Monthly Archives: July 2014

AUDIOSCOPE – Music for a Good Home 3

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When you go to the Audioscope all-dayer and your eyes wander across the posters advertising Audioscope’s past, they soon snap into sharp focus at the names who’ve taken the closing slot over the years – names like:

Califone, Damo Suzuki (twice), Karma to Burn, Wire, Don Cabarello, Clinic, Deerhoof, Four Tet, Six By Seven.

Impressive, no? And that’s before you scan down to the other bands on those bills such as Arbouretum, Explosions in the Sky, Grumbling Fur, Nought and so on and on and on.

So while you marvel at that rock procession, you kick yourself for what you might have missed over the years. My big miss was NOT seeing Damo Suzuki in 2012, opting instead for an Oxford gig of ‘avant metal and free jazz, Black Sabbath meets Sun Ra’.

It wasn’t though. It was fucking earache. Attended by about 9 people. Worst of all, we couldn’t even leave because the venue was too small for a discreet exit: we were trapped. Trapped by metallic free jazz. By the set’s end, even the drummer sensed our escapist longing and rejected the band’s suggestion of an encore. SENSE PREVAILED. But he was overruled … and the band played on.

But let’s get back to the beauty of Audioscope. Once you get rid of the flashbacks and look around the event – now tucked upstairs at the Jericho Tavern – you again try and square it with the names on those posters.

How can an event that’s this unassuming, this low key, manage to bag bands of that stature year after year?

And yet, somehow, it does. That’s the magic. Punching well above its weight, Audioscope is surely the Bruce Lee of one-day festivals.

Now we have the latest Audioscope album, Music for a Good Home 3, and it’s an even bigger version of those live line-ups. A website link is on its way but first, check this for an opening one-two from the album:

Amon Tobin. John Parish.

Shit me, is that alone worth the price of entry or what??? Tobin’s cooling, gothic downbeats Twin-Peaking into Parish’s sliding Americana is as sublime a start as you could want, and it all ends 29 tracks later – yep, 31 tracks for a bargain 7 quid – with a ragged, 18-minute grope towards lo-fi salvation by Magik Markers, the spirit of Crazy Horse and Brain Donor infusing their tech-free reps.

Elsewhere on the record there’s a stack of goodness to digest. Grumbling Fur, Arbouretum’s David Heumann, Wolf People and Six by Seven count among the higher-profile bands, yet the pleasure of this expansive comp is unearthing the stuff you don’t know or haven’t heard. Karhide’s explosive chase/attack, Dirty Beaches’ beat-less drones and Barn Owl’s intense immersive swell are just a few new discoveries, for me at least, but that’s just the beginning. What about Danny Paul Grody’s timeless acoustic fingerpickings? Or Chrome Hoof’s eccentric precision metal?

Time to send you on your way, methinks – get the full listing for Audioscope: Music for a Good Home 3 right here and download the album. You’ll enrich your life and do your bit to help others too, because Audioscope’s proceeds go towards Shelter.

Then spread the word and tell your friends to buy it, ‘coz compilations this good really shouldn’t go unheard.

See Audioscope reviews for 2013, 2014 and 2015

Drudes, freaks and wolves

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The Arch Drude is back in the news – the book news. Fiction news, to be exact, coz he’s only gone and put out his new (and first) novel, One Three One, on Faber and Faber. He nipped in to Stuart Maconie’s Freakzone for a wee chat about it so go check the July 6th episode for a short interview and snatches of music from Neon Sardinia and Dayglo Maradona, just two of the book’s fictional-bands-real-music backstory.

And as if an interview wasn’t enough reason to tune in, check these amplifier-friendly arteests on that same show’s playlist:

  • Jex Thoth
  • Poino
  • Yes (new single!)
  • Brain Donor (a righteous My Pagan Ass, no less)
  • The Safety Fire (right-now prog)

Anything else to report and reveal from this surge of rock radio activity?

Only the promise of a Freakzone interview with Southern Lord’s WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM on Sunday

AND a 30-minute Cope mix on the Freakier Zone on Saturday.

Who needs the World Cup???

 

 

 

Glastonbury Saturday: Metallica

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Still got doubts?

Sure. Lee. Not.

Metallica headlined Glastonbury and did exactly what they had to do – pulled it off with a festival-friendly yet thrash-infected set drawing heavily on the Ride/Black albums, and at least one cut from every record bar Load (surprisingly) and St Anger (not at all surprisingly).

So we got Fade, Nothing, One, Sad But True, Roam, Cyanide, Master, Nothing Else Mutters, Unforgotten and tonnes more biggies. Highlights included Memory Remains, its croaking Marianne steamrollered by mass na-na-nana, and Whisky in the Jar … ‘COZ IT’S WHISKY IN THE JAR-O, innit? Those tunes don’t get as much of a look-in these days, now that Metallica have plumped for the Metal more than the Rock in their live outings, and this was the place to revive a couple of those looser jams. Even the too-familiar Enter Sandbags sounded fresh again – every fecker in the field knows it so when that choked intro finally frees the monster hook that broke the band and sold a million (or 30) black albums, the release was huge.

Seek and Destroy brings the show to an end and it’s a show which, for all of its faux controversial (but undeniably fun) talking points, entertained. Striding that stage with total confidence, Metallica grabbed the moment, worked it hard and got a win-win out of it, or so it seemed from the TV. And while there won’t be a metal slot every time – maybe a hard-rock flourish for a year or two? – the time was right and Metallica were definitely the right band to do it. AC/DC next year?

Robert Plant

Ahead of the night’s novelty-value shake-up, however, the man who brought the class and the Glastonbury spirit to Saturday’s Pyramid stage was – as ever – the peerless Robert Plant.

Mining a seam of west African swirl ‘n trance mixed with those deep-set rock and roll sensibilities, Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters put on a show beyond reproach. Dreamland and Mighty Rearranger tracks get aired, as do a couple of newies (check the Perry Farrell-meets-Afro Celt Sound System air of Little Maggie), as do Zep classics – reworked, of course. Black Dog, now in its third incarnation following Plant-Krauss’s spooky two-step swing, is a beguiling prospect as its dusty psychedelia morphs into desert rave. Fresh as the first time you heard it. So is Funny in My Mind, its street-tough rockabilly makeover far removed from Dreamland’s take on it. Superlative stuff.

And this is what sets Plant and his band(s) apart. The explorer, the music fan as music maker, it’s these reworkings that keep the songs not just alive but LIVING – they’re timeless and increasingly formless, shapeshifting their way into whichever space and spirit is called for. Jimmy Page might be the curator of Zeppelin’s material, but Plant’s the one giving it new life in a global sense. In his hands, Zeppelin music becomes the trad arr of the modern day, ready for reinterpretation by whomever.

Which I guess is where Zep and Plant started anyway. Bring on the new Space Shifters record, it’s surely gonna be a bit special.