Playlist 9

I'm a bit late getting this month's playlist up but it has just crept in under the wire.  It starts scary, drives around a bit then ends with some real Italian beauty.  Sorry, - no clips this time.  Copyright issues stymied the ones I wanted but I'm sure you all know the way to You Tube.


'Beaster’, Sugar

Do You Get The Feeling This Might Not Be A Mellow Listen?

Playing Husker Du last month put me in mind of Bob Mould’s output after that band split.  Following two solo albums, he formed Sugar and released the ‘Copper Blue’ album with it’s perfect blend of hard Rock and Pop melody.  ‘Beaster’ contains six more tracks from those sessions but feels like ‘C.B.’s evil twin.  It’s the most intimidating material Mould has recorded and seems to soundtrack a complete psychic meltdown or profound religious crisis.

Following the mantra-like opener ‘Come Around’, is a sequence of songs that evoke terrifying degrees of frustration and rage.  Within impenetrable walls of guitar and frenetic drumming, Mould resembles a man trying to sing Byrds songs from the heart of a tornado.  At the album’s core, ‘J.C. Auto’ sounds like the living end and, truly, there’s nowhere left to go from there.  It’s succeeded by ‘Feeling Better’, which suggests at least the possibility of catharsis for the listener, if not the singer.  ‘Walking Away’ concludes the album with waves of wobbling, churchy organ, implying Mould might feel able to stagger from the wreckage, if not towards any state of grace.

'Landcruising', Carl Craig

Carl Craig Opens The Door Of His Invisible Car

Whilst reviewing Burial's new tracks recently, I considered how often he has evoked the sense of a reflective journey through darkened city environs and how often electronic music in general engages with the idea of movement through a built environment. 'Landcruising' is a classic slice of Detroit Techno from one of its acknowledged masters. Recorded in 1995, it’s aged remarkably well and provides an excellent soundtrack to any nocturnal drive around city streets.

Appropriately, the album starts and ends with car door sounds and a sense of forward progress through different neighbourhoods is maintained throughout.  Although more futuristic in outlook and less introspectively melancholy than Burial's work, Craig still captures a variety of moods, including the eeriness and isolating effects of urban environments under sodium light, and the misplaced utopianism of Modernism in general.  It's also impossible not to imagine the desolation of contemporary Detroit - a city built on old-school automobile manufacturing.

‘Autobahn’, Kraftwerk

When contemplating automotive-themed electronica, it seems only natural to revisit what is effectively the Grandaddy of it all. It was probably the first 'proper' electronic record I was really aware of, listening to Radio Luxembourg in bed as a boy.

If Burial made his name while staring through window of the London night bus and Carl Craig surveyed decaying Detroit from the wheel of his Landcruiser, back in 1974 it was still possible to jump into a VW or Merc. and head optimistically for a technological future somewhere on the post-war European horizon. The Doppler effect of passing vehicles and simulated car horns may sound quaint but a fashion for treated vocals endures to the present and there's a surprising, stately, timelessness about this piece of self-conscious futurism.  "Fun, fun, fun of the autobahn", indeed.

'Always Crashing In The Same Car', David Bowie

David Bowie: Berlin Gaze

Sometimes a mental thread just keeps unwinding. Bowie's return this month provoked a flurry of media adulation, (including a Radio 4 exclusive!), but, whilst his new single sounds pleasant enough, comparisons with his impressive Berlin/Eno recordings seem over-ambitious. This fragment was always a highlight of 1977’s ‘Low’ album for me and continues the motor vehicle theme, although more metaphorically. Bowie’s music of this period was clearly influenced by the Kraftwerk aesthetic and the song has a great title too.

'Present From Nancy', Supersister

Dutch Prog. Band Splits

My love of Dutch Prog from the Golden Age, (1960/70s, not 17th Century) prevails. There are definite connections between the sound of Supersister and that of Solution and indeed, Focus. This is their debut album and it includes plenty of Soft Machine-style European Jazz Fusion along with experimental Rock and Pop typical of the era.  Palpable connections with the Canterbury Prog. of S.M. and their British contemporaries abound, including the heavy fuzz effects, barmy humour and Avant-garde aspirations colouring various tracks. There's plenty of flute too, which is exactly as it should be.

'Six', Soft Machine

Soft Machine went through numerous personal and associated stylistic changes during its eighteen-year existence. By 1973 it had abandoned the quirky, psychedelic Rock and Pop of founders Daevid Allen, Kevin Ayres and Robert Wyatt and matured into an accomplished Jazz-Rock act. The sixth album also saw the band move away from the free-blowing approach of recently departed reeds player Elton Dean towards a more riff-orientated style, driven by his replacement Karl Jenkins and dynamic drummer John Marshall.

BBC footage of the quartet performing 'Gesolreut' shows Jenkins switching between sax and keyboards and a considerable degree of studious interaction between band members.  We might laugh at their threads and 'taches but it's a delight to revisit an era when musicians could be seriously experimental and still aspire to a mainstream career.

  

‘Blueprint’, Keith Tippett

Bristolian pianist Tippett is first and last an experimental Jazz musician, who made his name in the late 60s and 70s.  In the spirit of that era, he collaborated with many of its more fusion-minded musicians and several members of his own combos also turned up in Soft Machine at various times.  Though quieter and more meditative than some of his other records, ‘Blueprint’ still demonstrates Tippett’s uncompromising approach and shows a willingness to venture far into Free Improv. territory.

‘Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia’, The Caretaker

Leyland Kirby: Feeling Blue

Leyland Kirby has used his Caretaker alias to produce an extensive catalogue of work around the theme of failing recollection and haunted memory.  I downloaded these 84 tracks when he still offered them for free and, amazingly; I find I can happily play the whole thing from beginning to end.  Existing largely within the realm of abstract ambience, the ‘Memories’ resemble sound files that have been subjected to varying degrees of erasure and distortion.  Occasionally, recognisable, ghostly refrains are heard as though from a distant ballroom of the mind.  It becomes even spookier when one learns of Kirby’s fascination with  Stanley Kubrik’s psychological horror film ‘The Shining’.

Heaven Or Las Vegas', The Cocteau Twins

This made January's list because I got to hear the whole thing twice on a tortuous, snowy commute home one night, (everything's about driving this month).  It normally takes twenty minutes but this time I had over ninety to remember how much I like 'H.O.L.V.'  Released in 1990, it's my favourite of their three last 'mature' albums.  Undoubtedly, things are somewhat less anguished and more formally conventional than before but it's full of their signature shimmering, layered sound; nuanced production and glorious, swooning melodies.  I sat stationary in driving snow as the lights changed from red to green and back again to red and The Cocteaus made it all strangely evocative.

‘Monteverdi Madrigali’, Claudio Monteverdi, Performed: Anthony Rooley/Consort of Musicke

Bernardo Strozzi, 'Claudio Monteverdi', 1640

Given my interest in Renaissance and Baroque music, it’s surprising I haven’t paid much attention to Monteverdi before now.  He essentially bridges the two periods, originally composing polyphonic choral music before moving into a typically Baroque monadic style later in his career.  In addition to numerous books of madrigals, and his well-known vespers, the composer is also regarded as an originator of the opera form.  As a Monteverdi virgin, it seemed only natural to start with the early madrigals on this massive compilation, and very lovely they are too.