Maserati - Inventions for the New Season (Temporary Residence)

Remastered, repackaged and reissued in splendid multicoloured vinyl, this 2007 album absolutely kicks it in terms of driving hard instrumental rock music. Starting off slow, first track 'Inventions' ushers in proceedings and then the motherfucker really takes off and continues rocking for the duration.

As previously mentioned in my last Maserati review, this band produce such exciting music that it's really difficult to merely listen to it passively - it makes you want to do stuff whilst it's playing. I downloaded the free mp3 and burnt it so that i could listen to it whilst driving and found it really hard to stop myself flooring it to keep up with the inducement of the music.

It goes 'bang bang bang bang dugga dugga dugga dugga wah wah wah wah' for about 45 minutes.....and then you play it again. And again.

It's THAT good.

Really. 

Coppice Halifax - High Hawaiian Fog (Wil Ru)

Coppice Halifax also records far more prolifically as Milieu - who I've got about 6-10 releases by, but this is a much bolder step. Yes, the ambient analog drifting is still very much in evidence but here he has added  exquisitely perfect  dub-techno rhythms to the music to produce a record coloured by such luminaries as Wolfgang Voight's 'Gas' albums - which is the highest of high praise from me.

Ambient dub has rarely sounded so engaging and so enjoyable and the six tracks here (plus the extra one on the free 3"CDR contained within) have caught me and captured my attention in a big way.  The sleevenotes on the rear of the sleeve capture the mood perfectly (albeit grammatically all over the place) - "Your heartbeat becomes a muted kickdrum, reverb trail off, and beat by beat, you returned to your comfy bedroom. Were you really here, all that time? Put the needle down, one more time, just to find out..."

Rrose x Bob Ostertag – Motormouth Variations (Sandwell District)

More Sandwell District excellence and more wrong speed twatishness - i played it at 45 for the first side and was a little bit daunted by the pumping banging techno pulsing out of my speakers. I then realised it was a 33 and it all made a lot more sense - being a mid paced lump of electronica pulled apart by the allegedly mysterious Rrose and then re-assembled into a great slice of hypnotic sinewaves and analog rhythms.

Intelligent techno seems like a patronising term for this type of music but it really fits the bill - the electronic music on these four sides sound sculptured rather than produced and it works as home listening music as well as (i imagine) sounding fucking HUGE over a club soundsystem.

Shit, it makes me want to go out clubbing again - and i haven't done that for years, but i'd be the one listening to the music and saying things like "wow it has a really raw hypnotic quality with those analog sounds and fine motorik rhythms" rather than necking a shitload of drugs and dancing like a cock, which would be a whole lot more fun.

The Horrors - Skying (XL)

Bought for a fiver in the HMV sale recently as i quite liked the 'Still Life' single with its early '80s gruff melodrama and, surprise surprise, this album continues the mood. In short, it sounds like Psychedelic Furs outtakes and is generally alright but nothing mind blowing. Damned with faint praise?

Yep.

Sigur Ros - Inni (Krunk)

Heavyweight package of 3 X 180gm LPs, 2 X CDs and a DVD of this well recorded live set. There's no surprises here  - it sounds like Sigur Ros playing songs that most people buying this will have already heard, in live versions not dissimilar to their studio originals. It's great because Sigur Ros are great - but the DVD is far more interesting than merely listening to the music, the scratchily artistic post-production visuals show off the band's filmic qualities and their astonishing live splendour. Not that you ever notice the fact that this was filmed live - the camera never swings around to show the audience, they're obviously not important to the whole package. Fair enough really - most fellow audience members annoy the tits off me as well, with their inane chatter, their endless filming of gigs on shitty phones and their very presence. Sorry, grumpy bastard alert.

Reigns: The Widow Blades (Monotreme)

Just look at that package above - black/white 180gm vinyl, gatefold sleeve, free CD and numbered  individual linocut - pretty fucking top stuff, graphically speaking.

And the music inside matches the spectacle of the wrapping. As usual with Reigns there is a backstory behind the songcycle (let's not use the word 'Concept' ok?) regarding a woman disappearing during a blizzard, and the lyrics all make sense once you ready the words - there is exceptional intelligence and care for detail here. Musically speaking, this is pretty stripped down stuff - focussing mostly on piano, acoustic guitar, subtle electronics and voice, all reverbed up, and the darkness of the mood is perfectly conveyed by this simple instrumentation. Best track is the near-instrumental sidelong closer 'The mounds' which starts quiwtly until motorik rhythms appear slowly and take over before spoken words close the track. A fine 16+ minutes and a fine album as well. Recommended for all fans of intelligent music and exciting concepts (oops).

Yves De Mey – Counting Triggers (Sandwell District)

Lovely looking double clear vinyl in black die-cut with a postcard giving the bear minimum of info. Minimalist beyond extreme so you get a picture of Eric instead a picture of a plain black sleeve. Sandwell District keep producing interesting electronic music - far beyond the confines of the Techno world they have been lumped in with. This release is a beautiful slice of experimental electronica which, occasionally reminds me of (at times) Autechre without the annoying bleeps and abstract rhythm shifts. It flows very well and, despite being experimental and also rather abstract, holds an interesting array of rhythms in order to make this enjoyable for both the electronica fans AND the more traditional techno fans. Not that you could dance to it, mind, a DJ wouldn't know what the hell to do with it. But it is this non-dance reliance that will give it a longevity far beyond the fashions and fads that rule dance music - and that's a real good thing.

Oh, and Sides A & D play at 33, whilst B & C play at 45. Which i've only just realised - having previously played the whole thing solely at 45. The ghost of John Peel smiles down upon me.

Low Point records - A multitude of releases

A couple of months ago there was a sale on whereby all vinyl at Low-Point - purveyors of the finest in drones and beyond - was half price. I duly contacted  label boss and musician Gareth Hardwick and purchased everything that i didn't already have - which was one big bastard of an order and one that i have been working through ever since, amongst all the other things that i've bought since. And now it's high time that i got my arse into gear and wrote about each and every record.

Kogumaza - S/T

Possibly the closest to rock music of all the records, though still a few hundred miles away, Kogumaza are 2 guitarists and a drummer playing meditative riffs and looped sounds with an occasional feeling of warped menace. Parts reminded me of  Ramleh and parts reminded me of Caspar Brotzmann - it's that relentless playing as if lost in their own world, like they would be doing this regardless of whether anybody is listening or not. This is to such an extent that I imagine that, if you unplugged them, they would still continue playing as the sounds they hear in their heads far outweigh the sounds they produce with their fingers. Occasionally the tracks drop right down to a feedback and effects created ambience - into an almost dubwise World, these pieces are as welcome as the noisier parts and create an excellent contrast whilst retaining the atmosphere and air of expectation. Glorious stuff.

Ex-Easter Island Head - Mallet Guitars One

A one sided 12" comprising 3 tracks played on 3 solid bodied guitars
by two blokes wielding percussion mallets beating out
interesting and evolving rhythms on said instruments. The
Rhythm patterns and the resonances produced by the
guitars make this utterly captivating and strangely compelling
in a hypnotic way. The obvious comparison would be
Steve Reich's 'Drumming' (no bad thing at all) but that
would be doing the originality of this release a disservice.
I await excitedly 'Mallet Guitars Two'.

  

Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek - Patina

Elegantly played drones, produced on guitars and electric sitar by Catlin and then reprocessed, reorganised and added to by Machinefabriek. The 2 side-long tracks give over a sense of time slowly unfolding and give me images of flowers opening and time lapsed recordings of the world moving at an almost unnoticeable pace. I have no idea why nature films have flooded my head but i really feel that this music would suit a 'Koyaanisqatsi' type of scenario, but a soundtrack to a World beginning rather than a World destroying itself. I love this record and wish it would go on forever, to soundtrack my life, i feel my life would be all the better and all the more peaceful for it.

Dag Rosenqvist & Simon Scott - Conformists

Apparently a soundtrack produced before the film was made, this is a darkly unsettling experiment into emotionally affecting dronescapes(does that word exist?) all submerged in a mud of sound to cause a claustrophobic feeling of fear and loss. At times completely devoid of light and at other times soothingly beautiful , these ten tracks ebb and flow their muddy way into the deepest reaches of your psyche. I know nothing about the film but i feel it could not be as affecting as this music alone and may even detract from the emotional state that this album causes you to inhabit. Which would be a shame, as i quite enjoy all these experiments in wrenching me out of my comfort zone - it keeps me interested in the future. 

Gareth Hardwick - Sunday Afternoon

Gareth Hardwick, the man whose impeccable taste (and keen pricing structure) brought all these wonderful pieces of music above to me, produced this 33 minute lilting harmonic experiment into other worldly drones on just one Lapsteel in one take. The subtle timbres and changes are often so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable until you become aware that they changed a short while ago - undulating softly as though affected by the air around you. There is much beauty here and astonishing restraint to produce something so subtly creative and slowly evolving. Music to drift away to in a dark void, uninterrupted by the idiosyncrasies, idioms and idiots of the World that surround you.

Little Roy: Battle for Seattle (Ark recordings)

I must admit that all the other reggae versions of rock bands have left me rather cold - i felt they added nothing new to the originals (few of which i cared about in the first place anyway) so the chances of this being any different were pretty slim. After hearing a couple of tracks online i became more intrigued so decided to take the chance and get the album, and fuck me did i make the right decision.

Little Roy and gang have turned these songs into something completely unprecedented - they actually sound like original reggae songs rather than covers, the lyrics fit the genre beautifully and the change in rhythms suit them perfectly. The Welson organ that is all over this album lends the whole thing a mellow roots feel and the horns inject life in all the right places. I knew these songs so well before hearing these versions that i thought it would be hard to mess with the memory but my perception has now been completely skewed and, as such, i will never hear the originals in the same way again. Recommended for reggae fans, non blinkered nirvana fans and just about everybody else.