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?)
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 (2 Comments)
High On Fire have posted a new track from their forthcoming album, Death Is This Communion, on their Myspace so that we can all get bloodthirstily excited about it from now til September, when it’s out on Relapse.
I’ve heard some other bits too, and it’s MEATY. As befits production by Jack Endino, there’s more of a grain to it than usual, a deeper kind of fibre, and it’s pretty sweet, even via Myspace. In some ways I’m missing the weird white-hot woundupness of their usual sound, but am coming round to this bigger, more sinewy manifestation - especially as far as the drums are concerned.
They’re coming over to the UK in September, and if you haven’t seen them play live yet it might be a good idea if you did. No one rocks the vest’n'boat shoes look quite like Matt Pike.
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 (1 Comment)
It’s deadline weekend for Plan B, so, true to form, someone’s booked us to play some music. This keeps happening! I’m not complaining, though. Come see us and all these other awesome people vibrating the Vice pub for the good of humanity, or at least the people who go to the Vice pub.
Also some great stuff at the Pleasure Unit pub on Bethnal Green Road earlier in the day.
TWO SHOWS! ONE DAY! TEN BANDS!
Both happening on Sunday July 22nd.
HUSH ARBORS
Keith Wood aka Hush Arbors is straight outta Virginia, US and a long-time member of Sunburned Hand of the Man alongside his solo psych-folk explorations. Also regularly collaborates with Wooden Wand, Six Organs of Admittance and Current 93.
SHARRON KRAUS
Sometime Oxford, sometime Philadelphia resident Sharron Kraus gives us her incredible dark folk that draws comparisons with Shirley Collins and Anne Briggs, two artists who, like Sharron, have been released on the Bo Weavil label.
ALEX NEILSON
Alex Neilson gives us his unaccompanied solo vocal set of traditional and old-time songs. Neilson’s committed passion for British folk music as well as his deep involvement in the world of free music gives heavy weight to these classic songs.
JOANNE ROBERTSON
Visual artist / musician Joanne Robertson has collaborated with David Cunningham and has a forthcoming album out on Textile Records. Currently showing at the Nog Gallery on Brick Lane is her co-curated exhibition (with Byron Coley) Hot For Teacher. It’s great.
TOM JAMES SCOTT
Tom James Scott is a solo guitarist and sometime member of weirdo-improv rock duo Clunes. His own style is very much centred in minimalist solo acoustic guitar and there is a forthcoming CD album on Bo Weavil in the works.
Pleasure Unit, Bethnal Green Road, London
2.30pm, four pounds
tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/19601
then later (a ten minute walk away)…
SUNROOF!
Sunroof! is the one of the latest manifestations of sonic beauty and oblivion from guitarist Matthew Bower, longtime champion of the UK experimental noise scene, best known as Skullflower’s guiding light and for his work with Total, Ramleh, Hototogisu and Sunlayer.
DIRECTING HAND
Directing Hand is the project of Glasgow-based Alex Neilson, member of Taurpis Tula, Scatter and Tight Meat Trio. Neilson is firmly at the core of free music in the UK and beyond, playing and recording with Jandek, Will Oldham, MV/EE, Richard Youngs and plenty more besides. This particular show will be a drum/vox duo of Alex and vocalist Vinnie Blackwall.
CHORA
Chora have recently relocated from Nottingham to London and deliver glorious psych-drones / vocal whitewash. Impending releases on Chocolate Monk, Gold Soundz, Curor and Utech.
MORGEN UND NITE
High-end oscillations low-end interference nothing in the middle holy fucking extremes one guitar two synths twenty pedals telepathy divided by C sharp equals bastard radiophonic blues offspring of Richard Pinhas and Eliane Radigue equals Morgen Und Nite equals INFINITY.
PARTING THE WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES
PTWHMOBS is Pascal Nichols of Stuckometer and Kelly Jones of Cooper-Jones, who promise flute / drum / vocal meltdown.
Old Blue Last, London
8pm, six pounds
tickets: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/19602
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 (No Comments)
On the 7th of July, Boredoms got 77 drummers together to play 77 Boa Drum in Brooklyn Bridge Park. There’s about a million clips of it on Youtube but this is my favourite so far because the sound isn’t too awful and the first few minutes is just footage of the sky.
What an amazing day out. I wish I’d been there.
Here’s the link in case the youtube thing doesn’t work.
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 (1 Comment)
I’m still processing the fact that I saw Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, William Parker and Tony Oxley playing together on the same stage last night, at the Royal Festival Hall. It was the kind of show it’s hard to write about because there was just so much happening, at all times, even in the pauses, the quiet moments, something was always happening, something was always in the air, passed around between the musicians and never dropped.
Although the group playing was incredible, one of the highlights for me was a solo set by William Parker — wasn’t expecting it, for a start. I don’t know how long he played for: time kind of folded in on itself, the way it does when music really forces you into its space rather than making its way into yours. After the rolling, multi-hued sounds of Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley’s opening set and before the all-out brilliance of the full band, this was an interlude of weird, stark power. Parker stood with his head bent and face obscured by a cap: big, anonymous and uncompromising. Rumbles of noise, harmonics like burnished blades, every stroke of the bow pulling the sound together into an almost visible, albeit abstract, skeleton. And these moments of sweetness that spiralled out of the heavy structure like voices, tremulous and plaintive. And I couldn’t move. It felt good to sit that still, to let my mind out of its loops for a minute and into some kind of fierce peace.
And Cecil Taylor, I swear he’s made out of spider-silk or rubber-tree bark. Wrists like snakes, fingers seemingly drawing the notes out from the keys, not striking them in. Piano as fast-moving water, not static percussion.
It was very hard to write about. I mean, it is very hard to write about.
Luckily, Plan B jazz gent Daniel Spicer was also there, so I’m sure he’ll have something more proper to say about it, which you may be able to read in the next Plan B or on this site. And if you want to hear the concert, it’s going to be on Radio 3 on Friday evening.
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Monday, July 9th, 2007 (3 Comments)
My muse is shot to shit at the moment, derailed into submission/autopilot by heavy psychic damage and domestic bad vibes, so I’m determined - perversely - to start blogging again just to kick it back into its previous healthy shape. Fuck it, you know?
To start with, here’s an extract from something my good friend Dr Wommm wrote after the Ramleh gig we went to last week. I think he may have a point. In fact, I’m sure of it - much as I love a good knee-trembler of a bass frequency and have been known to throw myself at a cavernous drone, chasing the high end of noise-based music is one of the great pain-pleasures in life, as is trying to sing the ever-ascending theme of Morricone’s ‘Vergogna Schifosi’ and ending up dizzy, knowing you’ll admit defeat before the singer’s even got halfway to her peak and not really caring. Onwards, as they say, and most definitely upwards.
Those skull-ringing harmonics that most players roll off, deeming them too harsh or cutting, just too fucking much, are the essence of real sonic psychedelia for me, ‘cos they’re the frequencies which really disorientate and fool the ear, which change the sound so drastically when you move yr head an inch in any direction, which make yr fillings rattle, make the top of yr skull vibrate like a coked-up throat singer whistling through their brainpan, make you feel ecstatic one moment, confused and agitated the the next. Especially with judicious use of phase effects, the treble is the key to yr unmind.
Have composers throughout history called for a bass or a baritone when they wanted to give a feeling of the other? Nope, they called on the services of the castrati, or (particularly in these more apparently enlightened times), the countertenor. At the other extreme, what instrument, in the soundtrack of an otherwise trite and tacky 50s B-movie, has ever provoked the feeling of cosmic unease like the high warbling glissandi of the theremin? Or listen to Hermann’s score for Psycho, or Sala’s trautonium on the soundtrack to The Birds, Hitchcock understood.
Hope to see you at this. It will be cool. I just saw Peter Wright and Birchville Cat Motel playing in London, just a few hours ago, and can confirm that they were both doing some awesome rumbling thrumming soaring fluttering gorgeous sick shimmery harsh noise bliss beauty, and are likely to do so again at the w/end.
Get there early and say hi to Morgen und Nite too - I’m the one on the floor with the synths.
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Friday, January 5th, 2007 (No Comments)
If you’re feeling a little guilty about the amount of time you spend on Youtube watching pandas sneezing or Mike Patton laughing at Wolfmother or whatever, here’s something a bit more edifying.
I only found this site last night, and already it has blown my mind. Just look at this list! And - although I don’t want to tell you what to watch, because there’s so much here - I’d advise you click on Charlemagne Palestine’s Island Song. Give it a few minutes to get going. At first, it’s just a camera strapped to a motorcyle veering down the empty streets of a monochrome seaside town with a guy growling and exclaiming to himself as he swings around corners and past holiday cottages. Then - it’s still that. It continues to be that. But as the film progresses you hear Palestine’s voice smooth out and extend, until the growls have become drones, harmonising with the whirr and buzz of the motorcycle engine, and then full-throated hollers that soar over the thrum of the machinery, part prison work-song or yodel, part hymn to motion. But before it gets too blissed, the uneasy rider intersperses the singing with a chant of “gotta get outta here…gotta get away…” It’s funny, simple, completely un-self conscious and a really awesome realization of what the mind does when the body’s moving really fast: a layer of transcendent calm disrupted by everyday loops of stress and need. The houses are left behind; we follow the motorcycle’s jerky progress to the cliffs. The film ends looking out across the sea, Palestine singing along with a distant foghorn and the hiss of the waves.
The film stuff’s only part of the site - there are also tons of brilliant MP3s and even, you know, things to read. It is amazing. Get addicted. Watch some Maya Deren. If you want funny stuff involving animals, there’s an MP3 of Marcel Broodthaers interviewing a cat somewhere which made me do a laugh even though I’m not sure how the cat feels about it all.
Posted
by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 (2 Comments)
