The Plan B Diet, 29/08/07
One of the caffs on Plan B’s street offers a breakfast option called ‘Doctor Porridge’, but we don’t need that cos we got the new Shimmy Rivers And And Canal EP and it’s way better than cereal. It’s coffee! It’s going to work on an egg! It’s kind of YAY, basically: a four-track, self-titled thing that skronks and squawks inna communal fashion like The Ex or DNA or Silver Daggers, but with a very London-ish eccentricity and soul that comes to the fore in the friendly, generous vocals and casually woven-in melodies. Makes me think of parties, parks and bicycles; of talking a lot and staying up late and why everyone ought to have a band to be in. Here they are, look! Above is an act of vandalism they or maybe one of their rabid fans committed earlier this year, funnily enough just round the corner from our office.
The by-now obligatory listen to Dirty Projectors reveals that Rise Above is in no danger of losing its power to soothe, charm and generally awwwwwww the world around you into contrapuntal sweet-harmonied tricksy georgeousness, so I guess that means it’s a keeper.
If you’re looking for more African pop-inspired delicacies, you need to check out my friend AJ Holmes’ new album, out on Pingipung Records. There’s some tracks on the Pingipung site and on his Myspod, and they are sweet as. This guy is one of my favourite guitarists, channelling a love of Congolese, Nigerian and Sierra Leonian pop through a whimsical British songwriterly perspective, if you want it put all journalistic, like.
Then Louis came in and opened his parcel from Load records, the lucky sod, and put on a new album by Kites, which has the magic title of HALLUCINATION GUILLOTINE/FINAL WORSHIP. That’s what I call a fucking title. Anyway, it’s pretty great. It’s full of sounds that are bit like if someone was pushing a rainbow through chicken-wire and a lot of very sharp, staticky swooshes of noise, paper-cuts of distortion. I was convinced Kites was a Japanese musician, but Louis says not, so I guess it must just be that there’s a touch of Merzbow or Pain Jerk in there.
All day yesterday, pretty much, I mainlined both releases by Floridian ‘thunder pop’ (Rock Action website) or ‘bubblegum doom’ (my description) outfit Torche. This is mainly because I’ve been writing about them, but their s/t album has been on and off the stereo for months now. I wrote in an albums column a few issues back that it was: “a bumper dose of heavy orange sunshine, all rumbling grooves and vocals that spin out from hallucinatory bubblegum harmonies into discordant roars. If you’re feeling the recent No Age album, for example, Torche could be a good, heavier companion piece for the summer.” Now it’s autumn, and I’m still liking it a lot, now alongside new EP In Return. Heavy cosmic make-out music that’ll make all yr limbs glow: go on, let ‘em mentor you.
Les Savy Fav’s new one has also been on heavy rotation. It’s good, is why. But also it fits well with a work environment, kickstarting lazy brains into action. Best track on it, for me, is ‘Slugs In The Shrubs’, which is an angular, urgent beast with a whooping female backing vocal that sounds like Marnie Stern.
Back to the heavy stuff, an album by the wonderful Geoff Mullen arrived from Barge Recordings, whose great compilation Innature was where I first heard Mullen and I was so impressed, I…erm…wrote his name on a post-it, stuck it on the wall, resolved to track down everything he’d ever done and then proceeded not to get round to it for almost six months. I suck. The post-it is still there, along with the name Esplendor Geometrico who I think were a Spanish industrial band I was meaning to check out too. Anyway, Geoff Mullen makes fantastic guitar drone music with a sharp, reflective edge to it; music that sounds like the life of a building from blueprint to decay. The album is a double vinyl called Armory Radio, and is very limited, so please don’t be like me and wait around for six months with a post-it saying GEOFF MULLEN before you do something about it.
William Hooker’s album with Eyvind Kang and Bill Horist, The Seasons Fire, is on Important Records, which means it’s thoroughly righteous and looks beautiful too. We’re actually listening to it as I type this, and I don’t think it really works under office conditions when I can also hear a faint odour of the Jakobinarina album oozing from Everett’s headphones and kick talking to his heroes the Fiery Furnaces on the phone next door BUT it’s elegant as fuck: beautiful feathery drumming with mournful viola and guitar all meandering and watery. Lovely.
And how much do we love the Royal We album here at Plan B? Well, me and Everett, we love it quite a lot. I like the second and third tracks on it more than pretty much all the rest of them, I think, but it’s great: spirited, scrappy, sweet scratchy kitchen-sink charity-shop pop that speeds up and slows down and makes us all say “All Right!” is a silly voice. On Geographic records. Nice.
From nice, though, we swiftly return to the nasty, so there’s this band called Clockcleaner*, also on Load recs, whom we were liking rather a lot this morning, and I will leave you with the masterful Doug Mosurock’s assessment of their last album from Dusted - aaaaages ago, of course, because Doug is always way ahead of the game with this kinda thing.
* (NOT COCKCLEANER, FRANCES, CLOCKCLEANER WITH 2 Ls, OK?)
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by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
(2 Comments)
