Author Archives: kevinsmusicblog

Earth, Godflesh and a mint skirmish

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REWIND NOVEMBER

After all the live action and new discoveries from Audioscope, here’s a swift round-up of some new-ish listening from a couple of genre heavyweights.

When you find that Justin Broadrick and BC Green have revived Godflesh after more than 10 years apart and finally got some tunes to gift to the world, all you really wanna know is whether these morsels of new ‘flesh – a pre-album EP – are true to the big G’s legacy.

And, of course, they are. Decline & Fall is as Godflesh as you’d dare hope: four tracks of mechanised yet human heavy-industry beats, deep-stained by social decay, dereliction and absence – at least, that’s what comes to my mind (the true heirs to Sabbath?). Playing with Fire is an especially hope-less highlight in an EP that’s reassuringly stark and Godflesh pure, and all bodes well for A World Lit Only By Fire (in my tape deck – yep, cassette it is, why the bloody hell not? – awaiting a grim grey day for a first play).

Dylan Carlson’s posse seem to switch modes with almost every Earth record these days and they’ve done it again on Primitive and Deadly. Cello is out, big rock action is in, and it’s a beaut. Reviews have made reference to Pentastar: In the Style of Demons, and you can see why, but this record is way bigger. While Pentastar came out only three years after the radically insular Earth 2, Primitive comes off the back of all that AND Earth mk II – Hex, Bees, geophysical Americana, wilderness spirit, Angels I and II, drcarlsonalbion – and the five tracks swell to bursting with full-bodied rings, elemental drones and life-affirming amplification. Makes you feel good to be alive.

Right then. Who’s heard of Franklin Mint?

No, me neither, but a track of theirs (Emperor of Everything) got aired on 6 Music’s Freakzone the other week and I swear it coulda been fired out of the 90s on an Alternative Tentacle. Less hyper-maniacal than Nomeansno but channelling some of that restless post-hardcore prog-ness, these Bristol Misters impressed and could well be a name to check.

No such anonymity for David Bowie and the music world is a better place with him back in it. Bowie’s resurgence continues with new track Sue (or In a Season of Crime) – seven minutes of wired skittery jazz being chased down the lost highway to his boldest-sounding stuff since Outside and Earthling … and that is very much a Good Thing. More please, Mr Jones.

AUDIOSCOPE 2014

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Zero familiarity with any of this year’s line-up except New York’s junk electronic freakonauts Silver Apples means that Audioscope 2014 looks set to be a non-stop tale of the unexpected. Saturdays don’t get much better than this, and at 3.10 we see The Doomed Bird of Providence.

Let’s just repeat that name one more time: THE DOOMED BIRD OF PROVIDENCE.

Magnificent. Sounds like a bunch of Wheatsheaf-stained mantra-rock hairies, but they’re actually a septet of Oz/London (nick)cave-dwellers with a ramshackle line in Celt stomp and shanty swing. Take the hey-ho from Saint Nick’s Supernaturally, add a bit of Murder by Death and you might be somewhere near.

Earthling Society: with guitar trebled and wah-wahed to the max over blues-ish rhythm and cosmicspacerock keyboards, the Society open with their version of Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda and pitch themselves as a quintessential Audioscope band. Better when they ditch the vocals and just rock out, you can see why they supported Julian Cope circa Dark Orgasm – there’s more than a whiff of the Archdrude’s back-then penchant for guitar excess, not to mention Brain Donor’s chasmic numbskullery.

After a swift pint down at the Bookbinders, we get ready for Wrangler.

Who?

WRANGLER.

Who?

Stephen Mallinder from Cabaret Voltaire.

Shit, really??? Seminal name #1 of Audioscope 2014 then, and Wrangler do NOT disappoint. Retro-futurist industrial beats, dirty synths and near-dalek vocals make for a seedy brand of heavy electronica that’s got the Cabaret creep but with added rock-band thrust. Loud and ballsy, we like this lot. We like this lot A LOT. Audioscope 2014 is most definitely hotting up.

You Are Wolf cool the mood, but that’s a compliment … we are, quite simply, powerless to resist. Nothing like the ‘Bjork-does-folk’ tag in the programme, singer Kerry Andrew cuts a quietly captivating presence and compels everyone to listen – as in, really listen. With her storyteller’s charm and made-on-the-spot loops, and the band’s sparse yet experimental folk backdrop, you enter a world in every song. For the last track, she persuades everyone to join in (‘You’ve got to sing or it’ll be rubbish!’) while the loops build and build. You Are Wolf: biggest surprise of the day.

Telescopes up next. Big contrast and, once the initial thrill of high volume passes, big boredom. Telescopes are definitely louder and less tuneful than imagined, but all that early promise gets pissed away in their interminable search for a magic moment. Probably because they went up their own arse to look for it.

But no matter, that’s the fun of the fair, right? Some you get, some you don’t. Now it’s past 8pm and seminal name #2 is in the room:

JONNY GREENWOOD!

No, I mean SILVER APPLES!

But Jonny Greenwood IS here, such is Silver Apples’ revered status as electronic rock pioneers from way out left. And while no-one would dispute the timeless legacy of SA’s junk-lab space throb, tonight’s show is, in truth, a tribute to a once mighty force. Reduced volume robs the music of its disorienting power and carousel madness, and the sight of a slight (but sprightly) Simeon – born in 1938, go work it out – at the helm is nearly as weird as the music he makes. Still, the always-awesome Oscillation burns a killer earworm back into the head, and the man Simeon appears in fine fettle. Cheers to that, to long life, and to the very existence of their otherworldly oddness.

After the good-natured but muted Silver Apples, and the endless-aimless Telescopes, we’re in need of an action shot.

Matt Elliott, of Third Eye Foundation, is … not the guy to do it. Sorry. Just too slow, quiet and acoustic for this hour of the day, and we’re in danger of flagging. The yawning starts. Need a sit down. Back aches a bit. Only three things can save us: a blinder from Public Service Broadcasting (I’m not confident), a mini mince pie from the merchandise stand, and a massive bag of chips.

Pie (mince) and chips (loads) duly scoffed, we are upright and awake. Can the headliners deliver? For some people, PBS are THE reason for coming to Audioscope 2014. For others – me included – Silver Apples are/were the no-brainer attraction, and the fact that the room has emptied somewhat since Simeon/The Simeon departed kinda proves the point.

Jonny Greenwood has vanished.

But all caution is unfounded because Public Service Broadcasting deliver exactly the right kind of energy with tight guitar/banjo licks running over danceable moto beats and, of course, their public service films whizzing past in the background. For most of the set, I watch the band – all two of them – and let the films pass by without too much attention. For the last track, I watch the film – about people climbing Everest – and find that the music scores the drama spot-on. Is this true of every track? I should watch again.

Whether their film-nerd shtick has longevity is another matter, but tonight, Public Service Broadcasting put smiles on faces and prove themselves well worthy of top billing. Nice one.

And so ends another eclectic Audioscope: brilliant, again. Raising good money for Shelter, again. Now excuse me while I go play Wrangler’s LA Spark CD. Again.

 

Audioscope reviews of 2013 and 2015 here, and Audioscope’s Music for a Good Home 3 CD

 

 

HALLOWEEN: PARANOID AND NEGATIVE

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TYPE O NEGATIVE SLOW DOWN A SABBATH CLASSIC

Of all the seminal heavyweight scare-alls you could choose for a Halloween soundtrack, you’d be hard pushed to choose chillier than Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath – not just the slowest, most-ominous anti-groove put to tape at that point in heavy rock’s short history, but a track that’s got the imagery to match: the Hammer-horror dread that Ozzy conjures in your shitting-it mind and, of course, the spectral Presence on the album’s cover.

But despite all that, we’re not picking Black Sabbath the track for a Halloween playlist, not this year. 2014 belongs to PARANOID.

I’ve never much liked it.

Easily the least essential of Iommi and co’s anthems, it stands supremely un-tall against Sabba-manna like Wheels of Confusion, Fairies Wear Boots, Hole in the Sky and the like. No-one, surely no-one, would pick Paranoid’s pop-metal bounce ahead of any of those.

But what if it was slower – like, a LOT slower?

Or blacker – like, none-more-Tap blacker?

Or deader – like, graveyard undeader?

Cue Type O Negative.

If ever a band embodied the Halloween aesthetic and staked it with wry gallows’ humour, Type O are it. Halloween in Heaven, Black No.1, Bloody Kisses and All Hallows Eve are literal enough links but really, any track of theirs from Bloody Kisses onwards that’s not thrash-fast is pretty much game – Suspended in Dusk, Everyone I Love is Dead, Haunted, The Profit of Doom, take your pick. You get the gist.

But it’s the realm of the cover version that pulls everything together today. The band have got form in this area, lending the Negative touch to Neil Young, the Beatles, Hendrix and – most perversely/brilliantly – to 70s harmony-pop smash Summer Breeze, dragging the Seals and Crofts/Isley Brothers classic from sunshine floater to a slow-low-lower hot sticky trudge.

And so it is with Paranoid, stuck on the end of the faux-live pisstake Origin of the Feces.

Hypnosis-slow, lavishly arranged and knowingly soaked in trademark vampiric goth, Brooklyn’s least celebrated give Sabbath’s 3-minute chugger a makeover so total and so Type O that they absolutely own it: seven luxuriant minutes of pure Para-satisfaction, making it feel like the first time all over again.

Sneak a bit of Iron Man’s downward bender of a riff into the mid-section and you’ve not just got a top Sabbath tribute and a ‘ween classic for the rest of time.

You’ve got one of the best metal cover versions EVER.

*recorded in 1994, it’s 20 years cold!!!! Dig it out from post-94 issues of Origin of the Feces.

**for a few more soundtracks from the dark side, have a quick look at last year’s Halloween list

MONSTER MAGNET – Last Patrol

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I’ll admit that, before Last Patrol appeared last year, Monolithic Baby! was my last encounter with Wyndorf and co back in 2003. Good album, no question – Slut Machine, On the Verge and Radiation Day are proof enough of MM’s hard-rocking creds and quality – but by riding the Powertrip/God Says No slipstream again, its heavily anthemic bent feels like a further shift away from the psychedelic superhighs of Spine of God, Superjudge, Dopes to Infinity and, of course, the well-strung munt that is Tab 25*.

We’re missing a bit of out-there.

So, we (I) skip a couple of albums. Before you know it, 2013 rolls around with a new album on the Napalm Records label and somehow, the time feels right to revisit Planet Magnet. What’s different?

First, there’s the cover art: the bullgod is BACK.

Not the reductive bullgods of the past few albums but the shapeshifting cosmic fucking overlord bullgod, the big dude tipping an interstellar third-eye nod to those early 90s meisterworks. It’s an artwork, not a logo. Things are looking good.

And when I Live Behind the Clouds – Wyndorfian title or what? – opens the show, they sound even better. Lean and unhurried, it’s devoid of Monolithic’s leather-kecked arena-sized swagger, drawing instead from low-key wells like Zodiac Lung and Nod Scene’s quieter bits. Promising stuff, and track two – the title track – confirms it: we have an official Return to Form. Last Patrol (the track) is space-bound psyche done the Magnet way, its off-planet swirl and astral solos stretching out over 9 minutes of impending meltdown. Classic, vintage – and again, lean. Monolithic’s beefed production has been ditched in favour of those Stooges/Hawkwind roots, shot through with a real late 60s analogue vibe.

Last Patrol strikes me as the sound of a band at one with themselves. Not striving to be anything, not pandering to some caricature of what they should be, they just ARE. And they’re confident with it. Whether that’s down to long-term axe fella Ed Mundell’s exit, or some new level of personal insight opened up by Dave Wyndorf’s Mastermind-era health probs, who knows, but there’s a refinement and a sense of pacing here that makes Last Patrol work as a proper album, a real start-to-finish listening job. Stay Tuned, a sparse electro-acoustic brooder, closes the album like a cinematic fadeout – a space for actors to exit – and Three Kingfishers does cross-cultural fusion as though George Harrison just got back from India for the first time. Guitar-west meets sitar-east, shades of Electric Prunes hymnal psyche circa Mass in F Minor – yep, it’s THAT 60s. Then again, Kingfishers is a Donovan cover so whaddya expect? Either way, it’s Patrol perfect.

And all the while, you’re reminded of just how good a hard rock voice Dave Wyndorf actually has, his biker-outlaw charisma and friendly motherfuckercool lifted with a sky’s eye insight:

‘Brother, can you help me now

I feel my mind is drifting

Lost between the sacred grains of sand forever shifting’

– Mindless Ones, Last Patrol

Yep, I think we can say that the spirit of Monster Magnet has been revived – and about time. Last Patrol is a class act, so much so that it’s even got me round to plugging those 4-Way Diablo and Mastermind-sized holes in the collection. Welcome back guys, you’ve been missed.

STOP PRESS!!! I’ve just found out that Milking the Stars: a Re-imagining of Last Patrol is coming out in November. Good timing or what?

*a review I posted on Head Heritage a few years back

Mind the gap

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Mind the gap???? That’ll be the gap between posts … yeah, it hasn’t been the most productive of times amplifier-wise in the past couple of months, but I’m hoping to sort that in the autumn-to-winter weeks.

Maybe a short-and-dirty monthly round-up of some new listening/discoveries, plus back catalogue reviews of forgotten or revisited records from the 90s/00s.

And of course, a gig or two as and when they turn up.

In the meantime, how about a bit of Monster Magnet?

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.

Metallica v Glastonbury

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We’re 48 hours from Metallica’s Glastonbury headliner slot. CANNOT WAIT. It’s like those good old bad old days when you’d scrabble around for hard rock morsels on TOTP or the Chart Show and feel joyously stuffed by even the tiniest scrap of six-string riff action. Glastonbury has a big-time metal headliner for the first time and that has thrust a playful, us-versus-them underdog thing into the festival hype.

How are they gonna play it, though? I reckon they should cast off the speedier stuff they’ve been playing the past few years and show some Glasto-sized balls by turning out a kick-arse crowd-pleasing setlist. Be a festival band. Play the hits, pull a few groovers out of the Load/Reload bag, nail some Battery-like blitz to the masts and do a couple of classic home-crowd covers.

Yep, covers. How could that not work on Saturday night? Play the heritage card and win / kill ‘em all – Sabbath, Motorhead, Queen, Thin Lizzy, they’ve all made it onto Metallica records and any one of them would go down like cold scrumpy in a hundred-degree hell-hole.

As would Free Speech for the Dumb, come to think of it. What an opener THAT would be (thanks to Garage Inc., on the stereo right now, for the reminder). And for a wildcard cover idea, how about a sneaky quid on Smoke on the Water? Not only has it got mass singalong potential for any number of drunks and wasteds in Worthy Farm, but it’s a well-placed nod to Deep Purple’s influence on Metallica’s earliest roots too. Just a thought. What’s your wildcard bet?

Anyway, it’s nearly show time and, whatever happens, Metallica’s appointment has brought a bit of extra fizz to the top-slot debate (though if you want to read a less enthusiastic view, from a metalhead no less, check Dom Lawson’s bummer-mood piece ‘Another half-baked vanity project’ from the Guardian the other week – an astonishingly churlish, self-regarding glob of journalism. Have a look here).

I hope Metallica storm it on Saturday. And if they don’t … well, so fckn WHAT.

PULLED APART BY HORSES: live, Art Bar Oxford, April 2014

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Short, fast, sweaty and screamy. Four words that could mean anything (keep it to yourselves though, eh?) but here, in Oxford’s Art Bar, they mean only one thing – Pulled Apart By Horses are on stage and they’re scorching it.

‘Was that you? Did you just catch him? Good one. That’s the only reason we do this, you know … to watch you lot. I mean, we really like playing but we love watching you lot.’

So says guitarist James Brown after yet another bit of spectacular/drunken moshgymnastics takes the band’s pre-tour pledge ‘to get sweaty with you guys’ to new levels of body-slamming bonhomie. That’s what Pulled Apart By Horses do, see. Stoke the heat with their punk-edged multi-riff attack, flick a match and set the whole thing off. By the time V.E.N.O.M. sears the room three tracks in, it’s game over: PABH have won the night, somehow making everyone feel like they’re mates with the band. How? Is it the grounded banter? Or the jagged anthems and ferocious pace? Or the fact that the band are enjoying this every bit as much as we are, inviting the Art Bar mob to hang out and do some drinking after the gig?

It’s all of that. Pulled Apart By Horses sound viciously sharp on record but even then, you sense they can rip it up EVEN MORE when they nab a stage and have a few bodies to bounce off, and tonight proves it – they’re one of those bands you’ve just got to go and see live, simple as that. High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive is nuts, and when I Wanna Be Your Dog gets the Horses makeover ahead of a crowd-surfing ceiling-hanging finale from singer Tom Hudson, you can’t help thinking that Iggy himself would give ‘em the nod.

Riotous good fun and – most definitely – a real cool time.