrogant or self-important, or read by no-one and meaningless. Where I think the 33 1/3 books succeed is that they are for the most part written by fans describing their own personal feelings about a record - what it meant to them when they heard it growing up - rather than an opinionated critique. That's the approach I should stick to.

On to my personal selection this week then. I've gone for some reggae which was inspired by my daughter actually, who showed me some clips of new new kid on the block Protoje from a festival. I misheard this as Prodigy at first of course! My go to reggae album Catch A Fire follows and then a CD from one of the excellent Trojan box set series, which moves us, by way of Austrian DJs Kruder and Dorfmeister, into "dub". Dub I understand as meaning deep bass, not necessarily reggae although the two are often synonymous. We have a leftover from the Bob Dylan weeks with his beautiful Blood On The Tracks album and then bringing up the rear a set from the prolific Cornwall DJ (no, not Aphex Twin - the other one) Luke Vibert.

Protoje - A Matter Of Time

Bob Marley - Catch A Fire

Trojan Dub Box Set - CD 2

Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions

Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks

Luke Vibert - Musipal

What strikes me about the Bob Marley is the lack of what I'd call reggae in it! It's actually just great pop/rock music with great rhythms and some beautiful guitar playing (I don't know if this is Bob himself - I suspect not - from the films I've seen of him he seems to be the one either just singing with his guitar slung over his shoulder or he's doing the reggae chug chug chug strum strum). Who is on lead guitar? Is it Peter Tosh?

That reggae chug chug chug strum strum.

Lots of reggae chug chug on the Protoje album. It's much faster and poppier and the singer sings in a rap style. There are some great pop singles on here. It's immediately accessible to almost anyone which does worry me a little as I wonder if it has much staying power - that is one of the most fascinating things about discovering new music - how your opinion changes over the coming weeks, months, and even years (one of the original reasons I started this log actually).

Who is he anyway? Well from Wiki I learn that he is a contemporary reggae artist from Jamaica. That's an obvious description but an important distinction as I still think of most reggae (probably solely due to Bob Marley) as 70s music. Furthermore most the Dub stuff from Trojan is from even earlier.  

Real name Oje Ken Ollivierre, Protoje started recording proper albums in 2011 and this one A Matter Of Time is his fifth.

One of my favourite tracks is No Guarantee which has this slickly produced video below (and also a catchy downward guitar riff):

Protoje himself has commented on the video:

This video is shot exclusively in Port Royal and shows bits and pieces of everyday life. Moments that often go unappreciated even unnoticed but are essentially all that we have. 

Tell me are there things you take for granted too often?

I've never visited Jamaica. I'm sure there's lots of what we would describe as poverty but that sea (and dare I say the way of life?) looks beautiful. Port Royal is a suburb of Kingston.

The Kruder and Dorfmeister double CD Sessions is a superb piece of music. For a brief moment in time it was actually my favourite album. The album consists of heavily dubbed out remixes of tunes by artists like David Holmes, Depeche Mode, Roni Size, Lamb, Count Basic and Bomb The Bass. CD number 1 is slightly more upbeat with CD 2 a touch more chilled. Sometimes this blissed out down tempo trip hop type music can become a bit too much like elevator music - a criticism K & D masterfully avoid (although you would have almost certainly heard some of their tracks before, even unknowingly, via TV background music). The other thing about this duo is they actually really do improve the originals - a case in point with the Depeche Mode remix below:

I had a look for the Luke Vibert album on Spotify and it wasn't listed. I then realised Luke goes under the name of Wagon Christ for this 2001 release. That's not his only pseudonym. He can also be found under the following names: Plug, Kerrier District, Amen Andrews, and the Ace of Clubs, although his own name plus Wagon Christ are the ones he uses most often. I believe each nomenclature indicates a different style of music whether it be trip hop, acid or drum 'n' bass, but I'm not enough of an expert to distinguish. What I can tell though is Vibert has a unique sound in the IDM (intelligent dance music) field identifiable across all his releases. This one starts off with the following sample and Luke always delivers. 

The premise of this album is very very simple - to listen to messages of soul with a solid beat.

For new listeners I'd also recommend Stop The Panic as a good starting point - available super cheap from amazon at the moment. This album expertly melds Luke's solid beats with slide guitar by BJ Cole creating a unique experience:

All for now, have a good week of musipal discovery!

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Log #19 - Have a flutter with purveyors of out of tune electronica Boards of Canada

1. Neu! - Neu!
2. Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right to Children
3. Boards of Canada - Twoism
4. Bob Dylan - Desire
5. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 2
6. Mo Wax - Headz Volume 1


Boards of Canada are two Scottish brothers who make electronic music. Their music is weird and strangely appealing. I think this is just as it is so unusual - it therefore does different things inside your brain than most music and hence stands out and becomes memorable. The effect is rather like hearing the minimalism composers Part, Glass or Reich for the first time, or music from a different culture (eg. Indian, or Chinese, or South East Asian) that sounds alien to our western ears.

We believe that there are powers in music that are almost supernatural.

Unlike most electronic contemporaries the Boards of Canada make wide use of vintage and analogue equipment including tapes. This gives their music an authenticity and warmth rarely present in the more mathematically perfect music of other electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk. On casual listening a lot of their music sounds "out of tune" but stick with it and literally "tune-in" and it becomes beguiling and hypnotic.

The reclusive Boards of Canada, unmasked

Debut album Twoism (1995) was a home recorded affair and was a real mind bender like a Chris Nolan film - but one of his earlier low budget ones. Like my favourite film of all time Memento Twoism sounds like it was recorded backwards. Follow up Music Has The Right To Children (1998) was a studio album recorded for Warp Records but is barely more "commercial".

Both records make liberal use of samples over a characteristic mix of loops, flutters, drone, squeaks, pips and wobbles, pinned by primitive drum machine beats. Aquarius from the latter album is a very accessible start point for new listeners. Things get a lot weirder than this lovely "counting" song (but checkout how the sequential count in the "lyrics" goes awry after 36 - I wonder if there is any pattern or coded meaning to this? - I expect a BoC geek, of whom there are many apparently, has investigated).

Someone even plotted the lyrics to Aquarius!

The boys' apparent love of codes, hidden meanings, fractals, subliminal messages, numerology and cults, allied with the paucity of their releases and live appearances, has added suitably to their mythical status over their 20 year career. Hashtag cool!

Similar but not really at all is the compilation release from the Mo Wax label Headz. This sort of bland sampled jazzy looped trip hop may have been cutting edge at the time (1994!) but now sounds frankly a bit lazy and soulless despite containing cuts by Autechre and DJ Shadow. It always fascinates me how music of very similar styles can either leave you inspired or cold. To describe the difference between say Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron and Wine, The National, Fleet Foxes, Mumford and Sons, Bears Den and The Felice Brothers, may be quite difficult in words but you'll rarely find someone who likes all those bands, and one is fairly universally disliked for whatever reason (any guesses?)! I also have this debate with my teenage son who loves "his" music and "hates" my music although on the face of it there is barely any difference.

Fancy a flutter on Boards of Canada? No better place to start than here >>

 

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Log #18 - Dylan and German

Desire is my favourite Dylan album. The experience of listening attentively to the nine songs on this album is like reading nine short stories, actually not even short stories, there is such depth and character in these atmospheric songs it feels more like reading nine novels.

One of Dylan's most celebrated songs on Desire, or from his whole canon actually, is Hurricane which tells the story of Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, the heavyweight boxer who was framed for a murder "he never done... the one time he could have been the champion of the world."

It is argued that some liberties have been taken with the historical accuracy of some of Dylan's accounts particularly on Hurricane and the 11 minute epic Joey chronicling the life story of gangster Joe Gallo. Some of his subjects were no doubt romanticised in song but it remains a fact that Carter wrongfully served 19 years in jail from 1966 until his pardon in 1985.

Dylan's writing was in a rich vein of form in the mid 70s and prior to Desire he had released another fan favourite, Blood on the Tracks. It is easy to forget that Dylan had been around a long time and by 1975, when equivalent singer song writers of the era were maybe on to the their sixth album or so, he had already recorded fourteen. Blood on the Tracks was his cathartic "break-up" album featuring heartbreaking odes to his ex-wife Sara, and some anger too such as Idiot Wind.

Of course Dylan's song writing genius is much celebrated, and he has recently been honoured by the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first time the award has gone to a song writer. This is not the place to offer any lyrical analysis or interpretation from such a vast body of work as I could choose practically any verse from practically any song so where could one possibly start? Suffice to say he often surprises with wit and humour as with this simple stream of consciousness dialogue between a husband and wife in Isis:

She said "Where you been ?" I said "No place special?"
She said "You look different" I said "Well I guess"
She said "You been gone"
I said "That's only natural"
She said "You gonna stay?"
I said "If you want me to, Yeah."

Then there's always this sort of wit and devastating commentary, this time from Joey:

The police department hounded him, they called him Mr. Smith
They got him on conspiracy, they were never sure who with
"What time is it?" said the judge to Joey when they met
"Five to ten," said Joey, the judge says, "that's exactly what you get!"

Dylan is an artist I return to again and again. Always offering something new or something reassuringly familiar.

This week's magazine then:

1. Can - Tago Mago
2. Can - Anthology
3. Neu! - Neu!
4. Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
5. Bob Dylan - Desire
6. Kruder and Dorfmeister - Sessions CD 1

The Tago Mago speaking alien brain man - usually in orange    

Another group who have stood the test of time is Can. Indeed their 70s music really was ahead of its time. Of all the "Krautrock" bands Can are probably the most revered and influential. In a genre that had a relatively short heyday Can had the greatest longevity. Tago Mago is an amazing piece of work - probably in my Top Ten albums of all time (now, what would they be I ask myself?). Originally a double LP the album consists of only 7 tracks. Two of the more lengthy numbers are Aumgn and Peking O which are both mind-blowing sonic soundscapes of random avant garde experimentation. Good for them putting these tracks to record. It took me a while to fully appreciate these tracks when I first had the album - in fact I bought the vinyl album second hand from an old record shop in the bus terminal at Chichester (a great shop that introduced me to many unusual bands - oh the excitement of thumbing through racks of old records!) and one of these side long tracks was marred by a nasty scratch that was possibly a blessing in disguise. Thankfully the absolutely amazing Hallelujah was unaffected and remains arguably the greatest Can track of all time. At 18 minutes long it gives full reign to drummer Jaki Liebezeit's hypnotic patterns and Holger Czukay's funky bass, over which eccentric singer Damo Suzuki repetively shouts what sounds like "I'm searching for my brother, yes I am!" It was for many years my go to track when I wanted to impress and astound a new friend.

Irmin Schmidt's sythesizer has been likened to the sound of a UFO taking off.

There is a brief respite during Hallelujah around the five or six minute point which is where the edit is made for the Anthology compilation. I'm normally not a fan of anthologies or greatest hits packages but despite one or two such edits (Can are rather like Pink Floyd in that it is quite difficult to create a greatest hits summary without trimming the length of the tracks) it's a very good career retrospective - unnecessary for completists like me but a good primer for less religious Can fans.

Kruder and Dorfmeister are also German (or Austrian rather I think?) but of a much more recent vintage. The Sessions album is lovely. It is remixes of various pop and jazz tunes mostly in the dub vein but these talented DJs really make the music their own. Who would have thought Depeche Mode could ever sound this good. Highly recommended and also one of my favourite records certainly a decade or so ago.

Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister - master DJ mixers

Actually it is so odd how your mind plays tricks on you. I was convinced someone introduced me to this music in 1992 (I remember as it was a certain time and place that was particularly memorable as I was travelling on a year out in Asia). I even remember the name of the person, who was called Dave Person and came from San Francisco! I then shared notes with an old muso friend of mine that I hooked up with when I moved to Brighton in 1997. But blow me down, both these memories are fundamentally flawed - I've checked and the album was released in 1998. I just can't understand how that is possible!

Last up this week in this German flavoured listing is Neu!

Please note that Neu! are the only band permitted to use punctuation in their name without being mercilessly ridiculed.

Tim Sommer 

Neu! - Sound like more than a 2-piece

Their music is quintessential Krautrock - mostly instrumental with the basic 4/4 rock "motorik" beat and very effective. Certainly not as groundbreaking or prolific as Can but very similar and this, their debut, is many people's favourite album of the whole genre, and the opening track Hallagallo is frequently proffered as the krautrock track.

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