Hometown Hatred |
Tremors, new punk-fucking-rock band fronted by ex-Dirty Money man Graham Sale. Getting real.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK – MEZZANINE |
I have been housebound this week. Inertia crept over me, spreading from my sprained and swollen knee. Over the past few days I have found trip-hop an appropriate companion (pardon the pun). Thirteen years ago, genre-definers and directors, Massive Attack, re-emerged with a defiant change in direction and released the stunning, ‘Mezzanine’.
Their new path went vertical. From the very beginning, with the introduction of ‘Angel’, we climb up and up and then remain high in a dark swirling cloud for the remainder of the album, still intensely engaging with the sounds of the underground, heads rolling all the while. There is an anticipatory atmosphere, yet each sound is clear and grabbing of our concentration in that present moment, whilst we are simultaneously transported somewhere slightly spiritual. This is all down to the marrying of exquisite production and perfectly portrayed emotion, coming from the collaborations of band old-timers, like Robert Del Naja and Horace Andy, along with the unparalleled Elizabeth Fraser, previously of Cocteau Twins. ‘Teardrop’, one of the group’s most recognized creations, is one of those subtly epic songs that slowly take you over. While the creation was happening, Fraser learned of her ex-partner Jeff Buckley’s death, making the song one about him, for her at least. This loss does nothing but add to the ever morphing halcyon and storm of this album.
It is Fraser’s heavenly vocals that help place this Massive Attack album in a different league, above the rest. She brings something to the sound that feels like it was missing all along, never taking all the attention, always beautifully blending. The instrumentals get dense, they sometimes verge on frightening, but Fraser’s voice is dropped in and ripples through often enough for this to be intriguing and not negatively overwhelming. This juxtaposition is Mezzanine’s core and makes it a flourishing whole.
Vermillion Vortex |
At a recent talk at the ICA John Russell described the need for artworks to construct disruptive experiential languages capable of inducing mobilising and political effects. As a suitable case in point his recent film Vermillion Vortex, commissioned for the November 2010 issue of Art Review, could undoubtedly be described as a deviously engineered example of such a vision.
Loosely adhering to the narrative arc of a caravan manufacturer’s mental disintegration the film follows his journey into an atomising spiral of destruction and rebirth. In tandem the supporting cast of characters present a mirror world of consumer desires, decaying dreams and social paranoia. Woven together with a poetic crudeness characteristic of much of Russell’s work, a ‘so wrong that it’s right’ faery factory, the film generates a contorted inner logic that channels an underlying ghastly seductive power. This accelerating climate of unease forms the framework for what it is under the bonnet an essay, in its most otherworldly form, on media, capital and faith.
At the heart of the film sits the question of personal and collective belief, and its roll as the binding agent in a complex array of fragile interacting systems that comprise 21st century social, economic and political reality. Intriguingly unlike many contemporary artists Russell demonstrates no concerns with adopting religious iconography, irreverently melding themes of Christian damnation with the high drama of Lovecraftian cosmic terror. Seemingly anything and everything being fair game for this suburban cut ‘n’ paste horror show.
The soundtrack features immersive contributions from New York filmmaker Rose Kallal and London noise mongerers Gum Takes Tooth, though equally insightful is the inclusion of edits from Polish psyche auteur Andrei Zulawski. With this in mind Vermillion Vortex comes across like a DIY rendition of his cult 80’s psychodrama Possession airlifted from Kreuzberg to Surrey.
off modern 17/2/11 |
The first Off Modern of 2011 returns to Corsica Studios.
LIVE:
D/R/U/G/S are certainly proving themselves to be intoxicating and highly addictive.
Read an interview we conducted with them here.
Sunny, layered pop from the Jonquil frontman whose new project is in no way related to the central African republic of the same name.
DJS:
BRAINS (PAUL B DAVIS)
MILO (THE BIG PINK)
SAMMY SEVEN (S.C.U.M.)
PALACE WAYWARDS BOYS CHOIR
+ Our Residents TOMFOOLERY & NASTY MCQUAID
—————————————————
+ In the Gallery:
‘Stly3dd&Acc3z’ by Henry Mackay-Bull
—————————————————
Thursday February 17th
Corsica Studios, Unit 4/5 Elephant Road
Elephant and Castle
LONDON SE17 1LB
£5 ALL NIGHT
9pm – 3am
flyer image – ICAFM
OM MIX 004: HACKMAN |
Typical Hackman. Somehow the twenty-one your old producer manages to communicate his own sound in this 30 minutes of perfectly mixed pre-releases which all walk a tightrope between sexy nineties house, UK Funky, garage and dubstep. We’re really chuffed to have this mix from one of the UK’s most talked about young producers and it’s a sign of things to come for this mix series, watch this space.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Meg Woof’s Album of the Week |
Mezzanine
I have been housebound this week. Inertia crept over me, spreading from my sprained and swollen knee. Over the past few days I have found trip-hop an appropriate companion (pardon the pun). Thirteen years ago, genre-definers and directors, Massive Attack, re-emerged with a defiant change in direction and released the stunning, ‘Mezzanine’.
Their new path went vertical. From the very beginning, with the introduction of ‘Angel’, we climb up and up and then remain high in a dark swirling cloud for the remainder of the album, still intensely engaging with the sounds of the underground, heads rolling all the while. There is an anticipatory atmosphere, yet each sound is clear and grabbing of our concentration in that present moment, whilst we are simultaneously transported somewhere slightly spiritual. This is all down to the marrying of exquisite production and perfectly portrayed emotion, coming from the collaborations of band old-timers, like Robert Del Naja and Horace Andy, along with the unparalleled Elizabeth Fraser, previously of Cocteau Twins. ‘Teardrop’, one of the group’s most recognized creations, is one of those subtly epic songs that slowly take you over. While the creation was happening, Fraser learned of her ex-partner Jeff Buckley’s death, making the song one about him, for her at least. This loss does nothing but add to the ever morphing halcyon and storm of this album.
It is Fraser’s heavenly vocals that help place this Massive Attack album in a different league, above the rest. She brings something to the sound that feels like it was missing all along, never taking all the attention, always beautifully blending. The instrumentals get dense, they sometimes verge on frightening, but Fraser’s voice is dropped in and ripples through often enough for this to be intriguing and not negatively overwhelming. This juxtaposition is Mezzanine’s core and makes it a flourishing whole.
Massive Attack – Teardrop (Live)
————–
Hats
Monday gone was Blue Monday, an apparently excusably depressing day, the supposed most depressing one of the year, no less. This dictated national gloominess lacks romance. The Blue Nile do not, and I have been listening to them all week. The masterfully melancholic trio gave us ‘Hats’ in 1989.
It is important to know that ‘Hats’ is the end product of almost six years of striving and effort. In between the previous (and great) LP, ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ and this one, the band completed a whole other, only to scrap it all. This fact gives this album such a weight, each song the end of a line that was hard to walk. All Paul Buchanan and company’s agitation and frustration still audibly surrounds the tracks, yet leaves well alone their resulting perfect, absolute authenticity; really the most important thing in any kind of artful creation, and, well, in life.
As well as being beautifully sounding, it is an album with a beautiful aura. It calls out for a mood and it brings images to mind. Painted pictures by Edward Hopper, cinematic scenes of Blade Runner’s Deckard strolling through San Francisco, lonely men in the night time. All the songs are of a love, a mostly sad one that is brooded over in the dark. So overwhelming is this melodic story-telling, that even if you’re not in a state of desperate blues, you want to be and you try your very best to be, remembering when you were, magically letting it wash over you again. This feeling is constructed through various means, notably the steady repetition of specific words. But there is no notion of manipulation here, the words (such as ‘love’, ‘night’, ‘lights’ and ‘it’s alright’) are being repeated throughout because they are honestly what occupies the protagonist’s mind, and they flow freely, simply, yet painfully in the most romantic and human of ways.
The Blue Nile – From A Late Night Train
———-
Led Zeppelin IV
Yesterday, the nominations were released for the 2011 instalment of the Brit Awards. I’m not sure how much credibility the ceremony still holds these days, nevertheless it’s always interesting to see how the industry chooses to both direct audiences and recognize artists at these given opportunities. Nearly 40 years after the release of this album of the week, its vocalist Robert Plant is nominated for Best British Male Solo Artist…
The officially untitled Led Zeppelin IV would receive the best album accolade from most fans of the band. Here, the four members combine honesty, folk and rock, not to mention some the best technical performances of their careers, into their fourth long player release. The absence of a name and the four mysterious symbols embellishing the artwork is emblematic of the band’s undaunted and unconcerned attitude towards their critics of that time.
The songs of Led Zeppelin deserve associations with words like alchemy and synergy. The mystic and spirituality of their sound give their acts of writing and playing together the feel and weight of a thousand year old chemical reaction, the result of which can sell over twenty million copies worldwide.
This combination and subsequent outcome is never plainer to hear than in the album’s stand out track, Stairway To Heaven. Known for their chromatic steps, here, Plant’s words and Page’s ascending and descending fingers conjure images of a chromium staircase, which we fly up and up, whilst listening to one of the best rock songs of all time. A lengthy number, there are times when the music dictates we take a pause. When we reach two minutes and fourteen seconds, a moment is created (similar to the one at three minutes and twelve seconds into Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’), as a guitar is strummed in such a way that lovely endorphins feel free to walk around inside you. With the introduction of percussionist John Bonham at 4.18, they march. And after Page’s amazing solo, at around 6.45, when Plant starts to scream, they’re exploding.
After the Stairway there’s the Misty Mountain Top, which is totally grooving. Before, the psychedelic, folky Battle of Evermore, caused by lonely, lonely, lonely Rock and Roll. I hope you take time to listen to it all, step by step in the right order. For a quick fix right now, here is a song of hope.
Led Zeppelin – Stairway To Heaven (Live)
———-
Tin Drum
Off Modern’s first album of the week marks the end of a life. With news of bassist Mick Karn’s passing, it’s safe to say that fans of Japan will be reaching for their records, ready for an extra-special spin. Here we celebrate the band’s fifth, final and breakthrough album, Tin Drum; eight tracks of oriental post-punk poetry released in 1981.
Although the band formed in lovely Catford, it was the Eastern world that fascinated them and which they made constant reference to in topic and sound, no more so than in Tin Drum. Though ever-present (see band name), the association never seems to get tacky; humanity, modernity and good music are of equal weight.
The album is a neatly packaged showcase of intricate and complicated rhythmical composition, which still manages to sound understated, effortless and even improvised in parts (especially the flangey, fretless basslines of Karn). The lush synths and David Sylvian’s croons both contrast and marry with the startling rhythm section, a relationship which is mirrored when describing Japan more generally; they are definitely one of those bands who manage to successfully create and then keep a feeling of intensity through both constraint and liberation. Intelligent structures that let emotional, space-age melodies run around inside them, like all good songs should. Watch and listen to the minimal and oh so beautiful track ‘Ghosts’. Rest in the cosmic balance easy, Mick Karn.
Album Of The Week – Hats |
Monday gone was Blue Monday, an apparently excusably depressing day, the supposed most depressing one of the year, no less. This dictated national gloominess lacks romance. The Blue Nile do not, and I have been listening to them all week. The masterfully melancholic trio gave us ‘Hats’ in 1989.
It is important to know that ‘Hats’ is the end product of almost six years of striving and effort. In between the previous (and great) LP, ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ and this one, the band completed a whole other, only to scrap it all. This fact gives this album such a weight, each song the end of a line that was hard to walk. All Paul Buchanan and company’s agitation and frustration still audibly surrounds the tracks, yet leaves well alone their resulting perfect, absolute authenticity; really the most important thing in any kind of artful creation, and, well, in life.
As well as being beautifully sounding, it is an album with a beautiful aura. It calls out for a mood and it brings images to mind. Painted pictures by Edward Hopper, cinematic scenes of Blade Runner’s Deckard strolling through San Francisco, lonely men in the night time. All the songs are of a love, a mostly sad one that is brooded over in the dark. So overwhelming is this melodic story-telling, that even if you’re not in a state of desperate blues, you want to be and you try your very best to be, remembering when you were, magically letting it wash over you again. This feeling is constructed through various means, notably the steady repetition of specific words. But there is no notion of manipulation here, the words (such as ‘love’, ‘night’, ‘lights’ and ‘it’s alright’) are being repeated throughout because they are honestly what occupies the protagonist’s mind, and they flow freely, simply, yet painfully in the most romantic and human of ways.
Up and Down |
This is Koreless, an 18 year old Glaswegian producer who is making some incredible music. Some of you might have been lucky enough to catch him at the last Off Modern of 2010, if not I urge you to listen to his track ‘Up Down Up Down’ below and follow him here. Goodnight & Godbless.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Dispatches: #1 + #1a |
In the last few days esteemed internet music mags Dummy and No Pain In Pop both have gone down, this is sad, sad news. Especially as the first Dispatch Mix we did for Dummy had just gone up. You can download two different versions of it here though. Come back soon guys.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Descent Of Life |
Descend upon the Art Work Space on Thursday night for an exhibition opening of otherworldly designs. ‘Descent of Life‘ is the well-deserved debut solo show from Camberwell College of The Arts graduate, Katie Brookes. Influenced by Flemish Renaissance artists, these impressively complex drawings are heavily and hellishly existential and erotic, yet light-hearted and graceful. They will surely draw the viewer right down into their deep warrens, whilst creepily hanging next to one-another with their quiet, all-knowing prophecies. Fall in and find out, 20th January 6.30pm-12am, and then until the 18th February. Plenty of time before they’re taken down themselves.
A Note on Robinson |
I don’t think I’ve ever particularly liked Robinson. I think it’s precisely this that makes me want to watch all three of Patrick Keiller’s psychogeographical, filmic cartographies over and over again.
Robinson In Ruins is now, reluctantly, my favourite of all three of Keiller’s beautifully orchestrated works. His even longer than usual, drawn out, balmy stills of Oxfordshire’s most arid and painfully redemptive countryside, only commands my attention further. Summoned towards the Herzog-esque images of rhizomatic pastures, harvest-golden, and Cable and Wireless’ lofty, Cape Canaveral-style telecom units in Hampton Gaye, I become even more confused as to why I’m trying to deconstruct this mode of clinical yet ephemeral deregulation.
What Keiller does, or should I say Robinson’s narrators do, is deregulate through a very patent mode of psychogeographical address; a matter-of-fact method of making clear what is so very regulated, in our so very regulated, “Dirty old Blighty.” A case of regulation that is English, so much so that even it’s counter-effective measures, voiced first by Paul Scofield in Keiller’s inaugural work of this series, London, appears to articulate the cultural, sociological, political lot in a matter of minutes. What this means is that Keiller – Robinson, Scofield and more so recently Vanessa Redgrave – has/ve fostered a narrative that serves to deregulate the static temporality of what Englishness is and that which an identity espouses. Which leads me to think whether psychogeography and its various trajectorial discourses relish in a space that is devoid of time. Whilst categorically, psychogeography can not possibly be read or indeed written as devoid of time, Keiller writes outside of time, and toward a time that is in actuality, static. These historical poetic-documents are suspended in a place where tentacular vestiges reach out into our time, as familiar, as home-made and as backwardly utopian as all our childhoods were.
As with its predecessors, Robinson In Ruins enlists an army of greats, whose own devices (whether literary, philosophical and so forth) serve to punctuate the otherwise banal, yet highly beautiful imagery of one of the nicer Home Counties. Keynoting the likes of Benjamin, Heidegger and Herzog to name a few, this time Keiller expressively marks a change in direction. Robinson In Ruins seeks to orchestrate old instruments to a new tune; instead of an immersive, dense and explicit narrative of a picture that speaks itself, this work steers very much away from what is clear, and in a strange way communicates a different picture to that which we see. Keiller and Redgrave pull us up to speed by footnoting the global economic crisis, climate change and the Middle East against arable farming, opium and hollyhock clusters. This time a biophilic engendering has weaved and permeated itself onto the sterile corridor of the England that Keiller resolutely tied himself to with his previous works.
Robinson has been released from prison and true to form is continuing his research, this time in Oxfordshire, following a route of scientific and natural interest. The love story between Robinson and his previous narrator is shattered when the work opens with a female voice, which in fact is an ex-lover of the now deceased original. However the combination of Redgrave, and Robinson’s newfound desire to procure the spirit of humanity from nature, not only writes into the story a completely different side to our protagonist, but sees the attention of Keiller’s psychogeographical wizardry turn to the more interstitial moments and intricate fissures of humanity, space, time and the natural world, to the degree that my perception of Robinson may begin to waver when I watch it again.
Staying In |
My______ the website formerly known as Myspace and innovative. Two words you just wouldn’t put in the same sentence any more. Strangely I just had to, and its all because of the BlackBox sessions; musical performances at the Roundhouse that are being broadcast live on the front page of Myspace. The series sees video directors matched up with bands to create visually and aurally unique experiences. The idea of streaming live performances over the internet is not a new one, but most offerings are choppy, underwhelming affairs. The people behind the BlackBox sessions however, realised the importance of the performance element and the careful consideration given to the bands and the visuals involved means you don’t end up feeling like your watching through a keyhole. The series seems to be gathering interest and with Django Django and Is Tropical already inside, Off Modern favourites Fiction were the latest band to be deposited in the BlackBox. OM caught up with Will Hanke and Jamie Roberts, the directors behind the project to get some answers.
DEPTFORD GOTH |
Can I call this a new ‘musical project’ from the man behind Deptford Goth? It’s definitely not a band; this track has been made by one man, a bedroom-dwelling soundscape craftsman. While the name inspires a comical image of a South-East stranded Goth, the music itself evokes an altogether different location. It’s all very Tokyo, as if Deptford Goth has chosen to score one of Yasujiro Ozu’s moments of delicate emotion and in doing so has drenched it in glorious Technicolor cherry blossom.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
[Download]
two soups & a honeybun |
This Wednesday sees the opening of gallery 18 Hewitt Street and it’s debuting exhibition, ‘Two Soups & a Honeybun” by Justin ‘Kutmah’ McNulty a prominent force of the Los Angeles underground music scene (Low End Theory, Brainfeeder)
“Justin “Kutmah” McNulty was born in the UK to an Egyptian mother and Scottish father. He moved to the US when he was 12-years-old. Without advance warning nor any provoking criminal activity, on 5th May 2010, seven armed federal agents entered his house, handcuffed and detained him. With no calls allowed to family or lawyers, Kutmah was brought to a facility in downtown LA where he was interrogated regarding immigration issues.
Album of the Week – Led Zeppelin IV |
Yesterday, the nominations were released for the 2011 instalment of the Brit Awards. I’m not sure how much credibility the ceremony still holds these days, nevertheless it’s always interesting to see how the industry chooses to both direct audiences and recognize artists at these given opportunities. Nearly 40 years after the release of this album of the week, its vocalist Robert Plant is nominated for Best British Male Solo Artist…
The officially untitled Led Zeppelin IV would receive the best album accolade from most fans of the band. Here, the four members combine honesty, folk and rock, not to mention some the best technical performances of their careers, into their fourth long player release. The absence of a name and the four mysterious symbols embellishing the artwork is emblematic of the band’s undaunted and unconcerned attitude towards their critics of that time.
The songs of Led Zeppelin deserve associations with words like alchemy and synergy. The mystic and spirituality of their sound give their acts of writing and playing together the feel and weight of a thousand year old chemical reaction, the result of which can sell over twenty million copies worldwide.
This combination and subsequent outcome is never plainer to hear than in the album’s stand out track, Stairway To Heaven. Known for their chromatic steps, here, Plant’s words and Page’s ascending and descending fingers conjure images of a chromium staircase, which we fly up, whilst listening to one of the best rock songs of all time. A lengthy number, there are times when the music dictates we take a pause. When we reach two minutes and fourteen seconds, a moment is created (similar to the one at three minutes and twelve seconds into Radiohead’s ‘Lucky’), as a guitar is strummed in such a way that lovely endorphins feel free to walk around inside you. With the introduction of percussionist John Bonham at 4.18, they march. And after Page’s amazing solo, at around 6.45, when Plant starts to scream, they’re exploding.
After the Stairway there’s the Misty Mountain Top, which is totally grooving. Before, the psychedelic, folky Battle of Evermore, caused by lonely, lonely, lonely Rock and Roll. I hope you take time to listen to it all, step by step in the right order. For a quick fix right now, here is a song of hope.
