Playlist 10

Last month's Playlist was almost late and, for numerically contrived reasons, this one's a bit early.  'Playlist 10' is also Post 100 on this blog and, as each list contains ten tracks, the temptation to mark a century this way was irresistible.

'Dubstep Allstars: Volume 03', Mixed By Kode 9 (Feat. The Spaceape)

Hyper Hat Dudes, Kode 9, AKA Steve Goodman, (L) & The Spaceape (R)

Dubstep's real moment is well past now and it long since succumbed to the formulaic mainstream or, more encouragingly, fractured into numerous fascinating 'Post-Step' mutations.  Luckily, I'm a 50 year old bloke who doesn't need to stay abreast of fashion and can just enjoy the intrinsic qualities of stuff, (that was never aimed at me in the first place), whenever I want to.

Kode 9's 2006 mix captured the movement in rude health, showcasing several of its original heavyweights, including Digital Mystiks, Benga and Skream.  Regular collaborator, The Spaceape, lays his laconic, blacker-than-black voice all over the mix tying the whole thing together effectively.  Generally, I prefer this kind of thing in instrumental form but his approach is far more engaging than the usual Grime bombast and definitely adds another dimension to the sound.  Even The 'Ape gives way to Warrior Queen though, as she teams up with Pressure to give the 07:07 suicide bombers a right good telling off.

'Five Years Of Hyperdub', Various Artists

Whilst record labels may be an increasingly endangered species, certain Independents have managed, over the years, to epitomise and distil a particular zeitgeist through strict quality control, stylish visuals, belief and vision.  Factory and 4AD are obvious examples, as is the Norwegian Rune Grammafon.  Kode 9 has pulled off much the same trick with his Hyperdub label, as a go-to source of crucial Dubstep and many of the good things that have followed in its wake.  We're closer to ten years of Hyperdub now but this 2009 survey demonstrates the strong foundations on which the label was built.

Of course, having Burial, (whose 'Fostercare' remains heartbreaking), and King Midas Sound on the roster helps no end.  Kode 9's own '9 Samurai' and reworking of 'Ghost Town', (featuring The Spaceape's near-comatose vocal), are hardly shabby either.  There are loads of other good things on the compilation, from the steppy Techno of Martyn to Darkstar's 21st Century Electro.  Amongst tracks I might never have heard otherwise are Mala's 'Level Nine' and 'Shake It'  by LD.

'Midnight Mushrumps', Gryphon

Gryphon Dress Up And Hang About The Woods Late At Night

Gryphon's second album forms a perfect bridge between the folky-medievalism of their first and the Prog. complexity of their third.  I have immense affection for their blend of good humour, authentic instrumentation and impressive musicianship and even find their fancy-dress excesses a cheerful reminder of a more flamboyant era.  In true early 70s style, the title piece is a suite composed for an Old Vic theatre production and tailored to fit one side of an LP.

'Wish You Were Here', Pink Floyd

Sid Barratt: The Unrecognizable, Rotund Stranger Who Appeared
 Mysteriously At The Recording of 'Wish You Were Here'

This is an obvious but an undeniable '70s classic' and effectively Pink Floyd's high water mark.  I revisited it after watching a late night 'making of…' documentary on TV.  It was predictably formulaic, featuring standard tropes of master recordings dissected by elderly sound engineers and band members strumming guitars nostalgically, but included some great vintage material and interesting insights into the album's creation.

It's impressive how a group of initially unfocussed, emotionally inhibited individuals could shape an artwork as resonant and well-resolved as 'Dark Side Of The Moon' then, despite various distractions, attain similar heights again with this.  For that we must forgive Roger Waters his driven megalomania, even if it resulted in embarrassing later work and, famously, fractured the band altogether.

Either way, 'WYWH' shows how, occasionally, a concept album could become a thing of sophisticated beauty by interweaving, (but not spoon-feeding), themes of absence and record-biz Mamon, and personifying them in the tragic figure of lost Floydian, Sid Barrett.  Most importantly, when all the discussion's over, the music is very good and not emotionally inhibited at all.

'Dub Side Of The Moon', Easy Star All Stars

'I an I' & 'Us and Them'

A Reggae version of Pink Floyd's best known album sounds like a crass novelty stunt but this is really very enjoyable.  New York label Easy Star set their in-house band and several big-name guests to work and three years later (!), they returned this clever rethink of the original, suggesting they took as much trouble over it as did the Floyd themselves.  Perhaps it's no real surprise that the original pristine atmospheres translate well into a dubby context and it's apparent that Roger Waters' basslines  weren't so far from the big reggae bottom end employed here.  The All Stars also get a little sly humour into the project, (bubbling bongs and coughing instead of cash registers on the 'Money' intro., etc.), but this tribute is anything but cheesy and actually adds a whole new dimension to 'DSOTM'.

'Early Venetian Lute Music', Joan Ambrosio Dalza, Francesco Spinacino, Franciscus Bossinensis & Vincenzo Capirola, (Performed by Christopher Wilson & Shirley Rumsey).

Robing and A-Luting

Recent winter floods remind me that Venice is a doomed city, destined to sink beneath the rising waters of its lagoon.  That makes these elegant, plangent lute pieces from the city's 15th and16th Century heyday rather poignant but I'm an enthusiastic observer of entropic processes and somewhat dubious about modern attempts to preserve the past in aspic (or cement).  This music was originally performed by professional musicians for wealthy patrons, providing escapism from the plague, war and financial corruption that surrounded them.  It provides similar distraction today, allowing me to inhabit an imaginative, ideal past where shifting sunlight reflects from water, onto the ceilings of a Renaissance Palazzo.

'Venice', Fennesz

This was also inspired by, and partially recorded in, Venice, being released in 2004.  If  Renaissance lutenists released beauty from strings through manual dexterity, Christian Fennesz does it by recording, treating and smearing them in gorgeous, degraded layers across his computer's hard drive.  The results are fluid,  atmospheric and mostly very abstract.  Should all this nuance and non-specificity become wearing, David Sylvian appears on 'Transit' with a deeply melancholy vocal evoking a form of particularly European demise.  Later, on 'The Stone Of Impermanence' the guitar work becomes loud and abrasive before subsiding back into ambience.

'The 50th Anniversary Collection', Bob Dylan

Young Bobby Single-Handedly Takes On Folk Music
At The 'Carnegie Hall Hootenanny', 1962

This is a massive, very limited and astonishing 4-disc release of outtakes and live performances from 1962.  It's also a cynical piece of ring-fencing, designed to secure European copyright under the 'use it within 50 years or lose it' rule. Inevitably, the tracks can be easily heard 'unofficially' anyhoo, so it's baffling to hear reports of the 100 or so physical discs already commanding stupid prices.  Scanning my music shelves, I wonder who really needs 7 alternate takes of 'Mixed Up Confusion' or indeed, any more versions at all of 'Blowin' In The Wind'.  It's astounding how one artist can have such an extensive back catalogue and how the recycling of Dylan's early recordings now resembles an unstoppable juggernaut.

Then I listen to the actual music and remember what all the fuss was about in the first place.  Whatever Dylan became over the intervening years, the young Bobby that Suze Rotollo and Joan Baez fell for was palpably hungry and committed to the material he appropriated or originated.  These performances certainly demonstrate his famed dynamism and unrivalled attack.  He steeped himself in Folk and Blues tradition but was always going to transform it into something uniquely his own and there's evidence here that Dylan actually toyed with electrification as early as '62.  More amazingly, there are even songs I'd never heard before.  It's a perfectly acceptable, (if repetitious), way to hear Dylan in his first incarnation, but I'm not sure why you'd pay for it, even if you could find one.

'Kurt's Rejoinder', Brian Eno

'Kurt's Rejoinder' re-joined

As I write I'm planning a day in London, including a visit to Tate Britain's Kurt Schwitters Exhibition.  It reminds me of this track from Brian Eno's 1977 album 'Before And After Science' which includes fragments of Schwitters reciting his own Dadaist phonetic poem 'Ursonate'.  Actually, the whole album is excellent  and, whilst Eno is best known for his membership of Roxy Music and for 'inventing' ambient music, I consider this is amongst his best recordings.

'Fear Of Music', Talking Heads

'Fear Of Music', - Be Very Afraid

Eno's production finger prints are also all over my favourite Talking Heads Album from 1979.  He and head Head David Byrne were very tight during this period so it's probably no coincidence that title track 'I Zimbra' features a lyric written by another Dadaist, (Hugo ball, this time).  The album is twitchy and rather paranoid in overall tone, showcasing Byrne's Art Geek schtick whilst capitalising on the band's inherent funk.

Postscript:

I've decided to scale down these monthly playlists for a while.  I enjoy writing them and music certainly remains intrinsic to my regular routines.  However, I fear they're tending to skate superficially over the surface of things, resorting to journalistic labelling and genre-fixation, rather than evoking the particular qualities of the actual music.  The comic captions may be getting out of hand too.  In the future I'll aim to write more subjectivity in fewer, but more in-depth, music-related posts; to get inside the music more and, (perhaps), just provide simple monthly lists as additional clues.