My last ten-piece playlist was essentially a generic primer - signifying how the various facets
of Dub Techno almost wholly dominated my listening, some weeks back. As ever, events move on - and this one
demonstrates just how eclectic things have once more become.
The Fall: ‘The Unutterable’
I suspect one
might never get to the end of The Fall’s expansive back catalogue, even if
foolhardy enough to attempt it. However,
you can have a lot of fun trying. The late
80’s incarnation (of a band everyone will have been in, for at least half an
hour, sooner or later) was one of the most engaging live acts I’ve witnessed. Their albums are rarely less than intriguing
– even at their most ragged or least coherent.
The great ones (of which there are several) can be plain jaw
dropping. I’d contend this offering,
from 2000, is close to one of those.
Despite leader Mark
E. Smith’s famous, revolving door recruitment policy, each successful Fall
line-up eventually sounds like a rackety, all-consuming piece of home-assembled
machinery - operated by a contrary, but surprisingly well-read, bar room
philosopher. ‘The Unutterable’ follows that blueprint, combining their trademark,
punkabilly guitar thrash with the kind of keyboards that suggest Eleni Poulou (Mrs.
M.E.S.) had only a couple of lunchtimes to learn her instrument, (she plays it
very well). Hubby mithers all over it,
in fine belligerent style - with no subject seeming too oblique or disconnected.
There’s always a
moment when those rudimentary elements fit together into something immense and
hypnotic, and everything makes sense.
Here, that happens during the intimidating ‘Serum’. Elsewhere, there
are well judged changes of pace, a generally acclaimed masterpiece (‘Dr. Buck’s Letter’), and even a left
turn into spastic ‘Jazz’ (‘Pumpkin Soup
And Mashed Potatoes’). Mostly
though, it’s just a great, steaming pile of everything The Fall does best.
DNA: ‘Blonde
Redhead’
Of course, everything’s relative - meaning that early 80s ‘No Wave’ band, DNA, can make The Fall sound vaguely conventional. Famous is also a relative term, but they were, ‘famously’, one of the mainstays of a movement that sought to deconstruct Pop/Rock yet further back than Punk did, and even - to dispense with formal structure by marrying it to free improvisation. What you actually have in DNA, is a trio (two trios, actually), comprising untutored musicians, (or others who chose to play that way), whose mania lasted around four years - never extending beyond their NYC hot house, at the time.
Miraculously,
this almost professional video exists on YouTube. It shows them in their second-gen. pomp,
(with a bassist who could play a bit), running through one of their ‘hits’. As is often the case with such Free noise-making,
repeated immersion eventually reveals an alternative, internal logic - however perverse. If nothing else, you’ve got to love Arto
Linsey’s detuned guitar work, surely?
Pantha Du Prince: ‘The
Triad’
I’ve enthused
about Hendrik Weber’s music as PDP before, and this new album largely carries
on from his previous two – ‘Black Noise’
and ‘Elements Of Light’ (with The
Bell Laboratory). This time, he works in
close collaboration with Scott Mou and The Bell Laboratory’s Bendik Kjelsberg
(plus guests), to fill that (often) sweet spot between ambient soundscape and
dance floor. They do so with now-familiar
chimes, melodic tones, and unobtrusive beats, alongside increasing amounts of
vocals, with an essentially pastoral overall aesthetic. It’s a sound not alien to followers of, for
instance, Four Tet - although painted on a somewhat larger canvas.
Of course,
there’s a danger of such stuff becoming overly tasteful, but it does provide
some lovingly assembled sonic healing, once DNA and The Fall have packed in
their racket. My only real criticism
would be with some of those vocals. The
aim is seemingly to inject techno tropes with greater emotion; but that can
feel more like ‘emotion’ as a non-specific stylistic dressing, than anything
particularly felt. Certain moments here sound
worryingly like Depeche Mode, or a certain brand of anodyne Indie Dream Pop - but
are outweighed by the album’s more intense passages.
Paul Simon: ‘Stranger
To Stranger’
The question is
probably - does the world really need yet another solo album by one of the aged
luminaries of Classic/Soft Rock?
Certainly, there will be many who wish the quasi-MOR stylings of Paul
Simon’s Mid-70s output had been consigned to history during the ‘Punk Wars’ -
or at least by DNA and their ilk. But
I’ve never bought into that Stalinist outlook and kind of want it all. If the old folks can still marshal talent and
inspiration, and even more importantly - experiment with new ways to express
themselves, why shouldn’t we sill give them consideration? It’s got to beat endless luke-warm rehashes
of the back catalogue - surely.
As it turns out,
a degree of relative innovation is exactly what Simon pulls off here. His songwriting still sounds pretty fresh;
and he switches between the emotive, the socially engaged, and the just plain
quirky, with a fleetness of mind many composers a third of his age might only
dream of, (sometimes all within the same song).
However, it’s the arrangements that really distinguish this album. No Paul Simon record is going to lack
pristine vocals or melodic beauty, but here they often float over a bare bones rhythm
bed, or within fields of unusual instrumentation, (liberally augmented with
samples). ‘The Werewolf’ cosies up to Tom Waits’ junkyard aesthetic, whilst
Simon’s use of Harry Partch’s outsider instruments suggests he’s as conversant
with Avant-Garde traditions, as with contemporary studio practice.
Simon & Garfunkel: ‘The Only Living Boy In New York’
In reality,
listening to any quantity of Paul Simon’s work with Art Garfunkel, from the
other end of his career, will either break your heart or rot your teeth. It’s easy enough to dismiss them as the more
saccharine wing of the 60s Folk movement, but that would be to ignore the
consistently strong core of Simon’s songwriting, and the care and attention
that went into the creation of much of their material. It also occurs to me that each S&G album comprises
a group of pieces, each with it’s own individual identity and specific
emotional cargo – in contrast with something like ‘The Triad’, for instance.
Anyway, this is,
for me, the best thing of theirs I’ve heard, and brings together all the elements
of their music I enjoy. Simon ruminates
on the inner tensions that would soon tear the duo apart, (and seemingly trigger
decades of acrimony). But he does so
with a degree of implied love and respect for his colleague - making the lyric
more philosophical than antagonistic.
The melody is just about perfect, and captures a world of melancholy
whilst soaring elegiacally in the choruses.
As recorded, the song wears some of the lush orchestration and studio
atmospherics as ‘Bridge Over Troubled
Water’, but avoids that track’s grandiose, manipulative overkill. The organ runs occasionally rising in the mix
are a triumph of understatement that kill me every time.
Gryphon: ‘Red
Queen To Gryphon Three’
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| Gryphon (Those Were The Days) |
Ah - that
inevitable, potentially awkward, early Prog moment. Actually, I feel no shame in enjoying this
kind of thing - relishing its good-natured ambition and potential to become a
portal to a partially re-invented youth.
Gryphon and their unembarrassed faux Medevalism have also featured here before, but this is their Proggiest masterpiece. Four extended pieces, comprising Folk
melodies, vintage synths, early instruments and numerous tempo/mood changes,
build to a wholly instrumental, overall concept piece, on the theme of a chess
game. Really - what’s not to like
there? Only in the 70s…
John Dowland: ‘Complete
Lute Music’ (Performed By Nigel North)
If Gryphon were
playing at Early Music, This is very much the genuine article, (in so far as
any recording of a contemporary performer can be). I picked up this multi-disc box set a while
back, at an embarrassingly low price considering the sheer quantity of treasure
it contains. It’s an absolute sanity
saver when I require a little tranquility, clarity, or calm dignity in my head,
and always takes me to a place far from the sensory overload of the modern
world. I also love the way that, although
just another wooden box with stretched strings - a lute always sounds intrinsically
more ancient than a guitar.
Of course, the Renaissance
world from which it all derives was one of routine death, war, pestilence and
religious persecution – in which only a tiny, privileged elite could access
such stuff at all. So, I suppose we
should be grateful to our modern age for providing the economic and
technological frameworks that allow us to experience it, after all.
Half Man Half Biscuit: ‘I Went To A Wedding’
I took my eye off
the HMHB ball many years ago, assuming them to be a once-amusing, novelty-Indie
act whose moment must have surely passed in the late 1980s. This little gem, from 2003, proves I was
wrong. Yet I only stumbled on it because
of its oblique Dowland reference (bless Wikipedia). I marvel that it also mentions another giant
of Renaissance music, Thomas Tallis, amidst some wry social observation -
before ending with a cheery football chant.
It’s all done with a Merseysider’s erudite wit, and actually ends up as
a rather poignant little bit of contemporary Folk. I have next to no pride in being English (especially,
now), but things like this (along with Dowland, Tallis and The Fall), do
represent some of this benighted nation’s saving graces.
William Basinski: ‘The
Disintegration Loops II’
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| Still From: William Basinski, 'The Disintegration Loops', Video, 2001 |
Basinski’s
complete ‘Disintegration Loops’ is a
bit beyond my monthly financial reach, but I’m enjoying slowly acquiring them
in manageable chunks. In the process of
revisiting earlier short loops, Basinski discovered that the tapes were
physically deteriorating before his ears, and thus serendipitously created a masterpiece
of long-form ambiences, cycling into decay.
It should, I suppose, feel tediously repetitive, and mostly about the
concept. In reality it’s a sensual and
highly involving experience, and bridges the gap between intellect and emotion
beautifully. That he finished work on the
morning of 11 September 2001 just seems too ‘good’ to be true. It allowed him to pair the music with a video
account of the unfolding events and reverse-engineer it all into a profound monument
to the disintegration of entire civilisations or value systems.
Deadbeat: ‘Drawn
And Quartered’
Had I heard it at the time, this would have definitely been in my Dub Techno-themed playlist. Indeed, it now feels rather like Scott Monteith's masterpiece to date. With delightful perversity, it contains five wholly instrumental 'Quarters', each of which sit at slightly different points on the Dub/Techno spectrum, and gradually unfold to build a whole much greater than their sum. Monteith's genius is to retain sufficient, recognisably Jamaican tropes, within a largely abstract context, as in 'First Quarter', where isolated guitar clangs rise up like thrilling signifiers. 'Fifth Quarter' does something similar with fragments of brass, whilst 'Second Quarter' uses recognisable bongo hits to punctuate its metronomic rhythms. Ultimately though, isolating individual tracks makes less sense than just treating it as a really satisfying start-to-finish deal.
Had I heard it at the time, this would have definitely been in my Dub Techno-themed playlist. Indeed, it now feels rather like Scott Monteith's masterpiece to date. With delightful perversity, it contains five wholly instrumental 'Quarters', each of which sit at slightly different points on the Dub/Techno spectrum, and gradually unfold to build a whole much greater than their sum. Monteith's genius is to retain sufficient, recognisably Jamaican tropes, within a largely abstract context, as in 'First Quarter', where isolated guitar clangs rise up like thrilling signifiers. 'Fifth Quarter' does something similar with fragments of brass, whilst 'Second Quarter' uses recognisable bongo hits to punctuate its metronomic rhythms. Ultimately though, isolating individual tracks makes less sense than just treating it as a really satisfying start-to-finish deal.
