Playlist 4

It's that time again.  Things were going a bit folky this month till the Olympics and the electronic weirdoes kicked in...

‘Espers II’, Espers

Espers Strike A Classic Folk Musicians In Knitwear With Big Tree Pose 

The last decade has seen a critical re-evaluation of the late 60s and early 70s Folk Rock period and a new generation of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic tapping the same vein.  Of all the American Acid/Psych./Free Folk acts, Espers impress me most and this seems to be their masterpiece.

Eschewing verse-chorus structures these solemn, stately songs are built from repeating cycles of melody and elegant female vocals.  Although largely acoustic, they often build towards passages of distorted electric/electronic psychedelia in an authentic but bizarrely dignified freak-out.  Heard in its entirety, the album becomes monumental, immersive and rather timeless.

‘No Roses’, Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band

More Folk Musicians, - More Trees 

Thoughts of that earlier folk revival led me to this masterpiece.  Ashley Hutchings made it in 1971 with new wife Shirley Collins and an all-star cast of dozens.  It places Hutchings’ knowledge of the tradition into an electric band context beautifully without ever overwhelming Collins’ fragile but earthy voice.  It also includes the wonderful fragment, ‘Just As The Tide Was A-Flowing’, which led, in turn, to repeat plays of…

‘Just As The Tide Was A-Flowing’, 10,000 Maniacs

Although Natalie Merchant’s own song writing can be over-precious, this band still achieved some real elegiac moments.  Here, they rip into the traditional ditty with energy and verve without losing an ounce of respect.  It’s an 80s stepping stone to the current re-re-re-revival.

‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’, Joni Mitchell

As a singer-songwriter, Joni Mitchell always carried a triple threat.  Her back catalogue bristles with examples of intelligent lyrics, fantastic tunes and emotive vocal performances.  People rave about ‘Blue’ but, great as that is, I prefer this one.

Beneath it’s jazz-inflected sophistication and Hollywood sheen lie songs with a real cutting edge and occasional darkness.  The recurring themes focus on dysfunction at the heart of the West Coast Nirvana and New York seen as an exotic jungle.  The album title captures the contradictions of an artificial paradise perfectly.

‘Street Legal’, Bob Dylan

This one’s often overlooked and suffered from a bafflingly bad production job, but I love these mid 70s Dylan albums made prior to the lamentable Born Again years.  Religious allusions were always present in his songs but work much better when, as here, mediated by worldliness and existential doubt.

‘Street Legal’ contains three real epics in ‘Changing of The Guard’, ‘Señor, (Tales of Yankee Power)’, and ‘Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat).’  Their complex lyrics, oblique references and multiple possible interpretations evoke a real ‘dark night of the soul’ that might actually explain the subsequent retreat into evangelical certainty.  To me, the much-derided Las Vegas big band arrangements create real drama and make perfect sense.

‘Full Sunken Breaks’, Kid Spatula

More beat-driven electronic oddness from Mike Paradinas, under yet another pseudonym.  This recalls the ‘Royal Astronomy’ album he made as µ-Ziq and includes some serious attempts to out-Aphex the Twin himself.

‘Tour De France Soundtracks’, Kraftwerk

Given this summer’s focus on competition cycling, it seemed only appropriate to spin this.  Music and technology had finally caught up with the former electronic pioneers from Dusseldorf when they released it in 2003.  Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable slice of sleek European Techno, evoking the cadence of pedals, the sweep of the peloton through a mountain stage and even the demands placed on a cyclist’s body.

We know that Paul Weller actually provides the current Tour soundtrack so maybe these clean, futuristic sounds could apply to the super-efficient, high performance world of track cycling instead.  Indeed, Kraftwerk actually performed in the Manchester Velodrome in 2008.  I’d like to think that, when Sir Chris, La Pendlena and Trotty were preparing to race in London, this was looped and synched on every iPod.

‘Supersilent 6’, Supersilent

Ah, - Those Difficult Norwegians 

Although nominally from a jazz background, these Norwegians are much closer to the world of Avant-Garde improvisation than New Orleans or The Village Vanguard.  They reputedly convene periodically, solely to record or perform without any rehearsal and in a purely improvised manner.  They generally combine conventional instrumentation with abstract electronics and edit recordings from each unique performance.  These are packaged with austere uniformity and minimal information.  Also, the one member who's not originally a jazzer calls himself Deathprod and they've recently incorporated the bassist from Led Zeppelin into their ranks.

The slowly evolving pieces on ‘6’ are quite varied but share a sombre, Nordic aesthetic ranging from solemn dignity to the threatening and just plain spooky.  Passages of unstructured exploration and careful decision making periodically arrive at points of general accord between the individual players, often around a particular phrase, but rarely settle into anything comfortable or stable for very long.  Quiet passages barely emerge from silence whilst the loud bits can be intimidating in their volume.  It’s not something to play every day but always leaves me feeling I’ve had an extensive aural and mental workout.

‘Tom Lehrer In Concert’, Tom Lehrer

Lehrer was an outwardly tweedy, Jewish, Harvard Maths professor who also wrote and performed cleverly barbed satirical songs in the 1950s and 60s.  This was recorded in London in 1960 and features all the favourites including ‘Poisoning Pigeons In The Park’ and ‘The Masochism Tango’.  Lehrer’s songs were played regularly on the radio when I was a child and often made me laugh.  I appreciate their dark humour and brilliant wordplay more knowingly now and they still make me laugh.

‘Telstar’, The Tornadoes

An Historical Artefact From The Future 

BBC Radio 4 recently repeated their smashing little survey of pioneering British electronic music, including this little gem recorded in 1962.  Joe Meek’s private life and mental health were messy and tragic but he was a truly innovative producer in the early 1960s.  The Tornadoes probably saw themselves as cowboys more than spacemen but this has a wonderful distorted keyboard sound and that lovely blend of modernism and nostalgia essential to any effective futuristic vision.