Category Archives: MONTHLY REWIND

Ear-catching new tracks from the past month

DRUDE FONK AND DC TRIBUTES

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MARCH REWIND: NEW COPE, NEW CRYSTAL

A couple of new releases from the past month or so to get us going in this March Rewind.

Julian Cope: Rite At Ya

Julian Cope: Rite At Ya

Cope: Rite on

Coming off the back of Drunken Songs, the Archdrude and his heritage Heads slipped another mind-number of a Rite-off our way this month… Rite At Ya. The last one, in 2006, was Rite Bastard. If you don’t know the Rite score, it’s an ongoing series of semi-fonk longflows in a metronomic, ultra pared vein where Not Much Happens except groove – minimal – and time – maximal. These self-styled meditational headspaces have no peaks, dips, breakdowns or pick-ups, just endless miles of sly stone-wheel trundle and tangerine dreams. Rite at Ya’s title track will nibble 20 minutes of your life without you even noticing, while the closing Ringed Hills of Ver tells you what Underworld might sound like if they got stuck on a one-note drone and added nothing. Rite on the level, the clue’s in the subtitle: Monotonous Meditations from the Back of Beyond (1993–2016). Check it here if you so fancy the most calming of trips.

Crystal Fairy: Crystal Fairy

Crystal Fairy

Pure cut

Does this band pack some crackle or what? With Teri Gender Bender on voice – shades of Karen O – atop King Buzzo’s heavy weaponry and, of course, the Dale Melvin Omar Volta Rhythm Section, Crystal Fairy are surely as pure a super-quart as we’re gonna get all year. Undeniably Melvins in its riffsome tonnage, as Drugs on the Bus and Secret Agent Rat amply show, yet concise and sharp and free of obtuse indulgence, Crystal Fairy flies with a punkish energy that wastes absolutely none of its 40 minutes 19 seconds. Another great Melvins rebirth… one for senile animal lovers.

RSD10

It’s the 10th anniversary of Record Store Day this month. Here’s the list. Nothing. Crucial. Except Dope, maybe. Think I’ll give up on hoping for something to come out of these lists every year, coz every year it feels like a list of specials that are special because they were made special for an event that was labelled special. How circular. Let’s just get down to the record shop, that beacon of noise and beauty and community, and CELEBRATE IT – the shop – both with and without RSD vy-nil. 

DC tribute

Which musical DC are we paying tribute to, Washington? Nah. Other end of the alphabet. Last week’s gig was an AC/DC tribute – the AC/DC Experience at the Oxford O2.

‘tribute band’. Right…

The tribute circuit always seemed to me to be a credibility-sapping Other World that ran parallel to the real one, but that thought was banished and swapped for a full-blown leap (to be explained) through a lightning-bolt portal to an AC/DC experience, tribute style. And you know what? These guys are a blast. The Scott-Johnson frontman hits the highs with ease while an Angus Young takes himself off the stage at every chance – in the crowd, up on the side tables, up on the bar, cap and blazer thrown off, the whole lot. Never stops moving, never stops playing either.

With the exception of Thunderstruck (which is awesome, natch), none of the set is more recent than Back in Black so it’s wall-to-stage-to-bar-to-wall classic-era anthems: Sin City, Whole Lotta Rosie, Highway to Hell, Back in Black, Hell’s Bells, Dirty Deeds, Touch Too Much, High Voltage…. the stuff that puts smiles on everyone’s faces, and I mean everyone – including my stepson Jan (age 12), who is the reason we are here in the first place. His First Rock Gig, first proper bit of live rock action. Seemed to me to be the right place to start the apprenticeship and he loved every minute. Even got devil horns in his face from the Angus – and threw them right back. Not gonna get that at Wembley, are you?

So if you’ve got young sons, daughters, nieces and nephews who wanna rock, or maybe even a bunch of drunk mates who wanna rock, the AC/DC Experience make it happen. THANKS LADS, great night.

’til next time!

 

COPELESS IN CARDIFF

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FEBRUARY REWIND: LOST GIGS, THRASHERS’ ROMANCE AND BOWIE’S LAST PLAN

Beer-fuelled tunes, trusty mellotron, acoustic guitar – possibly some lurid shade of green or orange – and piss-funny visionary tales from a shamanic rock-onteur perma-decked in shades n’ leathers with lashings of YEAH MAN! optimismo…that’s what you’re heading for when you get a ticket for J Cope 2017. Out on tour in support of Drunken Songs, he’s wrapping it all up at the Globe in Cardiff on Feb 26, which is where we find ourselves reading a just-posted note that sez NO GIG.

Shit.

And without the Archdrude on stage, there’s not much else to report from February. Let’s hope all is well in the Cope camp.

LOVING THE DISEASE

When did you last hear Caught in a Mosh on daytime radio? Never? Then treat yourself to a nice little old-school buzz with Mark Radcliffe’s Valentine Day show with Scott Ian and Frank Bello. Top fellas, ace chat, find it at 1 hour 35 minutes into the show, listen on a weekday afternoon for max pleasure (expires March 14th). Death Angel, Pantera, Sepultura and Slayer also played, as are Powermad – straight outta 1989, vintage frash par excellence.

NO PLAN FOR BOWIE

The last tracks recorded by David Bowie finally got their non-Lazarus physical release this month. No Plan, Killing a Little Time and When I Met You all follow the Blackstar vibe, and Killing… is especially turbulent – heavy like the reworked Sue. What an ending.

Otherwise, it was Drore and OHHMS blowing out the Cellar that was the Oxford highlight and we’ve already covered the gig, so that’s it for now – a very short REWIND, time to get outta here.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

PIGS, OHHMS, FAIRIES AND BEER

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JANUARY REWIND: NEW HEAVIES FOR 2017

Been a busy month for new discoveries so excuse the gush of these short sharp first impressions but they’ve given January a bit of a jump start, y’ know? A frisson for the short freeze.

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGSthe-wizard-and-the-seven-swines

Pigs. One pigs is not enough (grammar violation overruled) for some people, which is how you end up with Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs as a band handle. Doesn’t look quite so bad when written down here, but when you’re scanning the DAB text scroll to catch the name of the band whose rough-arsed rollock has fully pricked your ears, it’s an infinite porker drag. What the fissing puck is all this pigs shit???

Worth the wait though, so it’s a big snouty thanks to Gideon Coe for playing whatever the track was in the first place, because without that introductory exposure to pigsx7, I’d have been forever deprived of The Wizard and the Seven Swines, their 22-minute one-tracker from 2013. Does Fugazi ire, Sleep heft and Thee Oh Sees scorch tease thy aggro-prog garage psyche cravings? Then check the Pigs, meet The Wizard and keep all ears peeled for new album  Feed the Rats.

HEAVY RESISTANCE: OHHMS

You know how some stuff, when you first hear it, is so massive and all-enveloping that it begs, nay commands, you to drop down for heavy duty worship to the Rok Godz?

OHHMS is that stuff. Long swollen subterranean Yob-bery that peddles a mainline in transcendent rifferolla, the Bloom/Cold EPs add up to a massive 60+ minutes for four just tracks – go for the total immersion entry point of The Anchor and see if you ain’t sold on Cold. New album on the way, and Jeezus HC only knows how The Cellar is gonna contain their oversized moltenalia when they hit Oxford on February 13th. CANNOT WAIT. Support comes from Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, by the way.

TWO MELS, A GENDER BENDER AND A MAN FROM MARS

Melvins have been obscenely collaborative in recent years, and now they’ve got another ID on the go though it’s not under the Melvins banner. Nope, the Buzz n Dale show have hooked it up with Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Teri Gender Bender to form Crystal Fairy, and if the album is anything like the tracks played by Henry Rollins on his Iggy Pop 6 Music sit-in then it’s gonna be tight like (a) Senile Animal. Album due out v soon on Ipecac.

ALCO POP: BEER-FUELLED DRUDENESS

The return! Of the former Lord Yatesbury! Yep, Julian Cope is BACK with a new album: Drunken Songs, a record celebrating Cope’s official embarkation on a Beer Trip that was launched in Armenia a few years back. W-anchored at the back by an oversized Road to Tralee and inspired in part by the funeral song that Cope wrote for himself – As the Beer Flows Over Me, first appearing on Psychedelic Revolution but rerecorded here – Drunken Songs finds the Drude in light mood musically, all mellotron-ic melody and Black Sheep-ish acoustica. He’s on tour as well so don’t miss this highly focused rambling, man – see you in Cardiff for that one.

ADAMS UN-AMPED

Finally, Do you still love me? by Ryan Adams – ace acoustic-only tuneage, nailing that gentle downer vibe.

’til next time!

2016: the worst, the best

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Festive salutations and a happy new year!

Hope the bigfella Claus delivered the goodies, but whatever delights came spilling out of his magic sack, 2016 was a tough gig. What a remorseless cull of rock and pop names, and it didn’t even break for xmas – George Michael on Christmas Day, Rick Parfitt on December 23rd. Surely there’s got to be a little bit o’ room for a little bit of Quo in everyone’s collection, so how about spinning a handful of harder-rocking SQ to celebrate Parfitt and keep the party going at the 12 bar, even if it’s only in your head? Mystery Song, Don’t Drive My Car, Over the Edge and Is There a Better Way will all do the trick.

So, another bit of chat about the music events and highs of 2016? We’ll list a few, right after the shortest of December Rewinds.

REZNOR’S RETURN

Nine Inch Nails came back in recorded form with a new EP. Not the Actual Events appeared earlier in December and a first listen to Burning Bright (Fields on Fire) shows Reznor and soundtracker-turned-bandmate Atticus Ross on slow-grinding, doomy form. More to follow in 2017?

SHOCK of the year

David Bowie. Not over that one, even a year later, and Blackstar is still a difficult listen. The upcoming new Five Years documentary in January will no doubt be the most fascinating, and the most emotionally-charged, of the lot as it covers his last years.

TRACK of the year

OK, so the track came out in 2015, but Bowie’s Blackstar is a highlight for ANY year, as is the re-tooled Sue (Or in a Season of Crime). Iggy’s American Valhalla and Nick Cave’s Anthrocene are right up there for edgy atmos. And for something more manic, Spit Out the Bone is on heavy rotation over here too – fast and melodic Metallica with Hetfield in his most convincingly aggressive voice since the Black Album.

MISS of the year

As in, a gig on your doorstep that you really should have gone to. And in Oxford a few weeks ago, that was Primal Scream. Why a no go? Fear of too much Moving On Up and Rocks and Country Girl, not enough Vanishing Point Xtrmntr Evil Heat aggro. What did they play? Moving, Rocks, Country, but also Accelerator, Shoot Speed/Kill Light, Swastika Eyes and Kill All Hippies. ‘KIN ELL… ludacris decision making on my part. Kiran Leonard also a bad miss.

LUCKY MISS of the year

As in, a gig on your doorstep by a band you don’t know but, coz of who’s involved, you’ve got innerest piqued. Step forward Honky, the band of Butthole Surfers and Melvins bassist Jeff Pinkus. Check the music online – not great. Reject gig. Wonder if gig ended up being one of those ‘should have been there’ moments. Check trusted review source (Nightshift page 10). It wasn’t.

NEW SOUNDS of the year

Still getting into these new-to-me discoveries, but semi industrial groove psyche dealers Blackash from Birmingham and Belgian avant noise punks Raketkanon are doing the job nicely, as are Blackstar band leader Donny McCaslin – beefy modern jazz with a drummer who absolutely kills it – and downbeat electroni-cists worriedaboutsatan, who also have their music making its mark in Adam Curtis’s HyperNormalisation. Lofty company for the satanworrieds. Three Trapped Tigers and The Comet is Coming brought explosive prog math and Heliocentrics-fuelled heavy beats jazz-ish respectively.

ALBUM of the year

The old guard put out a lot of great great stuff this year, and the top 3 are linked by maturity, mortality and death: Bowie, Iggy and Nick Cave reached new highs in heavy themes, and Blackstar is the peak. Once January 10th revealed its scalp,  Blackstar became forever more than just a record.

Others: FUCKINGMETALLICA, Mogwai, Melvins, Crippled Black Phoenix, Kandodo and McBain, Cult of Luna w/Julie Christmas, Thee Oh Sees

PRINCE of the year

Prince. ‘nuff said. Check this clip, worship non religiously, then get a music fanatic’s view of Prince’s passing from Henry Rollins in what is one of his best LA Weekly missives of the year.

FISHY MEDIA FEATURE of the year

Did you see this feature in the Guardian back in the summer? Fishbone. Yes, Fishbone. Why??? Don’t know. But if, like me, you never got round to actually buying their albums when Swim and Freddie’s Dead and Everyday Sunshine were doing the rounds, here’s the prompt you need to pick up The Reality of My Surroundings and Give a Monkey a Brain…. the only downside is the 20-odd years without these phenomenal heavy funk rock ska metal explosions tripping out the (monkey?) brain.

BIG 3 AT 30 of the year

Three of the Big Four put out their meisterworks thirty years ago: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, 1986. Anthrax shunted Among the Living out a few months later, in 1987… heady days for head bangers, right?  Some, if not all, are ingrained so deep that we don’t even need to press play, but when DID you last press play and listen to Master of Puppets, Peace Sells and Reign in Blood end to end?

There’s nothing to say about Puppets. It’s pretty much perfect and reveals much less on a new listen, precisely because it was THE album of that bunch. Some say it needs a remix but nah, leave it – keep the mud on. Peace Sells and Reign in Blood can still bring surprises, though. With possibly the best opening track of any major thrash record, Megadeth’s #2 sounds even more accomplished today, and you can feel the chaos darkening the vibe. As for Reign in Blood, this is still the anomaly because it’s the least metal of the classics…way more disturbing and a truly diabolical force summoned in 28 possessed minutes. Still deadly.

Happy new year, have a great start to 2017. ‘til next time!

WASPs and tigers

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NOVEMBER REWIND: TWO-SPEED PSYCHE, MISSED GIGS AND A MIGHTY RETURN

John Peel: a man known for speed. How many times did we hear him get it wrong on a record, sometimes even sticking with wRongPM coz it sounded better? (if it sounds right, it can’t be wrong .. right?). Easily done. Not being schooled in the drumnbass arts meself, but tempted by a gnarly guitary Temper Temper collab with Gallagher Noel and the whole Goldie/Bowie thing, I jumped in and bought Goldie‘s 4-record Saturnz Return when it came out. Side 1 sounded OK but a bit off, but side 2’s Chico – Death of a Rock Star was way better, all mid-tempo breakbeating attitude and heavy on-the-level groove. Nice. Before even playing the rest of the album, I stuck that track on a tape I was finishing for a mate at work.

But Saturnz Return is a 45RPM record set, innit?

Which I learned soon after, but not soon enough to recall the tape (sorry Steve) and its revolutionary cock up. Still, it never did Peel any harm and anyway, Chico does sound pretty good on 33 (honest) so give it a go sometime, but flick the speed switch before the Bowie-sung Truth groans into half life – a downer on a good day, it’s last-breath deathly on the slowdown. 

NEW-ISH NOISES

All of this is a long way of introducing a record that you CANNOT play at the wrong speed because it’s been created to be played at both: Lost Chants by Kandodo McBain. The McBain is John, ex Monster Magnet, Kandodo is three bods from The Heads, and with this double-speed set-up we get two albums from the same set of instrumentals. The 45 version has track titles like Blowed Out, Holy Syke and Chant of the Ever Circling (Last Vulture), and their 33 equivalents are Really Blown Out, Holiest Syke and Chant of the Ever So Slowly Circling (Last Vulture). Even with the revs set to 45, Lost Chants ain’t the freak-frazzle burnout you might have expected from Heads mainstays – nah, this is a mellower kinda flow with overlapping waves of guitars… echoes of Hendrix Ladyland 1983/Moon Turn the Tide, Earth Pentastar, Julian Cope s.t.a.r.c.a.r., Carlton Melton, maybe even a less-fucked Tab by McBain’s magnetic ex. Guitar loaded without being riff heavy.

Three Trapped Tigers landed in Oxford in Nov and bugger me if there was no way of making it  – mildly gutting, but the Silent Earthling CD from Truck Store was some consolation and these instrumentals are definitely NOT Kandodo McBain high-plane drifters. Mathprog for the dance tent is what it is, all firecracker percussion and Battles/65daysofstatic/Aphex disorder with a Big Synth overload, and as right-now a production as you can imagine.

NO-DIOSCOPE

What were you doing on November 4th? Stacking up credibility points at Audioscope’s annual mindbender the day after Three Trapped Tigers?

Not me. Couldn’t make it this year, so while James Sedwards was no doubt killing it at Audioscope with Nought, I was doing the next best thing:

listening to WASP.

Ahem. But fuckityes, why not??? Blame Scream Until You Like It from the Hairy Halloween playlister – enjoyed revisiting that vid way too much, then wondered what happened to one of THE names of 80s metal: WASP, those crasser-dirtier-wronger descendants of Alice Cooper, the high-profile enemy of the State c/o PMRC. The Headless Children was my last brush with the Law-less way back in ’89, and that album – especially side 1 – is one whose lost-to-the-era greatness I’ll propagate to anyone anywhere. The Heretic (the Lost Child) and Thunderhead are metal classics in every sense and proof that WASP were capable of more than just fire-ejaculating sawblade codpieces…

…weren’t they? And so, after late night sampling, a WASP purchase was made just 27 years after the last one – KFD, aka Kill Fuck Die. ’tis a killer (WASP’s heaviest?) and blasts hard, taking you to a time when peeled-off solos by caricature heroes (Chris Holmes on this one) were the norm. Check the drum attack and the so-very WASP hook on Killahead … man, that track’s got some fury.

HARDWIRING

Back to 2016, but with another bunch of veterans with 80s roots: Metallica. In what seems to be even more controversial a move than getting haircuts or working with Lou Reed, they’ve gone and made a record that their fans* actually like!!!! Or at least, don’t hate. Yet. Maybe. Happy(ish) Metallica fans, the thing that should not be…who woulda thought? Still getting into Hardwired meself (also reopening tonnes of other ‘tallica sounds, as you do), but they’re the band of the moment and will be for a while yet. I really don’t get the level of criticism thrown their way, but more on the meninblack another day.

’til next time! 

(Monster Magnet Tab review posted on Head Heritage 2004)

*loose definition

One More Time With Feeling

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SEPTEMBER REWIND: NEW NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, AND GAME OVER FOR UNDERSMILE

September 2016 was Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds month. Not for the first time this year, loss has dominated a new work by a major rock artist who, it seems crass to say, can be trusted to handle it with honesty and grace.

One More Time With Feeling, the black and white film documenting the making of Skeleton Tree, showed at Oxford’s Phoenix Picturehouse as part of a national screening the night before the album’s release. And as you’d expect, given the circumstances, it’s an intense, almost physically emotional viewing experience. You watch Nick Cave’s disorientation, bewilderment and scatter-brain distraction as he talks around What Happened, while he and the band somehow piece the album together in the WH aftermath.

Skeleton Tree provides the film’s axial structure, its spine. Each track is performed in the order it appears on the album, interspersed with interview cuts – in taxis, hotel rooms, studio, performance space, office – with Cave, with his wife, with the Bad Seeds. Then there is Cave’s inner voice too, dropping in a first-person narrative flecked with self doubt, notes (“I must remember to be kind”) and deprecating humour.

Cave looks tired. The music is anything but. Weighty yes, but weary? No. Jesus Alone, the first track to be aired from the album, crackles with hypnotic spook while Girl in Amber drifts in and out of time. Anthrocene, meanwhile, is organic, scratchy, night-time glitchy – shades of Radiohead? – right up there with Cave’s latter-day best, and though it’s early days, there’s a touch of Blackstar in the way this album makes you feel: infrequent listens will go a long way. A week after the film, I played Skeleton Tree – side 1 one night, side 2 another – and each time I just stood and watched the vinyl while fragments from the film ran through my head, putting faces into and onto the music. Skeleton Tree might be ambient, pushing the quieter moods from Push the Sky Away, but it is not background. Too compelling. But again, it’s early days and no doubt there is more to be revealed with future plays.

Leaving the cinema on September 8th was a slow, dazed, contemplative drift back into the temporarily inconsequential, and if you’ve lost someone then One More Time With Feeling will bring it right back. It is a draining film to watch, but funny – sometimes – and poignant too; Arthur’s twin Earl appears, and Cave and wife Susie Bick say that they are ‘making the decision to be happy’, to care for each other and everyone around. 

Where does Nick Cave go next? Change was one of his themes in the film – the fact that, after trauma, you are changed on the inside, but the world outside isn’t. How does Cave the storyteller, Cave the live performer, carry on while carrying Arthur’s absence? Things must change… because Cave is forever changed.

Undersmile over

Just read in Nightshift mag that Undersmile, one of THEE heaviest of bands not just from the Oxford area but from any area any fckn where, have split. Not sure what that means for Coma Wall (good for autumn listening, by the way), but half of the band are carrying on in true drudge dread style with new band Drore.

’til next time!

Rockaway Oxford

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REWIND AUGUST: FIRST-CLASS FAIR, HARD-WIRED METALLICA

Bored with browsing worn old classics at record fairs? OK, we know that’s never true, but if you want a record fair with new-new vinyl (Aphex Twin Cheetah) as well as the old old, DO NOT MISS the next Rockaway record fair when it comes to Oxford. I went on July 30, thinking it was the usual fair in a different location, and left the place wishing it wasn’t so long ’til the next one. Mint, new and recent rock, metal and punk selections like Ty Segall, Carcass, Fu Manchu, Monster Magnet, Candlemass and Napalm Death made for a browse that dug deeper than yer average, and all genres looked well served. The next Rockaway fair in Oxford is November 26th, check their facebook thing for updates.

New old-sounds from way out

Did you catch Julian Cope’s 6 Music psyche-out? What a stellar double-hour – nothing current, all late 60s distortion and garage savagery. Most disturbing? Kim Fowley. Most welcome reminder of lost genius? The Misunderstood. Most flat-out mesmerising? Savage Rose’s A Trial in Our Native Town… recorded in 1968??? NO WAAAAAY. Doom-psyche witchafunkadelica via The United States of America, it sounds like it was recorded tomorrow. Don’t know how the rest of their stuff stacks up but have a go at A Trial… and see what you feel.

For new sounds with ancient resonance, check Hypnopazuzu, the new Tibet ‘n Youth movement between the Current 93 and Killing Joke luminaries. Freakzone played The Crow at Play and it’s a hypnotic, sweeping summoning from somewhere beyond. F-zone interview with David Tibet and Youth this weekend.

The last word

Metallica, Hardwired, new album soon, new track now. Hearing the news from out of nowhere put a buzz into breakfast that Friday morn, as did Hardwired itself. Very much in the Death Magnetic slipstream (My Apocalypse chopped with a Metal Militia fragment, right?) but slashed to less than four minutes, it’s gonna be a gig anthem for sure – in your face, no reinvention, no depth, pure pace and fury, a 2016 headliner of a headbanger. Don’t analyse it, just HAVE IT. 

’til next time!

(br)Exit music

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REWIND JUNE: ENDUM BLUES + ROLLINS ON AIR

Revolution blues? No way is this a revolution, despite some claims. No, it’s the referendum blues and we got a nasty, nauseous dose, but surely no such shitefest a title as Referendum Blues actually exists in song form so we might as well just stumble On the Beach, shakey and shaken, for a ditch-weary Revolution Blues by that man Young: sinister and unsettling, yet musically pure-as.

And while we’re rejecting faux claims, what about the Far-Age call for a brexit independence day? Independence from what, a consensual union that we signed up for? Fuckwit. There was an independence day this week though, and it’s an obvious thing to do but sometimes you gotta be obvious to banish the loony tunes and KEEP SANE… leap to the Superunknown and take in that low-end 4th of July chug. Soundgarden, yes. Music always wins.

Anyway… we need (a) soul to lift sunken spirits. But who?

HENRY ROLLINS, ON UK RADIO. Sitting in for Jarvis Cocker on the 6 Music Sunday Service for four weeks, he’s as pure an example of a music obsessive as you’re likely to hear and he’s got the tunes to back it up. Guerilla Toss, Ngozi Family, Soccer Team… who are these bands? And why do they all sound like they could be your new favourites??? Of course, Rollins has his inside-the-biz stories, but he also knows when he knows nothing, and it’s that counterbalance, that utter helplessness in the face of mind-blowing music, that make for some vital radio listening. You might still be able to catch a couple of episodes on the iplayer.

DSC_0427

Rollins tracklist: old school iplayer

Right, time to get outta this short late unravelled-by-brexit Rewind. Could have said a few words about a new Melvins album, Three Men and a Baby – as satisfyingly warped-heavy as only Melvins know how – but, as of last week, it’s not the new Melvins album any more, is it? Basses Loaded just came out. Looks like Melvins will figure pretty heavily in the next few weeks.

’til next time!

 

POP LEGENDS + POP’S LEGEND

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REWIND MAY: SHOULD YOU SEE YOUR CHILDHOOD MUSIC HERO ON TOUR?  

The Music You Leave Behind – that’s P-music, right? Pop music. But eventually, you become old enough to know better than to leave it behind because everything comes back around anyway. But when there’s a pop star – OK, the pop star – from your youth, the one you first really got into, on tour playing THE album, do you go? Do you shell out for the live senior version or just stick with album youth version? Dunno dunno dunno, so to delay things further we’ll hop to another kind of pop: Iggy.

He was on these shores the other week and if you’ve seen any clips from his current tour, you’ll see a man who looks like he’s fighting the limitations of his own body and yet, when he’s let loose near a stage, he still can’t fucking stop himself, even at this late hour in life. Crowd surf at the Albert Hall, was it? His gigs are one-man war zones, yet the reason Iggy’s out there at all – maybe for the last time, who knows? – is Post Pop Depression, and now that we’ve had two whole months to live with it, we can say for sure how great a record it is. When he hooked up with Homme last year, he can’t have known about Bowie’s accelerating endtime – not really – but in a Blackstar world, Post Pop Depression seems to know, seems to tell, seems to share. Something. About finality? Perhaps. PPD is ghostly, though deserted rather than haunted…a slow erosion, a fading print. Still got an edge though, and what makes it work is a band who feel the space (desert influence?) and play with and around it with a richness that Iggy’s solo voice – the post-confrontation, post-exposure, post-Stooges voice – finally deserves.

Anyway, back to that other kind of pop: music. Not because Duran Duran hit Oxford for the Common People festival on Saturday (even though they did), but because ADAM ANT is in town next week, playing Kings of the Wild Frontier. To go or not to go?

Sir Adam of Ant is my pop idol #1, much like it sounds like he was for Alexis Petridis in this feature,  though surely the headline overstates things a bit – if Adam Ant redefined pop, where were the colonies of Ant-alikes? However, he did own the charts and he did it with a style and a soundclash that was all his own, as did Frankie Goes to Hollywood a couple of years later. They put out albums that STILL sound brash, brave and brilliantly flawed today.

(for the record: have just put Kings of the Wild Frontier on – side 2, track 1. Completely proves the point. Now going full white-stripe for Ants Invasion, Killer in the Home, Dog Eat Dog…).

Can Adam Ant 2016 enhance the perfection trapped in those records, tapes and childhood memories? Or is it a gig best left alone?

’til next time!

Status update, Friday 3rd: ticket bought. Who am I to resist? CAN. NOT. WAIT.

RSD and a royal RIP

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REWIND APRIL: store bores, faith no mores and Prince

Record Store Day came and went, as it does at this time of year. Did you go?

Me too. Did you buy?

Me too. Did you buy any specials?

Nope. Had a half-hearted peep over the shoulders of the eager while quickly tuning out (you’ll see why) of a conversational pissing contest next to the RSD vinyl display (where else?) about the bassist in (wait for it) Hot Chip (told you). Do they have a bassist? Maybe it was someone else in Hot Chip. Or a different band that also has a bassist. Either way, big points were being scored in this rally of Geek Pingpong in Pseud’s Corner, but over in the Business As Motherfucking Usual section – used metal, since you ask – there were a brace of bargainous pickings from the scrap yard: Soilent Green and End of Level Boss. Top stuff, weighty. Nothing to do with the day itself but still, Truck Store had a buzz and a body count and that’s what matters.

Where do you stand on Mike Patton? Depends how annoying you think he is, I guess – windpipe? Testicular area? – but in last month’s Rewind we pointed to the Many Many Bands of Mike Patton on ye ole digital wireless. Drawling John Doran of Quietus fame was Maconie’s guide through some of Patton’s adventures and Mr Bungle, Fantomas, Dillinger Escape Plan and Faith No More themselves got their magnificent selves duly played, but the bestestweirdestexcitingest track of the show – and this is coz I’ve never heard it – was from Patton’s 1997 Pranzo Oltranzista album. With John Zorn and Marc Ribot on there, you know it’s gonna be avant, and with Patton free of band constraints, you know it’s gonna be based on Futurist Cookbook by Filippo Marinnetti. Don’t you? Er, no. Me neither.

Couldn’t help but pick up on a sniffy attitude towards Faith No More from Doran though, and it’s a sniffy that Maconie seems to share. ‘Bro-style rapping’? Records that were ‘overproduced for the day and sound terrible now’??? Surely that puts way too much weight on That Track and views the whole Patton era through an Epic filter, which is precisely how FNM fans don’t see it… well, not me anyway. Epic was always the anomaly. Get some Caffeine.

But at least Patton and co are still with us, which is more than we can now say about the sudden lonely passing of pop’s last great muso megastar, Prince. I’m not a fan, but I wish I was – and by that, I mean I never got round to cherry-picking the vast Prince vaults for the guitarfunkenrock end of his infinite jams, so I guess the discovery starts now. 3121 – the sole Prince album in the collection so far – has been a worthy replay of late; beyond the too-lightweight tracks you get multi-layered gems like 3121‘s slinky throb, Black Sweat‘s falsetto funk-industrial, and a heavy dancefloor strut n’ tease by way of Love.

While this space is not going to be an ongoing tribute to musicians who pass, we have to acknowledge that 2016 has been a shocker for rock departures. Lemmy left us last year, but only just last year, and so we sign off this month with three shades of greatness in one snap:

 lemmy bowie prince

’til next time!