Have been a more-than-moderate Telepathe zealot since we ran an intro to ‘em back in Feb ‘07, but they move slowly, creep like undergrowth, even - and it’s only now that an album is arising. ‘Sinister Militia’ (above) is an ‘07 single, and its slurring, landsick disconnects a good place to start. ‘Chrome’s On It’, below, shows how they’re developing - matching profound vocal drift to the wipe-clean urbanisms of hip-hop. New album produced by Dave Sitek, new single (’Devil’s Trident’), fearsome. More soon, for sure (oh, also: props to fingered for these - it’s a NYC DVD zine who kindly mail me issues, helpfully labelled with their name bold on the outside and probably convincing my postperson I am a knuckle-shuffler of great duration).
Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s headline slot at Glastonbury seems to have engendered a forest of high fives, and it makes me wonder if this is a (small) watershed. The sudden eruption of rockists surprised me, but it did feel a bit “daaaaad…” Anyway - link to H.O.V.’s hysterically clever ‘Wonderwall’ cover here, and the rest thereabouts…
Shd say, incidentally, that - although I bet it wd have been my highlight had I been there, accessing thru web activates my justified mistrust of rock-rap (or ‘organic’ instrumentation; gnash). The freestyles are nice, though - careering as they do between cocky rhetoric, emotional monologue and rise-to-the-occasion homily.
Posted
by kicking_k on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 (No Comments)
I’ve said it before and…you can finish that cliche yrself, my point is: if you still haven’t checked out Micachu (above) you are a victim of self-abuse (2xmeaning). Please do so ASAAAP (As Soon As As As Possible). I hear hectares of new music, most of which quickly proves not to be, really. She - and The Shapes - are definitely now, and maybe, next.
Less excitingly, wanted to dump a tombstone (there’s a visual image) to mark the doleful demise of Cutting Pink With Knives (who wrote a really happy-go-lucky tour diary in our current issue - what gave?) ‘Laser Hannon’, like being kicked in the face by an cool and ornate boot, below. Beyond that, well - at least Holy Roar continues…
Posted
by kicking_k on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 (No Comments)
Even those of you whose interest in hip-hop stretches to occasionally scolding popular artists for their conspicuous and elaborate tough/money/sex talk (three breaches of bourgeois etiquette) will probably have heard about Nas’ new album. Well, the first video is here, above, and it’s an eight-minute historical epic. By the time you’ve reached the chorus, Nas’ nerve in taking this stuff head on (and refusal to add in humour as distancing effect or safety valve) cdn’t be any more evident - it’s a direct challenge - catchy enough to sing along to - but will you?
The fact that Laurie Anderson week has thus far consisted of two posts, alpha-and-omega-style, shd be held against me rather than her. Maybe a Laurie Anderson week, like a light year, is a distance (how far our hero travels in seven days?) That seems appropriately oblique.
Anyway, today I wanted to alert you to the three of her albums you shd hear first, thereby beginning to convert all yr own waking hours into Laurie Anderson weeks (…as a state of mind?) Whatever - investigate the following…
Easily her best known redord, due to the presence of perhaps the least likely chart hit in UK history, make sure you also hear ‘From The Air’ (the most conceptually satisfying song I know: “This is the time/And this is the record of the time.”) ‘Let X=X’ is another favourite, represented here by an Eighties student video (mindlessly over-literal, but a likable vintage).
Bright Red, a collaboration with Brian Eno, is perhaps the most rigorous and austere of her records - pushing the use of pitch-shifted (and so, notionally male/female) voices into solo cross-examination. It feels neither as playful or populist as other releases, and consequently there’s a depth and darkness which comes to feel autobiographical. For all that, though, there’s also some of her most enduringly beautiful numbers - ‘World Without End’ has an epic grace (plz ignore the fanvid), and ‘Same Time Tomorrow’s immense power comes from restraint. Note: this version comes from…
Her best live document, the first I ever heard of her, and easily one of my favourite five albums ever. Essentially a spoken word performance, with traces of music, and fragments from across her career scattered through casually-delivered anecdotes. It changed the way I write.
Posted
by kicking_k on Friday, June 20th, 2008 (1 Comment)
For me, every week is Laurie Anderson week. For you, it’s this one right here.
I begin with “Language Is A Virus’ (above) because it’s a pretty good litmus for the the uninitiated. I have shown this video to many people in the hope that they will relate. Most don’t, really don’t. The best (most hurtful) response was (heavy paraphrase): “She says something clever-clever, does something surreal, has a bit of a dance. What’s the point?” To which there’s no real answer… Sometimes I point out that her dance partner at 2:00 is William S Burroughs, hence title (cue shrugs). No matter. For better or worse, I’m not sure you can talk floaters into this stuff. It feels pretty binary. You either light up with signal or get irritable.
Her spoken word, more discursively-conceptual side is represented by ‘Mach 20′, below. Pledge yr allegiance, opposition or confusion in the comments. More to follow.
Posted
by kicking_k on Monday, June 16th, 2008 (1 Comment)
What follows first ran in the magazine’s weekly beemail, along with listings, special offers etc - you can sign up here.
They have been making and swapping summer mixtapes on the Plan B forum. I did not join in - heat induces torpor, and pollen, mucus. But if I did…
Os Mutantes - Panis Et Circenses
What I like best about the clip above is the Manichean culture wars in the comments box between people who write “wtf is up wit the crowd? so miserable, lolz” and those who sweep in after saying “THEY WERE LIVING UNDER A DICTATORSHIP - PLEASE STUDY SOUTH AMERICAN POLITICS BEFORE POSTING”.
New Order - Perfect Kiss
Won’t embed, for some reason. Click! This isn’t the New Order track I’d put on my superfucking summer max-mix, but the video of the band layering up one of their epics in characteristically bashful fashion makes them seem even more titanic.
Loose Ends - Hangin’ On A String
Ok, so now we cool down with what is basically the audio equivalent of modish gourmet ice cream. Frictionless. I could write paragraphs on this song, but that would only be slowing you getting frosty cool over at the motherlode.
Dr. John - Danse Flambeau This is what I’ve been listening to at my desk when evening is finally arriving and - as heat and light recede - the immediate world becomes bearable again. I couldn’t find the particular song, but here’s a creepy alternative.
Hey Willpower - Double Fantasy II
If twee indie R&B (with extra cream) sounds like a bad (and perhaps suspicious) idea, well, it often is - but this is done right: camp, imperfect, kind of warmly dumb, but sincere enough to endear.
Paris - Bring It To Ya
This stone cold classic, meanwhile, takes the perfect tang of g-funk’s bass/synth combo and replaces slack gangsterism with a couple of fiercely smart blasts of righteous rhetoric. Be warned the (unofficial) video mostly consists of police brutality.
Droids - (Do You Have) The Force? Click it! Currently being sold by PRs as Daft Punk - from the Seventies, here’s this French Italo duo performing their biggest hit. It may well cause a disturbance in yr heart.
High Places - Jump In
Another casualty of Wordpress and YouTube’s trained relationship. Anyway, get past the muddyish beginning to where they play ‘Jump In’, a song they wrote for a local school. It’s like a tyre swing, or fireflies, or any one of those midsummer signifiers I’ve read about. Goooooooo allergens!
Posted
by kicking_k on Friday, June 13th, 2008 (No Comments)
Performing both sides of their debut single - the palindromic ‘Mirror Rim’, above - and ‘The Newlyweds’ Song’ below.
Back when I first interviewed them, last year, I asked if they’d seen the (german language) YouTube adaptation (in lego) of the novel their name is lifted from. They said they preferred the Fassbinder version.
Posted
by kicking_k on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 (No Comments)
Almost super weekend funtime. Here are two singles that didn’t make it to singles club.
Pivot - In The Blood (Warp)
Everett: “The first band ever signed to Warp without being seen live by co-founder Steve Beckett”…I’m not sure why this is a recommendation.
Kick: Warp are really casting out in search of new ’sonic terrain’. away from their IDMy rep.
Jesse: It’s quite masterful so far, innit? I’d play this during The Act.
Kick: Only if it was someone you didn’t know very well. Not for conception.
Louis: I listened to this four times yesterday and it slid off my brain every time. I am trying. It’s likethe incidental music in Terminator - except jammy!
Kick: Yeah, like publishing yr notebook or whatever.
Everett: Nice lack of vox. especially as it keeps threatening to break out.
Louis: If I was Steve Beckett i think I’d like to see them live - I have no idea how they might look.
Jesse: It makes some sort of weird sense. It’s a jam, but not a mush.
Everett: Yeah, this would rock live.
Louis: So in summary: synths, sinister, slightly post-rocky, skronky guitar, not going anywhere in particular but doing it with a certain elan.
Jesse: It’s two terminators in The Act only then the baby is born immediately out of some robot channel and it’s a pod and this is also the soundtrack of its birth.
Kick: And then they cut its head off and use it as a battery.
Their video was supposed to go here, but it won’t embed. Here instead.
Navvy - Robot (Angular Recording)
Everett: Mates of The Long Blondes…
Louis: Let’s stop! Let’s start! Let’s play cowbell!
Everett: I blame Bis. They made it ok for indie kids to shout like grown-ups.
Kick: Can’t really imagine these guys and the Long Blondes, except perhaps as warring neighbours.
Jesse: Sub-voidoids.
Everett: Long Blondes really like this kinda music. All their supports are like this. No competition, y’see?
Jesse: Can anyone hear what he’s saying? I’m a bit close.
Everett: I’M A ROBOT (at a guess).
Kick: This isn’t what robots sound like.
Jesse: “You’re easy to turn off!” (That’s what he said).
Everett: The drums suck. Not the cowbell - cowbell always rules. Just the drums
Kick: Robots wd consider this fleshy and inefficient.
Jesse: Yeah, the drums are a bit…basic.
Everett: I consider robots cold and inhuman.
Posted
by kicking_k on Friday, June 6th, 2008 (No Comments)
It’s Tuesday, the least inspiring day of the week, and so here is some starfuel for that condensed galaxy in yr cranium, courtesy of debonair strategist, Brian Eno. Shd you need more stimulation to eke you through yr own midweek purgatory, here he talks in America, about America, and then how music experienced a state change in the last 100 years (also: “A lot of works are produced in a peculiar mental condition…which I call ‘idiot glee’.”
Lastly, although this shd only be attempted by those of you with a fully-functioning conceptual digestive system, I very much like the mining of meets which took place when said wizard conspired with Paul Morley.
Posted
by kicking_k on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 (No Comments)
Maxxed out on words yesterday, so this time I’ma let the embedded media do most of the talking. Consider it a round-up of stuff from May’s issue I didn’t get round to mentioning - until now. Above, The New Bloods’ ‘Doubles’.
Next, Envy’s debut, ‘Tongue-Twister’ (note there’s also a making of video here).
My favourite moment in this all-conquering performance from Rolo Tomassi is 1:01, when their confrere in front row turns to camera and demonstrates approval via face. Seems a meme waiting to happen - live shows shrunk to become the backdrop to reaction shots - subliminal heckling cd follow.
